by S W Vaughn
The missed calls from the chief were the only ones in his call log.
Strange. Either he never made or received any calls at all before Chief Palmer called this morning, which was practically impossible, or he’d erased his call record. Most people didn’t bother doing that.
I shrugged and moved on to the texts. Like the calls, there was only one text thread. It was from a number that showed up as Private, and the last unread message was the only one showing. It said simply: You OK?
Frowning, I tapped on the message to expand the thread.
My stomach churned as I read the texts, which started at just after eleven last night.
D: Picked him up again. Gas station, exit 34 off R81N
Private: Which gas station?
D: Only one. R off exit, 500ft
Private: Keep him there. 10 min.
D: Shit he recognized me hurry
Private: 8 min KEEP HIM THERE.
Private: He still there?
D: In the bathroom
Private: Do NOT let him leave
D: Just hurry
Private: Well?
Private: You OK?
Goddamn it. Donnie-boy had been the one selling me out.
I tried to tell myself it was because he was a cop. He’d randomly bumped into me and texted a buddy, maybe a local in that area, for backup. That was probably why he’d lied to me about going on vacation — if he already knew who I was and what I did, there was no way he’d tell me he was law enforcement transferring to a different state.
But I knew better. He hadn’t been messaging another cop.
He’d been talking to Nicky Franzella.
That explained the cash, at least. The families in New York all had cops on their payroll, so Donnie must’ve been one of them. It made a lot more sense than the idea that poor, dumb-ass, easy manipulated Jake Paladino had somehow been able to keep tracking me while I moved around the city. Cops could do that shit — use traffic cameras, follow license plates, flush people out of hiding.
I thought back to the gas station, to Donnie’s SUV pulling in not five minutes after me.
He’d been following me the whole time, updating Nicky on my whereabouts. He never tried to take me out himself, though.
No doubt Nicky had insisted that pleasure was to be reserved for his men.
A shudder worked its way up my spine. What a sellout son of a bitch. Good thing I’d never actually considered Donnie my friend, or I’d be really pissed off right now.
I pocketed the phone and headed out to finish that asshole’s job.
Chapter Twelve
Preston
Preston glared at the black-and-white clock on the wall, which now read just after three, and then at the station doors. Where the hell was Detective North?
She drummed her fingers on the desk and frowned at nothing. Just like the last time, this case was going nowhere fast. The canvassing interviews from Chelsea Mathers’ neighborhood were all in, and no one had noticed anything unusual. Tommy Brand hadn’t found anything promising at the scene to test — though he was going to test everything anyway.
Their M.E. had the body. The autopsy would take time. The lab had the victim’s phone. Again, more time. The boyfriend was sedated and unavailable for interview at the hospital, and the parents had only been able to endure a few questions through their grief.
Not that she blamed them for that.
She couldn’t make any progress on Jane Doe’s case, either. Though the lab had the remains of the girl found in the woods, there was almost no chance the medical examiner had been able to complete so much as a visual inspection, let alone the tests required to possibly identify the body, before the second murder had been reported and became an even higher priority than the first — pushing Jane Doe further onto the back burner.
The one thing she’d been able to confirm had arrived in her email half an hour ago, an answer to inquiries she’d sent out before Chelsea Mathers’ body was found. She had a name and a little background information on the owner of the big, creepy house on TR-28. Eleanor Schilz. The woman had apparently taken in a number of foster children over the years, until she’d been arrested twenty-two years ago and sentenced to prison for several counts of child abuse, neglect, and reckless endangerment. She’d been released two months ago.
But the records were incomplete. According to the email from the county office, Eleanor Schliz’s foster care files had been ‘misplaced’ and they were ‘looking into the situation,’ and at the moment they were ‘unable to confirm’ how many kids she’d taken in or what their names were.
So the information did nothing to help Jane Doe’s case. Whoever the girl had been, she may or may not have had anything to do with that house, or that woman.
Another dead end in a long, frustrating line of them.
As Preston started to go over the canvassing interviews yet again, keeping half an eye on the door in case Detective North deigned to grace them with his presence, her phone rang. She glanced at it, and then smirked as she answered, “Hey, sis.”
“Oh my God, Prez, are you okay?” Bethy’s voice came breathlessly through the line, and Preston’s heart sank a little. She knew. And if her sister knew about the second murder already, chances were most of the Junction did, too. So much for media damage control — keeping horrific news like this away from newspapers and television wasn’t very helpful in a town this size, where the old-fashioned grapevine had always existed, but was now super-powered by social media.
