Closing in, p.1
Closing In, page 1
Closing In
A Conquering Fear Novel
Jane Blythe
Amanda Siegrist
Copyright © 2022 Jane Blythe and Amanda Siegrist
All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
Cover designed by: QDesigns
Edited by: Editing Done Write
Also by Jane Blythe
Complete Detective Parker Bell Series
A Secret to the Grave
Winter Wonderland
Dead or Alive
Little Girl Lost
Forgotten
* * *
Count to Ten Series
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Burning Secrets
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
* * *
Christmas Romantic Suspense Series
Christmas Hostage
Christmas Captive
Christmas Victim
Yuletide Protector
Yuletide Guard
* * *
Broken Gems Series
Cracked Sapphire
Crushed Ruby
Fractured Diamond
Shattered Amethyst
Splintered Emerald
Salvaging Marigold
* * *
River’s End Rescues Series
Cocky Savior
Some Regrets Are Forever
Protect
Some Lies Will Haunt You
Some Questions Have No Answer
Some Truth Can Be Distorted
Some Trust Can Be Rebuilt
Some Mistakes Are Unforgivable
* * *
Candella Sisters’ Heroes Series
Little Dolls
Little Hearts
Little Ballerina
* * *
Storybook Murders Series
Nursery Rhyme Killer
Fairytale Killer
* * *
Saving SEALs Series
Saving Ryder
Saving Eric
Saving Owen
Saving Logan
Saving Grayson
Saving Charlie
* * *
Prey Security Series
Protecting Eagle
Protecting Raven
Protecting Falcon
Protecting Sparrow
Also by Amanda Siegrist
A happy ending is all I need.
* * *
One Taste Novel
One Taste of You
One Taste of Love
One Taste of Crazy
One Taste of Sin
One Taste of Redemption
One Taste of Hope
* * *
Lucky Town Novel
Escaping Memories
Dangerous Memories
Stolen Memories
Deadly Memories
Forgotten Memories
* * *
Standalone Novel
The Danger with Love
* * *
McCord Family Novel
Protecting You
Trust in Love
Deserving You
Always Kind of Love
Finding You
Dare You to Love
* * *
Holiday Romance Novel
Merry Me
Mistletoe Magic
Christmas Wish
Snowed in Love
Snowflakes and Shots
Holiday Hope
Sleigh All the Way
* * *
Perfect For You Novel
The Wrong Brother
The Right Time
The Easy Part
The Hard Choice
* * *
Short Stories
Paint By Murder
Follow Me, Sweet Darling
* * *
Psychic Love Novel
Exploding Love
Captured Love
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Drowning in You
Out of the Darkness
Thank you
Also by Jane Blythe
About the Author
Also by Amanda Siegrist
About the Author
1
What had he done?
He stared down at the body lying at his feet. He didn’t remember picking up the knife, and he didn’t remember slicing it through the woman’s flesh until all that was left was the shredded corpse of what used to be a beautiful young woman.
It wasn’t really her fault. She hadn’t deserved this, she didn’t deserve to die, but she hadn’t been right.
She wasn’t really the one he wanted.
He’d tried though. He’d thought that if he could line everything up just right, get as close as possible to what he wanted that it would be okay, but it wasn’t.
Nothing was okay.
And now he had a gigantic mess to clean up.
Glancing down at himself, he saw that he was covered in blood from head to toe. There was no way he could walk out of here like this. It was late and dark out, but there was still a chance that someone could see him, and when they saw him drenched in blood, they would definitely call the cops.
That was the last thing he needed.
Okay, he had to clean up this mess, and then himself. He didn’t know a lot about forensics and DNA and fingerprints and stuff, but he knew enough to make sure he left as little of himself behind as possible.
Casting a sorrowful look at the dead woman’s face, he started a search through her house. Finding bleach in the laundry room and a stack of towels in the linen closet, he brought both with him to the living room.
Getting down on his hands and knees, he got to work sloshing bleach everywhere, then he grabbed the towels and did his best to clean all the blood off the floor.
Which turned out to be a lot harder than he’d realized.
Who knew blood was so hard to clean up?
It was like the more he tried to wash it away, the more it just smeared everywhere.
He was starting to get antsy.
What if someone came to the door?
