What Doesn’t Kill Her Read online

  Other Books by Max Allan Collins

  Published by Thomas & Mercer

  The Memoirs of Nathan Heller

  True Detective

  True Crime

  The Million-Dollar Wound

  Neon Mirage

  Stolen Away

  Carnal Hours

  Blood and Thunder

  Damned in Paradise

  Flying Blind

  Majic Man

  Angel in Black

  Chicago Confidential

  Chicago Lighting (short stories)

  Triple Play (novellas)

  Mallory Mysteries

  No Cure for Death

  The Baby Blue Rip-off

  Kill Your Darlings

  A Shroud for Aquarius

  Nice Weekend for a Murder

  The “Disaster” Mysteries

  The Titanic Murders

  The Hindenburg Murders

  The Pearl Harbor Murders

  The Lusitania Murders

  The London Blitz Murders

  The War of the Worlds Murder

  Other Novels

  Midnight Haul

  Regeneration (with Barbara Collins, as “Barbara Allan”)

  Bombshell (with Barbara Collins, as “Barbara Allan”)

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright © 2013 Max Allan Collins

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer

  PO Box 400818

  Las Vegas, NV 89140

  ISBN-13: 9781612185293

  ISBN-10: 1612185290

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2013904877

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I wish to acknowledge my frequent collaborator, Matthew V. Clemens, for coplotting, forensics (and other) research, and the preparation of a story treatment from which I could develop this novel.

  —M. A. C.

  In memory of Bj Elsner with fond remembrance of days at the Mississippi Valley Writers Conference

  CONTENTS

  Start Reading

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  My love for…

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  My greatest thrill…

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Such imbeciles, these…

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  If you are bent on revenge, dig two graves.

  —Chinese proverb

  There is a sacredness in tears.

  —Washington Irving

  True first love is dangerous.

  —Stephen King

  CHAPTER ONE

  Ten Years Ago

  Breath coming in raspy gasps, sixteen-year-old Jordan Rivera peeked out from her hiding place under her bed.

  Too loud, she knew, working to calm herself, control her breathing. Too loud.

  This had been such a typical boring evening, dinner with her folks and her older brother, Jimmy, then to her room for homework. Now the dullness that was her life had taken a terrifying turn.…

  She’d been lying on her bed, wearing only a knee-length nightshirt, algebra book open in front of her as she daydreamed about Mark Pryor. About kissing him. About more than kissing him…

  While it seemed every other cheerleader lusted after quarterback Pete Harris, Jordan had set her eyes on Mark, the team kicker. Mark was no broad-shouldered knuckle dragger—he was short and thin, like she was; but his hair was blond where hers was black, his eyes blue where hers were dark brown.

  Not just a football player, either—Mark was incredibly bright and no stuck-up jackass like so many jocks. And she just knew those lips of his would be the softest of any guy’s in the senior class—even if she hadn’t found out for herself yet.

  Such thoughts had sent her homework retreating to the furthest recesses of her mind, only to be interrupted by the crash downstairs.

  She never jumped at the “boo” moments in scary movies, but this jarring sound, unexpected and unknown, made her jump, all right. Shook and shivered her. As she hopped off the bed, she settled herself, thinking clumsy Jimmy had knocked something over, or maybe one of her parents had tripped and fallen.

  These innocent thoughts disappeared when, from beyond the door, came muffled, alarmed voices, and what sounded like someone thrashing around.

  Cautious but without hesitation, she opened her door, stepped into the hallway, and had just gotten to where she could see down the stairs when she heard her mother scream, “Run, Jordan! Run!”

  The words themselves barely registered—it was the fear in her mother’s scream that seized Jordan. Fear like nothing she’d ever heard from her mother before. It stopped her like a punch, and the girl’s eyes automatically shifted across the railing to the first floor…

  … where her father wrestled desperately with a man in dark blue.

  The front door was thrown open wide, a small hole in the wall where the knob had crashed into it. That had been the sound Jordan had heard—this man in blue had forced his way into their home!

  Their unwanted guest seemed to be wearing a police uniform… but why would a policeman be wrestling with her father?

  Then light glinted off something in the intruder’s hand—a knife!—whose blade slashed down across her father’s face. A ribbon of scarlet glistened on her dad’s cheek as he howled like a wounded animal.

  Her mom again screamed, “Run, Jordan!”

  But there was no going forward, the stairs blocked now by the struggle between the intruder and her father. And then her brother, Jimmy, entered into the fray, coming to aid Dad, but too late to prevent a second knife blow that plunged deep in her father’s chest. Dad sagged back to the floor, blood blossoming on his white shirt.

  Jimmy was diving at the intruder, and she wanted to help, but Jordan’s training was to obey her parents, and her mother had said “Run,” and so she ran.

  Back to her room, where she shut the door behind her, considered going out the window, but there was nowhere to go, just straight down to the ground, two floors below.

