Page 35 of Autopsy of a Fairytale

An hour later, her prayers went unanswered. The officers seemingly searched every room of that crumbling mansion, but Bel could tell by the defeated hunch of their shoulders that all they found inside Stone’s home was dust and nails and drying paint. Bel’s legs ached from standing, and when she noticed Sheriff Griffin’s exasperated expression as he emerged briefly from the house, she felt suddenly foolish for stalking them through the trees. She could do nothing hiding among the leaves, and she turned to retreat when she caught sight of Eamon for the first time that morning.

Cloaked in darkness, he stepped out of a side door, his hulking frame hidden from the officers’ view. He moved like a panther, all grace and savagery, and Bel watched mesmerized as he pulled his powerful body up to his full height before breathing deep. He lifted his nose into the air as if searching for a scent, and then with excruciatingly deliberate movements, his neck twisted until his eyes peered in her direction.

Bel’s skin went icy. There was no way he could see her from that distance, but it was as if he knew she was there. As if he smelled her fear. Heard her terror. Her heart pounded against her ribs, angry and alarmed like a red warning of danger, but her feet had grown roots, welding her to the dirt. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t think. It was an endless eternity, but then Eamon’s head snapped in the opposite direction as if he heard something. Air flooded her suffocating lungs as he launched into a run, disappearing into the trees.

Bel’s curiosity waged a bloody war with her self-preservation, but in the end, the detective emerged as the victor. She flew deeper into the forest, feet racing after Eamon, but within ten minutes she knew it had been a stupid decision. He had vanished, not a single trace of him remaining to guide her path.

“What are you doing?” Bel whispered to herself as she searched for any hint as to where the man had gone, but every tree, leaf, and branch stood unhelpfully by, mocking her. Their only suspect had fled the Sheriff and a horde of deputies unnoticed by all to race through the woods, and she had followed him. No one knew she was here, and she bit her bottom lip to keep from cursing.

Her phone vibrated in her pocket before she could berate herself further, and she pulled it out to check the notification. It was a text from an unknown number, and she almost ignored it before an urging in the recesses of her mind forced her fingers to unlock the message. It was one word. Only one. But never had three letters inflicted such fear in her chest.

Unknown

Run.

Bel exploded in movement,racing through the trees as she obeyed the anonymous warning. She wasn’t sure if the text inspired the sensation or if it merely alerted her to its presence, but someone was watching her. Their stalking eyes pricked the back of her neck. She ran faster, her heart crawling up her throat in an attempt to escape. A tree branch snapped behind her, and suddenly Bel was no longer in the woods beneath a warm, sunny sky but in a dark warehouse district, fleeing for her life. The slap of feet on concrete, the absence of life, the teeth. Always the teeth.

Her sight registered a twisted root at the last second, and she leaped over it, lungs burning. She was strong, a woman used to hiking and chasing a dog through the woods, but fear made breathing impossible. A branch whipped her face, the sting launching her back into the present as another footstep cracked to her left. She was not in the city, and her car was mere feet away. If she could just reach it.

Bel’s speed was so intense, she couldn’t stop in time to save her hip from slapping the side mirror. She hit the unlock button and jumped inside, bruised hip and welted cheek throbbing, but they were nothing compared to the pounding in her heart as she slammed her door shut and locked it. For long seconds, she sucked down painful breaths, her lungs protesting every inhale as she scanned the trees. No cars passed her on the road. No shadows moved among the leaves. All was silent. Peaceful. Picturesque.

Bel jammed her keys into the ignition and pulled out her phone, foot on the gas in case she needed to flee. She opened the text, her eyes tracing the curves of the unknown number. Had this one-word warning been meant to save her or increase her paranoia?

Bel lowered her forehead to the steering wheel. As the adrenaline bled from her muscles, exhaustion took its place. She was too tired to endure much more. She knew what it was like to be hunted, and she wasn’t sure she would survive it a second time. Someone was stalking her. She might not be able to prove it, but she felt their eyes, and somehow it related to this case. It was as if she had only half the puzzle pieces but was being forced to assemble them anyway, the unmatched edges jamming together without reason.

She shifted the car into drive, but her ringing phone interrupted her. For a second, she feared it was the unknown number, but one glance at the I.D. settled her anxiety slightly.

“Emerson?” The Sheriff’s voice greeted her. “We are finishing up at the Reale Estate.” Bel opened her mouth to say she knew, but then bit her tongue, realizing she should move her car before Griffin drove past.

“We found nothing,” he continued.

“Nothing?” Bel leaned back in her seat.

“He has plenty of tools scattered around his house, but none of them matched our victims’ chest wounds. We found no blood, no remnants from the crime scenes, or signs of surveillance. Besides a bag of coffee from the Espresso Shot in his kitchen, his missing piano, and the chandelier strung up in the foyer, nothing ties him to any of the victims.”

“His roses?”

“I saw them. He has a receipt. Bought them from the same nursery my wife got hers. Half the town has flowers from there.”

Bel hit the steering wheel with her palm. “There has to be something. You don’t just kill six people and not leave a single shred of evidence.”

“You do if you’re innocent.”

“He isn’t.”

“Emerson.” The Sheriff’s voice cut her off. “I’m as frustrated as you are. We have no suspects. No evidence. No motive. This killer shows no sign of stopping, and my best detective can’t be on the case. Trust me, I’m at my wit’s end, but we can’t accuse a man because you don’t like him. For all we know, Stone is simply seeking a quiet life away from the pressures of his job.”

He didn’t say it, but the‘just like you’was implied. “Unless you know something I don’t, my hands are tied. We’ll examine the evidence again with a fine-tooth comb, but with custom pieces used at the scenes, we don’t even have a company to inquire after.”

“So, we look into who has carpentry skills,” Bel said.

“The one person I knew capable of creating these is dead.”

“Garrett and I had considered that. His theory was Stone commissioned those from Lumen before he murdered him.”

“And it’s a decent theory, but again, we have no proof. According to both his assistant and his records, Lumen’s only job for Stone was the chandelier. They were supposed to have an ongoing relationship, but there was only one receipt.”

“So, he paid cash. Insisted on no paperwork to accompany his demands of no surveillance.” Bel was spiraling. She heard the desperation spilling from her mouth, but she couldn’t stop it.

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