Chapter One
The killer mounted the stairs of the small yellow stucco home and knocked on the door. A moment later, it opened, revealing a short man with a pair of reading glasses nestled in his graying brown hair.
“Can I help—?"
The stun gun fired before the man could finish his question. He stumbled back and fell, limbs jerking. The attacker leapt forward, knife in hand.
The result was immediate.
Krish Patel released his final breath.
Of course, killing the man was only half the work. There was so much more to do. Television and social media were full of murders—the public had grown numb to murder and death.
Only the most interesting murders stayed in the headlines for more than a second. Only the best ended up narrated by Keith Morrison or featured on a streaming service as a limited series.
If a killer wanted to be famous, he or she had to kill with flair. There had to be a nickname that struck fear into the hearts of men.
And, you had to kill more than once—create both anticipation and dread.
Then, there was the all-important marketing.
Luckily, unlike the old days—when a killer had to send encoded letters covered in DNA, or sit back and hope for attention—now, marketing was easier than ever. Darkweb internet sites leaked to the press, true crime podcasters, social media...
Yes, today’s killers had to have many talents, and they had to be willing to put in the time.
Time to get to work.
Chapter Two
Charlotte Morgan entered the small stucco home to find Sheriff Frank Marshall standing over a body. An olive-skinned man lay on his back on the Spanish-tile floor. The drying, maroon-colored stain on his chest said he wasn’t taking a quick nap.
The ambulance hadn’t arrived, and no one seemed in a panic.
No reason to hurry for a dead man.
She found a place beside Frank to examine the corpse. Excitement rumbled through her body, but she kept a serious, all-business frown on her face. It would be inappropriate to look too giddy.
Secretly, she felt like the luckiest girl in the world. Sure, her birth mother had given her up as a baby, and her adoptive mother died, and then her grandmother died...
Not a great start.
But since then, the universe had been working overtime to make that shaky start up to her. She’d been adopted by the entire Pineapple Port retirement community—primarily Mariska, Bob, Darla, and Sheriff Frank—and she’d had a happy, if slightly odd and old-fashioned, upbringing. Then, when she wasn’t sure what to do with her life, she’d found bones in her backyard. The discovery had not only inspired her to become a private detective but also led her to her boyfriend, Declan.
Quite the catch, if I do say so myself.
For her early troubles, the universe had been officially forgiven. She even had Sheriff Frank feeding her cases on a regular basis, like this guy, laying on his back at her feet.
“Thanks for calling me,” she said to Frank.
The sheriff grunted. “It’s a weird one, so I immediately thought of you.”
She squinted one eye. “Thank you?”
“Unless you’re too famous now?” he added.
Charlotte laughed. “I’ll always have time for the little people.”
She wouldn’t say she was famous. After a recent case, she’d been interviewed by reporter Lulu Trapping for an article in the local paper and Lulu’s true crime podcast, Trapping Killers. The exposure had been both a boon to her business and a royal pain in the neck. Her phone flooded with calls, but for every person interested in hiring her for real detective work, there were three others asking for a date or hoping she could locate a lost cat or summon a dead relative.
Why people thought she could communicate with the dead, she had no idea. Something about seeing so many murder victims, she guessed. They figured she talked them into revealing the identity of their killers.
Um, no.
Frank motioned to the body. “Meet Krish Patel, deceased. Cause of death—stabbed in the heart, by the looks of it.” Frank pointed to the heart-shaped stain marring the man’s yellow tee shirt. “Interesting blood pattern.”
“Quite a coincidence.” Charlotte’s attention jumped from the stain to a folded note of expensive-looking cardstock, sitting tented on the chest of the victim like a dinner party place card.
“Did you put that there?” she asked.
“Nope.”
Charlotte squat to get a better look inside the card. Tilting her head until she’d nearly rested it on the belly of the dead man, she read the words handwritten inside in all-caps blue-ink.
THIS SUCKS.
She looked up at Frank.
“Did you read this?”
“I had Deputy Daniel get down there and read it to me. Some kind of joke?”
“I suppose, though, in all fairness, being murdered does suck. I imagine.”
Frank nodded. “I’m sure he agrees.”
She took a step back to appreciate the full picture. The victim lay on his back with one arm down by his side and one perpendicular to his body. His legs were straight, with toes pointed up, as much as they could be without the help of working muscles. The stab wound punctuated the center of the heart-shaped stain.
“Stabbings are usually personal—crimes of passion—but this body looks posed, doesn’t it?”
Frank nodded. “Certainly looks like a very neat way to collapse to the ground.”
“Any suspects?”
“Nope. His girlfriend said she got a call from a number she didn’t recognize. The caller told her if she came to his house, she’d catch him cheating. She found the door ajar and him like this.”
“Male or female voice on the phone?”
“She said it sounded like a robot.”
“Hm. So, someone disguised their voice, left a note, shaped the bloodstain—”
Frank looked at her. “What do you mean, shaped the bloodstain?”
“You don’t think he really bled out in the shape of a heart, do you? They had to do it on purpose. Maybe painted it like that?”
Frank grimaced. “This is getting weirder by the second.”
She motioned to the man’s outstretched arm. “If the body is posed, then this arm stands out. The whole thing is starting to feel desperate.”
“Desperate?”
“The lengths the murderer went to to make this feel like the work of a serial killer. Amateurish.”
Frank grunted. “You think maybe this was personal? And someone is trying to make it look like it wasn’t?”
Charlotte shrugged. “Maybe...”
She circled to the opposite side of the corpse to study the arm stretched out from the body. The hand had been positioned into a loose fist, with the curled index finger poking out from the others.
“This finger looks like it’s trying to point. Like it was pointing and then curled as the body cooled.”
