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Overview
Forensic psychologist PJ Gray has never faced this kind of serial killer: The murderer is all of twelve years old. Columbus Wade was a clumsy killer at first, but he soon has a knack for the grisly business, slaughtering teachers with terrible efficiency. He’s had plenty of practice, having mastered murder in the alternate worlds of virtual reality. Forensic psychologist PJ Gray is no slouch with computers herself, and her simulation models—which allow her to piece together crimes from the perspectives of killer and victim alike—are of great help in the pursuit. But Wade, given to mimicking the reactions of others to blend in, keeps slipping away. And Gray must ask the chilling question: Might he even be among the classmates of her own seventh-grade son?
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781453286845 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Open Road Media |
| Publication date: | 10/30/2012 |
| Series: | The PJ Gray Series , #3 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 328 |
| Sales rank: | 694,155 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Shirley Kennett is the author of the PJ Gray series of thrillers, which center on a psychologist and single mother who deploys virtual reality technology to solve homicides for the St. Louis Police Department. The novels in the series include Gray Matter, Fire Cracker, Chameleon, Act of Betrayal, and Time of Death. She is also the author of Burning Rose, a stand-alone environmental mystery. Under the pseudonym Dakota Banks, Kennett wrote the Mortal Path series of supernatural thrillers. She lives in Missouri.
Read an Excerpt
Chameleon
Book Three of the PJ Gray Series
By Shirley Kennett
OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA
Copyright © 1998 Shirley KennettAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4532-8684-5
CHAPTER 1
Columbus wade was on his hands and knees rummaging in the kitchen cabinet, the one with all the glass bowls in it. He was sure he had seen a gallon jar on his scouting mission the day before. There it was, and now the problem was to get it upstairs without Nanny noticing. He extracted the jar as quietly as he could, his small fingers grasping the screw-on lid because his hands couldn't span the entire jar, but it clinked against the lemonade pitcher.
"Columbus, what are you doing in there?" came Nanny's voice from the living room. She had shut off the volume on the TV. How she heard that tiny clink over the talk, talk, talk of the TV was beyond his understanding. But it was as predictable as Pop having two eggs for breakfast.
"Nothing, Nanny," he answered, keeping the hated quivers from his voice.
"Is that a good nothing or a bad nothing?"
"Just nothing," he said.
He eased the gallon jar back into the cabinet in case she didn't go for it. A long moment passed in silence. He knew Nanny was considering whether it was worthwhile getting up, which meant putting aside her lap table with its diet root beer and magazines with fancy cupcakes on the front, pushing down the foot support of her recliner, and probably getting the shoes she had kicked off her swollen feet caught in the foot support. Then she would sit there getting red-faced, unable to get her feet down, and would finally call Columbus to pull out her stuck shoes. In the meantime she would have missed the last round of her quiz show.
The TV talk started up again, and Columbus thought it was certainly good to be five years old. Last year Nanny would have come in to check on him. Now she gave him just that little edge of independence—after all, he would be in school next fall—and he took full advantage of it. He was better at things, too. He had waited until her favorite show was on to make his trip, and his timing had paid off.
Upstairs, he eagerly carried the gallon jar to the hall bathroom to fill it with water. The jar wouldn't fit upright in the shallow sink, so he could only run the water into it partway. He dried off the outside so it wouldn't be slippery—a lesson learned on a previous ill-fated mission when he had been a baby of four—and carried the jug to his room. He had cleared a spot on his dresser for it. He made several trips to the bathroom, bringing a glass of water each time, until the jug was full to the very top.
Columbus walked over to the window. There was a strong glare from the sun shining on the snow outside, but his eyes adjusted as he looked out at the front yard. It had snowed yesterday, halfway up to his knees, and Pop grumbled about shoveling the sidewalk one last time. It was almost the end of March, and apparently it wasn't supposed to snow in Nashville in March, at least not this much. Nanny just shook her head and said "In like a lamb, out like a lion," which Columbus didn't understand at all. But she helped him put on his boots, coat, hat, and gloves, and watched him through the window of the front parlor as he built a snowman. Columbus reveled in that creative act, adding a lump of snow here, chopping off a bulge there. He modeled its face after Nanny's, framed in the steamy warmth. When he came in, she stripped off the wet snow clothes and hustled him into the kitchen for hot chocolate. It wasn't just the bite of the wind that reddened his cheeks. For a time he had held sway over the snow, molding it to his will, knocking it down at his whim, bringing into being and destroying.
The sun had done its work on the yard. The grass was showing in places, and he could see the crocuses along the front walkway, purple spikes pushing up through the white. Water gurgled in the down spouts, washing out all the itsy bitsy spiders, if there were any in March. His snowman had gotten smaller, and it was tilted. Soon it would fall on its carrot nose, which was short and thick like Nanny's.
The sun had power. Columbus wanted power, too.
