by Mary Stone
Emily finally took Autumn’s hand. “Well, don’t make me your pet project or anything.”
As their palms met, Autumn stiffened and took a quick inhalation of breath. If Carla hadn’t been watching the interaction, she wouldn’t have noticed. But she had indeed noticed the young woman’s response and couldn’t help but be curious as to the cause. Just like she’d been curious when she’d intentionally moved in front of the camera to touch Helen Mathers’s arm.
Emily must have felt it too because she yanked her hand away. Maybe they’d just given each other an electric shock? Carla wasn’t certain. Most people laughed and jerked away, apologizing for the surprise.
Before she could ponder on the interaction any longer, Emily barked, “What do you want?”
“Do you know where Linus is?”
Emily reached into a pocket of her housedress and pulled out a pack of cheap off-brand cigarettes and a lighter. She lit up and let the cigarette dangle from the cracked skin of her lip.
“No. I haven’t talked to him much for the last few years. He’s got his own life now, doesn’t need his mom for squat. Once his father died, he didn’t have too much time for me.”
“Do you know where he might be?” Carla asked.
Emily exhaled smoke, turning her head away from Carla’s direction. It didn’t help much with the smell.
“What did I just say? And if I did know, I wouldn’t tell you. Not without a court order. And I don’t see you carrying any papers. Linus has enough problems without a couple of ignorant women causing more.”
Autumn stepped in. “Mrs. Ashby, just what are we missing? What are we ignorant of?”
“You don’t know what it’s like to be poor, for one thing. Or to grow up with a drunk for a father. Linus was a good boy. One of the sweet ones. But that drunk-ass Jonah messed him up. Made it so he didn’t know whether he was coming or going. Thank God that bastard died when he did, or he would have killed us both. That’s why my boy had to go to that foster home for a while.”
Carla curled her fingers into fists so she wouldn’t strike the woman for pushing all the blame on someone else.
“But he changed after that,” Emily went on. She shook her head and took another deep drag. “It was too late for Linus to grow up normal by then. I don’t know if he’ll ever get over what his father did to him.”
“Did Jonah hit him?” Autumn asked.
The older woman huffed, smoke coming out her nose. “Played him like a drum in a marching band.” Emily used both hands to beat an imaginary drum. “So, you two just leave Linus alone. He ain’t done nothing. That doesn’t mean he wouldn’t hurt himself if you cornered him. Now, if you’ll get the hell away from my house, I’m going to go walk down to the cemetery and spit on that bastard Jonah’s grave. Leave my son alone, you hear?”
She slammed the front door in their faces, leaving them standing on the front step.
Carla blinked. She hadn’t really expected the conversation to go well, but she hadn’t expected to get the door slammed in her face either.
She turned to walk back to the patrol car, shaking her head. She wasn’t exactly back at square one, but Linus hadn’t been picked up by her deputies, and his mother hadn’t given them any leads.
Autumn was quiet as they got in the car.
Carla started the engine. “Don’t feel too bad. It wasn’t likely the woman could help, especially since they haven’t been in contact with each other for so long. I suppose I better keep a patrol car running through the neighborhood, though.”
Autumn nodded, her brows still furrowed as she pressed her palms together. “A black SUV covered in decals shouldn’t be too hard to spot.”
“Exactly. I’ll get a couple of deputies knocking on doors to see if he’s been around lately.” Carla sighed and checked her watch. “Close enough to five o’clock. I’m going to call the office and check in. Then let’s say the two of us go out for supper.”
Autumn’s stomach growled, but she seemed disconnected, as if her thoughts were elsewhere. “That sounds good…anywhere’s fine.” She seemed to pull herself together. “Can I ask Winter to join us? She should be finished with Helen Mathers and can fill us in.”
“That’s a good idea.”
“Shoot. I should probably invite my boss too.” When Carla’s eyebrows went up, she added quickly, “Mike, not Adam.”
