Crushed Ruby, page 6
“Why trash the house, then? Did they do it to upset the family, or were the Cochranes already dead by then? If they were already dead, then why do it at all?”
“For fun,” he replied simply. There was no meaningful reason to have done what they did to the house, it was done because they wanted to and derived some sort of pleasure from doing it. “So, we know that they had to get the family under control quickly and that they no doubt used their guns to do that. So, they break in, tie the family up, either trash the house and then kill them, or kill them, then trash the house. We might be able to figure out which depending on the approximate time of deaths. Then, when they’re done, they go back out the same way they came in because the front door was locked when the bodies were discovered.”
The family had been discovered when the people they carpooled with had shown up ready to collect Terry and Sally for school only to find no one waiting for them. The mother driving for the car pool wondered what was going on and used her key to let herself inside. Thankfully, as soon as she saw the trashed house, she knew something was wrong and immediately called 911, so she wouldn’t have to live with the site of the executed Cochrane family embedded in her mind for the rest of her life.
“There’s always the possibility that this was personal,” Zeb said.
They had spent the day so far speaking with coworkers, family, and friends of the Cochrane family, and no one had a bad word to say about them. To the people in their circle, they were a typical family. Their lives revolved around work, school, and the kids’ activities. They were active in their local church. They were good neighbors, good colleagues, good friends. No one could come up with a single reason why someone would want to kill them.
He and Zeb had fared no better when they’d looked into the family’s criminal history. There wasn’t one. No arrest records for any member of the family. For all intents and purposes, they were the perfect family.
“Just because we haven’t found anything yet doesn’t mean it isn’t there,” Zeb continued.
“Agreed.” They would continue to work that angle and delve deeper into the family. Maybe if they scratched beneath the surface, they would find something that would lead them directly to their killers. “We know that they didn’t come in a car, or that if they did, they parked it at least farther up the street or around the block. The next door neighbor who arrived home around eleven said that she didn’t see a car parked in the Cochrane’s driveway or on the street outside their house. She said that she didn’t see any vehicles that she didn’t recognize parked anywhere near her house.”
“That means they had to walk. That would be risky, especially if they had blood on them from the shootings.”
“It would have been dark out, though, so depending on what they were wearing, any blood might not have been visible, and depending on the time, it wouldn’t have been likely they would have seen anyone anyway.”
“A couple of the neighbors reported hearing loud music, but none thought enough of it to give it a second thought until questioned. The killers probably turned it on to mask some of the sound from the gunshots and trashing the house,” Zeb said. “No one saw anyone coming or going from the house, so we don’t have any descriptions or even know for sure how many people we’re looking for.”
“I might be able to help you with that.”
They both looked up as Elsie Mars walked up to their desks. Elsie was a decade older than him and worked for the crime scene unit, her specialty was ballistics.
“I started my preliminary examination of the bullets as soon as they hit my desk, and one thing jumped straight out at me,” Elsie told them, her brown eyes twinkling with excitement.
“What did you find?” Judah asked.
“Each of the bullets was a different size,” Elsie grinned.
“Meaning that there were four different guns used,” he said. He had been sure that there was more than one intruder, and this seemed to be proof of that. Why would one man need four different guns? He wouldn’t. The only reason that there would be four guns used in the shootings was if there were four armed intruders in the house last night.
They were looking for a gang.
A gang who broke into unsuspecting family homes to kill whoever lived there and then trashed the place for fun.
They were looking for four people who would strike again as soon as they had the opportunity to do so.
* * * * *
8:50 P.M.
It was quiet here tonight.
Amethyst was on shift at the fire house. Sapphire was spending the night at her and Gideon’s new house, and Diamond was out at an art show. Ruby had the house all to herself—which she both enjoyed and hated.
She didn’t like being alone in this big empty house; it always creeped her out a little. She felt exposed like the walls weren’t enough to keep out anyone who might want to hurt her.
Ruby was so tired of feeling this way.
She had been back in the real world for seven years now, and yet, most days, she felt like she was still living in Igor’s basement—living with that constant ball of fiery anxiety in the pit of her stomach. She still got up each morning feeling like she wasn’t in control of her own life. Like she was merely a puppet and that someone else was pulling strings making her do things that she didn’t want to do.
Okay, so now she wasn’t forced to have sex with a myriad of men, but she was still a prisoner. Only now her prison was different. It wasn’t a dingy basement full of beds and a bathroom with no walls. Now, it was a beautiful house and the ability to go wherever she wanted and do whatever she wanted, only she didn’t know what that was.
She was in a prison of her own making.
A prisoner to her emotions.
Which were usually all over the place.
