Too Close to Home (The Forensic Files) Read online

  Too Close To Home

  By: Tressa Messenger

  Too Close To Home

  Copyright © 2014 by Tressa Messenger. All rights reserved.

  First Print Edition: July 2014

  Limitless Publishing, LLC

  Kailua, HI 96734

  www.limitlesspublishing.com

  Formatting: Limitless Publishing

  ISBN-13: 978-1500235772

  ISBN-10: 1500235776

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

  Dedication

  For Pamlico

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  “All right, girls, good job today. We need to work on the timing a little more for the halftime cheer. We only have two days left to get it just right, but other than that, I think we are all set for the game on Friday night,” Missy said to the group of girls sitting on the hardwood floor staring up at her.

  “Awesome! We are so going to rock at the game,” Kristen said, jumping to her feet and shaking her pom-poms, making the shiny black and gold color glimmer in the bright gym light. Her long, dark brown hair pulled up in a tight pony tail bounced with the movement.

  “I hope so. The first game of the season always makes me nervous,” Brittany said.

  “Me, too, no matter how many years I’ve cheered,” Missy added. “This is my year though, and I want it to be memorable.”

  “Who knows, Missy? We might even make it into the North Carolina cheerleading competition this year.”

  Missy’s sultry blue eyes lit up at the thought. “That would be kick-ass for sure!”

  “I can’t wait for Frankie to see me in my cheerleading outfit. He is going to freak over my short skirt,” said a freshman, whose name escaped Missy at the moment.

  Missy rolled her eyes at the girl. It seemed so silly now, but she remembered feeling the same way when she first got to high school and joined the squad as a freshman. For decades it had been a tradition for the cheerleaders at Pamlico County High School to mercilessly haze the freshmen cheerleaders as a way for them to prove not only their worth, but also their loyalty to the squad. Missy had been determined to make it no matter what, and even though every year some girls didn’t last, she did. The prospect of being a part of the “in-crowd” and cheering on the most popular guys in school was like a fantasy to her. Three years later, as a senior, not only had she become the captain of their cheerleading squad, but she was also dating the hottest guy in the whole school, who just happened to be the quarterback of the football team. It had been hard work and a little heartbreaking along the way, but it had all been worth it to have her status escalate to the “it” girl.

  “Hey Missy, we’re all meeting up at the Crooked Hook. You wanna come?” Kristen asked, her big brown eyes twinkling with excitement, breaking Missy’s daydream.

  “Tempting, but no. I think I’m going to work on the choreography for the new cheer for a few more minutes so we don’t look like a bunch of dumbasses out there on Friday night,” she said. “Then I’m gonna hit the shower, cause I’m supposed to meet up with Rob later.”

  “It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it,” Kristen said, smacking Missy on the butt so loud the sound rippled through the spacious old gym.

  “Yeah, it is.” She laughed.

  “I guess it’s ok. You should spend more time with that hunky boyfriend of yours. He may start to wonder where you’re at, and I’m sure you wouldn’t want that.”

  Missy rolled her eyes at Kristen.

  “Maybe ya’ll can stop by later anyway,” Brittany said, sounding hopeful that they would.

  “We’ll see,” Missy told her, hoping that answer would appease her.

  “Okay, hooker, if we don’t see ya tonight, we’ll see you tomorrow,” Kristen said before giving Missy a hug and leaving.

  “Yep, tomorrow for sure. Ya’ll have fun, though.”

  Missy waved good-bye to the group of chatty and smiling girls, slightly wishing she were going out with them. She and Kristen had been best friends their whole lives. It is a friendship that started before their first day of kindergarten at Arapahoe Charter School. Kristen and Missy’s parents lived next door to each other in Minnesott Beach and became fast friends after the girls were born, that is until Kristen’s parents decided to move into a bigger house in Dawson’s Creek when Missy and Kristen were in sixth grade, leaving Missy alone in Minnesott. They each went their own way after that, making friends with other people, although they managed to grow close again in high school during those torturous freshmen cheerleading hazing days. The other kids at school had nicknamed them the dynamic duo during their freshman year and they had lived up to their titles proudly ever since. Throughout the past three years of school others had joined their group of friends. The most loyal of those, in Missy’s opinion, were Kristen, Rob, Marshall, Brittany and Kate. In fact, Missy felt certain that if they hadn’t gone to different schools up until high school, they would have all been friends a lot longer. She had worried that things would become weird once she started dating Rob last year, since Kristen was hooking up with him at the time, but they managed.

