A Caress of Bones: a serial killer thriller (Wren Delacroix Book 9)

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

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  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  A CARESS OF BONES

  Wren Delacroix, Book Nine

  V. J. Chambers

  A CARESS OF BONES

  © copyright 2021 by V. J. Chambers

  http://vjchambers.com

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  CHAPTER ONE

  THE timer on Wren Delacroix’s phone was beeping, but she wasn’t turning it off, because she was too busy glaring at the pregnancy test sitting on the sink in the bathroom.

  “That’s been two minutes, right?” said Caius Reilly, peering over her shoulder.

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “You going to turn that off?”

  She yanked out her phone and poked the screen to silence it.

  “So?” said Reilly.

  She shook her head.

  “What?” he said.

  “It’s… there’s nothing.” She pointed at it. “See, there should be a line here, and there’s no line here at all. One line negative, two lines positive, and there’s nothing.”

  He squinted at it.

  She made a face at the stupid test. “So, they were out of the boxes of three tests. I would have just got a box with three tests, but they were out. And then I thought, ‘I could buy three single tests. Or even two single tests.’ But I didn’t, because I figured one test would be fine.”

  He glanced at her, blinking, obviously confused.

  “The test is a dud, Cai!” She swept it up off the sink and tossed it in the trash. “Damn it, I wish I would have peed in a cup. Now, even if I go and buy another test, I’m going to have to wait until I have to pee again.”

  “A dud,” he said.

  She nodded.

  “So, you’re saying, this is getting stretched out here. Really? We still don’t know if you’re pregnant? How long are we going to have to wait on this?”

  She rolled her eyes at him. “This is not my fault.”

  “It’s cruel and unusual is all I’m saying,” he said.

  “If you weren’t recovering from a gunshot wound, I’d send you out to the damned store,” she said, stalking out of the bathroom. She wasn’t sure where she’d left her wallet, but she knew it had to be around here somewhere. She wasn’t going to bother with bringing an entire purse to the store, because that was just silly. A wallet would be fine.

  And she’d need keys to drive.

  Where had she left her keys?

  “I could go,” said Reilly.

  “No,” she said. “You need to be resting. You’re not healed.”

  “Does this happen often?” he said. “With pregnancy tests?”

  “I’ve never heard of it happening, but there’s a first time for everything.”

  “Are you sure you did it right?”

  “You pee on it, Cai. There’s nothing to screw up.”

  “Well, maybe you should check, just to look into it before you try again?”

  “I have taken pregnancy tests before, okay?” She glared at him.

  He spread his hands. “You know, it’s not my fault either.”

  “Do you know where I left the keys?” she said.

  Suddenly, her phone rang.

  She jumped.

  It was Amber Garrote calling. She was their contact at the FBI. She wasn’t technically their boss, but she did oversee them, and if there was a case that they’d be deployed on, she was the one who’d get in touch with them.

  “Well,” she said. “Whip me, beat me, take away my charge cards, NASA is talking.”

  “What?” said Reilly.

  She shook her head. “It’s from this movie called Space Camp. I used to watch it when I was a kid.” She put the phone to her ear. “Garrote? This is Delacroix.”

  “Hi there, Delacroix. How are you doing?”

  “I’ve seen that,” said Reilly. “I remember that. It’s really old, and it’s got, um, Joaquin Phoenix as a kid in it and the chick from Back to the Future.”

  Wren nodded at him. “Doing fine, Garrote?”

  “I guess Reilly’s still in recovery?”

  “Yeah, he’s supposed to stay off his feet,” said Wren pointedly.

  Reilly leaned against the wall, raising his eyebrows. “Who’s on the phone?”

  “Well, he’s going to have to sit this one out then,” said Garrote. “But if you could fly out to upstate New York right now, they could use your expertise.”

  “What’s in upstate New York?” said Wren.

  “They’ve got a black widow suspect in custody, but she’s playing games with them,” said Garrote. “A guy’s life is on the line. I’ll send you all the details, but there’s no time to waste. Every second that we talk about it is a second closer to an officer’s pending death. So, if you could just get out to the airport right now, that would be great?”

  “Uh…” Wren’s eyes widened. “Yeah, okay, I guess I can do that.”

  “Great,” said Garrote. “You’ll fly out of Dulles, and I’ll be sending you a digital boarding pass. Throw some clothes in a suitcase and get on the road, got it?”

  “Got it,” said Wren.

  “Great,” said Garrote and hung up.

  Wren slowly lowered the phone. “That was Amber Garrote.”

  “Oh, that’s why you said NASA,” said Reilly. “I get the association. Both government organizations. Both of them were quiet for a long time.” It had been months and months since they’d had a case for the FBI. “We caught something?”

  “Just me,” she said. “You have to stay here. You need to rest.”

