Autumn's Game

by Mary Stone

  The woman’s face paled, and she pressed her trembling lips together.

  Autumn leaned closer, and Carla could see just how furious the shrink was. It practically radiated from her. But she somehow kept her voice calm, her face neutral. Only her eyes gave away her innermost thoughts. It was fascinating to witness.

  “Our killer can’t be Kyle Murphy, Mrs. Mathers, because Kyle Murphy is dead. Who is it, Helen? Tell us his name. You need to tell us before others are brutally murdered and you’re an accessory to those crimes.”

  Mathers’s mouth trembled before it took on a hard edge and slammed shut again. “I want my lawyer.”

  Autumn sighed, but her eyes never lost their fury. “That’s fine, but I hope you know that he won’t be able to help you. You thought you were in trouble before, you haven’t seen trouble until it’s been broadcasted that you have harbored a serial killer.”

  “I didn’t do any such thing. I…”

  As she blathered an array of excuses, Autumn straightened and walked around the table until her back was facing the video camera. As Carla watched, Autumn leaned forward and very gently placed her hand on Helen Mather’s arm.

  It only lasted a second, then the young woman straightened and went back to her chair.

  What just happened?

  Carla watched both women closely and leaned forward. Mathers had asked for an attorney, and they had to be careful now. Carla knew that Autumn also held her JD degree, so she hoped like hell the woman knew what she was doing. If it even looked like Autumn was going to ask Mathers a question, she would intercede. She’d be damned if Mathers’s case was thrown out on a technicality.

  “Sheriff Morton?”

  She’d been so intent on what was happening, she jumped a little at her name. “Yes?”

  Autumn kept her gaze on Mathers. “Has your detective finished going through the list of Helen Mathers’s former foster kids?”

  Carla nodded, wondering where she was going with this. “Just an hour or so ago.”

  “And what about the list of current and former employees of the community center?”

  Another nod. “That was faxed over just this morning.”

  Carla could tell that Autumn wanted to smile, but she didn’t. “Sheriff Morton, would you please bring both of those to me?”

  Carla didn’t say a word. She practically sprang from her chair, and by the time she got back, Helen Mathers was sweating profusely.

  “Here you go.”

  “Thank you.” Autumn looked at Mathers again. “It’s too bad you won’t cooperate,” she said, keeping her tone light, even a little whimsical. “I’m sure things will go better for you if you do.”

  Mathers swallowed hard, and Carla silently counted to one…two…three…before Autumn lowered her head and ran her finger down the list of employees first, then the fosters.

  After several minutes passed, and it became clear that Mathers would say nothing, Carla wondered what Autumn would do next. She didn’t have to wonder long.

  Autumn stopped moving her finger. She looked up at the older woman and smiled. “Last chance.”

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  “Linus Ashby,” Helen Mathers blurted. “I tried to stop him. I tried to—”

  Autumn held up her hand and pushed to her feet. “Sheriff Morton, I believe Mrs. Mathers requested her attorney.”

  Carla was staring hard at the woman. She couldn’t believe that’d actually worked. “She sure did. I’ll go fetch…” she allowed a humorous snort to accompany the next words, “Arnie Becker for you now.”

  The sweet little foster mom was cursing them both as the door slammed shut behind them.

  Carla caught Autumn’s arm. “How did you know?”

  There was a gleam in the psychologist’s eye as she smiled. “Let’s just call it a hunch.”

  25

  Autumn watched in awe as Sheriff Morton began snapping off orders. One deputy was to head to the community center while another would go to Linus’s apartment. She put out a BOLO for their suspect with a description of his vehicle she got after a phone call to Nancy Gaines.

  “Do not approach,” Carla instructed the men. “Find him and sit on him from a distance. Don’t let him out of your sight.”

  They didn’t have a warrant to search his place or vehicle, and Carla would be working on that next. If she could get a judge to take Mathers’s accusation as enough probable cause.