People thought small towns were still clueless and backwards when it came to technology, but the truth was that in rural areas like this, where having a running vehicle was an absolute necessity because nothing was within walking distance and Uber was just the punchline of a joke about city people, cell phones and online social networks were a godsend. It was true that most of the folks in town loved their gossip — and what better way to spread it faster than ever, when you could just tap a few buttons and tell everyone about that thing you just heard from your cousin’s best friend’s aunt? There was no more having to wait until you ran into that know-it-all Mildred from church at the grocery store to spill the latest dirt on whoever you heard it about. In Landstaff Junction, everybody was connected. Everybody’s great-grandmother and crazy old uncle had Facebook and used it, and they could all fire off a group text faster than the average smartphone-addicted high school student.
And just like the old-fashioned grapevine, the truth often got lost in the relay, until ‘Johnny got drunk and fought with Lydia and walked out on her at the Roadhouse the other night’ became ‘Johnny beat the shit out of Lydia and left her and the kids and skipped town’ — and then the rumor circled back to a baffled Johnny, who was at home building a treehouse with the kids after having bought Lydia flowers to apologize for being an ass in public.
But when it came to these murders, there was very little exaggeration that could be worse than the truth.
Preston frowned a bit and finally answered her sister. “I’m fine,” she said. “You worry too much, you know that?”
“No, I don’t worry enough,” Bethy clarified almost primly. “It’s so awful about Chelsea. I can’t believe it.”
Her frown deepened. “Did you know her?”
She could almost hear Bethy shaking her head. “Not really. I mean, I talked to her a few times at Crazy Susan’s, you know, like one of my friends knew one of her friends and we were all kind of hanging out. Plus, she went to my church. But that’s not the point, Prez. Her and Lynn were both…”
Her sister trailed off, but Preston knew exactly what she’d been about to say. Bethy knew just enough about these murders and the Kid Glove Killer victims to be scared for an entirely different reason.
Truth be told, Preston was scared too. Especially after the second victim here. The killer had a type: blonde hair and blue eyes. Which put Preston squarely into the type range.
But she wouldn’t let that stop her from doing her job.
&nbs
p; “I promise that I’m fine,” she said, and then changed the subject. “So, I hear you met Donovan North.”
“Oh my God,” Bethy said again, but this time her tone had taken a one-eighty turn from worried to gushing. “He’s so … I mean, he’s …” She stopped and sighed. “I know you don’t want to like him.”
The way she said it, the words she chose, made Preston squirm, because it was so close to the truth about the way she felt — which wasn’t fair, and she knew it. She was predisposed not to like North. It colored everything she felt about him, every interaction, every suspicion. She really should lay off and get to know him better before she passed judgment.
But she probably wouldn’t.
“It’s not that,” she lied. “He seems okay.”
“Good, because he’s so freakin’ hot!” Bethy announced like she’d been waiting to say that for ages, even though she’d only met the man last night. “And his voice, that accent … oh, I could die.”
Preston rolled her eyes, glad that her sister couldn’t see it through the phone. He wasn’t that good-looking. “Better not let Rylan hear you say that,” she said.
“Aww, Ry knows I wuv his adorable face,” Bethy giggled. She and Rylan Sewell had been together since their senior year of high school — ten years now. And still no marriage proposal on the horizon, much to the disappointment of both their mothers. But they were happy with the way things were, and that was what counted. “Anyway, I wasn’t thinking about me. I meant —”
“Don’t,” Preston said in a clipped tone.
Bethy sighed. “A friend, Prez. That’s all,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with having friends, you know.”
She wanted to say that she did have friends. It was just hard to make time to hang out with them because of her job, especially since the promotion. But she knew that was just an excuse. She’d stopped spending time with her friends long before she made detective — because her friends had been Paul’s friends too, and it hurt to be around them without him.
“Anyway,” Bethy said, as if she’d sensed that Preston didn’t want to talk about this, “I’ll see you at Mom and Dad’s for dinner tonight, right?”
Preston held back a sigh. Monday night was always Goble family dinner night, and all three adult children — Bethy, Preston, and their brother David — were expected to attend at their parents’ house, the same house where they’d all grown up. It wasn’t really a chore, and usually she didn’t mind, but tonight wouldn’t be easy for so many reasons.
“I’m going to be working late tonight, Bethy,” she said in a low voice. “I don’t know if I’ll make it over.”
“You have to! Come on, dinner isn’t until nine,” her sister cajoled.
“We’ll see.” She really couldn’t commit, because she had no idea how long she’d end up following every possible lead, however slim — or how exhausted she would be when the day was done. “I promise I’ll try, okay?”