  Should she jump?

  She would almost certainly break one leg, if not both, and then how could she ever get away?

  She looked for her cell phone, remembered it was in her jacket downstairs…

  … downstairs, where Jimmy’s voice rose in a peal of yowling pain.

  Jordan shuddered, choked back tears, scoured her room for a weapon, seeing teddy bears, CDs, posters of teen idols, the mirror over the tiny dressing table. Though nothing looked out of place, nothing resembled a weapon either, unless she broke the mirror maybe. Then her eyes fell on her student desk.

  Scissors inside.

  She jerked open the drawer, found the scissors, and drew them out as the sounds of struggle grew closer. Someone was coming up the stairs—more than one person?

  Holding the scissors like a knife, the points not as sharp as she wished, Jordan threw open her wi
ndow to suggest that she’d fled, then squeezed under her bed.

  Where she waited.

  Trying to control her breathing, a ragged sound so loud that it seemed to echo throughout the room. The house. The universe. Sweat matting her hair, running into her eyes. Cold terror flowing through her veins, her heart hammering in her ears. She looked at the scissors in her trembling fist and tried to force herself not to shake. The room seemed warm, but she couldn’t stop shivering.

  She peeked under the hanging bedspread toward the door. Sounds of struggle had grown louder, closer, moving to the hallway beyond that door. Grunts and growls and bodies bouncing off walls.

  Then Jordan heard her mother nearby, crying, “Why are you doing this to us? What did we do to you?”

  If the intruder answered, Jordan didn’t hear the reply.

  Shivering, her teeth chattering now, she heard the struggle perhaps another ten seconds—then there was a loud gasp right outside her door.

  Not Jimmy or Dad—her mother.

  She wanted to scream, for her mother, for herself, for mercy, for no reason but to scream at the insanity that had invaded her sphere.

  But Jordan managed to stay silent and even made her breathing quieter, eyes glued to the light leaking in under the door.

  After what seemed like forever, the door swung slowly open and Jordan stared at a patch of hallway. An eternity seemed to pass before she saw a shoe take a drunken step in. Instantly, Jordan recognized her mother’s white New Balance walking shoe. Her mother’s foot hung there for a long moment, then a bead of blood plopped like a solitary raindrop on the toe.

  Her mother took another unsteady step, a gurgling sound coming from somewhere. As Jordan watched, her mother’s feet hesitated, then the body those feet had supported toppled.

  And her mother’s face came to rest just inches from Jordan’s own.

  Mom’s brown eyes wide, staring, lifeless, blood visible at the corners of her mouth and now Jordan screamed.

  The shrill wordless wail seemed to fill the whole world and even though she tried to stop, Jordan couldn’t. And when need for breath demanded a stop, the scream started right back in, on and on, her mother’s eyes staring at her without life, without love, without hope.

  A hand closed around her ankle and pulled—hard—cutting off her scream. She released the scissors to try to grip the floor or the underside of the bed or something, but she felt herself traveling backward, her fingernails clawing uselessly at the hardwood floor as she jerked her foot, trying to free herself of the firm grip. On her tummy, she tried to twist around to see her attacker, but couldn’t lift her shoulder, the bottom of the bed blocking her.

  As he drew her effortlessly out from under, by both ankles now, Jordan tried to kick free, though her attacker proved too strong. She was halfway out when she stretched her right hand and managed to grasp the handle of the scissors and take them along with her.

  “Let me go!” she yelled. It came up from her chest but sounded small and childlike.

  The attacker pulled harder and she found herself out in the middle of the floor, the protection provided by the bed a distant memory. He jerked her leg to one side and Jordan was forced from her stomach onto her back, the room suddenly seeming very bright around her.

  She could see him finally.

  Tall, white, more muscular than Jimmy, but probably only a few years older than her brother. His blond hair stood out at odd angles, tousled from all the fighting. Sky-blue-eyed, pug-nosed, Beach Boy–looking with an awful wholesomeness. He wore a police uniform, but the badge and shoulder patch were different than those of their local Westlake, Ohio, PD. In his right hand he clenched a hunting knife, streaked with glistening red.

  Releasing her foot, he leaned closer to her and she saw her chance. She thrust the scissors forward, but he responded with psychic ease, dodging her attack, slapping her arm away, scissors clattering across the floor somewhere.

  As she watched her weapon twirl away, pain exploded inside her head, and as she fell back, she realized the attacker had punched her in the side of the head, which knocked her jarringly onto the floor.

  The pain seemed to be everywhere and even smacking her head on the hard flooring didn’t register much. Jordan blinked and fought to clear her mind. Even as she did, her attacker grabbed a hank of hair and yanked, forcing Jordan to her feet with a fresh yowl of pain.

  She tottered in his grasp, trying to get her feet under her, eyes darting around the room searching for another weapon and, at all costs, trying to avoid her dead mother.