  A rattled looking public defender came hurrying through the door just as Winter came striding in. Autumn hadn’t gotten the joke about Arnie Becker until Carla had explained it to her. What had Helen Mathers been thinking when she told them that her attorney was a character on L.A. Law? Had she been so smug about getting away with her crimes that she’d felt comfortable enough to joke about such a thing?

  With a snap of her fingers, Carla shifted gears and steered the attorney to the interview room they’d vacated just minutes before. Then, she turned to Winter. “Will you conduct the interview after they’ve had their consultation and do your damn best to find out where Linus Ashby is holed up?”

  Winter didn’t hesitate. “Of course. Bring me up to speed.”

  Autumn and Carla took turns doing exactly that.

  When Carla stomped away to take care of another matter, Winter lifted an eyebrow at Autumn. “A hunch?”

  Autumn chewed her bottom lip. Now that the interview was over and they knew their killer’s identity, she was plagued with doubt. Had she done the right thing? Was that cheating? Should she have tried harder to get the information a different way? Would the touch get her in legal trouble or harm their case?

  “I touched her arm for a second,” Autumn whispered to her friend. “Will that cause a problem?”

  Winter immediately shook her head. “You can say you were offering a moment of comfort. We touch suspects all the time. Giving them a glass of water, dealing with handcuffs, putting them in a chair, helping them walk steady, holding their hand for comfort. You just can’t smack them.” Eyes widening, her hand went to Autumn’s cheek, her blue eyes turning icy. “Are you okay?”

  Autumn thought about the palm across her face from Adam Latham and was glad she’d taken the picture. In her line of work, she documented everything. As upset as she’d been, she was glad she thought to document it as well. Just in case she ever needed it.

  “Yes. Thanks. I’m absolutely fine. I’m just realizing that, even though I went to school forever, there’s still so many things I don’t know or have forgotten. I need to brush up on the basics the minute I get home.”

  Winter snorted. “That big brain of yours will soak it up like a sponge.”

  Autumn hoped so. “As long as it doesn’t leak back out, I’ll be okay.”

  “Don’t wor—”

  “Autumn!” She turned at Sheriff Morton’s call, but the sheriff was already halfway out the door as she yelled, “You’re coming with me.”

  Autumn turned back to her friend. “Guess I’ll see you later.”

  Winter pulled Autumn into a quick hug. “Be safe out there. And don’t doubt yourself. You have amazing instincts for this work. Believe in them.”

  Breathing more calmly after Winter’s little pep talk, she jumped into the brown and yellow SUV that screeched up in front of her. “Where are we going?”

  Carla’s foot was on the gas before she could even buckle up. “Linus Ashby’s mother’s house.”

  Autumn studied the sheriff’s face. “You don’t seem too happy about that.”

  Carla snorted and whipped around a turn. “Emily Ashby is one unique individual. She—” Her phone rang, and she tapped some buttons. “Give me some good news…”

  Autumn couldn’t hear the caller, but the gist of the call was that Linus Ashby was nowhere to be found. Not at his apartment. Not at his work. His cell phone appeared to be at his apartment based on the tracking system, but the man himself wasn’t there.

  “Keep your eyes open for him and his
vehicle. As soon as the warrant is signed, I’ll let you know.”

  As the sheriff handled a few other calls, Autumn thought about Linus Ashby and their brief encounter at the community center. She still couldn’t believe the meek looking little janitor—sorry, custodian—could be the man who’d killed so many people.

  She remembered thinking that he looked fit underneath the slouch, and she hadn’t recognized his voice, even though she’d spoken to the killer on the phone not long before.

  He’d been pretending to be sick, of course. That had to be it. He was sharp enough to immediately recognize the situation he was in and come up with a believable story.

  Their killer was much smarter than just about everyone, including herself, had given him credit for. And…he was on a mission.

