Too close to home, p.1
Too Close to Home, page 1
part #1 of The Forensic Files Series
Too Close To Home
By: Tressa Messenger
Too Close To Home
Copyright © 2014 by Tressa Messenger. All rights reserved.
First Print Edition: July 2014
Limitless Publishing, LLC
Kailua, HI 96734
www.limitlesspublishing.com
Formatting: Limitless Publishing
ISBN-13: 978-1500235772
ISBN-10: 1500235776
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.
Dedication
For Pamlico
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Epilogue
Chapter One
“All right girls, good job today. We need to work on the timing a little more for the halftime cheer. We only have two days left to get it right, but other than that, I think we are set for the game on Friday night.” The group of girls sitting on the hardwood floor stared up at Missy, smiles spreading across their faces.
“Awesome! We are so going to rock at the game,” Kristen cheered as she jumped to her feet and shook her pom-poms. The shiny black and gold color glimmered in the bright gym light, while her ponytail bounced with the movement.
“I hope so. The first game of the season always makes me nervous,” Brittany said.
“Me, too, no matter how many years I’ve cheered,” Missy added. “This is my year though, and I want it to be memorable.”
“Who knows, Missy? We might even make it into the North Carolina cheerleading competition this year,” Brittany says dreamily.
Missy’s sultry blue eyes lit up at the thought. “That would be kick-ass for sure!”
“I can’t wait for Frankie to see me in my cheerleading outfit. He is going to freak over my short skirt.” said a freshman, whose name Missy couldn’t remember.
Missy rolled her eyes at the girl. It seemed silly now, but she remembered feeling the same way when she first got to high school and joined the squad. It was a tradition for the cheerleaders at Pamlico County High School to mercilessly haze the freshmen cheerleaders. It was a way for them to prove not only their worth, but also their loyalty to the squad. Missy had been determined to make it no matter what, and, she did. The prospect of being a part of the “in-crowd” and cheering on the most popular guys in school was a fantasy to her. Three years later, not only had she become the captain of their cheerleading squad, but she was also dating the hottest guy in the whole school, the quarterback of the football team. It had been hard work and a little heartbreaking along the way, but it had all been worth it to have her status escalate to the “it” girl.
“Hey Missy, we’re all meeting up at the Crooked Hook. You wanna come?” Kristen asked, interrupting Missy’s daydream.
Missy shook her head. “Tempting, but no. I think I’m going to work on the choreography for the new cheer so we don’t look like a bunch of dumbasses Friday night. Then I’m gonna hit the shower, cause I’m supposed to meet up with Rob later.”
“It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it,” Kristen snickered, smacking Missy on the butt so loud the sound rippled through the gym.
“Yeah, it is.” Missy laughed.
“Are you sure you won’t get into trouble for being here this late?” Brittany asked, concerned.
Missy looked around the gym, then back at her and shrugged her shoulder, “Nah, Mr. White doesn’t mind. He wants the football team to go all the way this year, at any cost it seems.”
“It’s ok. You should spend more time with that hunky boyfriend of yours. He may start to wonder where you’re at, and I’m sure you don’t want that to happen,” Kristen said, changing the subject back.
Missy rolled her eyes at Kristen.
“Maybe ya’ll can stop by later anyway,” Brittany said, sounding hopeful.
“We’ll see,” Missy said, hoping that answer would appease her.
“Okay, hooker, if we don’t see ya tonight, we’ll see you tomorrow,” Kristen said giving Missy a hug before leaving.
“Yep, tomorrow for sure. Ya’ll have fun, though.”
Missy waved good-bye to the group of girls, slightly wishing she were going out with them. She and Kristen had been best friends their whole lives. It is a friendship that started before their first day of kindergarten at Arapahoe Charter School. Kristen and Missy’s parents lived next door to each other in Minnesott Beach and became fast friends after the girls were born, that is until Kristen’s parents decided to move into a bigger house in Dawson’s Creek. That was in sixth grade and they each went their own way after that, making friends with other people, It was during the torturous freshman hazing days that they managed to grow close again. The other kids at school nicknamed them the dynamic duo during their freshman year and they had lived up to their titles proudly ever since. Throughout the past three years others had joined their group of friends. The most loyal, in Missy’s opinion, were Kristen, Rob, Marshall, Brittany and Kate. Missy felt certain that if they hadn’t gone to different schools up until high school, they would have all been friends a lot longer. When she started dating Rob last year, she had worried that things would become weird, since Kristen was hooking up with him at the time, but they managed.