While Autumn contacted the agent and her boss, Carla called in to the office and found out exactly what she’d expected. There was zero sign of Linus Ashby. The kid seemed to have vanished. She considered inviting Laura Jane to join them but decided that she wanted to pick Autumn’s brain all by herself.
“Winter will be there shortly and told me what she wanted. Mike can’t make it, so it’ll just be us girls.”
Carla was a bit disappointed that the handsome psychologist wouldn’t be joining them but decided now wasn’t the time to crush on anyone. She was too old for that anyway. Too tired, at least.
The restaurant filled the whole northwest corner of Seventh and Main in downtown Sawmill. It had been faced with marble and plaster back in the 1880s when Sawmill was growing and flourishing. Carla parked across the street in front of the old opera house. It had been more of a vaudeville house than anything, putting on all kinds of entertainment. Now, it was apartments on the upper two floors with boutique shops below.
As they were seated at a table, Autumn inhaled deeply. “It smells good in here.”
“Not as fancy as on the East Coast, but they do all right. You should see this place in the summer. The line goes out the door from all the tourists.”
“Tourists? In Sawmill?”
Carla chuckled at Autumn’s astonished expression. “The highway leads out to the coast. In Oregon, the second it stops raining…” she chuckled again, “and even if it doesn’t, you head straight for the coast.”
They placed their orders. Carla got the chicken schnitzel with cheddar garlic mashed potatoes and soda. Autumn ordered an enormous burger with bacon and bleu cheese along with a glass of iced tea. She ordered the exact same thing for Winter.
“What I wouldn’t give for a glass of wine,” Carla mused.
Autumn smiled. “I’d go for the ‘strong dark’ from the local Hood River brewer.”
Carla wrinkled her nose. “That’d probably put hair on your chest.”
Autumn grinned. “My aunt owns a bar. I bartended all the way through school. I drink weird beers for fun.”
Carla wouldn’t have guessed it. Although Autumn had been supportive and competent since her arrival, she hadn’t opened up much. She mentally filed away the image of Autumn trying to keep up with a bunch of spring breakers and decided that there was more to her than a background in the foster system and a couple of advanced degrees.
“Ironic that we’re talking about drinks right after we just learned about the evils of alcoholism from Emily Ashby.”
“I’m pretty sure Jonah Ashby would have been evil even if he hadn’t been a drunk.”
Carla snorted, slapping the table with her palm. “Isn’t that true, though? And you never even met the man.”
They kept the conversation light until Winter arrived, the food right on her heels. As they dug in, they briefed each other on what they’d accomplished.
“That damn hag needs to be hung from the rafters like a piñata so every foster kid who ever lived with her can get a good whack,” Winter spit out just before taking a huge bite of her burger. “We’re going to throw every charge we possibly can at the woman. With any luck, she won’t see daylight again.”
They were far enough from the other occupied tables that they didn’t have to worry about being overheard, as long as they kept their voices low.
“How long did she say she knew about Linus killing people?” Carla asked.
Winter snorted. “She swears it was right after the Rose family was killed. She said that Linus called her in a panic because he’d accidently killed the boy, and she said she begged him to turn him
self in and tell her where Gina was.”
Autumn rolled her eyes. “Why didn’t she call the police herself?”
Winter’s face turned to stone, and Carla was glad she was on the good side of the law. “Because she was too busy beating on kids.”
They were quiet for a few moments. Autumn dragged a fry through a big pile of ketchup. “I can’t get away from the idea that Linus is getting ready to kill again. I wish I’d known it was him I’d been talking to. I wish I’d been able to talk to him longer.”
“Don’t go beating yourself up about that.” Carla wagged a finger at her. “I didn’t even believe it was our real killer until more than halfway through the call. I’ll never understand why crackpots try to take credit for something like that. And why would a real murderer call in to chat? This case is crazy.”
Carla had been with the sheriff’s office for almost two decades, both as deputy and sheriff. She hadn’t stopped caring about the people she served, but she had long since stopped being naïve about them. Nobody survived the justice system with their heart on their sleeve.
