Her Last Scream by J. A. Kerley Read Free Book Online

got something,” I said, walking up.
    “The Colorado cops ID’d their Jane Doe,” Sal said. “Name’s Lainie Devon Krebbs. They found out early this morning, got the ID from an arrest seven years back – the lady was caught trying to sneak a few joints into a Jimmy Buffet concert.”
    “Any ties to the Mobile area?”
    Sal flicked the page with a scarlet fingernail. “She lived her whole life here.”
    If the kick I’d gotten from the discovery of a body paralleling our crime was a three on a scale of one to ten, the identification rang up a six.
    I said, “Was she –”
    “Married?” Sal answered, always a step ahead. “Why yes, Carson. Her hubby is one Lawrence Krebbs of west Mobile. And before you ask, the missus filed charges against the mister. One count of abuse filed eight months back, later dropped. Three police calls to the residence, domestic beefs, the lady throwing things, the neighbors calling the cops at two a.m. when they saw Mrs Krebbs run out of the house, get tackled and pulled back into the house by her hair. Krebbs went to jail for assault, made bail in an hour, beat the charge on condition of anger-management classes.”
    “Probably promised to go and sin no more,” Harry snorted. “The abuse continued, of course.”
    “Three months back the lady got a restraining order on Krebbs, saying he was threatening her life. Krebbs violated by banging on the door at midnight, screaming. The wife said he had a knife, but it was never located.”
    “He go to jail?”
    “He got a warning. The jail was probably full that night. It happened again and he did a week in the slammer. Took mandated anger-control classes. You can read between the lines as well as me, Carson: he abuses her, she leaves, finds she can’t make it on her own, comes back when he promises to be a good boy …”
    “And it all starts anew. Anything else?”
    “Yeah, a few similar charges, but spread out over years. Filed by Mrs Krebbses, but all with different first names.”
    “A serial matrimonialist,” Harry snorted. “They always love the ladies, don’t they?”
    “Sometimes to death,” Sal added.
     
     
    Lawrence Krebbs lived in a small house, the lawn so manicured it looked like baize on a billiard table. The hedges were geometric forms, not a sprig out of place. The crepe myrtles were tamed to resemble outsize bonsai. I rang the doorbell, two muted bell-sounds from within.
    A curtain shifted in the window to my right, the fabric diaphanous enough to display a prominent forehead. The face disappeared.
    “Someone’s home,” I said.
    Harry knocked again, harder. Thirty seconds passed and the door opened to reveal a powerful-looking man in his mid forties dressed in a red tee and multi-pocketed hiker shorts. He was slender at the waist, big in the shoulders, bespectacled, the former expanse of pink head flesh now hidden under brown. The guy had needed to slap on a hairpiece to answer the door, which said something about his ego. The toupee was decent. There are no good ones.
    Harry held up the badge. “You’re Lawrence Krebbs?”
    The gray eyes studied us. “That’s the name.” He made no effort to open the door further.
    “It’s hot out here, Mr Krebbs,” Harry said. “How about we come inside so we don’t let all your fine air conditioning out into the street?”
    The man looked at our feet. “Take off your shoes. I don’t want shit tracked on my floor.”
    “You’re wearing shoes,” I noted.
    “They don’t have shit on them.”
    I slipped off my suede desert boots, Harry toed off his burgundy loafers, and we stepped on to a white carpet. The interior showed all the personality of a clam, jammed with furniture sold as “American Tradition” or “The Heritage Collection”, copywriter’s gloss for style-deficient crap with fake carving and dark stain masking the green grain of poplar. The AC was bottomed out and the place reeked of pine air freshener, like Krebbs was trying to simulate a