In the corner of his room under the window there was an elaborate habitat for his pet mouse Robert. Robert had tunnels and wheels and a hiding place shaped like a cave. Columbus lifted the lid of the habitat and looked for the white mouse, which had retreated to its plastic cave as soon as the lid was raised. He removed the shelter, revealing the mouse, with nowhere to hide, huddled in its bedding. Closing his hand over the mouse, Columbus felt the small heat of its body, and the shaking of its fear. A thrill of anticipation tiptoed up his spine.
He didn't know the jar would overflow when he put Robert in, lowering it by its tail. He screwed the lid on tight, and then went to the bathroom for a washcloth to wipe up the spill.
He looked over the railing, down into the living room, to make sure Nanny was still watching TV. She didn't know what he was doing. Probably she wouldn't like it. Maybe she would make him stop. Columbus suspected that he wasn't supposed to play with his pets like that.
It was a good thing Nanny's favorite program was on.
He pulled a stool over to the dresser and sat down to watch as the mouse swam round and round. In a disappointingly short time, the exhausted animal sank below the water. "Good-bye, Robert," Columbus whispered. There was no sadness in him.
At any time before Robert sank, Columbus could have taken the lid off, pulled the mouse out, and put it back in its habitat to lick itself dry. He had done that several times already, using a bowl he found underneath the bathroom sink. That had gotten boring. Always there was the need to take things further, to learn more, to experience more, to see if new sensations would trigger the emotions that should have been there and weren't.
Columbus learned that his mouse couldn't live in water, and before that, that his shiny goldfish couldn't live in air. Most importantly, he learned that he had power over their small lives.
He pulled the wet body from the jar and dried it as well as he could with the washcloth he had taken from the bathroom. He put the dead mouse back in the habitat and covered it with the plastic cave so that it was out of sight. No one tended the mouse except him, so no one would notice. Tomorrow he would "discover" the body, dry and curled inside its shelter. No one—Mom, Pop, or Nanny—would question the death. Mice died all the time. That was, after all, part of the mystery he wanted to understand, and to control.
Even though he felt no grief, he would produce a few tears. It was expected at moments like that, and he was getting better at mimicking the emotional responses of people around him. He had seen a science program about reptiles, and thought of himself as a chameleon that changes color depending upon events or surroundings.
Mom and Pop would console him and offer him a new pet.
He slid his latest video into the slot and settled back to watch. Snack time would be coming up soon. As the cartoon images moved across the screen, he replayed in his mind Robert's last fierce struggle to live.
Where would his curiosity take him next?
At the age of twelve, Columbus Wade still spent a lot of time with his bedroom door closed.
But on this particular Thursday night during his school's spring break, he was out on his bike, pedaling casually toward the school, hoping that he wouldn't encounter a patrol car along the few blocks to his destination. Fortunately, the five inches of snow that had fallen a few days ago had succumbed to plows and milder temperatures. The streets were clear and dry, but remnants of dirty gray snow clung to the curbs like hair fringing the head of a bum. There was a full moon, and its light cast shadows of tree branches onto the street, spread out in front of him, grasping arms that he eluded as he pedaled faster.
Strapped onto the luggage rack of his bike was a small cooler. He had lined the inside of it with thick foam padding salvaged from the school's Dumpster. The night was chilly and there was a strong March wind, but he had worn a jacket. He hated physical discomfort and always avoided it by careful planning.
When he rode into the front parking lot of Deaver Junior High, there wasn't a car in sight. The lot was deserted, as Columbus had anticipated. Just as he was getting off his bike, a car roared down the street, high-schoolers whooping through the open windows. It was an unwelcome intrusion, although he was fairly sure they hadn't seen him in the shadows near the front of the building. The moonlight was bright enough to guide him, but not so bright that he couldn't conceal himself when needed. He pushed his bike behind the bushes near the front entrance. In the rear, soccer goal nets were orange-lit by the building's security lighting, and beyond them he could make out the softball backstops. He walked around to the delivery door, where he had ensured the security light was not working. He knew that the door didn't fit well in its frame, and that the lock was old and ineffective. If he jostled it just right, he could spring the lock and gain entrance to the building.
Once inside, he waited near the door for a couple of minutes, resting the cooler and his backpack on the floor and taking slow, deep breaths through his nose.
Project Brimstone was under way, and the outlook was promising.
He made his way through the darkened halls toward the science lab. EXIT signs glowed with a brilliance not apparent during the day, and there were dim lights at each corner and every twenty feet or so of the hallway.
The hammer and chisel from his backpack took care of the puny padlock on the chemicals locker in the lab. He wasn't worried about leaving his fingerprints; as one of the lab monitors, his prints were all over the locker anyway. The ceiling panel light right over the locker was turned on, so he had enough illumination to work. He reached for the heavy glass jar of acid, with its label that said H2S04 and had a black skull-and-crossbones on it. It was toward the back of the locker, since it was used only for demonstrations by the science teacher, and not by the students. The sulfuric acid would provide an added dimension to his experimentation with cockroaches. He had a science paper due in a week, and he had chosen as his subject the ability of the hardy insects to survive environmental stresses. Columbus didn't believe in passive learning. He conducted his own research wherever possible, even if most of it had to be kept to himself.
