Autumn's Game

by Mary Stone

  That didn’t mean that he hadn’t been hired off the books. That happened too often, Autumn knew, and the people most likely to have hired him under the table were the ones least likely to come forward with his current location.

  Kyle had no family to speak of, having lost his parents when he was seventeen years old. Both parents had been only children and had raised an only child. The grandparents weren’t in the picture, either, so after the car accident, Kyle was placed in a foster home, where he lived until he aged out at eighteen.

  So many heartbreaking stories.

  Autumn rubbed her fingers against her aching temples. Her back was stiff from bending over the conference room table as she reviewed files. None of them were any closer to locating Kyle, or even finding out for sure whether Gina had been kidnapped by him or was serving as his assistant. Maybe they were in Vegas right then, with Elvis singing “Can’t Help Falling in Love” while the couple exchanged their vows.

  But that didn’t feel right. They had agents in Nevada going through all the chapels just to be sure, but Autumn’s gut told her that Gina hadn’t been part of her parents’ massacre. Unfortunately, Autumn had no proof that would satisfy her smarmy boss. Adam questioned everything she did until she felt like she couldn’t trust her own instincts.

  Was the killer Kyle Murphy or someone else? She hadn’t definitively identified whether the killer was driven by a psychological need or revenge of some kind. Hell, she didn’t even know if the cases were related at all.

  Adam seemed so sure of his conclusions. Autumn struggled with doubt.

  Sheriff Carla knocked on the door of the conference room they had been using. Their team of Autumn, Adam, Rich Brower, the sheriff, and a pair of deputies had taken it over, using it as a command center, complete with a map tacked up on a corkboard with red pins at the locations of the all the murder scenes, as well as the locations of every place where witnesses had reported seeing Kyle Murphy last.

  Carla bobbed her eyebrows at Autumn. “Hey there, hon. You got a phone call.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Oh, nobody important. Just someone claiming to be our killer.” The entire room stirred in their seats while the sheriff waved a hand. She clearly thought the call was bogus, and it probably was. “Laura Jane’s keeping him busy right now while we get the phone company involved. He says he wants to talk to someone who—”

  Adam was immediately on his feet, his normally smug expression even smugger. “I’ll handle this.”

  Behind Adam’s back, Rich Brower shook his head wildly, mouthing a silent, “No.”

  Carla sized Adam up, her gaze wandering from his clean, polished dress shoes to his expensive tailored suit to the top of his balding head. “He sounds like a young kid. He doesn’t want to talk to old people like us.” Her gaze slid to Autumn. “Would you take this?”

  Autumn’s skin prickled with excitement, even though she knew the chance that this caller was their actual killer was pretty slim. Still, she took a deep breath to calm herself. Slim chances or not, she would treat this caller as if he was the person who’d brutally killed at least five couples and taken a young woman against her will. She had the opportunity to save lives right now, and she wouldn’t turn this call into an opportunity to accomplish anything personal, the way Adam would have.

  She rubbed her damp palms down her trousers. “I’m ready.”

  Rich gave her a thumbs-up while Adam thrust his fists onto his hips, clearly trying to intimidate her. “As the more experienced psychol—”

  “Woah there.” Carla held up a hand. “Speaking as the person in charge of this case, I’d like to confirm my right to handle it the way I choose, without debate. We can discuss this later. I want Autumn on the line, and I think Rich agrees with me.”

  Adam glanced at him, clearly insulted at what he no doubt thought of as insubordination against the alpha male in the room.

  Rich nodded with almost comical seriousness.

  The backs of Autumn’s hands were tense, and she rubbed her palms with her thumbs. At least she wasn’t sweating. She reminded herself that she had talked more than one person through a tense and violent situation. “Any words of advice?”

  Carla smiled. “You’ll do fine, hon. That phone on the desk behind you, just pick up the handset and push the button beside the flashing red light.”

  Autumn turned around, putting her back to Adam. She decided she didn’t want to see him while she was speaking to the suspect. Blowing out a long breath, she tapped the speaker button. She faced the map pinned up to the corkboard and concentrated on it until everything else faded from view.

  “Hello.”

  “Who is this?” a young man asked, his tone curious. He didn’t seem nervous, which made Autumn sit even straighter. This could be their killer, and if he wasn’t, she could gain some insights into why some people offered false confessions. She hoped it was the prior.

  “Autumn Trent. I’m a therapist here to assist with the case.” She only stretched the truth just a little.

  “A head shrink?”

  She forced a soft chuckle. “You could say that, although I’ve never actually made anyone’s skull get smaller.”

  He snorted, seeming to genuinely be enjoying their conversation. Was he so arrogant that he had no fear? “Why put you on the line? You gonna give me therapy?”

  Autumn tried to keep her tone light. “I think you were freaking out the secretary, to be honest.”

  “Oh, yeah, well.” The suspect laughed. “I guess I probably did. Not every day a person gets a call from someone like me.”

  “And what kind of person are you?” she asked softly.

  “I’m a person who rights the wrongs.”

  Carla slid a small legal notebook and a pen across the desk toward the phone. Autumn nodded and picked up the pen.

