No Rep by Lani Lynn Vale

CHAPTER 3

Be a badass with a good ass.

-Madd CrossFit T-shirt

TAOS

The white-haired woman turned slowly, her long curls brushing the tops of her butt cheeks, and looked at the puddle of blood with a glowing sense of horror on her face.

She didn’t know that I’d done it for her.

She didn’t know that…

Brrrrring.

I frowned and glanced at the phone, pissed that I’d had to stop that particular scene.

“Hello?”

My terse words felt like sandpaper in my throat.

I’d been up all night, and it was now three in the morning.

“Taos.”

I would know that raspy, perpetually pissed-off-sounding voice anywhere.

“Hey,” I greeted. “What’s up, Chief?”

The chief sighed. “Long story short? There’s been a few murders that I’m worried about. Seriously worried about.”

I felt my stomach sink.

“What’s going on with them?” I asked, not able to help myself.

I’d been a detective at the police department in town for ten years after I’d gotten out of the Army.

I just couldn’t help myself from wanting to know. My brain was wired differently.

I just saw things, patterns, and inconsistencies, that other people didn’t see.

That was why the FBI had tried to recruit me. Twice.

However, I’d stayed with Paris PD and Chief Wilkerson because I didn’t usually buck from tradition.

“Bad shit,” Chief Wilkerson grumbled. “I know that you’re not here anymore, and I’ve left you alone for a year. But shit. This one is getting at me. I need you to look at the case notes. I just… something doesn’t sit right with me.”

I looked at my current work in progress. Then at the time on the clock. “Now?”

“I’m at a crime scene now,” he said. “The fourth one exactly like this.”

I knew what that meant.

We might have a serial killer on our hands.

“I can be there in fifteen minutes,” I stood. “I need some coffee because I haven’t gone to sleep yet. And some pants.”

Chief Wilkerson sounded like he’d had a laugh ripped right out of him at that.

“I’ll wait.” He paused. “The body’s been dead a while. Fifteen minutes, or thirty. Won’t make a fuckin’ difference.”

I looked at my watch and grimaced.

I had to be at the gym at six to teach a class.

That meant that I had three hours to sleep. Or I would have, had I not had to go do this.

“I’ll be there soon.”

And I was.

It took me two minutes to get to the house, which fuckin’ sucked because that meant that there was a murder taking place not even a couple of blocks away from me.

Parking my vehicle in the front of the house—a house that looked like it’d been built just recently seeing as it still had red dirt instead of grass along the side of the road between the sidewalk and the road—I got out.

The moment my feet hit the driveway, I stopped and studied the front yard with curious eyes, taking in the manicured lawn, the well-tamed flower bed, and the lilies that were planted around the mailbox.

Either a woman lived here, or a woman had done the gardening and the upkeep.

As much as I would like my place to have flowers and shit, they were too much upkeep, meaning I didn’t have them.

“Taos.”

I looked up to find Chief Wilkerson heading toward me.

I gave him a chin jerk and canvassed the neighborhood next.

The chief gave me a grimace.

“What’s wrong?” I wondered.

“It’s bad.”

I had no doubt it was if he was calling me.

It wasn’t like they needed me. They’d replaced me easily enough.

Sure, the solve rate on the crimes wasn’t as good now that I wasn’t around, but they were still getting through.

But this…

“Let’s get it over with,” I grumbled. “I have to be at the gym to teach a class by six a.m.”

The chief nodded his head and led me inside, looking like he’d rather pluck off his testicle hair than go back inside.

Yet he went anyway, and his face was blank the entire way inside.

“Tell me what happened, and the events leading up to finding the body,” I asked as we walked.

The chief held open the heavy oak door and waited for me to get inside before he closed it behind us.

The house still smelled new, too. As if there was still the scent of pine and fresh paint that was clinging to the walls.

“Call came through about nine last night,” he said, sounding tired. “Officers came and knocked on the door, but no one answered. The neighbor said that the guy who lives here hasn’t been home in at least a week. Left on a business trip the middle of last week they think. The only reason they knew was that they were heading to work when the guy was heading out with his suitcases. He said that as far as he knows, the guy is the only one that lives here.”

“Okay.” I paused. “Was it the guy who died?”