  “Oh, fuck that,” said Reilly. “I’m not sitting at home while you—”

  “You are under orders to rest. You’re not even supposed to be up like this.” She gestured at him.

  He hung his head.

  “You’re still on painkillers, Cai.”

  “Damn it,” he muttered.

  She pressed closed and kissed him. “I’m sorry. I know how much that sucks.”

  He slid one of his large hands up to cup her cheek. “You’ll call me? Keep me in the loop? I can help.”

  “Yeah,” said Wren. “Of course. But I don’t even know what’s going on. She said something about a black widow killer.”

  “That’s a woman who kills her husbands, right?”

  “Yeah,” said Wren. “Serially. Usually for financial gain. Anyway, I’m rushing because apparently, there’s a cop’s life on the line. I don’t know the details, though.”

  “Shit,” he said. “You better get going, then.”

  She pulled back. “I’ll get another pregnancy test at the airport, okay? I’ll call you as soon as I know the results.”

 
“Okay,” he said.

  “I’m sorry. I know it’s not as good as seeing it together.”

  He kissed her again. “It’s fine. Get moving.”

  “THIS officer went to bring her in for questioning and he never came back,” Garrote was saying on the other end of the phone.

  Wren had an earphone in, holding onto the cord to keep the microphone close to her mouth. She didn’t want to speak too loudly about this, since she was rushing through the airport, and she didn’t want to alarm people with discussions of serial killers and bodies and other disturbing things. “The black widow suspect got to him then?”

  “Yes,” said Garrote. “So, when he didn’t check in, they sent multiple officers after her, and they were able to bring her in. But she’s got the first officer stashed somewhere, and she won’t say where that is. She says that she’s given him a slow-acting poison and that he can be saved if they get him to a hospital within the next…” A pause as Garrote checked her watch. “Twelve hours.”

  “What poison?” said Wren.

  “She didn’t say,” said Garrote. “They want you to interrogate her. They figure if anyone can get the location of this police officer out of her, it’ll be you. The officer’s name is Leroy Graham. He’s got two kids, both under the age of ten.”

  Wren grimaced. “Don’t tell me about his kids.”

  Garrote barked out a laugh. “That’s your response?”

  “Sorry,” said Wren. “I’m protecting myself, I guess. This guy might die, and if he does, it’s going to be my fault. If I go too deep into the emotional reality of that, I’ll be worthless on the case. Tell me more about the suspect.”

  “Um, she’s in her late twenties. Her name is Poppy Morgan, and she may have killed four men already.”

  Wren nodded. “Okay.” She spied her gate ahead. “Hey, do they have pharmacies in airports?”

  “What?” said Garrote. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “But what about if you want to buy some ibuprofen or something?”

  “I don’t know,” said Garrote. “Look, you don’t have time to go shopping. You got a headache, suck it up. Your plane is boarding in ten minutes. I didn’t get you a rush job through security for nothing.”

  “Right,” said Wren, sighing. It was probably better to put all that from her mind anyway. And if she was pregnant, she didn’t think stress was good, so she should remain as calm as possible.

  “Listen, I don’t know any more details. They’ll fill you in when you arrive. Someone will be waiting for you at the airport.”

  “Okay,” said Wren.

  She and Garrote said their goodbyes and hung up.

  They called for boarding almost immediately after.

  Wren shot off a text to Reilly. No time to buy a test at the airport. I’m not even sure if they sell them in stores here.

  No worries, he texted back.

  I’m going straight from the airport to the police station there. I don’t know when I’ll get a chance to buy one.

  Seriously, don’t worry about it.

  She told him that she was boarding the plane, and so she was going to go ahead and put the phone in airplane mode.

  He texted that he loved her, and it made her feel a jolt of goodness and her eyes stung.

  She texted that she loved him too.

  Reilly told her he loved her all the time, and it didn’t usually make her feel like crying. That was a sign, right?

  She sighed.

  As she boarded the plane, she tried to tell herself not to think about it, but she’d been trying that for the past several weeks. She was more attuned to her body than she’d ever been. Trying to interpret every twinge and sensation, wondering if it meant that there was a small life taking root inside her.

  At first, she’d been apprehensive about it. She and Reilly had often had conversations about pregnancy, and he’d been pretty adamant that he didn’t want to have any more children. He had a child with his ex-wife Janessa, Timmy. His son was ten years old, autistic, language delayed, and probably the sweetest kid in the history of the universe. Wren had gotten close to him in the past year that she and Reilly were dating, but even still, she didn’t feel like she had a parental relationship with the kid, and she hadn’t tried to have one.

  She hadn’t seen herself as becoming a parent, well, ever.

  But now, the prospect of it excited her, and she couldn’t deny it. Now that she knew that Reilly was also excited, she felt as if she didn’t have to stifle her desire to be pregnant.