Like right now. She should be happy. She liked her job; there was no stress involved with being a hairdresser. And she had picked a very low risk place to do it. She worked at a couple of nursing homes in the area, stopping by one day a week to each of the five facilities she worked with and brightening the days of the residents who lived there who suffered from Alzheimer’s and dementia. She loved living with her sisters. It was nice to have family close by, and this should be an exciting time, helping Sapphire prepare for her upcoming wedding.
And yet, she didn’t feel happy.
Or excited.
Or even okay.
She felt hopeless.
Trapped.
Like she was stuck in a cycle that had no end. She might never get over what happened to her. And not just in a there-would-always-be-scars sense. In a real sense, an everyday sense. Part of her wanted to believe that there would be a fairy tale ending to her own life. That she would meet a man and they’d fall in love. She could let go of the past and look to the future; they’d get married and one day have a family of their own, then they would grow old side by side.
But fairy tales were just that.
Fairy tales.
Stories.
Make believe.
In real life, you didn’t always get what you wanted. There wasn’t always a prince who came riding in on a white horse to save you. You couldn’t always save yourself. She had once before; she had saved herself, and she hadn’t relied on anyone to come running to her rescue because no one had. She had spent four years as Igor’s prisoner, and no one had saved her. So she had found strength that she hadn’t known she possessed and done what she had to, to get free.
Her statement led the cops to Igor’s house. Many of the other girls there had been rescued. A lot of her captors were caught, charged, and currently serving out their sentences. Igor himself had been found guilty and had committed suicide in prison a little over a year after her escape.
Suicide.
That one thought had hovered in her brain nearly every single day since she’d come home.
It wasn’t always in the forefront, but it was always there—lingering in the background, like some kind of creepy stalker who couldn’t let her go.
She had tried it before. About a month after she came home, when she realized that her life wasn’t going to magically go back to the way it had been before and that she wasn’t going to magically go back to the person she had been before, she had cut her wrists.
An attempt to end her life or a cry for help, she wasn’t entirely sure which it had been.
That hadn’t been the only time she had tried something like that.
Just before the second anniversary of her escape, she had swallowed an entire bottle of her antidepressants. Then, around eighteen months ago, she had tried slitting her wrists again.
Each time, one of her sisters had found her and rushed her to the hospital, saving her life. She was counseled every time, and the fear and pain on her sisters’ faces were enough to stop her from trying again.
For the time being.
It never lasted, though.
In addition to the scars from two of her suicide attempts, there was a myriad of scars where she had toyed with the idea but never actually did it.
What would happen when her sisters all moved on and moved out?
She would be alone here, no one to notice if she tried to kill herself again.
Both Amethyst and Diamond were adamant that they didn’t intend to get married and move away, but Sapphire had felt the same way, and now she was head over heels in love. From their wedding planning talk last night, Ruby knew that Diamond liked someone too, so how long before her older sister made a move on the man she liked? Or if she didn’t, he might.
Her twin sister was different. She couldn’t see Amethyst settling down with a man, or any man being able to handle her, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t happen.
Then it would just be her.
Alone.
Again.
Ruby lifted her hand and looked at the small razor blade she held in it. It glimmered as it caught the light, and it made her think about what lay beyond this life. Was it bright and sunshiny there? Was it peaceful? Would she finally be happy? Would this heavy weight of fear and guilt finally be lifted away?
She moved the blade to her wrist and held it there, applying no pressure, so the blade didn’t cut her skin. It would be so easy. One deep cut and she would bleed out before anyone found her. Amethyst and Sapphire wouldn’t be back until sometime tomorrow. Diamond would be home late and would no doubt go right up to bed when she did get home. There would be no reason for her to check the library first.
One move; that was all it would take.
Just one.
The sound of shattering glass jarred her out of her trance, and the blade nicked her skin. Ruby hissed at the sting, but jumped to her feet and headed to the library door to see what had broken.
As soon as she opened the door, she saw them.
Four people.
One was dressed all in black with a skull mask, one dressed as a black cat, one dressed as a ghost, and the last as a witch.
All four held guns.
Ruby froze.
She didn’t need to think about why these four people had just broken into her house. She already knew. They were here to hurt her. To kill her.
Her library was at the front of the house, to the right of the front door. They had broken in at the back of the house. If she was quick, she might be able to make it out the door before they got her.
As though reading her mind, Ghost lifted his hand, pointing the gun directly at her, clearly indicating his intentions.
They thought they had her, but she had an ace up her sleeve.
She and her sisters were victims of human trafficking; they had designed this house themselves, and because of their paranoia—or what she liked to think of as smart thinking—they had not only put in a good security system that should have already sent alerts to the police and to Sapphire, but they had also installed safe rooms. There was one in each of their bedrooms, and there was one down here in the living room.
All she had to do was play along, then make her move.
Ruby forced herself to stand still while two of the foursome came toward her. It wasn’t all that hard. She had plenty of practice staying still while people hurt her.
