I had my four o’clock cancellation to thank for what started as a terrible idea and quickly evolved into a terrible plan. With an unallocated block of time on my hands, I cracked open my laptop, determined to find out as much as I could about the Dude Bro Strangler.
Dr. Wolfe’s brief summary had been pretty close to accurate. Eight victims so far. One a month, every month, always on the same date. All blond, blue-eyed and built like extras from Gladiator. All found in gyms. All strangled with some sort of garrote. All had names like Trevor, Todd, Preston, Chase or Brock.
Brock Peterson’s murder had been the one Dr. Wolfe referred to when he’d said the last one had happened in my own back yard. According to the ongoing coverage, a friend had found Brock’s body slumped on a deadlifting bench earlier this morning.
I punched up the local news website and clicked on the first video I found.
In it, a man with feathers of bleached blond hair sticking out of his backward ball cap found creative ways to flex while addressing the attractive reporter. The caption beneath his sleeveless Swole Patrol t-shirt read “Brodie Billings, Longtime Friend and Training Partner of Brock Peterson.”
“B-Rock was a real stand-up guy,” Billings said. “I’ve never seen anyone hit the circuit like that. Never skipped a rep.” Here, Billings’s voice choked up and he cleared his throat, his neck tendons popping with the effort. “It really makes you think about your life, you know? You never know which squat thrust could be your last. I mean, strangling B-Rock on leg day? Whoever this guy is, he’s more gnarly than an anal prolapse.”
I recognized the broad brick wall behind Brodie as belonging to the Powerhouse Gym just at the border of historic downtown Plattsburgh.
Six minutes would see me there.
Before I could second-guess myself, I shoved everything into my laptop bag and clicked off the many lamps on my way out the door.
“Heading home early?” Julie had stayed later than usual, a calculated move to make up for her earlier absence, or so I suspected.
“I think I will.” I breezed by her without stopping, not quite ready to make nice. “Have a good night.”
Eight minutes later, I pulled into the Powerhouse Gym parking lot and killed the engine. The area closest to the building was choked with police cruisers and cordoned off with garlands of yellow crime scene tape. A solemn gathering of mourning dude bros congregated just beyond it, pressing for entry to the parts of the building the cops weren’t using. Impassioned pleas of “Brock would have wanted it this way!” and “We need to dead lift, man! We owe it to his memory!” fell on deaf ears.
“They’re brave,” I said, sidling up to the greenest-looking patrol cop in the bunch.
He stood up straighter when he saw me, squaring his shoulders as if newly reminded of his duty. “Miss?”
A triumphant thrill skittered through me at being addressed as a “miss” rather than a “ma’am” or even a doctor. Between Crixus and Vasili, my blouse had a total of about three buttons holding it together. I had decided to use this to maximum effect, adjusting my bra strap to haul my breasts a couple inches higher than their usual cruising altitude. I’d also freed my hair from its ubiquitous bun and pocketed the modest meteorite of my wedding ring, but stopped short at stashing my glasses.
History had taught me the painful folly of trying to seduce someone I couldn’t see.
“Gathering around like that.” I bestowed upon him a coy lipsticked smile. “Standing there like a giant bro-ffet, when for all they know, the killer is still nearby, searching the area for his next victim. It’s a common tendency among murderers, as I’m sure you’re well aware.”
“Returning to the scene of the crime, you mean?”
“See, Sgt. Perkins?” I traced my fingertip across the bottom of his badge. “I knew you had the look of a man who knows his business.”
Perkins had the kind of skin that didn’t so much blush as stain. He grinned at me from a face that looked double-slapped. “I try, miss.”
“Tell me something, Sergeant.” I lowered my voice a register and leaned in a little closer, letting my breast accidentally brush his upper arm. “Did you see the body?”
“You’re not some kind of reporter, are you?” It was just the right kind of question. One that informed me unequivocally that the last threads of his caution were quickly fraying.
“Do I look like a reporter?”
Hook, line, and accomplice.
He examined me a good, long time. Longer, perhaps, than was necessary to determine whether or not I was likely to paste his face all over the evening news.
“Reporters don’t wear glasses,” he said, clearly pleased by his own shrewdness. “The lenses would cause a glare on camera.”
“Very good, Sgt. Perkins.” I gave his chest a playful poke. “No, I’m not a reporter. I’m a psychologist. I’ve been following this case since it first broke on the national news. I’m putting together a psychological profile. Trouble is, I haven’t been able to review a crime scene firsthand.”
