Lullabies & Dead Bodies, page 1
LULLABIES & DEAD BODIES
LASHELL COLLINS
For my mom and my husband, for believing in me.
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
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Epilogue
Murders & Romance
About the Author
Join Lashell’s Facebook Reader Group
Acknowledgments
Also by Lashell Collins
Copyright © 2020 Lashell Collins
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or people — living, dead, or undead — is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author. This book contains content that may not be suitable for young readers (under age 18).
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All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this eBook may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
1
Detective Isaac Taylor was drunk on Sidney and he knew it.
He’d known it from the moment they’d met three months ago.
There was no mistaking the euphoria. The headiness.
Being with her was like a drug, and he knew it wasn’t just the amazing sex.
It was her touch.
Not being afraid of feeling her skin against his own. Not being afraid of what he might see, or the possibility of pain.
He sat up, still panting, and ran a hand through his sweat-dampened blond hair. Then he reached to the table for the cold bottle of water and took a long swig. He handed the bottle to Sidney and watched her lift it to her lips.
His gaze drifted over her hot body — light brown skin with soft bronze undertones curved around perfect breasts with pretty brown nipples. He licked his own lips at the sight of her.
She put the empty bottle down and looked at him with a sultry smile that made his manhood twitch, eager for more.
“I could get used to lazy mornings like this.” Her words were slow, and she slipped her slender legs across his lap. Isaac’s hands were drawn to them like a magnet. “Just making love and eating breakfast in the sunroom and…”
“And making love again?”
“Yes. And eating again.”
Isaac laughed and his gaze wandered out the window at their backyard.
“We’ve been in this house about a month now. You putting any curtains on these sunroom windows, or should we start selling tickets to the neighbors for the peep show?”
“I love all the natural light. I don’t want to cover them up. Besides, between the privacy fence and all the trees, no one can see us.”
She sounded so certain that Isaac couldn’t help messing with her. He gave her one of those eyebrow-arching looks that leading men always did in the movies.
“You sure about that?”
“Yeah.” Her voice held on to the bravado even as uncertainty and embarrassment played over her face. Her gaze darted to the windows. “Oh, God. Do you think someone saw us?”
Isaac couldn’t stop laughing even if he’d tried.
She tossed a balled up napkin at him and turned onto her belly, leaving her beautifully rounded rump exposed. Isaac slid a hand up the back of her thigh to this new destination.
With his other hand he picked up a strawberry and dipped it generously in the melted chocolate. He took a bite and then fed the other half to her.
“Mmm. Best flavor combination ever.”
“Oh, I can think of a few others.” Isaac wiped the excess chocolate sauce from his thumb onto her right butt cheek. Then he leaned down and sucked the chocolate off her ass.
Sidney giggled, and it was the sexiest sound he’d ever heard.
He watched his fingers drift back and forth over her butt for a moment.
“You know what I could get used to?”
Sidney sent a flirtatious glance at him over her left shoulder and her curls fell around her face.
“What’s that?”
“Walking around half naked and not worried someone might accidentally touch my skin.” Isaac took a deep breath and looked up at her. “I love that I can be this free with you. That I don’t have to worry about physical pain when we touch. You have no idea how much that means to someone like me.”
It was the curse he lived with every moment of every day. The curse of being a hypersensitive psychic. That’s what his grandad, Sterling Taylor, called it. What his psychic therapist, Geneviève Leroux, called it too.
Sometimes with skin to skin contact, his psychometric abilities kicked in and he saw things about that person. Usually something about their past or something going on in their lives in the present. On rare occasions he saw the future. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the flashes of unwanted knowledge always came with excruciating physical pain. Didn’t matter who the person was, didn’t matter if they were his own family members. It happened with everyone.
Everyone except Sidney.
She turned over and sat up, scooting her soft body closer to him. Isaac’s arms went around her, drawing her in close.
“I hate that you have to be so careful with others all the time.” Sidney caressed his face and looked into his eyes. “But the fact that you don’t have to be that way with me makes me feel super special. Like I was meant only for you.”
Isaac touched her chin. “I believe you were meant only for me, darlin’. And I am so grateful God put you here. I mean, when you ran away from Damien you could’ve gone anywhere.”
He hated thinking about her dirtbag of a husband. The man had abused Sidney for years, finally giving her a beating so bad it had sent her to the hospital. But thankfully that asshole was dead now.