  Autumn was hanging on to the oh shit handle for her life by the time Carla Morton pulled up to the curb of the house instead of pulling into the driveway. About the size of a matchbox and painted a pale salmon color, it had an attached garage with a cheap, buckling door, the kind you had to haul up and down by hand.

  The driveway was cracked all to hell and the window was covered with what appeared to be thick blackout curtains. The front yard held a two-drawer file cabinet and several tarps covering cardboard boxes full of what she was sure was worthless junk. The front flowerbed was filled with trash and spinning garden decorations.

  Autumn frowned. “I stayed at a place like this once when I was a foster.”

  Carla was already getting out. “It’s practically the Waldorf Astoria. I guess I don’t have to lecture you about what it must have been like to grow up in a place like this.”

  Autumn met her at the front of the car, and they both turned to study the house. “I think I got it. Did you know that hoarding was actually classified as a subtype of obsessive-compulsive disorder until 2013?”

  “OCD? No, I didn’t know that. So, a person is driven to hold on to things?

  Autumn scanned her memory banks. “It’s not as simple as that, but that’s partly true. Hoarding disorder affects about two and a half percent of the general population, and about fifty percent of people with the disorder have comorbid depression. Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and anxiety disorders are also more prevalent among those with hoarding disorder.”

  “Don’t ADHD and depression kind of cancel each other out?”

  Autumn smiled. “You would think, but the brain doesn’t work that way. For some, ADHD and depression just happen to co-exist, but for others, the depression is a result of the ADHD. These are both comorbid conditions, which means that if a person is diagnosed with one, the odds of them also being diagnosed with the other are higher.”

  Autumn had the sheriff’s rapt attention. They didn’t really have time for an in-depth conversation of the disorders, but it would most likely help Carla better understand Emily Ashby, maybe even sympathize with her in a way that helped them communicate better.

  Carla leaned back on the hood of the vehicle. “Why?”

  “That is a very long conversation, but the nutshell of it is that many people with ADHD have low self-esteem and poor self-image caused by their ongoing feelings of being overwhelmed by life and the belief that they are failing at everything.”

  Carla snorted and rubbed her face. “That sounds like me.”

  Autumn understood that completely. “I think we all feel that way from time to time, but a person suffering from ADHD is on a type of hyperdrive, even their feelings. That can lead to depression, or the medication for the ADHD can create feelings of depression as a side effect.”

  “That sucks. Poor Linus. He was raised by a belligerent drunk and a hyperactively depressed hoarder.”

  Autumn just shrugged. She didn’t think she could sum it up any better herself.

  Carla turned to face her. “That’s really sad when you really think about it.”

  Autumn nodded. The sheriff had reined in her anger, which was a relief. They might have a better chance of having a productive conversation with the woman. Maybe.

  “On top of all that,” Carla went on, “Linus’s father died a little over four years ago.”

  A thought hit Autumn like a slap. “What was the father’s name?”

  Carla opened her mouth, then cursed. “Shit, his name was Jonah.”

  Autumn groaned and slapped her palm against her forehead. “Our caller said his father’s name was Joe, but he stopped himself before saying the entire name.”

  Carla nodded and cursed again. “That’s what I think too.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “I actually investigated his death. He was found alone in a cheap hotel, the kind with ground-floor drive-up rooms that you can rent by the month. He literally drank himself to death. He passed out and choked on his own vomit. A real winner.”

  Autumn was confused. “But Linus’s mother is clearly alive. When and why was he placed in a foster home with Helen Mathers?”

  “You’ll see for yourself in a minute why he couldn’t live at home anymore.” She waved her hand toward one of the piles of boxes. “That place is a hellhole, inside and out. Emotionally and physically. We used to be called out here all hours of the day and night for domestic disturbances, and let me tell you that Emily was just as bad at stirring things up as Jonah was.” She sighed. “I thought that once Jonah was gone, Emily would pull herself together.”

  “She didn’t,” Autumn surmised.