  She hoped that she was, but that was probably crazy.

  Being pregnant would throw her life into a tail spin.

  Hell, right now, she and Reilly didn’t even have a permanent living situation. They were staying in the facility where they worked. It was a federal building that housed their offices, their lab, and a retreat facility for federal employees. They held trainings there and they sent agents there for convalescence if necessary.

  They had been looking at buying houses, but with Reilly recovering from a gunshot wound, they weren’t in any real position to go out and look for places.

  It was mid-July, and they had felt lazy in the summer heat.

  If there was a baby, however, they would have to find a new house soon, because there was no way she was moving in someplace when she was huge and lumbering.

  Her breath caught in her throat at the thought of that, both apprehensive and eager.

  Wren sat back in the seat on the plane, shutting her eyes.

  She could be a good mom. Her own mother had been a terrible mother, but Wren wasn’t like her. She was empathetic and good-hearted. She wasn’t an abusive sociopath like her mother was.

  Wren put a reassuring hand on her own stomach.

  And unbidden, an image surfaced in her head, Doug Sanders, shot dead, his body lifeless. She had killed him, and it had made her feel powerful.

  She shuddered.

  She wasn’t going to think about that.

  I am nothing like Vivian, she assured herself. I am nothing like my mother.

  “POPPY Morgan kills her husbands on their honeymoon,” said Detective Jenny Queen to Wren as they made their way through the Brookton Police Department. “Oh, there are donuts. You want one?”

  “I’m fine,” said Wren. What she wanted was coffee, but until she knew one way or another about her pregnancy, she wasn’t going to have any caffeine. That was probably silly, because she’d been drinking coffee every day without any concern over it, but she wanted to do this right.

  Queen stopped and snagged herself a donut with chocolate sprinkles. She broke off a piece and put it in her mouth and chewed.

  “Does she usually use poison?” said Wren. “It’s not an uncommon weapon for female killers.”

  Queen was still chewing. She shook her head.

  “No?” said Wren.

  Queen swallowed. “She doesn’t really have a pattern that way. Every single one of the victims was killed a different way. She shot one, suffocated another, slit another’s throat, and strangled the fourth with his own belt.”

  “How did you know it was the same killer?” said Wren.

  “Well,” said Queen, “after she did it the first time, she blamed it on an intruder. We had a circus show about that. We had her in and interviewed her four or five times. We had a composite sketch done on this guy, who supposedly broke in and shot her husband. She cried and cried and acted distraught. Then one year later, she’s getting married again, and that man ends up dead on his wedding night, suffocated. She tried to say it was accidental, but no one was buying it. So, we issued a warrant for her arrest, and she promptly skipped town.”

  “Ah,” said Wren.

  “That was two years ago,” said Queen. “But then a couple days ago, we got a tip from someone that they had seen her. So, we don’t know why she came back here. Since leaving, she’d gone on to kill in both New Mexico and in Kansas. Just kind of scattershot. Anyway, we underestimated her, I suppose, because we sent so
meone out to bring her in for questioning, and that officer never came back.”

  “This is Leroy Graham?”

  “Yes,” said Queen. “When he never checked back in, we sent out four officers, and they had no problem apprehending her. But then, she says that if we don’t let her go, she will not tell us the location of Officer Graham, and that he will die.”

  “Right, and how much time do we have left on that?” said Wren. “Nine hours?”

  Queen checked her phone. “Yes, about nine hours.”

  Wren took a deep breath.

  They had stopped walking. Queen pointed. “She’s down in that interrogation room. Is there anything you need before you go in to see her?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Wren.

  “Any other questions you have for me?” said Queen.

  “So, her initial two kills were done here, in New York state, two years ago?”

  “One was two years ago, and the other was a year before that.”

  “So, she has about a year cooling off period?”

  “Yes,” said Queen.

  “Maybe because she runs out of money?” said Wren.

  “Could be,” said Queen. “I don’t know much about money.”

  “Did she take money from her first victims?” said Wren. “Black widows are often financially motivated.”

  “I mean, she was married to them, so I’m sure she had access to their bank accounts, but I don’t think she targeted particularly wealthy men or anything.”

  “Huh,” said Wren.

  “Does that mean something?”

  “I don’t have time to sit here and speculate, do I?” said Wren. “Take me to her.”

  “Sure thing, Agent Delacroix.” Queen stuffed the rest of her donut into her mouth. Chewing, she headed for the door to the interrogation room.

  Wren followed.

  At the door, Queen pushed it open.

  Inside, sitting cross-legged and coiffed, was a beautiful blond woman in a pencil skirt, her blond hair pulled into a sleek, high ponytail. She tapped well-manicured long red nails on the table next to her. “Finally, someone’s here to see me. I was about to die of boredom.”