While investigating a viral internet game, 17 year old Thea
Riggs stumbles upon a series of unsolved murders and the global crime syndicate
that orchestrated them. Can she alone bring down a secret crime syndicate, or
is the cost of justice too high?
Specimen
by Lisa Towles
Genre
YA Psychological Thriller, Suspense
Thea Riggs is shocked by a dead body in the empty house she
was summoned to. It feels like a setup, like she’s being framed for murder. By
the time she discovers a connection between the body and the internet game
everyone’s playing, it’s too late. They know she’s onto them. Now she’s their
next target.
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Chapter 1
Blood pooled under the mop of the woman’s dark brown hair, her skin a
horrid chalky color, gray almost, body awkwardly twisted like she’d been
on her way somewhere and shocked by the thrust of something blunt and
resolute intended to stop the beat of her heart, or at least her intentions. As
to what—I hadn’t gotten there yet. Was it a good day to die?
I stared down at her body from the kitchen doorway, one hand
covering my mouth to quell the shaking in my soul. I knew her. How
could this possibly be real?
The house was quiet except for the howl of wind, the Fenning’s giant
sycamore scraping the east side of the house like a demon’s fingernail.
Fitting.
Something made me turn, not a sound exactly, more like a sensation. I
gazed at the upstairs landing that overlooked a foyer the size of a
basketball court. A much better vantage point to say the least. I tore up the
stairs and pancaked myself to the cold tiles. My erratic pulse banged in my
ears. Tha-thump, tha-thump. Breathe, Thea. Breathe. Okay, my frantic
brain re-engaged for the moment, I could see this was a much safer place
to assess. The woman’s lower half was visible from here on the marble
floor beside the island – dark gray pants, expensive black heels, one of
them on and the other three inches from her body exposing a bare, grayish
foot. Lying on my stomach, pain jarred me from the phone in my pocket—
glass on bone. I hadn’t pulled it out yet or called for help because I needed
time to gather my wits, I had no idea what I’d say and, more importantly,
what if her killer was still here?
I used to think a day that began with a game of cards was destined to
be good. With a father and grandfather in the Navy, of course I grew up
playing cards. I could beat them both at cribbage by the time I was fifteen,
or maybe they let me win. There was something about numbers that had
always comforted me, like a tacit reminder of the ordered universe despite
all the visual evidence of chaos. And cribbage was a game that valued
numbers and pairs, and in my fragile heart that symmetry felt, somehow,
like safety. Okay sure, life in the Marshall Islands was a little sheltered,
but my dad wanted it that way. My mother disagreed and tried to move us
all to San Francisco, where we’d have the support of her family along with
the contemporary imprint of urban life. She won the battle but lost the
war. My father remained five thousand miles away in Majuro Atoll, and
after my brother Rudy died she and I built a new life in San Francisco’s
Mission District without them. The culture and beauty of my Islander
roots lives in my heart forever but honestly failed to prepare me for the
spectacle of Roberta Fenning’s bludgeoned body. Could anything have?
Rudy died on his seventeenth birthday, my age now, which my mother
said was like being erased by the universe and twice as bad as just losing
him. Now we can’t even celebrate his birthday without reliving the trauma
of his loss. The closest thing I had to a brother now was Fergus Wilde, my
best friend since the third grade.
“Stop dreaming and cut the deck,” Fergus had said this morning while
we drank coffee on the floor of my bedroom, preparing for another game
of cribbage during the lazy, summer lull before college. And I had been
daydreaming while he decided which cards to throw in the crib. Nothing I
hated more than wasting time. And there was nothing I wanted more than
to escape reality go back to the safety of that cribbage game right now.
My chin touching the cold floor of the Fenning’s second floor landing,
I couldn’t make my lungs remember how to work. Sucking in air, I clawed
the grout between the foyer’s white marble tiles to steady myself. That
same marble downstairs in the kitchen would now be permanently stained
with Roberta Fenning’s blood. Wait…why was there blood under my
fingernails? I hadn’t touched the body. Not even close. Had I?
I shouldn’t even be here, I realized, gasping finally like a surfer
reaching air after being held down by a set wave. My nose ran and the
fluid mixed with tears sliding down my cheeks. I couldn’t wipe it because
whoever did this to her could still be in the house watching me right now.
Stay silent. Don’t move. Two questions: would I be next and, more
importantly, why had Lise summoned me if she wasn’t even here? I
ignored the most obvious possibility because honestly it was too much
weight on my heart. I needed to get the hell out of here before the police
arrived. Had anyone even called them? Had Lise done that before she
skipped out?
