Chapter 2

Grace was not use to having to make up as early as she did that Monday morning. It was almost as if she knew that there was going to be something big coming her way. There was no way that she could have anticipated what it was or when it was going to happen. She just knew that her alarm was not set to go off for another 3 hours, and yet she was laying in bed wide awake.

She check to see if her Dalmatian, Big Ben, was okay or needed to be let out to roam the backyard, only to notice that he was curled up next to her with his head on her pillow and the rest of his body under the covers. “You are pitiful, you know that Ben,” she said. He just opened one eye, uninterested and sighed and fell back asleep. “How could I have ever expected that you could be a replacement for a man in my bed,” Grace stated. Big Ben had been part of her life, ever since her mom had passed two years prior. She hated to be alone in the house and so she had gone to the local SPCA and found Big Ben. He had only been a pup then, but he soon grew and started to take over his house as if he was the owner and not her.

Since she was up, she figured that she might as well turn on the television and see what was going on at this ungodly hour. As she hit the power button on the remote control, the screen was filled with the look of horror from the reporter. “This is Becky Newman reporting from the scene of the horrific crime. It would appear the “El Diablo has struck again. There has not been an official statement made yet, but all signs are pointing to this conclusion.” Grace could not believe what she was hearing. This monster had started to overtake her town of Grangeville, Illinois.

In all the years that she had lived here nothing this horrific had ever happened. She was not that naïve to believe that it couldn’t happen to her town, but there had never been a serial killer on the loose in this town before. Her private investigation business had kept her pleasantly busy, but it had always been for small stuff. A missing persons report, a father who had skipped town on his child support obligations, and once she had to deal with a dog napping but nothing like this ever seemed to come to her town.

There was no real chance that she was going to be able to get back to sleep, knowing that there had been an other murder in her town. She had always thought of Grangeville as her town. She was born and raised here by her mother. Her father had passed away 3 months before she was born. Her mother, Lucy, had never been able to bring herself to marry again. After she had lost one husband to a killer, cancer, she did not want to put her only child through that ever again. It was bad enough to be raised without a father, her mother told her, it is another tragedy to have different men come in and out of my life. So that is how her life had been.

She had been an only child, but was not raised as a total brat. She did not always get what she wanted, in fact she always thought that her life was harder because she was raised as an only child. Her mom always made sure that she worked for everything that she wanted in her life. If she wanted a new toy, and it was not near her birthday or Christmas, she had to do chores around the house to earn the money. To this day Grace is eternally grateful to her mother for instilling such a great work ethic. She believes that this is what helped her to go to school and become the private investigator that she was today.

“There is no way that I am going to be able to head back to dreamland after hearing this,” Grace told Big Ben. He opened both eyes, yawned at her and then seemed to really concentrate on what she was telling him. She decided to just get up and get started with her day. After taking a warm shower, drinking some coffee, and feeding Big Ben she headed on into the office. Her office was in a small strip mall right next door to the cleaners and to the nail salon. Not the perfect location, but it did serve her purpose well and she got plenty of business.

Arriving at the early hour that she did, she realized that nothing else would be open and it would be at least 2 hours until her secretary, Amilia would be arriving. This was fine by her because she had some final touches to put on her report before she met with Mr. and Mrs. Hansen about where she found their missing daughter. They were not going to be happy to hear that their 17, almost 18, year old daughter had decided to run off to Vegas with their pastor’s son. There was no easy way to let them know that they had just gotten married. It was not her business to make the truth come easy, rather she was to just gather the information and give it to her clients. It was up to them as to what to do with it after they left her office.

After working for about 45 minutes, Grace was surprised to hear the bell on the door sound to announce that someone was there. She wondered if Amalia had decided to come in early today to try to leave early again for the second week in a row. “If you are thinking you will get out early today, Amalia, you won’t be able to,” shouted Grace. There was no response. “That is kind of odd,” she thought, “Amalia is always challenging me with what I have to say.” Grace decided to go to the front to see what was going on. It was when she got to the doorway leading to the front reception area that Grace realized that she was going to be having a very different day that she had previous thought.