BooksBarbecue
Back The Ursulina Save as PDF
Chapters (45)
  1. I know you'll never forgive me...
  2. Part One - Your Father
  3. Chapter One
  4. Chapter Two
  5. Chapter Three
  6. Chapter Four
  7. Chapter Five
  8. Chapter Six
  9. Chapter Seven
  10. Chapter Eight
  11. Chapter Nine
  12. Chapter Ten
  13. Chapter Eleven
  14. Chapter Twelve
  15. Chapter Thirteen
  16. Chapter Fourteen
  17. Chapter Fifteen
  18. Chapter Sixteen
  19. Chapter Seventeen
  20. Chapter Eighteen
  21. Chapter Nineteen
  22. Chapter Twenty
  23. Part Two - Your Mother
  24. Chapter Twenty-One
  25. Chapter Twenty-Two
  26. Chapter Twenty-Three
  27. Chapter Twenty-Four
  28. Chapter Twenty-Five
  29. Chapter Twenty-Six
  30. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  31. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  32. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  33. Chapter Thirty
  34. Chapter Thirty-One
  35. Chapter Thirty-Two
  36. Chapter Thirty-Three
  37. Chapter Thirty-Four
  38. Chapter Thirty-Five
  39. Chapter Thirty-Six
  40. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  41. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  42. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  43. Chapter Forty
  44. Chapter Forty-One
  45. About the Author

Every time Darrell brought out the crime scene photos, they sickened me all over again. Nearly every square inch over every surface inside the mobile home was covered in blood, much as it had been in Gordon Brink’s bedroom. According to Darrell’s theory of the crime, Racer Moritz died first. He was found at the back of the trailer, stabbed so many times that the autopsy couldn’t give an accurate count. The postmortem blood test showed that he’d been drunk and high on weed at the time of his death. There were no signs of a struggle, so Darrell suspected that Racer had been asleep or unconscious when the murder occurred.

Kip Wells had been found just inside the trailer door. Darrell speculated that the killer murdered Racer and then waited for Kip to return before attacking him from behind. All the knife wounds—more than a hundred, the coroner said—were in Kip’s back. The frenzied attack on his body had continued long after he was actually dead.

Then there was the message from the Ursulina, painted on the trailer wall in Kip’s blood.

For as much time as Darrell had spent on the investigation, he didn’t have much to show for it. The trailer where the killings occurred belonged to Norm Foltz, who used it as a campsite when he took hiking trips in the forest. He was an amateur photographer and naturalist, so when he wasn’t in a courtroom, he was usually in the woods. Sometimes he went alone; sometimes his son, Will, went with him. But because of Norm’s extended stay in Stanton for a trial that summer, the trailer had been unused for a few weeks. It was impossible to know exactly when Kip and Racer had begun squatting there.

But why were they dead? And who killed them? Darrell didn’t know. Honestly, in Black Wolf County, nobody cared. Kip and Racer had bullied people around here from the time they were teenage dropouts. If there was a break-in or theft in town, deputies usually knocked on their doors first. Even the 126 had banned them, and it took a lot of bad behavior to get thrown out of the 126. Many of their worst crimes went unreported, out of fear of retaliation. One woman had accused them of rape, and a week later, her house burned down. People got the message to keep their mouths shut. So when the Ursulina ended Kip and Racer’s reign of terror, pretty much everyone was grateful. If anyone knew anything, they didn’t rush to give Darrell evidence to solve the case.