  “Did Marcus and Olivia Webster do something wrong?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can you tell me about it?”

  “I don’t want to talk about that right now.”

  Autumn decided not to push him yet. She didn’t want to frighten him away. “Have you been righting wrongs for a long time?”

  “Not really. It took me a while to get fed up with society, you know. Seemed like nobody was doing nothing, and somebody needed to. I’m the somebody.”

  “Are you doing this alone?”

  Behind her, Autumn heard Adam let out a hard snort of air. He clearly didn’t approve of the question, but she didn’t care. She needed to find Gina.

  “Yeah…well, no. Kinda.”

  The man on the phone sounded so young that it was hard for Autumn to believe he was a cold-blooded killer.

  “What does that mean?” She tried to make her voice light, even a little teasing. “Yes, no, or maybe isn’t very helpful.”

  He laughed, but it sounded more embarrassed than anything. “I know. It’s complicated, I guess.”

  “I’m betting that a great deal of things feel complicated right now.” Autumn still wasn’t certain if this was their suspect. She needed to do a better job of finding that out. “That’s a very interesting knot you made with the green rope. I’ve never seen it before.”

  “Blue. The rope is blue.”

  Autumn’s eyes snapped to Carla. The sheriff pursed her lips and nodded. This was their guy.

  Law enforcement often purposefully withheld specific pieces of evidence from the public for a couple of reasons. First, it helped them determine whether a suspect was indeed guilty. If a suspect possessed nonpublic information about a crime, it was likely that he or she committed that crime or knew the person who did.

  Second, withholding evidence also helped police rule out the possibility that a suspect was confessing to a crime he didn’t actually commit. False confessors occurred more often than one would think. Sometimes, an innocent person might confess to a crime because they felt coerced or trapped by the law enforcement officials who were supposed to protect them. A confessor might suffer from a menta
l health issue or simply confess to a crime to gain attention. Other times, a confession might be sacrificial, like when a parent confessed to save a child.

  Whatever the reason, the withheld evidence often became a key piece to solving the puzzle…just like now.

  “Oh, that’s right,” Autumn said, the tension she’d been holding inside her easing a little. “The rope is blue. What do you call that intricate knot?”

  “It’s called a handcuff knot. It’s not that hard to learn how to do.”

  Carla nodded again. That was another piece of information they’d withheld from the public. This was most certainly their man.

  “Were you a boy scout?”

  He laughed. “No, nothing like that. I just like to learn things, you know.”

  “Is it part of your job to tie knots like that?”

  It was an open-ended question, but Autumn couldn’t think of a better way to word it on the spot. She held her breath, hoping this young man would slip up and tell her where he worked. If she was very lucky, he’d tell her his address, social security number, and what he had for breakfast. Oh…and where Gina Webster was.

  “No, nothing like that.”

  “What do you do for a living?”

  He didn’t take the bait. “Actually, I’d like to talk about Gina.”

  Even better.

  Autumn let out a relieved breath, happy to let the killer steer the conversation. The longer he spoke, the better.

  Tracing a phone call was different than how Hollywood portrayed it on television shows and movies. A landline was easy to trace. A cell phone more difficult. A burner phone could be traced as well, though doing so was challenging and time consuming because of cellular triangulation. Tech savvy bad guys had ways around that too.

  But Autumn couldn’t think about any of that. Her purpose was to learn more, and if this person was indeed their killer, use this time to better understand his motivations.

  In case they didn’t catch him right away.

  “Is she with you?” Autumn asked, while writing wants to talk about Gina on the notebook. Young male, under twenty-five? High school education, not college?

  “Not at the moment, but she’s safe.”

  She wrote: Says Gina is safe.

  “That’s wonderful news…um. I’m sorry, what should I call you?”

  A small hesitation was followed by, “You can call me the Avenger.”

  Behind her, Adam groaned, but she ignored him. “All right, Avenger. Do you feel like you’ve avenged Gina in some way?”

  “Yeah. Absolutely. I don’t know if you know this, but Gina comes from a broken home. Her mom and dad really screwed her over. Her dad was a druggie. He kept it hidden for a long time, but eventually the truth came out, the way it always does. When you use drugs to keep yourself on the straight and narrow the way he was, it never works out. You can’t fix something broken by breaking it even more.”

  Autumn pressed her fingers to her temple. “I agree.”

  “He got his life back together, though, and I guess that’s sort of impressive, except for the fact that they’re getting divorced, which negates the whole thing. It had been looking up for a while, but…”

  The suspect’s voice faded as if he’d turned away from the phone, and for a moment, Autumn thought she might have lost him. But he came back after a few seconds, his voice rougher than it had been a moment ago.

  “When a man agrees to a divorce, it means that he never meant to stay married in the first place. Gina was torn up about it. She didn’t want it to happen, I could tell.”

  Autumn wrote: Blames killings on Webster’s divorce? He knew her well before he killed them.

  The sound of a large engine passing muffled the man’s voice for a moment. “…and I was kind of on the edge for a while. Do it or don’t do it? Sometimes, you know what has to be done, but you hesitate to do it. It’s not always easy doing the right thing. But she was so upset, I finally just decided that it was time to be done planning and time to act.”