“You know, I never thought about where I was going when I ran. I just ran. I’m not really sure why I stopped running when I hit Cleveland.”
Isaac stared into her beautiful light brown eyes. “Like I said… no doubt in my mind that we were meant to be together.”
“Finding each other was fate.”
“I love you, Sidney.”
“I love you back, baby.”
He kissed the soft skin of her neck, breathing in the scent of sunshine.
“What do you say we get a shower and then hang out at the beach for a few hours today?”
Her voice was suddenly full of mischief and adventure, and Isaac laughed.
“If that’s what you want.”
He kissed her lips again just as his ringing cellphone took them both by surprise, and Isaac moved plates and napkins to locate it beneath the remnants of their breakfast feast.
“It’s Lieutenant Hayes. I’ll meet you in the shower.”
“Okay.” Sidney grabbed their plates and carried them into the kitchen.
Isaac watched her, admiring her walk, her ass, and the way her long hair swayed across her bare shoulders.
“Hey, Lieu, what’s up? And before you answer that, sir, please remember this is my day off and I am thoroughly enjoying it.”
The heavy silence on the other end of the line siphoned out all that joy.
Trepidation crept into Isaac’s gut like a tarantula.
“We’ve got a murder.”
The words were delivered with more dread than Isaac had ever heard come out of Hayes’ mouth, and in nine years he’d heard a lot. Whatever this was, Isaac knew it was bad.
“Give it to somebody else.”
“I would. But it looks like the Lullaby Killer.”
Isaac’s stomach seized, threatening to bring up breakfast. His brain was suddenly swimming through muck, fighting hard to fend off flashes of little girls and party dresses and heartbreaking crime scenes.
“You still there?”
Hayes’ question snapped him back.
“Yeah.” Isaac cleared his throat and tried again. “I’ll get to the station as soon as I can.”
He ended the call and headed for the bathroom. Sidney stood at the sink in her long silky pink bathrobe, pinning up her hair to get into the shower.
“I’m afraid spending the day together is going to have to wait.”
“Isaac, you’re white as a bleached-soaked sheet. What’s happened?”
“There’s been a murder. It looks like the killer from an old case of mine. I’ve gotta go in.”
He stepped past her and into the shower, and was out in five minutes flat. He dressed in dark blue jeans and a light blue button down shirt, feeling Sidney’s eyes on him the whole time.
She sat on their bed watching him, and he knew she was waiting for more. Waiting for him to explain or to say… something. But he couldn’t. He had no words.
Jesus.
If he was being honest with himself, he’d known it wasn’t truly over. That the bastard would resurface one day. They never caught him. And killers keep on killing. So now, that day was here.
He ran both hands through his towel-dried hair and then strapped his holster and gun to his hip and clipped his badge to the front of his belt. Then he headed for the door.
“Isaac?”
He turned around and looked at her. She got off the bed and walked over to him, placing her hand on his cheek.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
Isaac sucked in a deep breath. Then he gently took her hand and kissed her palm.
“No. I’m not.”
The emotion he saw in her light champagne jewel-colored eyes touched him. This incredible woman loved him, and he felt so honored by that.
“I’ll explain later, darlin’. But right now I’ve got to go.”
“I love you.”
He caressed her face and ran his thumb over her bottom lip.
“I love you too.”
He placed a swift kiss on her lips and left.
2
Isaac’s mind raced the entire drive to the police station. When he got there, he took the stairs two at a time up to the fourth floor and marched across the detectives pit with a determined gait. He went straight into Lieutenant Gavin Hayes’ office, shutting the door behind him.
“What’s going on, Lieu?”
A swift knock at the door preceded Pete Vega’s entrance. Isaac stared at his partner but said nothing. Why had Hayes called them both here?
“You needed me Lieutenant?” Pete asked, frowning when he noticed Isaac in the room.
Hayes stood and came around his desk, eyeing them both in a way that made Isaac’s stomach tighten.
“Close the door, Vega.”
Hayes’ demeanor was flat and scratchy. It made Isaac’s skin itch, and he folded his arms across his chest and looked at his boss. Waiting.
Pete closed the door.
“At approximately 7:36 yesterday evening a six-year-old girl went missing from a family gathering in the Detroit-Shoreway neighborhood.”