Once all was quiet in the gym, Missy retrieved her pom-poms off the glossy wooden floor and turned on her iPod to the song that went with the new cheer. As the music began, she held her pom-poms on her waist and stood like a beautiful blonde statue until the timing was right. She closed her eyes, feeling the music and waited for the note to begin the cheer. As she began, her face lit up while she shook and gyrated everything the good Lord gave her in perfect rhythm. She turned, kicked and rattled her pom-poms to the beat of the music. Her heart leaped with the thrill.
BANG!
Missy jumped at the sound of a thunderous boom that echoed through the gym. She hugged her pom-poms to her chest and looked around.
“Hello? Is someone there?” she asked...
She pressed the pom-poms hard against her chest, feeling exposed in her yellow sports bra and black leggings. She continued to look around as she quickly walked over to the bleachers to turn off the music. She stood still and listened for a sound, any sound, but there was none. Feeling creeped out, she gathered up her things and headed to the girl’s locker room.
She put her gym bag on the bench and dug around inside. She took out her clean change of clothes, make-up bag and a towel. She then stripped out of her sweaty clothes, balled them up and put them in the bag, along with her pom-poms and iPod before shoving the bag into the old beat up locker. Feeling uneasy she grabbed the neatly folded towel off the bench and looked around the row of lockers. She slammed the metallic door closed and pressed the towel closer to her chest and briskly walked to the open shower stalls in the back of the room.
She hung the towel on the nearest hook and turned on the hot water full blast. She stood under the hot water and closed her eyes, as the scalding hot water ran down her naked body, melting the tension away and calming her racing nerves. The water pressure wasn’t hard enough to massage her muscles like she liked, but the steam still worked its magic.
BANG!
Her eyes shot open and she froze in mid-movement. Her heart jumped in her chest when she heard the loud bang again.
“I knew I wasn’t hearing things before,” she said to herself before calling out, “Hello?”
BANG!
“What the hell is that?” She whipped her head around, causing water to slap against the shower stall.
She turned off the water and wrapped the towel around herself and stormed out of the shower stall.
“Is someone in here?” she asked, her annoyance growing.
Another loud bang.
“Hey, asshole!” she yelled.
Silence.
She tiptoed out of the shower room. Just outside, on the floor, she spotted something black. Curious, she bent down to examine the object. It was her panties. She had put them in her bag with the other dirty clothes, so what were they doing here? Leaving them where they were, she stood up and looked around.
Someone was here!
Feeling violated, she hurried to her locker to get dressed, but found it wide open and her bag containing all of her stuff—clothes, phone, and keys—all gone. She threw a couple of old rag magazines and her
choreography notebook onto the floor, emptying out the locker. She continued to look even though she knew she wouldn’t find anything to put on because her clothes were gone and she never kept extra stuff at school. She slammed the palm of her hand on the front of the locker next to her and cursed to herself for not keeping extra clothes in it.
“Okay, whores, nice joke! Now bring my stuff back so I can get dressed,” she yelled.
Silence.
“Kristen, Ashley, Brittany, joke’s over! Payback is going to be hell tomorrow at practice!”
Still no sound.
She looked down at the wet towel wrapped around her and slammed the locker door closed with a loud metallic bang. “Great, just great! Very funny, assholes!” she yelled, then mumbled to herself, “What douchebags. Just wait. Payback is going to be a bitch.”
Leaving the magazines and notebooks on the floor she walked through all the rows of lockers, opening each as she passed by hoping to find a piece, any piece, of clothing to put on, but found them empty. Grasping the towel around her even tighter, she walked to the end of the last row of lockers and looked around the open space of the locker room toward the gym door and muttered to herself, “I swear to God, those girls are going to be dead if anyone sees me like this.” She’s sure her so-called friends were getting a kick out of her discomfort, knowing she would have to walk through the entire length of the school to the front office to use one of the phones in nothing but a wet towel. She even half-expected pictures to be taken to capture the moment. Maybe even a video.
Feeling uneasy, she took another deep breath to steady herself and let it out slowly before leaving the safety of the row and out into the open. She hurried to the door and put a hand on the knob, quickly turning it. She peeked her head out into the dark gym and tried to look.
“Didn’t I leave the lights on? I can’t see shit in here,” she mumbled.
Standing with her back toward the gym, she slowly closed the locker room door, trying to keep as quiet as possible. Every hair on her body stood on end when the heavy old metal door squeaked with age. Too afraid to look around, she stood frozen, waiting for any kind of sound to indicate anyone might be there.
Please God, don’t let anyone see me like this, she silently prayed.