It was after eleven, but some people were up late, and he didn’t know this woman well enough to know who her friends and family were and what her routines were.
That should be enough, right?
What about the rest of the room?
What had he touched?
His heart was hammering in his chest as panic clawed at him, making it hard to think, and with a million worries flying through his mind, concentrating on any one thing was virtually impossible.
Grabbing one of the towels, he took it to the kitchen, soaked it in water, then proceeded to walk around the house, wiping down anything he thought he might have touched.
When that was done, he gave the room a satisfied look, confident he had done his best to wipe away any traces of himself. Now he just had to do something about his body and his clothes. If he threw his things in the washer and then the drier while he took a shower, he could be out of here as clean as he’d been when he arrived for the date.
Loading the machine, he headed upstairs to the bathroom and turned the water on as hot as he could bear then methodically scrubbed every inch of his body until he was sure that there wasn’t a speck of blood remaining.
With nothing to do while he waited for his clothes to be ready, he went back to the living room and looked with remorse at the woman’s body. Her eyes stared sightlessly at the ceiling. They had a weird, empty look to them that he’d never seen before, and it made him shudder in revulsion.
Death was creepy.
He’d never seen a dead body before, and sitting here in this room with one was making his anxiety fly through the roof.
Prayers.
He’d say his prayers.
That would make everything better.
He’d pray for her and for himself. She was an innocent. She’d be in Heaven right now, free and happy, at peace, but if he wanted to go to Heaven one day, then he had a lot of repenting to do.
First thing tomorrow, he would have to go to confession.
Now, though, he’d get a head start with his rosaries. Getting down on his knees he began to pray.
“This is a mess.”
Owen glanced a t his partner Max and nodded. A mess didn’t even begin to describe it. What lay in front of them was mayhem. Complete and utter mayhem.
Katherine Datuche, a thirty-three-year-old woman, who worked in the mortgage department at a local bank, was eviscerated from head to toe. Knife wounds marked her face, her chest, her abdomen, and a few on her legs. Some defensive wounds, no doubt. Most intentional. At this point, they didn’t know much other than her name, her occupation, and she owned a black cat that marked its paw prints everywhere.
Amongst the scattered prints was a mixture of blood and what he could only assume was bleach, but the stench was strong.
Owen wasn’t sure yet what to make of the bleach. The blood on the floor looked smeared as if the killer had attempted to wipe up the mess. Her body had a strong odor of bleach as well. He’d have to wait for confirmation from Crock, the coroner, that she had indeed been doused with the cleaning detergent.
There were a few towels folded properly on the dryer in the laundry room that were stained an odd pinkish-red. They had once been a vibrant yellow, if the other towels in the hallway closet were any indication. Ms. Datuche seemed to like color coordinating. A brief walk around the house said as much.
Her kitchen was decorated in bright reds. From the polka dot curtains to the stylish tile backsplash coated with red and white every other tile.
Her bedroom was a pretty blue, as majestic as a sunny day with no clouds in sight. She even had a painting of a rainbow above her bed.
Her bathroom was decked out in different yellows. He liked the large starfish hanging on the wall above the toilet. It reminded him of Tina and—
Whoa. Not where he wanted his thoughts to go. Except, since he had seen her two weeks ago when her brother Miles went missing with Detective Hawkins, he couldn’t get her to disappear from his mind.
“Killer must’ve known her,” Owen said, hoping to distract his wandering thoughts by focusing on the crime in front of him. He rarely lost his focus while working. When he was on a case, that’s all that mattered. The case. The victim. Finding a killer. Closing said case. Moving on to the next one.
Max nodded. “Crime of passion, for sure. What do you think,” Max asked as he walked to the left a bit to see the scene from a different angle, “about twenty to thirty stab wounds? You don’t stab someone that many times unless you’re really pissed about something.”
Owen circled the opposite way, liking to get a new angle like Max. That’s what made them such great partners. Their thought processes were the same, yet dispositions a bit different. He was a no-nonsense kind of guy. By the book. Organized. Detailed notes. Mission-oriented. Although, more so the bad guy in a good-cop-bad-cop scenario. Max was more lighthearted. Liked to joke around. Organized, but in a chaotic sort of way that made sense only to him. And, of course, the good guy in the good-cop-bad-cop situation. Unless a suspect said something that set him off. He did tend to have a slight hair-trigger temper. Which made Owen laugh when it came out of nowhere, especially since he loved to joke around. A person had to watch what kind of jokes were said.