Hayes’ brown face wore a somber expression and his tone was tight, full of tension. He ran a hand over his short, slightly graying dark hair.
“Family members formed a search party and combed the streets looking for her before they called the police. We then canvased the area, calling in extra officers to go door-to-door, and issued an Amber Alert.”
“I saw that alert on my phone last night.” Pete’s voice was all business. “And I live in Detroit-Shoreway. I wasn’t called in, but I joined the canvas on my street.”
“I got the alert too. Isabel Scott is her name, right?” Isaac already hated where this conversation was going.
“That’s right.” Hayes put his hands in his pants pockets and looked at the floor for a moment. “This morning that alert and the search were called off when little Isabel Scott’s body was found in the Stockyards neighborhood.”
“Damn.” Pete sounded disgusted.
Isaac’s jaw tightened and he turned away, his gaze drifting around Hayes’ office and his thoughts careening dangerously around the sharp corners of his mind.
“When we were first called in I gave the case to Miller and Dorn.” Hayes looked beaten as he continued to lay out the details.
“Then why are we here?” Pete asked.
Isaac swallowed and forced himself to face his lieutenant and speak.
“On the phone you said this murder looked like the Lullaby Killer. Why?”
“Whoa, wait a minute. Who’s the Lullaby Killer?”
Pete raised a hand to stop them. It was an empty gesture as Isaac and Hayes stared at each other in strained silence. Finally Hayes quietly cleared his throat.
“Seven years ago there was a string of murders around the city. It happened in the summertime when kids were out of school. All the victims were young girls between the ages of five and eight years old. Some from upscale neighborhoods, some from economically challenged neighborhoods. White, black, Latina. Race didn’t seem to matter to this asshole and the entire city was in a panic.”
Hayes paused and Isaac suddenly realized he wasn’t the only one this case still haunted.
“He would brutally rape them before he strangled them to death.” Hayes’ voice was softer than it had been a moment ago. “DNA from the bodies never matched up with anyone in the system. The killer would stage the bodies and leave a slip of paper behind with a line from a lullaby scrawled on it at every scene. Before it was all over he’d killed nine little girls.”
“Madre de Dios.”
It was a disgusted whisper from Pete, and Isaac didn’t need a translator to understand the sentiment. Mother of God, indeed.
“I remember hearing about that case when I was still in uniform.” Pete shook his head. “Everywhere we went, people were near hysteria. Everybody on my shift was tense for weeks.”
“We were all tense,” Hayes said. “And we never caught the guy.”
Arms still folded, Isaac’s hands tightened around his own biceps, and he closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
They never caught him.
That was all his fault.
“What made you think this new victim is his work, Lieu?” Isaac opened his eyes and met Hayes’ probing gaze.
“Something found with the victim’s body at the scene. It was a line from a lullaby. Except, unlike last time, it appears to have been torn out of a page from a book instead of printed from a computer.”
That detail struck Isaac as odd.
“Then it’s not him. It’s a copycat.”
It had to be. He was sure of it.
“That was Miller and Dorn’s initial assessment as well, and I was inclined to agree. Until I got a look at the lullaby snippet in question.”
“And?”
Isaac’s tone was short and irritable. A tone he didn’t usually take with his superior. He and Gavin Hayes had a great working relationship, had from the very beginning — since back when Isaac had first joined the detectives section and Hayes was the sergeant over the homicide division.
“It appears to be the first line from Brahms Lullaby. But there are three letters in the line that have been poked out by something sharp. Three tiny pin pricks in the paper.”
Hayes reached for something on his desk and handed Isaac an enlarged photo of the evidence in question.
Isaac studied the image and read the line: “Lullaby and goodnight, in the sky stars are bright.”
He held the picture closer. Something about it wasn’t right. It took him only a moment to realize what that was, and he looked up at Hayes with a jerk.
“You think this was meant for me.” It wasn’t a question. “What? Like this bastard is taunting me or something?”
“Taunting you?” Pete sounded shocked. “What the hell is it?”
In two strides Pete was looking over Isaac’s shoulder, inadvertently bumping into him in the process. A move that made Isaac flinch out of habit.
He spun around and glared at his partner.
Pete jumped and stepped back, raising both hands in surrender.
“My bad.”
Isaac handed the picture over and turned back to Hayes.
“It would appear that way.” Hayes answered Isaac’s earlier question.