“Is there a way to warn people going through a divorce with children?” Winter asked.
Carla cut off a piece of chicken, savoring the tender breaded cutlet and the rich mushroom sauce. “We could go through the records of everyone applying for a divorce and start calling folks.”
“That would help, but with the Rose family, they were just thinking about it and he took them out.” Autumn’s fry was nearly drowned in the red sauce by now. “So, we have a young boy with two mentally ill parents who are very dysfunctional. But from Linus’s perspective, they are a family nonetheless. The mother kicks the father out, and bam…”
“It all falls apart,” Winter finished for her.
“Exactly. The father died. His mother fell apart. He ended up in the foster system with who else…?” Autumn bobbed her eyebrows.
“Helen Mathers.” Winter and Carla said the name together.
Autumn finally ate the fry, then attacked the burger like she was starving.
Carla made some progress on her chicken before sitting back and watching the headlights passing outside the windows. “We made some headway today, but I’m left wondering what to do next.”
She had only been thinking out loud, but Autumn took her seriously. “I need to interview Lisa Hill and Ashley if she’s well enough. You never know what kids in a house overhear. I’d also like to interview people at the community center.” She looked at her watch. “Damn, they’re probably closing soon.”
Carla noted the time. “Yeah. We’ll have to do that in the morning.”
“What about the kids who took Marcus Webster’s class? They’d know Marcus for sure, and some might even know Linus, right?”
Carla nodded and stared at her plate. She wasn’t sure how to sum up her opinion of Marcus. He had been a complex character, a lot of good in him but a lot of bad too. She had been trying to avoid the thought of Marcus as a man, so she could focus on the case. But now that Linus was officially a suspect, it was harder to put off thoughts of him. They hadn’t been close, but she’d met the man over a couple of juvie cases and liked him.
Carla closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. “I thought Marcus was doing good work with those kids.”
“He sounds like a good man,” Winter offered.
Carla shook her head. “If he was, it didn’t come naturally. I’d say he was the kind of man who walked a thin line between compassion and selfishness. He struggled.”
“Good people struggle too.”
Autumn might be wise for her young age, but she didn’t have a sheriff’s experience of the world. Truly good people didn’t struggle to be good. Not the way Marcus Webster had struggled.
But a truly good man wouldn’t have been able to reach those kids, either.
She would miss the man. They weren’t close, but she had respected him. And either way, no human being deserved to die the way he had. Neither had his wife.
Carla sighed. “While you’re at the community center, let me know if you spot or hear of anyone who fits the profile of our victims, and I’ll send someone out to check up on them, warn them to be careful.”
“Since the community center also offers couple counseling sessions, that might be more than a few people,” Autumn warned. “Can you get a warrant for the names of couples who have attended those sessions over the past three months, at least?”
Carla frowned, her glass halfway to her lips. “Yeah, I can do that, but what about the previous murders? The ones in other parts of the state?”
Winter ran her finger through the condensation on her glass. “That’s confused me too. We’ll need to establish alibis for Linus for those dates and those locations. On the flight over, I went through all the media coverage from those cases.”
Carla snorted. “That must have taken most of the trip.”
Winter sighed wearily. “Most of it. In one article, I spotted a reference to blue vinyl rope. In another separate article, there was a reference to a handcuff knot.”
Carla froze. That opened up a whole new can of worms. “Son of a bitch. You mean those facts had been leaked to the press?”
Winter nodded, meeting her gaze. “Both references were from the first case, the Johnstons, so a very clever person could have researched that crime scene and duplicated it here.”
Carla looked between Winter and Autumn. “Is Linus that clever?”
Autumn lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know that yet, but it’s possible. He certainly has covered his tracks very well. Another possibility is that he wanted to test his abilities away from his hometown first.”
“He didn’t want to shit where he ate,” Carla filled in. “That sounds…right.”
