Cleansed by Death Read online

  Table of Contents

  Praise for “Cleansed by Death”

  Title page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Discussion Questions

  Resources

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  More fiction from HopeSprings Books

  Praise for CLEANSED BY DEATH

  “This skillfully crafted suspense story of a police chief tracking a serial killer will have you on the edge of your seat. Readers will root for Josie as she struggles to do the right thing, not only in her relationships, but as she searches for answers about God. Catherine Finger has crafted a feisty heroine in Chief Josie Oliver as well as a cast of fascinating support characters. Looking forward to Catherine's next book in the series.” --Patricia Bradley, award winning author of Shadows of the Past

  “Move over Kinsey Malone, Josie is in the house! This police chief is not only a local leader, but respected throughout her community of coworkers, friends and good neighbors. She manages to overcome personal challenges while still putting the bad guy behind bars and reconciling her relationship with 'the magnificent being.'” --Elizabeth Martin Stearns, Waukegan Public Library

  “As a pastor, I rarely see characters in books or on screen who wrestle with God in a way that feels like what I see every day. Cleansed by Death is the rare exception, a world where spirituality is real but not easy, where the tragedies and triumphs of life work together to form a cohesive whole. I recommend it to anyone who has wrestled with God... and loves a good mystery!” --Gary Ricci, Pastor of New Hope Christian Community Church in Round Lake Heights, IL

  “This Glock-toting, heel-wearing, justice-driven heroine in Cleansed by Death had me from the start. Unrelenting action and witty dialogue kept me loving this ride-along until the very last page. A must-read.” --Joseph Sugarman, Chairman of Blublocker Sunglass Corporation

  Copyright © 2016 Catherine Finger

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  All Scripture quoted is from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

  Cover design by Bookfly Design LLC.

  Interior art by Chalfont House or in the public domain.

  Published in the United States of America by HopeSprings Books, an imprint of Chalfont House Publishing.

  http://www.HopeSpringsBooks.com

  http://www.ChalfontHouse.com

  Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Paperback ISBN 9781938708725

  To the One Most High – my Magnificent Being.

  Despite the fact that Christmas was fast approaching, traffic was smooth sailing on I-94 northbound. But what thoughts crept sluggishly through the murky caverns of my husband’s mind? His large hands kept a death-grip on the wheel, like an Airborne corpsman gripping a jump seat handle a second before free fall begins. We surged ahead over snowy Wisconsin roads, his fingers taut.

  “Del, please slow down. It’s snowing pretty hard out there.” My stomach clenched and my temples tightened.

  He rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Oh, so now you’re telling me how to drive too? I don’t think so.”

  He punched the accelerator, rocketing the car to well over eighty on the slippery highway. Would we make it intact to the exit up ahead? Clenching my teeth, I sank into silent compliance once again. I closed my eyes. The misery between us pressed in on me. We’d just made it to the turnoff when my cell phone buzzed.

  “Oliver.” I fidgeted with the seat warmer as I answered, my voice flat.

  “Josie?”

  “Yeah. Hey, Nick.” The day we met, I’d been assigned to be his on-the-job training-wheels, his Field Training Officer, when all I had on him were a few months, and my killer political instincts. Lucky me. We were scrungy beat cops together in Chicago. We were young, foolish, and thought we knew it all. Not much had changed, other than me staying close to home and him taking one undercover assignment after another until he morphed into a Fed. I smiled, looking back but, in the next moment, I stiffened as my body slammed into the door panel. Del was taking this corner dangerously fast. I shut my eyes again and concentrated on Nick’s voice as the car jetted forward. “What’s up?”

  “We got another vic. And they’re getting closer to home. This is not cool.” His silky voice hardened as he spoke.

  “What do you mean? I thought you said the last murder happened in Spokane. That’s not exactly next door. Was this one as bad?”

  “Worse. And I’m talking about the current tragedy, not the last one. This one happened last night, early this morning technically, in Madison. Popped up on ViCAP right away. You on the road right now?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You with the man?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “It matters to me, Josie. You matter to me. He’s not driving, is he?”

  “Yup.”

  “He knows you’re talking to me.”

  It wasn’t really a question. “Yup.”

  Nick Vitallero, at it again. My marriage should be off-limits. I loved the man beside me—wounds and all. Even if no one else did. Even if doing so made me almost as sick as he was. Am I sick enough to stay? I hope not. “Give me some info. How did the killer get from Spokane to Wisconsin?”

  “Who knows? We haven’t exactly cracked his travel schedule, but everything else is right in line. He grabbed a woman—a church mentor. She’d been working with a six-year-old girl through a formal mentorship program for the past year. Successful woman. High profile attorney. Well-liked, by all accounts. Everything to live for. And everything about the kill says it’s our guy.”

  “Please tell me they found traces of drugs. Any kind of tranq in her system?”