“Smart lady,” Skull said as he grabbed hold of her arm and began to drag her down toward the living room. Black Cat trailed after him, not really paying attention to what was going on. Ghost and Witch had already walked off as soon as they thought everything was under control.
They thought they were in charge here, but they were wrong.
It was odd. She spent a lot of time thinking about and wanting to end her own life, and yet when she was thrown into a situation where she had to fight for her life, she fought.
There was probably something to that, but she didn’t have time to examine the thought right now.
Skull guided her down to the living room where Ghost and Witch were already laying things out on the table, Black Cat was wandering somewhere, so, at the moment, it was one against one. It looked like Skull had the advantage because he had a gun, but she had a weapon too.
The safe room was only about ten feet away, but she was only going to have one chance at this. Mess it up, and she was dead.
Since she hadn’t given him any reason not to believe it was true, Skull wasn’t acting like she was any sort of threat; he was just pulling her along behind him, heading for the dining table.
It was now or never.
With the small razor blade that just a few minutes ago she was holding to her own skin and contemplating slicing through her arteries, she now swung it up and cut through the man’s arm.
He yelped in both pain and surprise and released her.
Ruby didn’t hesitate.
She ran.
She heard a commotion but didn’t turn around to see what was going on. She just opened the door to the safe room, ran inside, and slammed the door. Then she sagged against the wall, letting it hold her up. Her heart was racing, hammering in her chest like it also wanted to run away.
Breathing hard, she tried to calm down.
She was safe now. There was no way the intruders could get inside, and the cops should already be on their way.
Ruby knew she was lucky to be alive, so why didn’t she feel grateful?
* * * * *
9:03 P.M.
It was nine o’clock, but Judah felt like it was much later.
It had been a long and exhausting day, and he didn’t feel like he and Zeb had made enough progress in the home invasion case. Part of him was preparing for a call in the morning to say that another family had been killed. He wished there was something he could do to stop that from happening, but they just didn’t have enough information at the moment.
He was stretched out on the couch in his den. He wasn’t really a TV watcher; he didn’t have a subscription to Netflix or Stan or any of those places. When he was home, he liked to just relax and listen to a little music. He had the tendency to be a workaholic, so he had implemented a no-work-once-he-left-the-station policy; otherwise, he probably wouldn’t do anything but pour over cases.
Tonight, he had hit the gym on the way home, cooked a risotto, then collapsed onto the couch. His cat had curled up on his lap, and that was basically an order to not move for the foreseeable future. He loved cats, but he’d been thinking about getting another dog. It had been almost two years since his last dog died, and he thought he was finally ready to let a new one into his heart. Punkin, the cat, had loved the dog, and they had grieved Domino the Dalmatian together. He hoped that Punkin would be willing to let a puppy into their home.
Risking the wrath that only a cat who had been disturbed while sleeping could deliver, Judah scooped him up and stood. Punkin blinked, yawned, glared at him, and hissed his displeasure. Before he could get caught with the cat’s claws, he set Punkin down on the floor, and the cat meowed irritably at him as he headed for the bathroom. By the time he took a shower and ran through his evening routine, it would be late enough to go to bed.
He’d just turned on the shower when his phone rang. For a moment, he debated leaving it; it was probably his mom. She was a night owl and often called around this time, but at the last minute, he snatched it up. What if it was another home invasion?
His boss’s name was on the screen when he pulled his phone out of his pocket. Immediately, he felt nervous energy buzzing through him. “Debra, what’s up?”
“The alarm was just triggered at Sapphire’s house,” Debra said. “I tried calling her, but she’s not picking up. Dispatch has sent officers, but you’re only a couple of minutes away. Can you head over there, see what’s up?”
Relief that there wasn’t another home invasion was quickly replaced with fear for Sapphire’s sisters. He wasn’t sure who was home, but Sapphire lived there with three sisters—Diamond, Amethyst, and Ruby.
He may or may not have a crush on Ruby.
Okay, he did have a crush on her.
“I’m leaving right now.”
“I’ll keep trying, Sapphire,” Debra said, then hung up.
He grabbed his gun and his keys. He didn’t bother changing out of the shorts and tank top that he’d put on at the gym. It was cold out, but he doubted he was going to be worrying about that.
The Hatcher house was about five streets over from his, and the streets were quiet. It was after nine, and the fall weather had come. Most people were tucked inside their houses by now. He was there in about three minutes. The house was dark and quiet, and he parked out front and didn’t pause to lock his car, heading straight for the front door.
Judah found it locked, and since he didn’t know what he was going to walk into, he circled the house to the back and froze at what he saw.
The window beside the back door was broken.
The back door was standing wide open.
Déjà vu flushed through him.
This was exactly the same as the scene at the Cochrane house. Had the Hatcher house been the next one the gang of home invaders had decided to hit?