  She jotted down: Near a highway? Passed by a semi-truck?

  “It’s obvious that you care for her.”

  “If I hadn’t cared, I wouldn’t have been able to save her from that abuse.”

  So, the killer thought he had been saving Gina from her parents. That was a lot of background to unpack. Autumn decided to open up to the killer: give a little, get a little.

  A little might be enough.

  “I understand. I had a similar experience as a kid with my father. He was abusive, and it took an extreme event to save me from him. He hit me in the head and knocked me into a coffee table so hard that I had to have surgery to relieve the pressure on my brain or I would have died. It wasn’t until that point that people finally started paying attention to how he was treating his family.”

  It was ironic. She’d told that same story to Justin Black that same week. Now, she was telling it to another damaged young man who blamed women for everything bad in today’s society.

  “Huh.” The suspect seemed surprised. “You don’t think about head shrinks having a screwed-up family.”

  “A lot of us have experience with abuse or mental illness. We want to help others who are going through the same things we did.”

  “Go figure. I don’t know that you could really call that abuse, though. I remember my dad, Jo…” He stopped abruptly and coughed directly into the phone. “Um, I remember him hitting me enough times in the head as a kid, although he never did knock me down into a table or anything.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it.” She wrote: Father – abuse – name is Joe?

  “I deserved it, mostly.” The suspect chuckled, as if reliving a memory. “So, don’t feel too bad for me. I suppose a head shrink has to have a soft heart for sob stories, though.”

  “I can understand that you felt the need to protect Gina from abuse.”

  A popping or sizzling sound came through on the call. For a moment, Autumn worried that she was hearing interference—maybe even evidence of the phone company monitoring the call. But then the sound changed and became louder and more regular. He was rubbing and scratching the stubble on his face.

  “Yeah, well. Girls can’t take it the way boys can, and anyway, she didn’t deserve to be treated like that. To put someone through all that drama, then pretend to fix it all before you take it all away again…nobody deserves that. Nobody ever deserves that. Even boys. We can take a lot, but not that. I guess if you want to write that down as the reason I do what I do, that might work.”

  Avenger.

  He was on a mission.

  He would kill again.

  Autumn wasn’t sure about challenging the man’s opinion but wanted to see how he would react. “Gina’s father did try to get his life back together, so he could take care of his daughter.”

  “He tried to take care of her,” the suspect exploded through the phone, “but he didn’t do much good, now did he? She was better off in the foster system. I’m taking care of Gina now. And even though it’s been rough, I’m doing a far better job of it than he ever did.”

  At least he hadn’t hung up. Autumn wrote: Not threatening her, just controlling her?

  “Can I talk to Gina?”

  “You think I’m a big talker, all hat and no cattle, don’t you? You want her to bear witness to what I’ve said. But neither one of us is ready to face the outside world at the moment.” He stopped to take a deep breath. “Just know that I care for her, and I’ve tried and tried to make sure she knows it.”

  “Is that why you did this? Because you care for Gina?”

  There was a long moment of silence, then, “I do feel better talking to you, but I’ve been slacking off for long enough today. It’s time to get a move on. I just have one last thing for you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I want you to let everyone know that there is a judgment day coming for parents who let their children down.”

  “I’m sorry? Kyle, I don’t understand. Can you cl
arify that?” She tapped her pen on the pad. Using his name was risky, she knew, but she had no other choice. She needed to reach him, and there was no better way than connecting name to name.

  He laughed, a harsh bitter sound. “You think you’re so smart, don’t you?”

  “I just want to help you. What can I do? Do you have any specific parents you want me to warn so that they do the right thing by their children?”

  She didn’t expect him to name names, but she would hope it would keep him talking.

  “Just watch.”

  The line went dead.

  Autumn stared at the phone. Had she pushed him too hard? Not hard enough? Now that the conversation was over, she was riddled with doubts.

  More victims? Judgment day?

  As she wrote on her pad, tears filled her eyes. If only she had tried harder, she might have kept him on the line longer.

  From behind her, there was a beep. Rich cleared his throat. “Well, Carla? Did we get him?”

  Autumn blinked away the tears and turned to the others. Adam was scowling at her while Rich gave her a double thumbs-up.

  Carla was wearing a headset plugged into another phone. It allowed her to adjust the volume, to listen to the background noises better than the speakerphone would reveal. She held up a hand, signaling for everyone to wait a moment as she switched to another line.

  “This is Sheriff Morton speaking. What’s the word? What did we get?” She paused, her face giving away nothing. “I see.” Another pause. “That would put him toward the southwest corner of Sawmill, right? South of Old Richard Road, yes. Thank you. I’ll have someone stay on the line to wait for the confirmation, but I need to get a move on. Sheriff Morton out.”

  She pulled the headset off her head.

  “He was using a burner. They think they got the nearest cell phone tower. They’re double-checking it now.”

  Adam slammed his palms down on the table. “We can’t trace the call?”

  Carla ignored him and handed the headset and phone to Rich. “Keep an ear on this for their confirmation. I need to set up a search before he gets too far out of the area.”

  Rich nodded. “Got it.” He might have been retired, but he still knew his job inside and out.