  “Not a one. She was most likely awake through the worst of it. He’s escalating, getting more twisted. We’re on high alert, and we want you in our inner circle. We need your hunting skills. In fact, the Governor of Wisconsin has also requested your participation. Let me sketch it out for you.”

  I’d given up on the Feds forever ago—but that didn’t stop them from asking for my help occasionally. Every now and then I’d get an offer I couldn’t refuse.

  Del glared at me and then looked back at the road, his hands clenched. Anger glimmered in his eyes. Why had I given up that once-in-a-lifetime career offer with the Fed
s, tracking notorious criminals? Now Nick had all the glory—and all I had to show for it was Del. Nick revealed the brutality of another innocent woman’s death at the hands of this twisted serial killer. I sucked in fresh air as he described the horror of the woman’s last minutes alive.

  I waited until he finished with the grim details, and then I exhaled hard and fast. Surely Del could sense my discomfort. Was he going to start hammering me again over why I’d stayed in the bush leagues by marrying a beat cop instead of marrying Nick all those years ago? I couldn’t tell what he was thinking any more. When had I stopped trying?

  Del smiled darkly but waited to act out until I ended the call and dropped the phone into the console compartment. “That your big-shot boyfriend again?”

  Del’s menacing tone sent a wave of nausea through me.

  “He’s not my boyfriend. There’s been another murder. It ain’t pretty.” I closed my eyes, gently shaking my head.

  We crested a little hill and hit a patch of ice. Del’s jaw went rigid as he battled the wheel. I gripped his thigh, but he grunted and shrugged me off.

  I had chosen him—the out-of-control man in my car—over the possibilities of a life with Nick. Why?

  The car slid and the traction control system made its own adjustments, trying to keep the car safely moving forward. All the average driver had to do, in theory, was reduce speed and allow the automated steering system to take over. Del had never been average. When the car moved of its own accord, he floored the gas instead of the brake. The jerky acceleration and his wrestling match with the steering wheel sent us off the road, sliding down a steep incline that must have been at least a hundred feet long.

  Nick’s handsome face appeared, abruptly pulled down like a shade and then ripped away by a fiery-faced Del, screaming beside me as we slithered down the hill. My heart pounded and heat swept through me, melting my lips together, shoving words back down my throat before they reached my tongue. I kept my mouth shut. All he had to do was let up on the gas, ease up on the steering wheel, and let the computers adjust the skid. Instead, he kept accelerating and forcing the wheel in the opposite direction. If we died, I would miss my friends, my job, my horse. But most of all, I would miss Samantha, the foster child I desperately wanted to adopt.

  “Del, ease up on the gas. Don’t fight the wheel for just a second. Relax.” I spoke to him in quiet tones to soothe him out of his black mood as he spun the wheel back and forth. We continued to slide down the embankment.

  “Shut up, Jo! We’re locked in a skid! I’m not your pretty-boy FBI agent; I know how to drive! There’s nothing else I can do!”

  I shrank against the car door, shoulders hunched, head down. There’s plenty he can do. Take control, Oliver! You’re a police chief! No, I should just walk away. Why couldn’t Del hold me, care for me? I stared at my knees, as if in a trace. If I was small and quiet enough, maybe he would calm down.

  God, are You out there? Do You even exist? Why aren’t You helping me? Some prayer that was, selfish and hollow. I did not want to die like this. But did I want to be saved, just to go through this again? So I sat there, holding onto the passenger door armrest with my right hand, bracing the other on the dash, shaking. I took a deep breath and steeled myself for what might come next.

  I let out a sigh when we finally reached the bottom of the hill with a jolt—sideways, but intact. We ended up in a gully between a farm road and a large field, heading into a little stand of ancient pine and oak trees. I looked over at Del. His stony, impassive stare was followed, quick as lightning, by a hideous mask of anger. I was in deep, deep trouble.

  He punched the accelerator again, letting up on the wheel long enough for the thing to self-correct, until we were parallel to the highway far above, moving along the dirt path, hitting pothole after pothole. He sped up when the trail faded into open fields and rural countryside. An old farmhouse rose above a ridge a few minutes beyond the end of the path. We might’ve been okay if he would have just kept driving straight.

  I stared into the distance. A glimpse of Nick, smiling. Then the sweet smell of Samantha’s hair as she rested next to me during a longer-than-usual Sunday sermon. I hadn’t been to church since I was a small child, until Samantha asked me to take her as often as I could. She had more faith than I. Which wasn’t hard since I was pretty much an agnostic. An iron fist twirled through my stomach. Shoulda, woulda, coulda. Why hadn’t I pushed past Del’s resistance and adopted Samantha out of the foster care system? I wanted a child. A child of my heart.