Frank sniffed. “In all fairness, it is easier to point when you’re alive.”
Charlotte eyeballed the distance from the finger to where it would have been pointing had it remained straight. Her line of sight ended at a closed door.
“Do you have any gloves?” she asked.
Frank threw back his head. “Daniel!”
Deputy Daniel appeared at the front door, looking fresh-faced and gangly as usual.
“What’s up, sir?” he asked.
“Gloves,” barked Frank. “Check the trunk of my cruiser.”
Daniel nodded and disappeared. A minute later, he bounded back into the house with an open box of latex gloves.
“Thank you,” said Charlotte, plucking a pair out.
Daniel’s eyelashes fluttered almost coquettishly. “You’re welcome, Charlotte. How are you doing this fine—?”
“Out,” said Frank.
Daniel nodded, flashed a sheepish smile in Charlotte’s direction, and left.
“You’re so mean to him,” teased Charlotte, snapping on her gloves.
Frank snorted. “Best to get him out of here before he steps on the body or something. The boy can’t think straight when you’re around.”
Charlotte rolled her eyes. “That’s not true.”
“If you don’t know he’s got a crush on you, then you’re not half the detective I think you are.”
Gloved, Charlotte opened the closed door to find a coat closet. She checked the pockets of the few coats inside and banged the back of the shoes against the ground to see if anything had been tucked into the toes. Best to not shove your hands into things when the bad guy has already shown a penchant for sharp things—not to mention any number of Florida creepy-crawlies.
Frank walked around the body to peer into the closet. “What are you looking for?”
“I don’t know. I was thinking if someone took the time to point a finger at a closet, they must have a reason.”
Charlotte checked inside the ballcaps piled on an upper shelf and then considered the remaining items in the closet—a broom, dustpan, and vacuum.
Something about the vacuum made her turn back to the body and eyeball the tented note.
Could it be?
She pulled out the vacuum.
“You probably shouldn’t clean up until the coroner gets here,” said Frank.
Charlotte peeked into the see-through canister of the appliance. There, embedded in wads of dust, she spotted the corner of what looked like a second and outwardly identical note.
“Hold on...”
She opened the canister and retrieved the card, a shower of dust sprinkling the ground around her feet. She opened the card and read the words scrawled on it with Frank.
Out of Time.
“What does that mean?” Frank mused aloud.
Charlotte lowered the note. “I don’t know. Obviously, Mr. Patel is out of time, but it has to have another meaning like the word suck referred to the vacuum.”
Charlotte studied the cardstock of the second note, searching for anything that might identify it as unique. She found no blemishes, designs, or watermarks. The second note had been written in the same handwriting, on the same plain, heavyweight cream-colored cardstock.
She scanned the room, looking for clocks, finding a simple round one on the wall in the kitchen. Pulling a chair from the dining room table, she plucked the clock off the wall.
“Out of time?” asked Frank. “You think the message trail continues?”
“Worth a shot...”
Charlotte searched the clock for another message but found nothing.
“Is he wearing a watch?” she asked, rehanging the clock and returning the chair to its spot.
“Nope.”
Charlotte returned to the body to find the sheriff looking pensive.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
He put his hands on his hips and glowered at the ground as if it had done him wrong. “Something Patel’s girlfriend said. She said the voice told her he was cheating and then suggested she call the sheriff on him.”
“Why would she call the police on a cheater?”
“That’s what I’m saying. She wouldn’t. Seems like whoever did this wanted the body to be found as soon as possible.”
Charlotte nodded. “The killer’s proud of what he’s done. Proud of the notes. Toying with us...”
“I don’t even want to say this out loud,” said Frank, lowering his voice. “…but does this mess have a familiar feel to you?”
Charlotte’s eyebrows lifted. “You’re thinking the Puzzle Killer?”
They had a long history with The Puzzle Killer, a.k.a. Jamie Moriarty, but there was one gaping hole in Frank’s theory—Jamie was dead. She’d been gunned down outside a hotel on the opposite side of the state.
“She’s dead,” said Charlotte.
Frank squinted one eye. “Are we sure?”
“Pretty sure. I mean, if anyone could find a way to come back from the dead, it would be her, but after everything she put us through, I asked a lot of questions after they found her. There’s no way.”
“What about her daughter?”
Frank meant Stephanie, Declan’s ex-girlfriend. Like her mother, Stephanie had been full of ugly surprises.
Like her mother, she was also dead.
“We were at Stephanie’s funeral not that ago.”
Frank shrugged. “Easy to fake a funeral.”
The idea made Charlotte feel vaguely ill. “I’ll double check. But I don’t think we should waste any real time on a dead woman as a suspect.”
“Fair enough. Who else would want to get our attention?”
Charlotte racked her brain.
“Maybe one of Jamie’s witness protection people?”
Jamie Moriarty had spent years hiding in plain sight as a U.S. Marshal, assigning all her criminal witness protection clients to the area so she could then blackmail them into helping her with her own nefarious plans.
Frank frowned. “You think she could have left some sort of bounty on your head? In the event of her death?”
“I guess it’s possible.” Charlotte’s shoulders slumped at the prospect. “But there are plenty of other options. Could be someone wants to step into Jamie’s shoes now that she’s gone. Could be someone who craves attention, or the notes could be specific to Krish Patel. His murder could be some sort of revenge, and they left notes so the right people would know. Maybe someone Patel knows would understand exactly what these messages mean—”
Frank snorted a laugh.
“What?” she asked.
“A copycat, a serial killer, an enemy—you really narrowed that down. I guess that’s why you’re on the radio.”
“Ha.” She slapped his arm as she stepped around the body. “And podcasts aren’t radio. They’re podcasts.”
Frank shrugged. “Whatever.”
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