Fear Collector by Gregg Olsen Read Free Book Online Page A

was going to her car and said she’d call me later, but I fell asleep. I never even looked to see if she called until the next day.”
    “What did she say about the guy with the broken leg?”
    “Just that he was a dork and she was going to help him. She used to be in a club that helped those people.”
    “The ‘cappers,’ ” Paul said with obvious disdain for the young woman’s choice of words for handicapped individuals.
    “Don’t be a judger,” she said, her eyes now icy. “Just do your job and find her.”
    Grace cut the tension with a question. “What did she say about the guy?”
    “Not much. She went to help him because he dropped his books. I guess some of our diversity training actually took root. I would have just let him struggle. I don’t believe in helping people who you don’t know.”
    Naomi was a jerk, but she’d been the last one to talk to the vanished girl.
    “Marty and Lisa’s mother seem very close,” Paul said.
    Naomi shrugged. “I guess so. I’m sort of creeped out by the two of them.”
    “Creeped out?”
    “Yeah. There were a few times when I was over there in high school that I thought they were a little too close. I told Lisa and she didn’t care. She was just using Marty for his car anyway.”

    Grace checked her messages when she and Paul returned to the car. None from the state crime lab. And thankfully, none from her mother. While the possibility was always out there that her sister’s remains would be discovered sometime, somewhere, Grace also knew that for many family members of the missing and presumed dead, there was never a final answer.
    “Let’s go back to the office,” she said.

C HAPTER 6
    D ismembering a human body was much harder than it appeared. It was messy, took considerable strength, and no matter how tough one thought he or she was, it took a very, very strong stomach to get the job done.
    And yet, when the endeavor was part of the family business, there was no getting around it. It must be done.
    The man looked down at his tool kit—knives, a handsaw, kitchen shears—and the oozing red that flowed like a sluggish river toward a rusted, hair-clogged basement drain.
    He let out a sigh.
    The Saw slasher films, the charming but bloody cable TV show Dexter , and assorted episodes of Criminal Minds had done him wrong. They’d not prepared him for the smell of torn human flesh. They’d done a poor job putting him in the picture to see what it felt like doing the necessary but nasty. He winced slightly as he moved the blade deeper into the widening crimson canyon of the dead woman’s abdomen. The vibration that came from a serrated blade against the impasse of a bone rankled him whenever the steel of the blade met one. Femurs were particularly resilient. He hated femurs because they called for the swinging of an axe.
    Hoisting an axe overhead and driving it into his victim meant breaking a sweat.
    He hated to sweat.
    The young man had read everything he could on the subject, at least subjects that were parallel to what he was undertaking. He’d watched videos of hunters dismembering deer on YouTube. He’d even practiced on the turkey that his mother had served that Thanksgiving. It was a twenty-five-pound tom, fresh, not frozen.
    A very uncooperative turkey at that.
    “Poultry can be tricky. Aim for the joints,” his mother said, pulling all the air in the room through her cigarette. “The leg will come right off.”
    He’d glared at her back then. Never a beauty, any looks she’d had were long gone. She was dour, with lifeless eyes. She had the kind of smoker’s mouth that looked more like a shrunken gash than a smile.
    “Hmm,” she said, as the juices ran in the platter. “Might not be done,” she said, snuffing out her cigarette into raw giblets in the sink. “Looks red, not clear.”
    He ignored her.
    He liked red.
    Everything was red.
     
     
    That evening Grace and Shane Alexander shared a bottle of Riesling and a wedge of creamy