  Del accelerated even more, pushing to over seventy miles per hour on the rocky, frozen earth. Just as we came across pavement to end our off-road adventure, he snarled at me and turned the wheel sharply to the right, heading the nose of the car toward a thick patch of mature trees on my side. This couldn’t be happening. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t, could he?

  He steered the car straight toward the trees, zeroing in on a large, sturdy trunk, standing maybe thirty feet high, thicker than a tractor tire. I tried to relax into it, bracing for impact. The violent jolt of the fender glancing off the massive tree barely slowed us down, tearing into my passenger door. Airbags exploded and metal sheets folded like foil, but the steel frame protected me like a mama bird folded around her brood.

  “My nose! I think it’s broken!”

  I recoiled from Del’s shrill screams. His side of the car hadn’t been touched, though his airbag had deployed. He was shaking theatrically, near tears. He got out of the vehicle, limping. He never once looked back at me, never tried to help me get out of the wreckage, never asked if I was okay.

  The car door on my side was shredded. The handle wouldn’t budge. I threw my shoulder into the door and a shard cut into my skin. Blood seeped through the outer layers of my clothing and dripped onto the car seat. Fine, white powder from the airbags settled, clotting blood on the door’s upholstery.

  I unbuckled my seat belt and pushed my seat backward to free my legs from under the wrecked dash. My stomach lurched at the acrid stench dominating the car’s interior. Del barked orders into his cell phone as I hoisted myself over the console toward the open driver’s door. Once he ended the call, our eyes locked, and for a split second he gave a triumphant smile.

  I had to get out of my marriage—the sooner the better—if I wanted to get out alive.

  I grabbed the steering wheel for leverage and the car lurched to the right, throwing me down onto Del’s heated seat. I sat back, panting. Thin streams of blood dripped onto the warm leather from my jacket sleeve. Pain knifed through me with each heartbeat. Fuzzy stars ebbed and flowed in front of my eyes. I pressed my right hand into the crimsoned leather seat and grabbed the steering wheel with my left hand to steady myself. A thin film of talcum powder from the depleted airbags covered the palm of my hand.

  I blinked my eyes several times to stop the dash from rushing toward me and receding back like a sea at low tide. The radio crackled on with the low-slung voice of some female crooner.

  I turned off the radio, then opened the console and jammed my hand inside, searching for my cell phone. My fingers bumped into a checkbook, a brush, and a pack of gum before grasping the plastic cover. I pulled the phone out and slid it into my coat pocket. I took in another deep breath, closed my eyes, and edged myself with glacial slowness over the warm seat to the door. My left foot hit the ground, and I turned my hips to wrench my right leg out of the car. I pushed myself up. Vertigo rocked me from side-to-side as I staggered onto the road.

  Del’s face was bathed in blue light when the first squad car responded to the accident.

  With shaking hands, I tapped the first picture in my faves contact list and waited for Nick to answer. Icy wind battered my matted hair. Del’s anger steamed from both eyes. We locked eyes, and a rogue tear trickled down my face. I stabbed at it with my bloody right hand. Nick picked up, and I turned away from my husband.

  “Another Josie call. Miss me?”

  The muscles at the base of my neck relaxed.
I closed my eyes and breathed lightly into the phone.

  “Josie? Whatever it is—I got you.”

  “Come. Nick, I need you to come get me. Now.”

  “You still in Wisconsin?”

  “Yeah. At the end of the road with Del. He just plowed the car into a tree. On my side of the car. By accident... maybe... maybe not. Just come. Please.”

  “Cops there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll find you. Then I’ll find Del.”

  Nick waited for me at the emergency room registration desk, his jaw tight. “So, it’s true?”

  I nodded.

  “Cops say you didn’t file a report. Didn’t give a statement.”

  I shrugged. Welcoming waves of hospital-strength painkillers lapped up my anxiety. Things struck me as almost funny. The neat stitches sewn into my shoulder resembled a nice butter braid, an image that made me hungry. But I smiled and suffered in silence.

  “Let’s get out of here so you can rest, and we’ll talk about this later.” Nick’s voice was sweet like warm apple cider.

  I was dying for some quality chocolate. But I didn’t mention it. Instead, I leaned into Nick, struggling to stay awake as I stumbled through the parking lot. He opened his car door and gently lifted me in. His earthy scent wafted above me as he leaned over to buckle me up. I inhaled deeply and smiled before drifting off to sleep. Safe.

  The killer, wiry and strong, appeared and disappeared like lights flickering in a storm. He had started out as a harmless presence in my dream. Sometimes a solid form, sometimes a whisper of a man—always floating above and circling what looked like playgrounds.

  He orbited far away from the women and children chattering happily below him. But then his flight would grow urgent, morphing into a tangible cloud of malevolence. His mouth spewed filth as he descended, distorting his features. He pulled himself closer to the unsuspecting children and women with each spiral. Close enough to touch them.