Shattered Read online

  Praise for Shattered

  “M. Night Shyamalan, meet Harlan Coben. Shattered seamlessly blends the frightening metamorphosis of a serial killer with a race-against-the-clock chase. Who is more haunted, the serial killer or the FBI profiler chasing him? The head-spinning plot turns and fascinating characters put Shattered at the top of any reading list. This novel will stay with you long after you finish it.”

  —David Ellis, Edgar Award–winning author of Eye of the Beholder

  “A great hero, a truly sinister villain, and a riveting game of cat-and-mouse between them—Shattered is a gripping, compulsively readable thriller.”

  —Joseph Finder, New York Times bestselling author of Power Play and Killer Instinct

  Praise for Twisted

  “Scarily real and really scary…everything a great thriller should be—and more.”

  —Lee Child, New York Times bestselling author of Killing Floor

  “Suspense, thrills, action—Twisted has a pulse-thumping pace all the way. Highly recommended!”

  —Raymond Benson, author of Sweetie’s Diamonds and several James Bond novels

  “The chills don’t stop…Bonansinga has a talent for painting suspenseful scenes in vivid colors, put to especially good use in the final showdown.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  Praise for Frozen

  “A relentless chiller that leaves you guessing and gasping again and again.”

  —David Morrell, New York Times bestselling author of The Brotherhood of the Rose

  “A thrilling, beautifully paced skyrocket of a novel.”

  —Peter Straub, New York Times bestselling author of In the Night Room

  “A captivating novel of cold and meticulous suspense, Bonansinga’s Frozen rings a bell that defines eternal evil in all its manifestations, in fact spanning six thousand years of the entity we call evil. This thriller is like no other serial killer novel. It has everything—a unique setting, a compelling lead character, a new twist on forensics, and the latent evil of mankind.”

  —Robert W. Walker, author of Absolute Instinct and Final Edge

  “Frozen will send chills down your spine.”

  —Barbara D’Amato, award-winning author of the Cat Marsala mystery series; former president of the Mystery Writers of America; former president of Sisters of Crime International

  “Frozen will chill you to the bone! Bonansinga breathes much-needed life into the serial killer genre while simultaneously turning it on its head. With enough suspense, twists, action, and surprise revelations for a dozen thrillers, Frozen is a must-read book of the season, written by a master at the top of his game. Be prepared to set aside a few days, because one you begin Frozen, you won’t be able to put it down. Frozen kicks serious ass.”

  —J. A. Konrath, author of Bloody Mary and Whiskey Sour

  “Frozen is the latest example of author Jay Bonansinga’s impressive range, depth, and audacity…. Bonansinga nimbly avoids all melodramatic traps and makes his two investigators believable and moving.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “One of the best pure thrillers I’ve read all year—a marvelous, addictive piece of detective fiction that will appeal to anyone who enjoys the strange-science leanings of the Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child novels.”

  —Rod Lott, Bookgasm.com

  ALSO BY JAY BONANSINGA

  Frozen

  Twisted

  Available from Pinnacle

  SHATTERED

  JAY BONANSINGA

  PINNACLE BOOKS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  In loving memory of

  Junior Parrick (1926–2007)

  CONTENTS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  PART I: THE MISSISSIPPI RIPPER

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  PART II: THROUGH THE CAUL

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  PART III: THE UNSAFE HOUSE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Special thanks to Michaela Hamilton for teaching me the dark arts; Peter Miller for ruling the shark tank; Tina Jens for tender loving care; Lance Catania for painting the nightmare with light; Robert Oxnam for his indispensible first-person account of mental illness, A Fractured Mind; and Jeanne Bonansinga for remaining my number-one reason for living.

  “Who will pity a snake charmer bitten by a serpent, or any who go near wild beasts?”

  —Apocrypha, Ecclesiasticus 12:13

  PART I

  The Mississippi Ripper

  ONE

  Gullibility killed the cat. This silent refrain had been echoing through Dina Dudley’s thoughts on a regular basis since she was a teenager and had swallowed Robbie Pettigrue’s story about being a test subject for a male contraceptive pill. Time and time again, Dina had found that it wasn’t curiosity that did the feline in. On the contrary, it was a person not being curious enough that did the damage. It was a girl not bothering to question her mother’s blind insistence that her husband—i.e., Dina’s dad—had gotten his drinking under control. Or it was a girl—i.e., Dina—not investigating the background of a dreamy stockbroker boyfriend who turned out to be a coke dealer. In fact, it almost seemed as though Dina Dudley was getting more gullible with age. Her closest friends claimed it was simply a side effect of her being so bighearted. And it was true that Dina had a thing for shaggy dogs, hard cases, losers. But there’s a point in every gullible person’s life when trust turns to recklessness.

