Read Online Agnes Hahn by RICHARD SATTERLIE - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: RICHARD SATTERLIE
Ads: Link
had waited for Bransome to waddle off for lunch. Getting the visit with Agnes was easy, but convincing her to let him drive her home today, in her car, required all of the smooth talking in his extensive repertoire. His honorable intentions were confirmed when he insisted she tell the property clerk to take her house key off the chain. Only the car key was needed. What a smoke screen. No one asked how he planned to get the automatic garage door open. He smiled. The back door of Agnes’s house had yielded easily to his lock-jimmying skills.
The dank, cool air, with the smell of a grandma’s house, came back to him as if blown in through the open car window. He had found nothing remarkable in the house. Vintage furniture that would command a good price at an estate sale cluttered every room but one. Agnes’s living space was ordered, plain, almost spartan, except for the decorative carved wood elaborations on all of the furniture appendages and picture frames.
Her clothing hung in a small walk-in, dominated by a row of flannel shirts as straight as a chorus line, the muted colors in spectral order. All garments were free of bloodstains, and none bore the telltale signs of recent, desperate scrubbings.
What had captured his attention was her bathroom medicine cabinet. With her solitary ways, her recent familial losses, and her timid nature, he expected to see at least one bottle of prescription, mind-targeting pills. All he had found was an empty circular card that once held a cycle of birth control pills.
A stiff gust of wind feathered his hair, bringing him back to the Honda. The speedometer read fifteen over, and he held it there for a few defiant seconds before letting it slide down by five. Birth control pills. She wasn’t the type who needed contraception. Maybe they were for irregular cycles.
His mind flashed on the police reports he’d seen from the first two murders. In both, the killer was menstruating, and she used the victim’s member after she severed it. Probably in the third as well. Otherwise Bransome wouldn’t have reacted so strongly when Jason called her the Menstrual Murderer. In any event, there was plenty of DNA from the sites.
His foot pulled from the gas pedal. Female athletes used birth control pills to control the timing of their periods so they wouldn’t be bothered during a competition. Murder dates paraded through his head—always on Friday or Saturday nights. Mental calculations came hard with the sudden infusion of adrenaline. The cycles couldn’t all fall on weekends, could they? Random chance was a long shot.
His mind went back to the house. Letters had been strewn on the carpet under the belt-level mail slot in the front door. He had found nothing remarkable there either. A couple of utility bills, a
Sunset Gardening
magazine, and a card from the AAA auto club. No personal letters.
Jason looked at his watch and pressed on the gas pedal. Back up to fifteen over he risked detection, even in his camouflage vehicle, but he was behind schedule, nearly five minutes late.
A chest-level hedge protected the entry to the police station parking lot, so he couldn’t change his mind once he’d made the turn. His foot jumped to the brake pedal, but he didn’t slam it down. Bransome leaned against the rear fender of a police cruiser, arms crossed and resting on the top of his belly. He stared at the Honda.
Jason thought of swinging through the lot without slowing. With the diffuse glare from the cloud cover, maybe his features were obscured by a glint on the windshield. His finger hit the window button and the pane whined upward. Continuing on, he hoped to avoid detection by hiding in plain sight.
Bransome pushed away from the vehicle and withdrew the baton from his belt, as if he was pulling a sword from its scabbard. Stepping closer to the approaching Honda, he waved the stick at an empty parking space two down from the cruiser.
Jason exhaled his frustration, but obliged. He opened
The dank, cool air, with the smell of a grandma’s house, came back to him as if blown in through the open car window. He had found nothing remarkable in the house. Vintage furniture that would command a good price at an estate sale cluttered every room but one. Agnes’s living space was ordered, plain, almost spartan, except for the decorative carved wood elaborations on all of the furniture appendages and picture frames.
Her clothing hung in a small walk-in, dominated by a row of flannel shirts as straight as a chorus line, the muted colors in spectral order. All garments were free of bloodstains, and none bore the telltale signs of recent, desperate scrubbings.
What had captured his attention was her bathroom medicine cabinet. With her solitary ways, her recent familial losses, and her timid nature, he expected to see at least one bottle of prescription, mind-targeting pills. All he had found was an empty circular card that once held a cycle of birth control pills.
A stiff gust of wind feathered his hair, bringing him back to the Honda. The speedometer read fifteen over, and he held it there for a few defiant seconds before letting it slide down by five. Birth control pills. She wasn’t the type who needed contraception. Maybe they were for irregular cycles.
His mind flashed on the police reports he’d seen from the first two murders. In both, the killer was menstruating, and she used the victim’s member after she severed it. Probably in the third as well. Otherwise Bransome wouldn’t have reacted so strongly when Jason called her the Menstrual Murderer. In any event, there was plenty of DNA from the sites.
His foot pulled from the gas pedal. Female athletes used birth control pills to control the timing of their periods so they wouldn’t be bothered during a competition. Murder dates paraded through his head—always on Friday or Saturday nights. Mental calculations came hard with the sudden infusion of adrenaline. The cycles couldn’t all fall on weekends, could they? Random chance was a long shot.
His mind went back to the house. Letters had been strewn on the carpet under the belt-level mail slot in the front door. He had found nothing remarkable there either. A couple of utility bills, a
Sunset Gardening
magazine, and a card from the AAA auto club. No personal letters.
Jason looked at his watch and pressed on the gas pedal. Back up to fifteen over he risked detection, even in his camouflage vehicle, but he was behind schedule, nearly five minutes late.
A chest-level hedge protected the entry to the police station parking lot, so he couldn’t change his mind once he’d made the turn. His foot jumped to the brake pedal, but he didn’t slam it down. Bransome leaned against the rear fender of a police cruiser, arms crossed and resting on the top of his belly. He stared at the Honda.
Jason thought of swinging through the lot without slowing. With the diffuse glare from the cloud cover, maybe his features were obscured by a glint on the windshield. His finger hit the window button and the pane whined upward. Continuing on, he hoped to avoid detection by hiding in plain sight.
Bransome pushed away from the vehicle and withdrew the baton from his belt, as if he was pulling a sword from its scabbard. Stepping closer to the approaching Honda, he waved the stick at an empty parking space two down from the cruiser.
Jason exhaled his frustration, but obliged. He opened
Similar Books
