Free The Collie Murders: A Serial Killer Crime Thriller by Jared Paul

to the one he’d sported while he was alive.
                 
    Cory let her eyes drift mechanically to Willis’ feet where a trail of dirt led to what appeared to be a gravestone. Willis’ blood had spattered onto it, nearly obscuring the name engraved onto it, but it was legible enough for Cory to realize that she was seeing her son’s tombstone for the first time. Whoever had murdered Willis had taken the time to defile David’s resting place.
                 
    The floor rushed up to greet Cory’s knees, the pain of the connection taking her breath away. Everything that she had been avoiding by not visiting her son came rushing up like a possessed tidal wave into her senses. David was dead, her husband was gone and all that was left in the wake of so much loss was a grave stone covered in cooling blood.
                 
    The epitaph that had been carved into the stone, an event she didn’t have a part in, read simply: A beautiful soul now at peace in heaven. Cory knew that Jon had done his best by their son, that even though his heart had shattered along with hers, he’d had the presence of mind to do something extraordinary. How was it possible that such a small gesture could patch her heart with the first Band-Aid that might begin to heal the hole in her soul?
                 
    “Like your present, Dr. Lance?”
                 
    Cory’s breath caught in her chest. She’d thought that the worst was over, that seeing Willis inside of her apartment, left as he was, had to be the thing she was meant to see. Her head, ever so slightly, turned so that she could see behind her. She saw a pair of feet in tennis shoes leading up to a pair of legs dressed in khaki pants, a floral pattered blouse and then the shaded faces of someone smiling at her.
                 
    “Drew?”
 
    “Why the hell didn’t you call me when you headed back to your place with Cory? For that matter, why did you leave me with that old geezer? I must have wasted an hour just trying to get him to give me that frickin’ video footage, which by the way, hasn’t got a thing worth spit on it.”
                 
    Jon would have added to his view on Louis‘ self-indulged rant, but as his eyes drifted back out to the window, the man was rounding a corner and he could see the police station clearly from across the road. Lights lit up the parking lot like it was Christmas and people were milling around out front as if they were handing out wads of hundred dollar bills.
                 
    “The mayor invited the press down from Hadley to the police station to get the scoop on Collie’s first serial killer. If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear the whole town is out there with torches and pitch forks gearing up to slay the caged monster.”
                 
    Jon absorbed what Louis was telling him, and it hurt his heart that Travis was being run through a witch hunt, but the panic in his heart was telling him that Travis, while life sucked for him, was not the one who needed him.
                 
    He felt his hand squeeze the arm rest of the passenger’s side door. “Do me a favor and shut the hell up.” He looked over at the vehicle’s speedometer and made an irritated sound through his teeth. “You need to make with the speed, Louis.”
                 
    Louis kept his eyes on the road as he replied, resisting the urge to shoot an annoyed look in Jon’s direction. “You still haven’t told me what I’m doing driving out to your ex-wife’s apartment at night.”
                 
    “If I told you, would you believe me? Right now, I just want to get to her before someone else does. Louis, she’s in danger. I think she’s taken off to meet with a serial killer with no more sense to her than an outhouse with an elevator.”
                 
    “What!?”
                 
    Louis