  As a matter of fact, tonight, as she lay bound and gagged on the cold, corrugated iron floor of a battered van’s cargo hold, she was silently cursing herself for letting her gullibility finally do her in. If only she had been one iota of a degree more alert. If only she had been a single, infinitesimal scintilla more suspicious…she probably wouldn’t have stopped to help the little milquetoast in the hunting cap wrestling with his flat tire. But that’s not who Dina Dudley was. Dina Dudley was a sweetheart. Dina Dudley was gullible. And now it looked as though Dina Dudley was a dead woman.

  Bone thin and sinewy—in recent months her cokehead boyfriend had taken to calling her Skinny Minny—she tried to move in the darkness, but her arms ached, her wrists bound so tightly behind her back they felt numb, the plastic shackles digging into her tendons. Her denim jacket was torn, her jeans cold and wet where she had peed herself. Her matted copper-colored hair dangled in her face. Duct tape covered her mouth, smelling of chemicals and grime. Fear constricted her throat.

  Dina tried to see through the unr
elenting shadows. Her best friend, Jenny Quinn, lay against the opposite wall, whimpering, also bound and trussed like a piece of meat. Raw, watering eyes, hot with horror, stared back at Dina. That was the worst part, seeing her friend Jenny like that, her old pal from Belleville High, always so bubbly, always the first to go on the roller-coaster or play spin the bottle, now reduced to a mewling little caged bird. All because Dina had to go on this idiotic wilderness camping trip. Two girls from the suburbs of St. Louis. Making like they were Lewis and Clark.

  Meanwhile the van vibrated and rattled, grinding through its lower gears as it climbed a steep grade. Where in God’s name was this sicko taking them?

  Breathing through her nose, sniffing the rancid air of the van, Dina tried to think. It’s not too late, she urged herself, maybe you can still get out of this, Jenny’s a wreck, she’s no help now, but you can stay calm, wait for an opening, maybe surprise this guy.

  The van made a tight turn suddenly, pressing Dina against the wall.

  Then the vehicle squeaked to a stop. Dina’s heart started thudding in her chest. Her mouth went dry. She could hear footsteps now, crunching in gravel, coming around the side of the van. Icy terror spread through her veins like cold poison, searing her nerve endings, making everything feel numb and sluggish.

  Not now, she scolded herself, don’t freeze up now!

  The rear doors clicked, then slowly creaked open on rusty hinges. The odors of pine and fish rot and river mud flooded the van.

  The dark figure stood there in the moonlight, calmly looking in at his captives. Everything about him was average, ordinary, nondescript—from his duck-billed hunting cap down to his dirty khaki pants. “Hello again,” he said in a convivial tone. “Sorry about the bumpy ride.”

  Dina tried to latch on to some detail about him, some mark or scar that she might remember later for the cops, but it was difficult in the darkness. His face remained in shadow, his head haloed by moonlight. In fact, from the moment he had attacked them on the side of the road a few hours ago, Dina had caught only fleeting glimpses of the man. All she could tell for sure was that he was middle aged, probably white, very strong, and spoke with a flat Midwestern accent. Modulated and genial. Like a TV game-show host.

  “Don’t you worry your pretty heads now, ladies,” he murmured as he went for Jenny first, grabbing her by the ankles, eliciting an anguished moan out of her. Then he started pulling her from the cargo bay as though he were removing a canvas bag full of dirty laundry. Then he said something else that sent an electric bolt of panic down Dina’s spine.

  “It’ll all be over soon.”

  That was when Dina realized that this polite psychopath was going to kill them both; maybe rape them or torture them, and then kill them. Something buried deep inside Dina awakened then, and she decided—right at that moment—she was going to fight. She was going to go down swinging.

  She flexed her bound hands in preparation for…something. She wasn’t sure what.

  The moments seemed to stretch interminably as the madman lifted Jenny Quinn out of the van, then carried the trembling girl off into the shadows of the forest. He was gone for only about fifteen seconds but it seemed like hours as the adrenaline sluiced through Dina’s skull, making her ears ring and her scalp crawl. She smacked her dry lips on a sour metallic taste as if she were sucking coins.

  Then she made one last critical discovery: her legs, although bound at the ankles, were loose. They were loose! She could still kick, and she could still jump. It only took seconds to make the decision.

  His footsteps were returning. Crunch-crunch-crunch! Dina cocked both legs back like springs. The man’s shadow fell across the open rear doors. Dina held her breath. The killer was talking as he came into view: “I promise this will only take a few more—”

  She kicked out at him with both feet as hard and suddenly as she could.