I went through it in my head to sort of rehearse. I entered with my own
personal key to the Fenning estate, given to me by Lise Fenning, my other
BFF. It’s not that I lived here, necessarily, just that the house was huge
and running to answer the door every time the bell chimed was apparently
too extraordinary an effort on a regular basis. So they gave me one of the
spare keys. Lise should have been here to meet me, and she was scheduled
to be. I’d called out for her and at least expected Nanny, the live-in cook,
to be in the kitchen where I always stopped in to say hi. She’s nice, I liked
her. Today the kitchen was completely closed up. No Nanny, no Roberta,
only her discarded body staining the pristine tile with a pool of her blood.
What if they asked me if I knew her? I needed an answer ready for
that. Yes, of course I knew her, I even liked her. She was my best friend’s
mother so I’d been to that house at least once a week for years. The words
felt so strange in my mouth – was, best friend. Best friends didn’t do what
Lise has done. Roberta was the kind of woman, the kind of mother who
cared about people and wanted to know them. She’d stop me in the
hallway sometimes and grasp my shoulders, look in my eyes to not just
ask how I was doing but see for herself. My God. Roberta.
I’d only stood in the doorway and honestly didn’t take a single step
into the kitchen. But when I crouched low, I caught sight of a pooling of
blood in the back of her head, mostly dried now, and the ghastliest color
I’d ever seen on another person. I tried to remember if she’d been sick
lately, but she was fine the last time I saw her. My God, the blood. I knew
that had to mean something about the timing of her attack, but my mind
wasn’t capable of critical thinking right now. I’m not sure why, but I’d
snapped one quick photo of her lying there before charging up the grand
staircase and dropping to the floor of the landing.
From this vantage point I could see into the kitchen, her lifeless legs
visible and feet turned awkwardly inward. I might never be able to unsee
the ghoulish cast to her skin, and the way rigor mortis had frozen her
contorted fingers into these spectral claws belonging in a zombie movie. I
felt sick and rolled onto my left side before vomiting, another assault on
what had once been their pristine floor. How could this beautiful estate be
habitable again after tonight? My fingertips gripped the edge of the
staircase and pulled my body forward two inches, which gave me a bit
more view. Some kind of leather strap stuck up beneath her on the side of
the kitchen island, which I hadn’t noticed before. Was it her handbag, and
why hadn’t I noticed it when I’d been in the kitchen?
My frantic brain began some basic calculations, starting with steps. An
estimated thirty-seven to the lower landing and then roughly another
twenty to the inner front door. Could I make it there before the killer
spotted me? Wait a minute, I knew this house. There was a back bedroom.
Lise and I removed part of the flooring once to access a support pole that
weaved from the basement up to the second floor. If I could get to that
closet, I might be able to use the pole to exit the house through the
basement’s bulkhead, which would be safer than ploughing out the front
door for all of Sea Cliff to see. My wet, swollen eyes blinked through
these new possibilities, fingernails clicking the white marble, performing a
momentary risk assessment. Had the Fennings discovered our secret
escape path and blocked off the closet? If someone was still in the house,
this could be my only chance of making it out alive.
I tried texting Lise again. Where the fuck are you?? Don’t leave me
here!
I heard the clink of china from the kitchen, a saucer upended and seesawing side to side before it came to rest.
OMG. My stomach tightened with an imaginary vice grip over my
throat. That sound could mean Roberta was still alive. I pressed my hands
over my mouth to suppress the urge to call out to her, because it could also
mean that her killer was down there waiting for me.
Lisa Towles is an award-winning, Amazon bestselling crime
novelist and a passionate speaker on the topics of fiction writing, creativity,
and Strategic Self Care. Lisa has 11 crime novels in print with her newest
title Specimen freshly released in November 2024. The first two books of her
E&A Investigations Series (Hot House and Salt Island) were both #1 Amazon
Kindle Bestsellers. Lisa also writes standalone thrillers, such as her 2022
political thriller, The Ridders, which won an American Fiction Award. Lisa is
an active member and frequent panelist/speaker of Mystery Writers of America,
Sisters in Crime, and International Thriller Writers. She has an MBA in IT
Management and works full-time in the tech industry.
Read more about Lisa’s book on her publisher’s website.
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Signed Hardcover of Codex by Lisa Towles (US only),
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