WHEN THE MUSIC DIES (MUSIC CITY MURDERS Book 1)
Read WHEN THE MUSIC DIES (MUSIC CITY MURDERS Book 1) Online
Authors: KEN VANDERPOOL
Copyright © 2012 Ken Vanderpool
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced or transmitted in whole or in part, through any means electronic or mechanical including photo copying or electronic transmission without prior written permission from the author, except short excerpts considered normal for review.
This story is a work of fiction. All the names, characters, places, organizations and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, establishments, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
ISBN 978-1-937937-00-3 (print)
Twin Oaks Press
Cover and Interior design
By Sandra Vanderpool
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For my brother, Edward Neal Vanderpool (1948-1992), and for all the brave officers of the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department, past and present, who have traded their days and nights to protect us and provide us with one of the safest of America’s most beautiful cities.
You all have our unceasing respect and appreciation for a job well done.
W
HEN THE
M
USIC
D
IES
Life is our gift from The Holy One;
His design for us all is the same.
After creation, the challenge is ours,
to give back a life lived in His name.
The love we show for our fellow man
writes the background music for our lives.
So, love your neighbor as yourself,
and live—so the music never dies.
Ken VanderpoolPrologue
Clarksville, Tennessee
June 4, 1994
Saturday Late
He approached Ryan Wilson from behind. Ryan and his fellow neophyte paratrooper Dave Coleman sat on limestone boulders, pulling their clothes on over bodies still damp from the midnight swim they’d shared with their dates. The splash of the spring-fed waterfall on the surface of the lake helped to shroud the intruder’s advance. In one skillful motion, his arm encircled Ryan’s head and covered his mouth so he couldn’t speak. He jerked Ryan’s head up tight against his own and through clenched teeth, whispered his tequila breath. “Was she worth it, you cheatin’ son of a bitch?”
Before he’d completed his question, he opened Ryan’s throat with the seven-inch KA-BAR blade. He restrained him until Ryan’s body grew limp, and then lowered him to the dirt. The killer stepped behind the rocks and crept toward Dave, who was seated no more than twenty feet away, tying his running shoes.
Dave stood, fastened his jeans and was buttoning his plaid shirt when he turned to shout at Ryan over the roar of the falls. As his eyes were deciphering the shocking image before him, the crouched killer rose up. The tempered steel of his guilty blade found the small depression below the young soldier’s Adam’s apple, and he thrust it until the honed tip struck the vertebrae at the back of Dave’s neck.
The killer’s hand braced the hilt of the knife. As he skillfully fended off Dave’s waning attempt at self-defense, he watched the panicked soldier’s mouth flexing, searching for air.
He clutched a fistful of Dave’s shirt and pulled him closer. Staring into his victim’s watering eyes, he tilted his head and slowly twisted the knife. Blood leached from both sides of the blade.
“There’s a price to pay for adultery, you bastard, and you’re paying it.”
Dave fought to steal another breath, but there was none. Life left him there.
The killer jerked the knife from the soldier’s throat and shoved him. Dave’s body collapsed across the large rock where he’d been sitting. The killer kneeled and wiped each side of the black carbon steel blade across the leg of the dead man’s jeans. He glanced in the direction of the girls, and moved behind a large tree near the edge of the woods to wait.
It was now twenty-eight hours since he’d stepped into the stale darkness of the small apartment and found her note on their kitchen counter—not the loving welcome he’d anticipated for more than a year. Her guarded words didn’t explain. His wife had left that to the neighbors.
“I saw them leave together late that night,” the E-4’s wife from next door had told him. “I was up watching a movie. They’d left together before, but they were loading bags in his car this time.
“I remember when I first saw him. He wore a single chevron—only an E-2. I wondered who he was. I couldn’t figure why, with you on deployment, she was allowing a man inside her house, unless ...” she stopped, and then looked away.
As the killer concealed himself at the base of the tree, thoughts of his wife’s infidelity fed his anger. He had no idea where she and her adulterer had fled, but he needed to kill them ... now.
I gave my life to this country—and to my wife. But, the ungrateful bitch couldn’t keep her pants on until I got home. While I’m deployed, honoring my commitment, she’s enjoying herself and breakin’ her damn vows.
As Connie Neal and Heather Lawson finished dressing in the woods, he could hear their high-pitched laughter over the roar of the falls. It reminded him how all this had begun earlier at the saloon.
The irritating date-night banter from the two couples in the booth next to him was overpowering the heartrending country and western music he’d selected at the jukebox. His plan for musical solace wasn’t working. These people didn’t get it. There was nothing left that called for laughter. Their loud-mouthed babble had confirmed their plans. He was familiar with the old quarry.
“You’d better be dressed,” Heather shouted, as the girls moved along the bank toward the clearing and the campfire. “We don’t want to see those shriveled up packages again.” The girls laughed. The killer worked his way through the woods so he could get behind them. The girls stepped into the clearing.
“Oh, my God!” Connie screamed.
A muscled arm tightened beneath Heather’s chin and pulled her backward. She stumbled, struggling to regain her balance and her breath.
Connie couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
Heather’s face reddened as she pulled at the man’s arm and screamed, “Help! Help me!”
Connie looked for a weapon, anything to use against the attacker. She grabbed a limb, and swung it at the man’s head. With Heather’s neck wrapped in his left arm, he turned and the limb missed his head, striking his right shoulder. Connie lost her grip on the limb and almost fell.
Searching for another weapon, Connie failed to see his fist coming at her head. She dropped motionless to the dirt.
Connie awakened, unsure of how long she’d been unconscious. Her clothes were in shreds and the full weight of his body was on top of her.
“No! Please. No!” she screamed.
He ignored her pleas, slapped her and continued his sexual assault, shouting, “Whore. You unfaithful whore.”
Still dazed from the blow to her head, Connie tried without success to push him off. Thrashing in all directions, she looked to her left for maybe a rock to.... She stared into Heather’s bloody face, her throat as wide open as her eyes, looking back from the plum colored dirt where she suffered, and lost her fight. Connie was stunned. Her fear overwhelmed her. But, her increased struggle only served to irritate her attacker more.
“You adulteratin’ whore.” He hit her again. “I go off to fight for this country; you ignore your vows and start screwing some damn ranker behind my back.”
“What are you talking about? Who
are
you?” Connie screamed.
“I’m your husband, damn it. And you won’t be fornicatin’ no more. You hear me? No more.”
“I’m not your wife!” Connie screamed through her last tears.