  “Whoa!” The man jerked backward instinctively, just far enough to avoid getting brained by the bottoms of Dina’s size-eight Naturalizer boots. The kidnapper stumbled backward, tripping on a pothole, then sprawling to the pavement and landing on his ass with a grunt, giving Dina just enough time to shimmy frantically toward the opening.

  She leaped off the edge of the van, then furiously hopped, sack-race style, across the gravel shoulder toward the darkness of the woods.

  It would have been hilarious in any other context—this feisty suburbanite doing the bunny hop across a deserted road in the dead of night—but not now. Not with the keening moans of Jenny Quinn a few yards away. And the mucusy growling of the man who was no longer polite. He was rising to his feet behind her, grumbling something obscene.

  She reached the threshold of the forest and misjudged the angle of the slope.

  The ground seemed to cave in beneath her, and before she knew what was happening she was falling, falling through darkness. For several breathless moments she careened wildly, head-over-heels, seeing stars, falling, falling, the world somersaulting like a crazy black carousel.

  She landed on the banks of the river, in the weeds, the impact like a Roman candle going off in her head.

  She had no idea how long she lay there, alone in the dark. The pain gripped her like a vise, pressing her against the rocks. Her back, twisted in the fall, sang out in agony, and her legs, still bound at the ankles, were jackknifed underneath her. She could not breathe normally. Probably one of her lungs had been punctured. But none of that mattered anymore because the worst was yet to come.

  She could hear twigs snapping, the nimble footsteps coming down the slope in the darkness, the lunatic moving with catlike grace for a man his age. His shadow swept over her like a shroud. She closed her eyes.

  The terror had boiled out of her now. She felt no fear. Nor did she feel any of the sorrow or regret that she would expect to feel at such a time as this. Her life didn’t pass before her eyes. She only felt a vague sense of disappointment in herself, a sense of loss.

  To die in such a tawdry, messy fashion, at the hands of a mild-mannered psychopath, felt like pure anathema to Dina Dudley. She had spent a lifetime grooming herself to be frugal, orderly, neat, and prudent. For the last nine years she had worked her way up the corporate ladder at Haglett and Myers to become one of the most efficient estate planners in the Midwest. The brutal hours had cost her a marriage, and now—now—she was going to go out like a common roadside hooker, strangled in the weeds with her own nylon stocking, and the world would count among its population one less gullible knuckle-head.

  The figure loomed over her, breathing hard, searching for words. “You just had to…had to do it the hard way,” he said between gasping breaths. As though he were a headmaster addressing an insubordinate student.

  Dina felt her spirit shrinking inside her, a balloon with the air squeaking out of it.

  Something snagged her hair then, an iron grip tightening around a hank of her meticulously colored burnt-chromium-red locks. Her head was jerked back with enough force to dislocate a cervical vertebra. The duct tape slipped off her lips, dangling from her chin.

  Fresh pain screamed in her neck, choking her, stealing her air. She braced herself for the cool touch of a razor across her neck. She closed her eyes. She prayed it would be quick. This is it, Dina, she lamented in some far corner of her brain, the last hurrah…

  Except the razor never materialized. Death never came. At least not in the way she had expected.

  She felt herself being dragged—backward, headfirst, her legs completely paralyzed—back across the cool hardpack, through the weeds and the brambles. The nutcase was dragging her by the shoulders, like a sack of lawn clippings, back up the side of the hill. She couldn’t see her captor, couldn’t move. She wondered if the fall had broken her back?

  She tried to focus, tried to make sense of what was happening.

  It was obvious he was dragging her back up to the road, his labored breathing coming out in ragged puffs. She could smell him. He had too much aftershave on. If there was one thing
that turned Dina Dudley’s stomach it was a man who drenched himself in too much aftershave. She had to say something. She knew she was going to die. What difference did it make?

  “You dunk yourself in the Aqua Velva tonight?” she uttered through clenched teeth at the faceless figure hauling her up the hill.

  “Beg your pardon?” His breathless voice still had that creepy courtesy.

  “Let Jenny go. Please. You can do whatever you want to me, I’ll suck you off.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, the tone of his voice like a government bureaucrat politely denying a permit. “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

  “Do what?” she said. “Get a blow job or let her go? Come on, please, she’s just a kid…”

  “I’m really very sorry.”

  They had reached the crest of the hill, and Dina could smell the piney exhaust fumes of the road. Headlights blurred in her eyes. It had begun to rain—a thin mist coming down—and Dina couldn’t see very well. She felt herself being propped against a tree.

  Now she could hear the faint mewling cries of her best friend, maybe twenty or thirty feet away, still muffled by the duct tape.

  The lunatic had gone back to his van and was fiddling with something just inside the rear doors. It looked like a toolbox. Dina wanted to chew off his testicles. “C’mon, let her go, you got me, you can do whatever!” she called out to him. “Why do you need two of us?”