  Her attacker pulled her around until they were face-to-face, only inches apart, as if they were dancing—his icy blue eyes boring into her. She tried to turn away, but he jerked her hair and made her look at him again. This time anger mixed with her terror and she took a good look at her mother’s murderer. And probably her father’s, and her brother’s… who would be here helping if they could…

  … if they were alive.

  She doubted she’d survive this, but in case she did, she would memorize every detail about him. That he wore no mask meant he would likely kill her. She had a sudden fatalistic, even Zen-like realization of that. But if she could survive, she would know this bastard.…

  Start with this: he’s wearing contact lenses. Are his eyes really blue, or not?

  He smells of cologne mixed with sweat from his struggle, making a pungent, sickly sweet odor.

  The knife danced into her line of sight, her mother’s blood glistening on the blade.

  Jordan tried not to stare at the steel shaft bobbing slowly like a serpent poised to strike. What gripped her now was not fear of death—she was past that—but the anticipation of pain. The pain she did fear, and that sent hot tears flowing.

  “This is what I do,” he said, almost calm about it.

  She said nothing, but her face must have registered her confusion at his too-simple explanation for slaughtering her family.

  “It’s what I do,” he said, as if volume and repetition would make her suddenly understand his gibberish.

  She managed, “You kill… families?”

  He shook his head, obviously angry that she was too slow to grasp his meaning. “I reestablish the natural order… God’s natural order.”

  “God told you to kill my family?”

  His eyes flared and he smiled. “Yes. You perceive. How nice that you perceive.”

  “I perceive that you’re insane!”

  The eyes went cold again, as lifeless as her mother’s, and Jordan realized too late that she had made a mistake. Using her hair as a handle, he whipped her around, smashing her face into the mirror, glass shattering.

  She crumpled, landing atop the dressing table, fingers scrabbling for a weapon—he’d found something to break that mirror for her, hadn’t he?—shards, or even a brush, makeup, anything, but he still held on to her long black hair and jerked her back to a standing position. Her hands empty, something warm and wet on her cheeks. That coppery taste on her lips was blood.

  Better to keep her mouth shut.

  Still using her hair like reins, he forced her to the floor next to her mother.

  “Pick her up,” the intruder said.

  Jordan looked at the dead body of her mother and began to sob. “I… I can’t… she’s too… too heavy.”

  Her mother was barely bigger than her, but that was what she said to try to get out of the terrible task demanded of her.

  “Then drag her,” the intruder said.

  “What?… Where?”

  He squatted down and showed her the knife again. “Wherever I tell you to.”

  To punctuate his statement, he jabbed the knife deep into her mother’s back, just above the kidney.

  Jordan cried out, as if the knife had gone into her.

  There was blood, but not very much. Maybe dead people didn’t bleed.

  “Now,” the intruder said.

  Forcing herself to her feet, Jordan bent at the knees and picked her mother up under the
arms. Though it made no difference now, Jordan tried to be gentle.

  “Downstairs.”

  The wood floor was slick with her mother’s blood and even as she struggled with her burden, Jordan fought to keep her balance, tears running freely down her cheeks again, mixing with the blood from the cuts inflicted by the mirror. To her surprise, Jordan felt no pain—no fear, really. Was this what it was like to accept death? It was that moment when the dentist’s drill sends you to that place where you lull yourself, This will be over soon, this will be over.…

  She dragged her poor mother into the hallway, heaving for breath.

  The stairs now.

  The intruder preceded her, going down backward, one knife-gripped hand also holding on to Jordan’s hair, the other on the railing. Her back to him, holding her mother from behind, she would take a step down, drag her mother a step, take another step, drag her mother a step.…

  Halfway down, she let go of Mom, and hurled her weight into the man, knocking him backward, her hair released reflexively as he fell. She spun to push him again, but he had regained his balance, and slapped her.

  Slapped her hard, her head twisting impossibly on her neck.

  Then, with the knife at her throat, his other hand gripping her by a bicep, he trotted her down the stairs and flung her to the floor. She was pushing up groggily to see the horrific sight of the intruder dragging her mother down the stairs by one arm, bump bump bumping, like a terrible Slinky.

  She began to cry and then he was shaking her, as if she had fallen asleep in the midst of an important task. He had dumped her mother on the entryway floor nearby.

  He pointed toward the living room. “In there. Take her!”

  Holding her mother from behind, the back of the dead woman’s head near her face, Jordan hauled her burden, the small woman seeming heavy as a sack of grain. The smell of her mother’s hair lingering in Jordan’s nostrils reminded the girl of how comforting that scent had been on every other day of her life.

  When she got to the living room, despite her efforts not to look, Jordan saw the bodies of her father and brother tossed like broken toys discarded by an evil child. She managed to swallow the wail of despair that wanted as desperately to escape as she did.