“Well, we didn’t find any forced entry, so she had to have known the killer. We need to see if she has a boyfriend. Has she been arguing with someone lately?” Owen crouched down to get another new angle of the body. “Definitely killed in a fit of rage.”
Knife wounds scoured her body. Some looked deep. Some looked shallow. She fought back. Tried to, anyway. Her hands looked like someone had taken a cheese grater and went to town rubbing her hand up and down, so many nicks and cuts coated them. She had tried to fight back.
Her hair, a shade of brown, sort of like the spare room she had decked out in sandy-brown tones—which had reminded him of the beach, especially with the pictures of the ocean on the walls—was now lying in a pool of blood. Instead of a rich brown-looking tone, it resembled more of a murky mud puddle.
He couldn’t tell by her hair if she had just come home from work or out to drinks with some friends; it was tangled in a heap of crimson red. Her clothes weren’t much better to give him any indication. She wore a black dress. Not too fancy where she could’ve worn it to the bank, but also not too dressed down where she might’ve planned to take a stroll around the lake and maybe dip her toes in the water. A casual dress. No fancy jacket was lying around indicating she had taken it off and tossed it.
Her sister had called it in after Ms. Datuche hadn’t shown up to work this morning and a co-worker couldn’t get a hold of her. The co-worker also knew her sister, who had called her with concern. She had let herself in with a spare key and was so shocked by the horrific scene, she had thrown up her breakfast right in the midst of the chaos already spread across the floor.
The stench from that, to the dead body, to the strong smell of bleach had him ready to gag himself.
Max finished circling the room, edging closer to the front door. “Let’s knock on some of the neighbors’ doors.”
Great idea. They could get away from the smell, which was what Max was also thinking. “Lead the way.”
Max started to walk out. Owen couldn’t resist looking at the victim and her soulless eyes one more time. Nothing but a vacant stare. No life. No heartbeat. No spirit. It was so disheartening to look upon a dead body. But someone had to do it. Someone had to help the people who couldn’t help themselves. He took pride in being that person. Being a voice to the murdered victims who couldn’t simply say, “This person killed me. They did it.”
While he wished he had a one hundred percent closing rate on his cases, he didn’t. Not even close because some cases were never solved. Not enough evidence. No witnesses. Not many clues to lead them in a good direction.
This scene had so much to say. Too messy, which he hoped meant the killer left something behind. A print. A hair. Some sort of DNA—as long as they were in the system. The rage, the brutal way she had died, said this killer knew her. That was a good sign, too. All they should have to do was find out the problems she was having in her life and weed out the person most likely to kill her in such a fit of rage.
Easy-peasy.
Owen inhaled a large breath of fresh air as soon as he stepped out onto her porch. A bright sunny day. Slight breeze. Not too cold, not too hot. A perfect day, which was surprising considering it was early November.
Except for the terrifying crime scene a few feet away inside the morbid house.
Easy-peasy? Yeah, right.
Not much was easy in life.
Certainly not his childhood. Adulthood was even a struggle. He learned that the hard way when he thought he found the woman he would marry.
Until she tore his heart out with her lies. At least, he thought she lied. That was the problem. He didn’t know. And not knowing was worse than a lie.
He couldn’t abide by secrets.
Tina Thomas had secrets she hadn’t been willing to share, and he hadn’t wanted to stick around to deal with her betrayal.
This was silly.
She should leave.
Yes.
No.
Ugh, Tina Thomas groaned. Why was she making a big deal out of this? All she was doing was going to thank someone who had helped to save her brother’s life. That was perfectly acceptable.
So why did she feel like she was doing something wrong?
Well, unfortunately, she knew the answer to that question. She felt like she was doing something wrong because the man who had saved her brother’s life was the only man she had ever loved.
Probably the only man she would ever love.
At least that’s how it felt. It had been more than two years since their relationship had ended and she hadn’t found herself interested in another man. There had been a few who had asked her out, and her twin sister had tried to help her move on by setting her up on a few blind dates, but none of those men could even come close to Detective Owen Morrison.