He pressed the stem of his Indiglo watch and noted that it was 11:15 P.M. Mom and Pop, or the Cow and the Turd as he now called them, wouldn't be home from their weekly bridge game for another two hours. He had plenty of time.
He had brought duct tape in his backpack to wrap tightly around the ground glass stopper so it wouldn't work loose in the padded cooler on the way home. He set the jar on a counter next to the hammer and chisel, and dug into his backpack for the tape.
"What are you doing, Columbus?"
The voice lashed at him from the darkened doorway of the lab. He straightened up abruptly, backpack forgotten. As he twisted to see who had caught him, his elbow sent the jar of acid flying. It landed with a crash that echoed in the hallways.
A man stepped forward, into the light where Columbus could recognize him. It was Ed Mitchell, one of the teachers at the school. Thoughts raced through Columbus's mind, colliding with each other and leaving him dumbfounded.
"I'm surprised, Columbus. You know chemicals don't leave this room. You should have talked this over with Mrs. Garfield, and maybe you could have done whatever it is you're trying to do under her supervision."
Mitchell was calm but very stern. Columbus had never heard him use such a tone of voice. It snapped Columbus back into cunning mode, and he began to get angry. After all, he was certain that Mrs. Garfield would not have approved of the use he intended to make of the acid.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Mitchell," Columbus said. It was hard to keep his voice sounding humble, because he was seething as he thought of the trouble the man would make for him. Project Brimstone was rapidly heading into the toilet, and he'd have to do his science paper on acorns or something.
"Now we've got quite a mess to clean up," Mitchell said as he approached the lab counter. "Help me get out the kitty litter."
Mitchell bent and reached for the cabinet door near Columbus's legs. Inside was a tub of kitty litter, the first line of defense against spills in the lab, something to keep the problem from spreading until it could be dealt with properly.
Somehow the hammer jumped from the counter into Columbus's right hand, and he swung it at the back of Mitchell's head as the man was bent over. Mitchell didn't go down immediately, as Columbus had hoped. Instead, he grunted and fell heavily to his knees, reaching out for Columbus's legs. Columbus almost panicked and dropped the hammer. But he held on, and gave the man a satisfying whump above the ear. Then it was just a matter of swinging again and again, until his shoulders hurt.
CHAPTER 2Penelope Jennifer Gray mentally crossed her fingers and struck the last match. It flared, and she closed the few inches between it and the corner of newspaper she was trying to light. The wind immediately snuffed the tentative flame out. PJ closed her eyes tightly against both the wind and her misfortune, squeezing tears of exasperation from the corners.
It was the last night of PJ's vacation with her son Thomas. They were staying at a rustic cabin in Big Springs State Park in southern Missouri. Part of the National Scenic Riverways, Big Springs certainly lived up to its name: the park contained a stream that gushed millions of gallons of water a day from a modest-looking cleft at the base of a hill.
PJ and Thomas had gone to the site of the park's namesake soon after their arrival. It was only March, so the flow hadn't reached its late-spring peak yet, but it was still impressive. Where the water rushed from the hillside, its motion was enough to keep ice from forming. Water vapor rose into the chilly air and condensed on their hair and eyelashes. Ferns on the shaded hillside above the spring were lush and green, even that early in the year. The air was heavy with moisture, so heavy that droplets condensed on anything or anyone that held still more than a moment. Moss-covered rocks were washed constantly with the turbulent water of the spring, trapping bubbles of air in the green mats as they were lashed back and forth. Farther downstream, a thin layer of ice remained on the surface while the water moved rapidly underneath.
PJ had been energized by the place and could have stayed all day listening to the water tumbling over the rocks. Thomas had reacted very differently. He couldn't seem to stay near the spring, and could offer no explanation beyond not liking the sound, which he described as a roaring that drowned out his thoughts. He stayed as far away from the spring as he could get, preferring to hike the park's wooded hills instead. So they rose early, dressed warmly, and walked on the trails while the ground was still frozen.
The forest was beginning to awaken from winter. Leaf buds were swollen and small green plants nudged aside last fall's leaf drop as they pushed their way up to the sunshine. Squirrels dug and chattered, chickadees called to each other, and woodpeckers rapped out their staccato searches for lunch under the bark of trees. The sky was a deep, brilliant blue, and the sun warmed their shoulders through the leafless tree branches.
In the afternoon, when the forty-degree warmth thawed the frozen ground and the trails became slippery and unpleasant, they either went back to their cabin to read and relax, or explored the nearby town of Van Buren, where they browsed in small stores with dusty postcard racks and salt and pepper shakers shaped like corn on the cob or a gold prospector and his mule. In the evenings, they ate whole fried catfish in a restaurant overlooking the stream.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Chameleon by Shirley Kennett. Copyright © 1998 Shirley Kennett. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
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