Once she was satisfied that there was no one else in the gym, she shut the door the rest of the way and clung to the cool brick wall behind her. She tiptoed as quietly as she could toward the exit that led into the school. She would prefer to go through the exit leading outside, since it was a less creepy path to the front of the school, but the exit door leading into the school building was her only option at that time of day. All the other exit doors leading to the outside of the building were locked at four o’clock for the safety and security of the school. Unfortunately for Missy, her only option was a door located on the opposite side of the gym beside a row of wooden bleachers. Not only did it look extremely far away, but Missy was certain that the thirty seconds it was going to take to reach that door would feel like an eternity. She took another deep breath and continued to cling to the brick wall as she made her way along the gym.
She breathed a little easier when she finally reached the gym exit. As she extended her hand to push the bar on the old door to open it, she saw a form of what looked to be a man standing close to the locker rooms where she had just left.
“Jesus Christ! Who’s there?” The gym was too dark to make out his face. “Coach Grady, is that you?”
The man didn’t respond.
“Seriously, Coach, don’t be a creepy perv!” she yelled with a hint of disgust in her voice.
Without a word, the man slowly began to walk in her direction.
Missy, now clutching the towel tightly to her chest, could feel her heart pounding. The closer the man got to her, the harder her heart beat. “Don’t come any closer. I’m going to call the police and your ass is going to get fired,” she threatened.
The man didn’t stop.
“I’m serious!” she shrieked.
Still nothing.
“Shit!”
She threw open the heavy gym door and rushed out into the dark hallway. Holding onto her towel, she ran down the wide corridor, slipping and nearly falling because she had no shoes on and her feet were still wet from her shower. When she came to a fork in the hall, she looked back and forth, trying to decide which way would be the best. All of the exit doors in the school were locked at that hour except for the exit the ones by the office, school where the only phones were, but it was still too far away. She didn’t have long to think before she heard the loud thud of the man’s heavy boots coming down the hall behind her.
“Shit! Science!” She took a right down the science hallway and straight into Mr. Peters’ chemistry classroom. She closed the door as softly as she could and turned around to face the classroom. She had Mr. Peters’ for fourth period class so she was well aware of all of the empty cabinets lining the walls. At the time they seemed like a good hiding place, but now she realized they would be too much of an obvious hiding spot.
Her heart leaped into her throat at the sound of a metallic like scratching, comparable to nails scratching on a chalkboard, if the chalkboard was a set of metal lockers and the nails were made out of another metal, coming from right outside in the hallway.
She hurried to the first place she could think of, Mr. Peters’ desk. She grabbed his lab coat off the back of the chair and crawled underneath, hugging her body tightly and praying she wouldn’t be found. She could hear doors opening down the hall as he got closer and closer. When the Science door swung open, she had to put her hand over her mouth to stifle a startled gasp and to quiet her rapid breathing.
Thankfully the moon was not only full that night, but it was also unusually bright, which allowed Missy to watch the man’s shadow along the chalkboard and on the tile floor. Within a few breathless minutes, his shadow disappeared and she heard his footsteps leave the room. Removing her hand from her mouth, she poked her head out from under the desk, but just as she did, her hair was painfully grabbed and she was pulled her up onto the desk. She grabbed for her hair, forgetting her towel, letting it fall to the floor. The man pinned her down on the desk, maneuvering himself between her legs. Continuing to hold onto her hair with a tight fist, he managed to keep her in place despite of her pleas and flailing body.
“Oh my God, please don’t,” she screamed, fearing she was about to be raped.
Missy struggled to catch a good look at her assailant, hoping to appeal to him, but he was wearing a ski mask. The only features she could see were, pink lips which were formed into a thin angry scowl and cold, calculating dark eyes.
“Please don’t!” she sobbed
The man stared down at her for a long breathless minute. She wondered for a second if he would let her go. He lifted his free hand, and she saw he was holding a knife. Missy’s eyes widened at the sight of the blade and she began to scream. “What do you want from me?” she whimpered.
He lowered the knife and ran the cool steel along her naked body, making circles around her hardening nipples down to her belly button. He then leaned over her, his face so close she could feel his hot breath on her neck as he breathed her in. She was unable to see the knife, but she felt it when it pierced her skin, the sharp pain radiating through her body as he repeatedly plunged the knife into the soft flesh of her stomach. Her screams began to quiet, her breath coming in slow, shallow gasps as her blood pooled in her throat. With one last gurgled sigh, she stilled, leaving the ghost of her screams echoing through the hall.
Chapter Two
Carma pulled into the high school parking lot in Bayboro a little after seven in the morning. She came to a stop behind a row of sheriff’s cars at the front entrance of the high school. Before getting out of her car, she looked around at the small developing crowd of bystanders scattered outside the school.
“It’s too early for this,” she mumbled to herself, knowing it wasn’t going to take long for word to get out in this small town. Soon the school grounds were going to be littered with a lot more people, mostly kids.
