Body Hunter by Patricia Springer Read Free Book Online

had the power. He had the control. Ellen’s light body was thrown to the ground as her clothes were ripped from her body and tossed aside. Blau’s blue jeans, with one leg turned inside out, her tennis shoes, shirt, bra, and one sock were scattered on the ground nearby. Her shivering from the cool September air turned to fearful shakes.
    â€œWhy wouldn’t you listen to me?” the man screamed in anger. “Why didn’t you care about what I was saying?”
    Ellen’s assailant hovered over her. Each brutalizing strike of his fist caused excruciating pain. Ellen’s face swelled, her body ached as he pummeled her over and over. Then the batterer’s long forearm pressed hard against her throat. Unable to breathe, her legs and arms thrashed wildly in the air. Within seconds, Ellen’s limp limbs fell to the ground. Her fight was gone, but the perpetrator continued to apply pressure. It would take more than ten minutes before life had been totally stripped from Ellen Blau.
    The man, his shirt wet with sweat, stood over the body of his newest victim. His breaths were deep, his energy spent. He stared down at the dark-haired girl he had barely known. A calmness went through his body. The rage was gone.
    The killer walked to the Volkswagen parked on the dirt road not far from Blau’s body. He drove back to town, parking near the apartment complex where he and Ellen’s best friend lived.
    Physically and emotionally exhausted, he lay in his bed and stared up at the ceiling. Tears came to his eyes as he thought of the woman he’d left nude in the rural field. They ran down his cheeks as his thoughts turned to someone else. He pressed his eyes shut tightly and shook his head. His frustration and displaced anger had claimed another victim.

Chapter Six
    Janie Ball was frightened. Ellen Blau had failed to come home overnight. Ellen had begun living with the Balls when she had finally given in to Janie’s insistence and left her Polk Street apartment where the roof leaked and she kept getting bit by spiders. During this time, when Ellen was “in between” apartments, she shared space in the Balls’ infant son’s room while she saved money to move into her own place.
    Just that morning, Blau had put down a deposit on an apartment. She was scheduled to move the next weekend. Ball remembered Ellen thinking out loud, figuring out how much of her paycheck would be going for rent.
    It wasn’t like Ellen not to come home, and certainly not like her not to call if she was going to be late.
    Janie Ball ran her fingers through her light brown hair as her mind turned to the headlines in recent months. WOMEN MISSING. WOMEN KILLED . Janie began frantically making calls, trying to find Ellen.
    Janie’s distress heightened when a call came in from the bread delivery man who serviced the Subs ’N Suds.
    â€œIs Ellen there?” the delivery man asked. “I saw her car down the street, parked in the side parking lot of The Country Store at Burkburnett and Puckett, near Sheppard Air Force Base.”
    Janie Ball knew exactly where the store was located. Sheppard was on the outskirts of Wichita Falls. A technical training center, Sheppard hosted the only NATO pilot-training program in the world. The Country Store was close by.
    â€œI’ll be right there,” Ball replied. She hurriedly drove to The Country Store and immediately located Blau’s car.
    Janie opened the driver-side door and looked inside for any clue as to where Ellen might be. Seeing what looked like blood on the front seat of the unlocked, green VW Rabbit, Janie came close to hysteria. She immediately called her husband.
    â€œThe car is parked on the side of the store. The keys are in it. Her purse is in it. The shirt she was wearing last night is in it, along with a broken beer bottle. And something that looks like a trace of blood on the front seat,” Janie Ball frantically told her