  Once all was quiet in the gym, Missy bent down and picked up her pom-poms off the glossy wooden floor and turned on her iPod to the song that went with the new cheer. As the music began, she held her pom-poms on her waist and stood like a beautiful blonde statue until the timing was right. She closed her eyes, feeling the music and waited for the note that was supposed to begin the cheer. As she began, her face lit up and she started to move. She shook and gyrated everything the good Lord gave her in perfect rhythm. She turned and kicked and rattled her pom-poms to the beat of the music. Her heart leaped with the thrill.

  BANG!

  Missy jumped at the sound of a loud, thunderous bang that echoed through the gym and vibrated off the dark brick walls around her, breaking her spell. She hugged her pom-poms to her chest and looked around for the culprit.

  “Hello? Is someone there?” she asked, looking around, but finding no one.

  She pressed her shiny pom-poms even harder against her chest, feeling exposed in her little bright yellow sports bra and tight black leggings in the open gym. She continued to look around as she quickly walked over to the bleachers to turn off the loud music. She stood still and listened for a sound, any sound, but there was none. Feeling creeped out, she gathered up her things and headed to the gi
rl’s locker room.

  She put her gym bag on the bench in the middle of the row of lockers and dug around inside. She took out her clean change of clothes so they wouldn’t get tainted from her sweaty workout clothes and placed them beside the bag along with a fluffy, terry-cloth towel, her makeup bag and hair brush. She put her pom-poms and iPod in the bag and then stripped out of her sweaty leggings and sports bra down to her little black thong. She balled the clothes up and put them in the bag before shoving the bag in the old beat up locker and placing her clean clothes and makeup bag on top of it. Feeling uneasy in only her little panties, she grabbed the neatly folded towel off the bench and looked around the row of lockers. She slammed the metallic door closed and pressed the towel closer to her chest and briskly walked to the open shower stalls in the back of the room.

  She hung the towel on the nearest hook and turned on the hot water full blast. Once the steady stream of water was hot and steamy, she removed her panties and kicked them to the side. She stood under the hot water and closed her eyes, letting the scalding hot water run down her naked body to melt all of the tension away and calm her racing nerves. The water pressure wasn’t hard enough to massage her muscles like she liked, but the steam still worked its magic.

  BANG!

  Her eyes shot open and she froze in mid-movement. Her heart jumped in her chest when she heard the loud bang again.

  “I knew I wasn’t hearing things before,” she said to herself before calling out, “Hello?”

  BANG!

  “What the hell is that?” She whipped her head around when she heard it again, causing steamy hot water to slap against the shower stall.

  She turned off the water and wrapped the fluffy towel around herself and stormed out of the shower stall.

  “Is someone in here?” she asked, her annoyance growing.

  Instantly, a loud bang rang in her ears again.

  “Hey, asshole!” she yelled.

  Silence.

  She hurried to her locker to get dressed, but found it wide open and her bag containing all of her stuff - clothes, phone, and keys - all gone. She threw a couple of old rag magazines and her choreography notebook onto the floor, emptying out the locker. She continued to look even though she knew she wouldn’t find anything to put on because her clothes were gone and she never kept extra stuff at school, but she completely emptied her locker anyway. She slammed the palm of her hand on the front of the locker next to her and cursed to herself for not keeping extra clothes in it.

  “Okay, whores, nice joke! Now bring my stuff back so I can get dressed,” she yelled.

  Silence.

  “Kristen, Ashley, Brittany, joke’s over!” she exclaimed while not even trying to hide her anger. “Payback is going to be hell tomorrow at practice!”

  Still no sound.

  She looked down at the wet towel wrapped around her naked body and slammed the locker door closed with a loud metallic bang. “Great, just great! Very funny, assholes!” she yelled, then mumbled to herself, “What douchebags. Just wait. Payback is going to be a bitch.”

  She walked through all the rows of lockers, opening each as she passed by hoping to find a piece, any piece, of clothing to put on, but found them empty. Grasping the towel around her even tighter, she walked to the end of the last row of lockers and looked around the open space of the locker room toward the gym door and muttered to herself, “I swear to God, those girls are going to be dead if anyone sees me like this.” She’s pretty sure her so-called friends were getting a kick out of her discomfort, knowing she would have to walk through the entire length of the school to the front office to use one of the phones in nothing but a wet towel. She even half-expected pictures to be taken to capture the moment. Maybe even a video.

  Feeling uneasy, she took another deep breath to steady herself and let it out slowly before leaving the safety of the row and out into the open. She hurried to the door and put a hand on the knob and quickly turned it. She peeked her head out into the dark gym and tried to look around as her vision began to adjust to the darkness.

  “Didn’t I leave the lights on? I can’t see shit in here now,” she said to herself.

  Standing with her back toward the gym, she slowly closed the locker room door, trying to keep as quiet as possible. Every hair on her body stood on end when the heavy old metal door squeaked with age. Too afraid to look around, she stood frozen, waiting for any kind of sound from anyone who may be in there.