“I agree. So, Linus somehow learns of other couples with kids struggling with divorce. He takes a road trip and avenges the child or children. Then he targets closer to home when he has honed his skills a little better.”
Carla pulled out her iPad and began swiping through the screen. When she found the Johnstons’s autopsy report, she paused. “Yes…the coroner who autopsied the Johnston couple stated that the initial stab wounds appeared to be hesitant.”
Autumn sat up straighter, looking less tired than she had a moment ago. “There were no hesitation wounds for the Websters because—”
“He had some practice under his belt,” Winter finished for her.
“Exactly.” Autumn took a long drink of her tea. “And he’s escalating.”
“Because he’s afraid of getting caught before his mission is complete?” Winter asked.
Autumn’s hands fell to the table with a clunk. “Possibly. Or maybe because things didn’t go exactly as planned at the Rose’s home. He killed a child.”
Carla nodded. “Yes. A first.”
Winter held up a hand. “Let’s go back. We learned that Gina Webster was supposed to have been gone most of the night of New Year’s Eve with her boyfriend, Kyle Murphy, so we can theorize that Linus planned the attack for when Gina wouldn’t be home, but then he was surprised when Gina was there, so he had no choice but to take her.”
“Exactly.” Autumn pulled out her own iPad but didn’t power it on. “At some point, he managed to overtake Kyle Murphy and kill him as well.” She looked at Carla. “How far away from the Webster home is the lake in which Kyle’s Jeep was found?”
“Not far. The Websters lived right on the edge of the county, so maybe only half a mile or so.”
Autumn drummed her fingers on the table. “So, if Kyle surprised him the night he killed the Websters and took Gina, then it wouldn’t have been too terribly difficult for him to drive Kyle to the lake, dump him and the Jeep, then run back to the Webster home and whisk Gina away.”
Carla thought it through. “Yeah. As far out of town as the Websters lived and as isolated as they were, that is very doable. An hour max.”
Winter pushed her half-eaten meal away. “So now, Linus has a teenage girl on his hands that he w
asn’t expecting.”
Carla’s spirit plummeted. “Or not. He might have gotten rid of her and was messing with us on the phone.”
Autumn’s mouth tightened. “True, but Nancy Gaines said that he had a crush on Gina, so maybe not. He must be torn and panicking and not sure what to do.”
Winter nodded. “Right. Now, Linus has his secret crush, who may or may not know that he killed her boyfriend. His secret crush who certainly knows he killed her parents.”
Autumn sighed. “True, but I don’t think this is about the kids. It’s about the parents. I think he’ll try to keep her alive and take care of her, but if she makes that impossible, then yes, he might lash out to silence her, especially if she makes it abundantly clear that she doesn’t return his feelings. If he does that, he will be filled with remorse, which could cause him to escalate even more.”
Carla rolled her head on her neck. “Awesome. Just what we need.”
The psychologist gave her a wan smile. “We’ll find him, and we’ll find her as well.”
Carla glanced at Winter, who didn’t look as optimistic, then watched Autumn finish her last few fries. “I always hope that someone’s going to provide me a magic bullet and solve the tough ones for me. But this isn’t a newspaper crossword puzzle, and there are no answers on the back page.”
Winter chuckled. “Yeah, my crystal ball is severely cracked. So is my magic wand.”
Speaking of magic…
It had been on the tip of Carla’s tongue to ask Autumn about her encounter with Linus’s mother, but she wasn’t quite sure how to ask the question. Was now even the time? Maybe she should wait until they were alone?
She decided that her curiosity couldn’t hold, so she went for it. “Autumn, I’ve been wanting to ask you something. When you shook hands with Emily Ashby, you seemed to freeze for a second. What happened?”
Autumn and Winter exchanged a quick glance, then Autumn wiped her mouth and fingers with a napkin. Carla couldn’t help to think it was a delay tactic. When those green eyes met hers, Carla felt pinned to her seat.
“Do you believe in intuition?”
Carla snorted. “Of course. Every good cop lives or dies from it.”