He shook his head. “Nope.”

Then he walked me into the living room, right into a nightmare.

At first, I wasn’t sure what I was seeing.

I mean, obviously there was blood. A lot of it.

And the really bad thing was that the couches were white, so the blood showed up really well on all of them.

And I do mean all of them.

Every single couch—there were three of them in the room set up as a sectional type thing—was saturated in it.

Whomever it was that died here had to have been killed here.

That, or there were multiple victims.

“Shit,” I breathed.

“Big shit,” Chief Wilkerson agreed.

I shook my head and walked farther into the room, coming to a stop right where the blood was slowly coming out in an ever-widening pool.

That’s when I saw the vic.

“Woman,” I mused, still not quite processing what I was seeing.

The victim was a female with blonde hair that was very long.

That’s when my brain finally comprehended what it was seeing.

The woman was on her stomach, face down in the puddle of blood. But there wasn’t a single thing wrong with her—at least from the back.

“Did the crime scene technicians get in here yet?” I asked, my belly rolling now at the sight before me.

“Yes,” he answered. “Other than removing the body, we’re done with it.”

I grabbed a pair of the boot covers that the chief was holding out to me, slipped them on over my feet, and then made my way through the blood.

“Did you flip her over yet?” I asked.

The chief nodded. “Flipped her back over so that you could see what she looked like when we arrived.”

The chief knew how I liked to work.

The details of how the victim was found were always important.

“Okay,” I murmured as I slowly moved the victim onto her back.

Rigor mortis had already set in, meaning that she stayed exactly where she was when she was on her stomach, even though I’d rolled her onto her back.

That’s when I saw the wound.

One single solitary wound.

In the upper thigh on the inside.

“Severed her femoral artery,” I observed woodenly. “Knew exactly where to cut and how deep.”

“Yes,” the chief agreed.

“Shit,” I grumbled. “Was the victim identified?”

While the chief spoke about what was found—which wasn’t much—I stood up from my crouch and walked around the room, being careful to stay in only the bloodied areas so I wouldn’t track blood any farther into the house.

“So we don’t know who she is, why she’s here, or how she’s related to the man that owns this house,” I surmised. “There was almost zero evidence to be found, and the house was locked up tight on top of all that. Am I correct?”

Chief Wilkerson nodded his head. “About sums up what we know.”

I scratched my head, likely getting blood in my hair. “And the other murders. Are they all similar?”

“Other than the first was a redhead, the second a brunette, the third a black-haired one, and then this blonde.” He nodded.

I tilted my head. “All curly-haired?”

The chief blanched. “Yes.”

Had he not picked up on that?

I had.

But, granted, I did have a bit of insider knowledge on serial killers.

I mean, it’d been a long time since I’d had to deal with working on a case for one. Way longer than when the chief had started at the department.

“That’s all I have for you,” Chief groaned.

I nodded and moved to the edge of the saturation of blood on the carpet before pulling my booties off and tossing them into the trash that’d been erected in the middle of the room for the same exact thing I’d just used it for.

Then I went to the bathroom and washed my hands, my eyes taking in the bright blue towels that had likely just been bought as well.

Brand-new house. Brand-new towels.

Brand new dead girl.

My stomach flipped over but I held my cool, offering chief a jerk of my head to let him know that I was ready to leave as I headed to the front door.

When we got outside, he said, “I’ll have the other files sent over to your place.”

“I’m at the gym all day until around seven tonight. Madden’s working,” I explained.

Madden also worked at the police department. He was leader of the SWAT team and they had some training to get done. Training that had kept him from dealing with his six o’clock class for the next week, forcing me to teach that one today, too.

Which pissed me off thoroughly. I didn’t teach classes.

However, Jasper and Sophia both had something going on today, too, as well as our regular coach who taught mostly everything at normal hours—he was a single dad and had a young boy that was now six months old.

Which all meant that the only other person that could take over was little old me.

“I’ll send them to the gym, then,” Chief offered.

I felt my throat constrict.

The chief’s phone rang and I jerked my chin at him. “See you later.”

He jerked his own chin in response and placed his phone to his ear.

I walked away from the house and didn’t look back, my mind spinning with possibilities.