  “Nope. She actually got worse and the house got worse. Child services took Linus away, and he lived with Helen until he aged out at eighteen.”

  “How old was he when it happened?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “How old is he now?”

  “Almost twenty.”

  Autumn considered the story. “So, life as he knew it ended at the tender age of fifteen, and he then suffered through whatever torture Helen Mathers dished out for a few years.”

  “Then what?” Carla asked.

  Autumn turned the puzzle over and over in her mind. “Then he had a couple years for his pain to fester after leaving the system, then he began working with Marcus Webster, mentoring kids who were hurting.” It suddenly clicked. “That’s when he snapped, seeing others suffer.”

  Carla rubbed the back of her neck, looking weary to her core. “That sounds about right.” She took a deep breath and faced the door of the house again. “Let’s go in. Let’s see if Emily likes me any better now than she did a few years ago.”

  26

  As Carla marched up to the door, she felt close to being on the verge of tears. She had to pull herself together. But dammit, knowing the kind of home Linus was raised in had taken the anger right out of her sails. And she hadn’t done anything about it. That was the thing that was kicking her ass with each and every step she took.

  Dammit, how had all this been going on in her town? She felt so foolish. So blind.

  “Has she always been a hoarder?” Autumn asked as they got closer to the house.

  Carla was glad for something else to focus on for a few minutes. There were stacks and stacks of boxes on the porch. Hell, there were stacks and stacks of boxes everywhere. From her previous visits, she knew there were many mounds of different-colored tarps in the backyard too.

  “I’d say, and then it only got worse after Jonah died. Emily grew up poor, lived poor and desperate, kept everything she could get her hands on, in case it might help. She finally got free of Jonah and it seems like she didn’t know what to do with herself.”

  Autumn crossed her arms over her chest and shivered. For January, the weather wasn’t too terribly cold, but the shrink wasn’t wearing a thick jacket. It had hovered in the fifties most of the day, but the wind was picking up. “I lived with a foster family like that. Not for long.”

  Carla frowned. “You know what’s so sad about all this? We all thought Helen Mathers was a freaking saint for taking care of all those kids for so long.”

  Which was another reason she was taking all of thi
s so personally. How hadn’t she known?

  “You can only see what you can see, and people are clever. I met Linus Ashby just the other day, and I had no idea such a meek man could murder so many.”

  Carla sighed. “Let’s get this over with.” She pressed the doorbell. When it didn’t make a sound, she knocked hard enough to make the door jerk in its frame.

  “Who is it?”

  “Sheriff’s office, Mrs. Ashby. It’s me. Carla Morton.”

  After a few moments, the front door opened. Carla couldn’t see very far into the room for all the boxes stacked against the wall. Emily Ashby was a small woman with long dark hair so thin her scalp could be seen through it. She wore a pastel pink and lavender housedress covered with roses and accompanied by stained yellow terrycloth slippers. The house exhaled the scent of ancient, rancid cigarette smoke. Carla wasn’t sure if she would go inside, even if she were invited in.

  “What do you want?” Emily growled.

  Carla extended a hand. She didn’t intend to arrest the woman or search her house. This was an informal visit to gather information.

  Emily Ashby stared at the hand suspiciously. “I know who you are, Carla Morton. I remember you from the inquest into Jonah’s death.” She peered over Carla’s shoulder at Autumn. “But who’s that with you? Looks like a social worker.”

  Carla stepped aside and Autumn offered a hand. “I’m Autumn Trent. I’m consulting on a case.”

  Emily stared at the appendage as if it had grown fangs. “What are you even doing here? Is this some kind of setup?”

  “Not at all. We’re here to ask you a few questions about your son.”

  “And all the bigwigs were busy, weren’t they?” Emily snorted. “You look too young for something like this.”

  Autumn lifted her chin a fraction and gave the belligerent woman a warm smile. “Thank you for the compliment, but after spending nearly a decade in college, I can assure you that I’m plenty old enough for my job.”