The Man Burned by Winter by Pete Zacharias (Rooker Lindström Thriller Book 1) EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available For Free Download
- Author: Pete Zacharias
- Genre: Small Town & Rural Fiction, Serial Killer Thrillers
- Publish Date: 1 June 2022
- Size: 2 MB
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Status: Avail for Download
- Price: Free
SNOWFALL
She would be the third one, another piece waiting to be finished. He imagined
the brushstrokes, the wand flourishes, and that gentle wisp sound on the
cotton fabric. With his eyes closed, he could see the eighteen-by-thirty-six
canvas. They were always done in neutrals: whites, grays, and blacks, like a
perfect photograph.
The only splash of color, a signature in the bottom right-hand corner,
like a velvet bead of water—or a drop of blood trickling down.
The flurries fell against her skin. Her face was bare, chalky and pale
aside from the mascara tears frozen like charcoal at her cheeks. She was
lovely, a perfectly blossomed rose.
Eyes like blue glass stared up at the
starless night sky. Cotton speckles drifted to the banks of snow below. Their
mist lit the trees, leafless and withering through a light fog. Through their
naked branches, he made out the semi’s high beams: two watchful eyes,
milky white and intrusive. From a quarter mile away on the expressway, the
semi looked like a Hot Wheels car. With a whistle of wind, the 18-wheeler’s
squeal vanished around a bend, and it was gone.
He was left alone again with her.
He peered up at the powder that glazed the alder and oak branches;
every now and then a faint crackle would signal one’s crash to the ground.
The trees survived the brutal winter by going dormant, everything within
slowing down.
She lay with her back up against the tree, her breasts as porcelain as the
snow surrounding her. She wasn’t dormant. She was dead. He’d made the
perfect snow angel. A flake danced from the sky and fell gently on her cheek;
he caressed it with the knuckle of his gloved hand until it was gone. Broken
twigs and dead earth had tangled and matted in clumps on her ash-blonde
hair. Despite the size of the hole in her chest, the bleeding had finally
stopped. The sea of white had begun to slither over her bare legs; by the time
she was found, they’d be swallowed whole.
She was the third body the police would find, and they’d be further
from catching him than when they’d found the first. There would be traces of
lubricant from the prophylactic in her mouth, but they wouldn’t match it to
that found on any of the previous victims. They would look for foreign hair,
blood, fingerprints, semen—but they’d find nothing.
They were trying to
solve an intricate puzzle without so much as a single piece. He’d leave them
something, but they wouldn’t know what it was. He had folded the photo in
quarters, zipped it inside a plastic bag, and stuffed it into her mouth. It was
only a copy. He’d send them the real one soon enough.
While she lay there, now looking up at him, he brushed the hair from
the front of her shoulder to her back. He left her tears frozen like icicles on
her fair skin.
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