Soul Possession(18)

“Sounds like he’ll be out hunting again soon,” Bull said with a scowl. “We have to nail this son of a bitch.”

“Call it out,” the chief said. “We need to start looking. Do it as quietly as possible. We don’t want to alert the media before we even have a body. People will run all over those woods and mess up our crime scene.”

The officers slowly dispersed. Rick ran a hand through his hair. His head ached like a son of a bitch. This sucked. The timing sucked. As much as he wanted nothing to do with the investigation involving Jessie, a part of him refused to believe she could be responsible. Last he’d heard it was just a matter of formalities and that the case would be turned over to the DA soon. And even though he wasn’t supposed to go near this case—or Jessie—he had no intention of just leaving it alone. He needed to know himself just what Jessie’s role in this was. Only now, every minute of his time would have to be spent on the recovery of the newest victim.

With a weary sigh, he picked up the phone to call in his group of volunteers. The very last thing he wanted was the body of another young woman to haunt his dreams. But she at least deserved to be found and buried with dignity, not left to rot with no marker to celebrate her life.

Jessie and Kirsten sat cross-legged on Kirsten’s couch, a pint of Blue Bell ice cream in their hands. Jessie’s poison was Cookies ‘n Cream. Really. There wasn’t a better ice cream. Anywhere. Kirsten liked the more frou-frou stuff and so she’d gotten some weird mix of flavors and nuts. Jessie shuddered at the mere thought of all that stuff in her ice cream.

Kirsten flipped through the channels, a practice that made Jessie crazy, but she didn’t say anything and instead focused on her ice cream. Every delicious calorie. Hey, when your life sucked, eat ice cream.

“Holy shit, Jessie, that’s you!”

Jessie’s head jerked up, her eyes narrowed in confusion. “Wha?”

She quickly focused on the screen as Kirsten turned up the television. She froze when she saw a snapshot of herself plastered across the news. The anchor was babbling on about the murder of a local pub owner but the only thing Jessie heard was her name and that she was a person of interest in the case. The story then went on to give information about Jessie, including that she had been a waitress at the pub until she’d been let go under suspicion of theft.

“What the f**k?” Kirsten bit out. “I don’t believe this. Holy shit. They can’t do this! You haven’t been arrested. They can’t just smear your reputation like that.”

“Though no charges have been filed, the police are expected to make an arrest soon.”

Jessie’s stomach dropped and her mouth went dry. She sat staring at the TV long after Kirsten turned it off and hurled the remote across the room.

“That does it! I’m calling my dad. This is outrageous. They can’t do this to you. A ‘source inside the police department’? What the ever-loving hell? We need to find out who sold you out and sue their asses,” Kirsten snarled. “They can’t go around leaking crap to the media when you haven’t been charged with a crime. Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty? They’ve already started your trial, goddamn it.”

Jessie couldn’t speak. Her throat was too closed off. This was a nightmare. Yeah, she’d been freaked out by being brought into the police station for questioning, and yeah, it had pissed her off that they’d come right out and said they thought she killed Merriam. But not even then had she really thought that it would come to this. Maybe she was in denial, but innocent people didn’t really get convicted did they? Only in the movies or mystery novels. God, she felt like a naïve moron.

“What am I going to do?” she whispered to Kirsten.

Kirsten sat down next to Jessie and gripped her shoulders. “What we’re going to do is hire a lawyer. A damn good one. Daddy will know someone. I’m going to call him right now. And listen to me, Jessie. If they come for you, don’t you say a word. Not a single word. You just look through them and refuse to speak until your lawyer is there to advise you. Okay? Do you understand? Not even a peep. They’ll try to get you to confess. Hell, they’ll try to get you to say all sorts of things that they can twist around on you in court. So if you don’t say anything, they can’t do that.”

Jessie nodded dumbly. Then she hugged Kirsten to her and hung on for dear life. “I’m scared. These things aren’t supposed to happen in real life.”

Kirsten squeezed her and then pulled away. “Tomorrow, I want you to go to your apartment and get all your stuff. You’re moving in with me until this is all over with.”

“But I can’t do that. I don’t even have a job,” Jessie protested.

“Exactly. You can’t pay rent if you don’t have a job and if you don’t stay with me, you’ll be out on the streets. That is so not going to happen. You can take me to work then take my car to get your stuff and pick me up after my shift.”

“I love you,” Jessie said fiercely.

Kirsten smiled. “I love you too. We’re going to kick some cop ass. Now let me go call Daddy. He’s going to be pissed. We’ll get you through this, Jess. I promise.”

Chapter 8

Even after seeing countless dead bodies in his years on the force, Truitt still had to turn away from the sight of the young woman sprawled on the ground, half covered in leaves, dirt and mud caking her body, mixing with blood from numerous cuts. The killer had been right. The victim hadn’t been hard to find at all because the arrogant ass**le had left her for the police to find in the area they always staged in when they searched the woods.