Laying Down the Law by Delores Fossen

Author:Delores Fossen [Fossen, Delores]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2016-08-15T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Karina held her breath while Jericho eased the first of the three photos from the envelope. She could practically feel Cord trying to bolster himself for whatever he was about to see. Unfortunately, he might need some bolstering.

“Remember,” Karina whispered to him, “anything the person says or gives you could be a lie. We’re not dealing with a sane, normal person here.”

But she had no idea exactly who they were dealing with, and she doubted anything in that envelope would tell them, either. If the real Moonlight Strangler had indeed sent this, then she figured there would be nothing to incriminate him.

So, why had he sent it?

Jericho carefully placed the photo on the desk, and Karina got a good look at the one on top. It was an old Polaroid, yellow with age and worn in spots, but the image was still fairly clear. It wasn’t a posed shot. There was a woman on a porch. Her head was down so it was hard to see much of her face, but she had her hand on her throat and was looking down at two children.

A boy and a girl.

Cord jerked back his shoulders. And Karina knew why. The children were wearing clothes exactly like the ones the caller had described. The clothes that Cord and Addie had been wearing the day they disappeared.

Someone had written “Mom” at the bottom of the photo.

Oh, God.

Was that actually Cord’s mother?

Jericho took out another pair of gloves when Cord reached for it, and Cord put them on without taking his attention off the photo.

“That’s Addie,” Jericho concluded. “I was eight years old the day they found her wandering around the woods near the ranch, and she looked exactly like that. Well, except when they found her, she had a cut on her cheek. She doesn’t have one in the photo.”

Not yet. Karina had the sickening feeling that it’d come shortly thereafter. And the cut had been the crescent shape that the Moonlight Strangler had given all his victims.

Or in the cases of Addie and herself, his near victims.

Cord picked up the picture and brought it closer, his eyes combing over every inch of it. Especially the woman’s face. “I don’t remember this. I don’t remember her.”

Since there was nothing she could say to make this better for him, Karina simply put her arm around him and hoped that helped. It did.

Until Jericho went to the second photo.

Cord actually staggered back a step, and it took him a second to regain his composure. Karina didn’t even try to regain hers. Because the photo turned her stomach.

It was the same woman who’d been in the previous shot, but she wasn’t on the porch with the kids in this one.

She was dead.

Karina didn’t have a lot of experience looking at dead bodies, but the woman was ashen, not a drop of color on her face. Except for that obscene cut on her face and the bruises on her neck.

“It could have been faked,” Jericho quickly pointed out.

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