Artist Read Free Page B

brackish water and moldy swamp grass. Mosquitos buzzed in the low bushes along the trail. If a runner stopped long enough to catch a breath, the buzz provided a background symphony to the whisper of wind falling from the trees or the occasional buzz of an outboard motor on the lake. It was a weekday and the place was empty, silent but for a single soul pounding her way through the weaving track.
    Cassie Reynold was working on her third mile, pushing past the physical wall, the heavy air and the occasional ankle snapping trap nature threw in her way. A rubber band pinned back her brown hair, now dark with sweat. She was wearing a gym suit that covered a body taught with muscle but unmistakably female, hardened by two years of constant training. The shirt was soaked through with sweat in the back, a dark line that made a T across her shoulders and trailed down the center, a signpost of exertion. In the Louisiana air, the moisture had nowhere to go. Cassie jogged another hundred yards, her pace quickening as she went, pushing the last half mile. It was an exorcism, the last three years of heartache and anguish leaking from her pores, a cleansing exhaustion. By the time she passed the big oak a hundred yards from the trail’s end, she was running flat out, pushing harder, reaching for something. Vindication? The end of guilt? Something.  She felt a burst of cooler air under the big tree, sucking in air in gulps, sprinting for the parking lot. The hard ground turned to soft grass over the last fifty yards. Cassie pulled up at the edge of the hard parking lot, bent at the knees, and began her cool down walk around the lot.
    The run was purgatory and therapy, preparation and pain relief, an escape from her past, yet the only way to move forward. A little more than two years ago, she was looking forward to a career, marriage, family. Today, with even the birds silent in the muggy air, she had nothing to look forward to but wo rk. And death. Maybe hers. More likely someone else’s, or multiple someone else’s. She didn’t know and cared even less. Killing was the kind of work she was born to do. She knew that now. On a hot night in Virginia, with cold calculating hatred running through her veins, she had ended the only escape from what she was. In the ensuing two years, she embraced the running, the training, honing her physical skills mercilessly in the hilly terrain of the Southwest under the tutelage of the best, sometimes she thought the worst, the U.S. government had to offer. There were men with no more feeling than a beast, women with no more motherly instinct than a reptile. Now she was one of them.
    Another walking lap around the parking lot brought her to her car. She sat in the driver’s seat, kic ked off the running shoes, wiping her face with a towel. The sound of tires on concrete came to her. Most days she could run alone. Occasionally another runner would come to this spot or just someone looking for a walk through the woods. She closed the door, fired up the engine. Waiting for the air conditioning to catch up, she watched a black Lincoln Continental swing into the lot, heading directly for her. The car stopped and a woman got out.
    Dr. Jennifer Wesling stepped directly over to Cassie’s car, signaling for her to roll down the window. She did and the wave of hot moist air fought the cold air from the vents. Cassie shivered.
    “Go home and get changed,” Wesling said. “Meet me at the office in two hours. It’s time to go to work.”
    With that, she turned, got back in her car, and drove off. Cassie put the Mustang in gear and followed.
     
     
     
    The victim was face down on a four-post bed, arms and legs secu red with rope. Another rope twisted around her neck, the two frayed ends arranged neatly in a line down her back. There were two people in the room when Dupond walked in, a young patrolman looking white faced and shaken, and an older man on his hands and knees, peering intently at the wrist of the