  Please God, don’t let anyone see me like this, she silently prayed.

  Once she was satisfied that there was no one else in the gym, she shut the door the rest of the way and clung to the cool brick wall behind her. She tiptoed as quietly as she could toward the exit that led into the school. She would prefer to go through the exit leading outside, since it was a less creepier path to the front of the school where the office was located, but the exit door leading into the school building was her only option at that time of day since all the other exit doors leading to the outside of the building were supposed to be locked at four o’clock for the safety and security of the school. Unfortunately for Missy, her only option was located on the opposite side of the gym beside a row of wooden bleachers. Not only did it look extremely far away, but Missy was certain that the thirty seconds it was going to take to reach that door would feel like an eternity. She took another deep breath and continued to cling to the brick wall as she made her way along the gym.

  She breathed a little easier when she finally reached the gym exit. As she extended her hand to push the bar on the old door to open it, she saw a form of what looked to be a man standing close to the locker rooms where she had just left.

  “Jesus Christ! Who’s there?” The gym was too dark to make out his face. “Coach Grady, is that you?”

  The man didn’t respond.

  “Seriously, Coach, don’t be a creepy perv!” she yelled with a hint of disgust in her voice.

  Without a word, the man slowly began to walk in her direction.

  Missy, now clutching her terrycloth towel tighter to her chest, could feel her heart pounding in her chest beneath her arms. She had become aware that the closer the man got to her, the harder her heart beat. Missy felt it pounding so hard now that she was afraid that it would burst from her chest, leaping right out onto the wooden basketball court.

  “Don’t come any closer. I’m going to call the police and your ass is going to get fired,” she threatened.

  The man didn’t stop.

  “I’m serious!” she shrieked.

  Still nothing.

  “Shit!” She leaped at the door.

  She threw open the old heavy gym door and rushed out into the dark open hallway of the recreation wing of the school. Holding onto her towel, she ran down the wide hallway, which was somewhat difficult because she had no shoes on and her feet were still wet from her shower, which made her slide all over the glossy tile floor. When she came to a fork in the hall, she looked back and forth, trying to decide which way would be the best. All of the doors in the school were locked at that hour except for the exit in the gym leading out onto the football field back the way she came and the only phones are in the office, which was still too far away. She didn’t have long to think before she heard the loud thud of the man’s heavy boots coming down the hall behind her.

  “Shit! Science!” She took a right down the science hallway and straight into Mr. Peters’ chemistry classroom. She closed the door as softly as she could and turned around to face the classroom. She had Mr. Peters’ for fourth period class so she was well aware of all of the empty cabinets lining the walls. At the time they seemed like a good hiding place, but now she realized they would be too much of an obvious hiding spot.

  Her heart leaped into her throat at the sound of a metallic like scratching, comparable to nails scratching on a chalkboard, if the chalkboard was a set of metal lockers and the nails were made out of another metal, coming from right outside in the hallway.

  She hurried to the
first place she could think of, Mr. Peters’ desk. She grabbed his lab coat off the back of the chair and crawled underneath and hugged her body tightly together in an upright fetal position, hoping and praying that she wouldn’t be found. She could hear doors opening down the hall as he got closer and closer. When the door swung open, she had to put her hand over her mouth to stifle a startled gasped and to quiet her rapid breathing.

  Thankfully the moon was not only full that night, but it was also unusually bright, which allowed Missy to watch the man’s shadow along the chalkboard and on the tile floor. Within a few breathless minutes, his shadow disappeared and she heard his footsteps leave the room. Removing her hand from her mouth, she poked her head out from under the desk, but just as she did, a massive hand painfully grabbed a handful of her long wet hair and pulled her up onto the desk. She grabbed for her hair, forgetting her towel, letting it fall to the floor. The man pinned her down on the desk, maneuvering himself between her legs to keep them still, continuing to hold onto her hair with a tight fist, managing to keep her in place in spite of her pleas and flailing body.

  “Oh my God, please don’t,” she screamed, fearing she was about to be raped by this psycho stranger.

  Missy struggled to catch a good look at her assailant, hoping it would help appeal to him, but through her tears and his well-suited ski mask, she was having difficulty discerning who it was. She was, however, able to distinguish think pink lips which were formed into an angry scowl and cold, calculating dark eyes, which only worked to add to her fear.

  “Please don’t!” she begged again through her sobs.

  The man just stared down at her for a long breathless minute. She wondered for a second if he would let her go. Then, lifting his free hand, she saw he was holding a long shiny blade. Missy opened her light blue eyes wide at the sight of the knife glistening in the moonlight and began to scream and cry even more, knowing for certain that he had no intentions of letting her go.