“Why not?”
“Oh, you know how political these things are. The career climbers get direct access while professionals like us with genuine interest and ability are relegated to the sidelines.”
“You’re not wrong about that,” he said.
A couple more minutes of this, and Perkins might just purr. I waited, ready to give him another nudge if he required it, almost positive he wouldn’t.
“I got a look at it, all right. I was the first officer on the scene. I was in the middle of a routine traffic stop one block over when the call went out. I kept things secure until homicide showed up and ran me off.”
“So you must have seen Brock Peterson up close, then.”
“I sure did.”
“Then maybe you can tell me if there were any unusual marks on his neck. You see, I’ve been compiling a list of similarities between the individual murders, and this would really help me out.”
His brows bunched at the center of his forehead. “Unusual how?”
“You know. Redness, abrasions, puncture wounds…”
“He was strangled, if that’s what you mean. There were ligature marks.”
“But nothing else? Say, anything that looked like a puncture wound? Or, two puncture wounds, maybe sort of close together? Maybe in the general vicinity of the jugular vein?”
“You mean like a vampire bite?” He laughed, apparently highly entertained by the idea.
“A vampire bite?” I laughed too, only mine leaned a little more toward hysteria than humor. “Of course not! How ridiculous. A vampire.” I hissed and mimed fangs with my fingers, which sent us both into another round of snickers and snorts.
“A vampire.” He wiped a tear from the corner of his eye.
“So, were there?” The humor vanished from my voice almost as quickly as it vanished from Perkins’s face.
“Were there what?”
“Puncture marks. Were there any puncture marks on his neck?” I detected a hint of a simmering teakettle’s whistle in my desperate query.
“No,” he said.
“What about blood? Had he lost any blood?” The kettle had gone from a simmer to a full boil.
The unmistakable gleam of genuine fear now shone in his eyes. “What? No.”
“Was he pale? Was he cold? Did he look like he’d gotten a wicked hickey from an undead Russian cage fighter? God damn it, level with me, Perkins!”
“Let go of my collar!” Perkins seized my wrists and attempted to pry my death grip from his lapels. Until that moment, I hadn’t been aware that I’d grabbed them.
“Hands off the lady.” The unmistakable snick snick of a gun being cocked punctuated the order.
A small herd of goose bumps broke over my scalp and migrated down my neck.
I knew that voice. I would always know that voice. The last time I’d heard it had been in the seconds before the catastrophic car crash that nearly cost me my life.
It was this and nothing else that stunned me out of my fevered inquisition of poor Perkins.
He let go of my wrists. I let go of his lapels.
Perkins blinked at me. I blinked at Perkins.
To be fair, his was more of a do you know this psychopath? sort of blink, while mine was more of the there’s a psychopath behind me, isn’t there? variety.
The answer to both ocular interrogatives was, of course, a resounding yes.
“Liam,” I said, not taking my eyes off Perkins. “I would advise you against pointing a gun at this nice officer. He was just trying to help me.”
“Gun?” Liam asked. “What gun?”
To say I wasn’t prepared for what I saw when I turned around would be a staggering understatement.
Liam looked like hammered shit in the grittiest, dirtiest, panty-wettingest way possible.
He wore black.
From the tattered duster coat to threadbare slacks to a t-shirt peppered with holes. The body beneath was leaner than I remembered. All the better to emphasize musculature almost cruel in its unforgiving, razor-honed brutality.
His hair had grown long and wild. Onyx waves falling across his hollowed cheeks and past a jaw shadowed by a beard whose texture I already felt between my shoulder blades.
In a staring contest, the Devil himself would have looked away first. Which was pretty impressive, considering Liam had only one eye in the game. The other hid behind an eye patch, which seemed both the origin and terminus of a web of silvery scars.
“Miss me?” he asked.
I knew from the handful of words he had spoken that if I were to kiss him, he’d taste like whiskey and smoke.
“Liam, what are you doing here?”
“Protecting you.”
“Protecting me?” My attempts to keep my voice and face completely neutral failed miserably. “From what?”
Of all the evidence detailing how hard he’d lived since our parting, his smile was somehow worst of all. A devastating echo of what it once had been. A reminder of the charm that had relieved me of my virginity in a cheap motel room so long ago. He unleashed it upon me full tilt.
“Maybe you should ask your husband.”