“Okay, but Mom and Dad will be really upset if you don’t come.”
There went her eyes, rolling again. She was about to explain — as if Bethy didn’t know — that they had dinner together every week, and their parents wouldn’t proclaim her dead to the family if she missed one stupid Monday night, when the station doors opened and Detective Donovan ‘I’ve-got-better-things-to-do’ North strolled in.
About damned time.
“Hey, Bethy, I have to go,” she said into the phone. “I’ll call you later, okay? Love you.”
She barely gave her sister the chance to reply ‘love you too’ before she ended the call.
Now, maybe, she could actually get something done.
Chapter Thirteen
Marco
As I followed the phone’s GPS directions to the Landstaff Junction Community Police Department, I’d found my salvation in the form of a shining beacon of mass consumerism: lovely, familiar Dunkin. The boxy little white building squashed onto the corner of Main Street and Wilson Avenue was the most welcome sight I’d laid my eyes on since I came to this town, and there was no chance I wasn’t hitting the drive-thru on the way past.
While I was there, Oren Beauford managed to turn up in his hulking green pickup — apparently just to glare at me as I pulled out of the parking lot. If I was a paranoid man, I’d have thought he was following me.
Around twenty after three, I walked into the station armed with an extra-large coffee and immediately felt a piercing thousand-yard stare that burned right through me, even before I caught sight of Detective Clarke glowering from across a jumbled warren of desks that filled the space behind the main counter. The look was so intense that I wondered if I’d managed to piss her off further in the past few hours without even being here.
And I thought the answer was probably yes. She didn’t seem to need a reason for being angry with me.
The main counter ran along the back of a decent-sized waiting room at the entrance of the station, serving as a barrier between public and public servants. This section was worlds away from the front end of New York police departments, which I’d unwillingly visited a time or two. The reception area looked more like a doctor’s or dentist’s waiting room, with bright walls and cushioned armchairs and tables stacked with magazines, even a coffee pot and a water cooler — whereas the NYPD’s public areas were dark and deliberately uninviting. Here, a total of two people sat calmly waiting for whatever they’d come to do. In the city, the police station activity might be generously described as a zoo where all the animals had escaped their cages and started wandering around the place, most of them either confused and scared, or angry and looking to bite.
A middle-aged woman wearing a blue blouse and a bored expression sat behind the counter, watching me as I approached. She offered a vaguely polite smile when I stopped in front of her. “You must be Detective North.”
“The badge gave it away, didn’t it?” I smiled back, but either she didn’t get the joke or she wasn’t prepared to be amused, because she failed to react. “Yes, that’s me,” I said. “And you are?”
“Vonda Clafferty.” She stared at me for a beat. “We do have a back door to the bullpen from the staff lot,” she said, the polite smile still fixed in place. “You didn’t have to walk all the way around the building.”
“Right. I must’ve missed that.” I decided not to mention that I’d parked in the front and had no idea there was a staff lot. “Well, I’ll just go on back from here,” I said, and pointed at a door off to the right of the waiting area. It was the only other door in the room besides the entrance to the building. “Through there, right?”
Vonda’s fixed smile dipped a fraction. “That would be the restrooms.”
Before I could wedge my foot any further in my mouth, a male voice called, “Detective!” from somewhere beyond the counter. I looked past the now-unsmiling receptionist and saw Senior Officer August Farnsworth weaving his way around desks toward me, waving enthusiastically with one hand while the other clutched an oversized paperback book.
‘My’ book. The one he wanted me to autograph.
I cleared my throat to cover the sigh that attempted to emerge and pulled on what I hoped was a pleased expression. “Officer Farnsworth,” I said in greeting.
“Please, call me August.” He came right up to the opposite side of the counter, grabbed the edge of it, and pulled up. A hinged section lifted and formed a gap leading to the bullpen. “Come on back,” August grinned.
I shot a glance at Vonda Clafferty, who shrugged as if to say I could’ve told you, but I didn’t.
“Thanks,” I said to the eager officer as I walked through, and he lowered the counter behind me.
August beamed for another few minutes, and then ducked his head and scuffed a foot along the cheap carpet that covered the bullpen floor. He had both hands on the book now, bending and flexing the pages in an absent rhythm. “Could you …” he began without meeting my eyes.
He must’ve really enjoyed the book. The real Donovan North probably
would’ve been touched, if he hadn’t been a mafia sellout of a cop.
But I wasn’t going to ruin anyone’s illusions about old Donnie-boy.
After all, I was supposed to be him.
Instead of waiting for August to spit the rest of it out, I smiled and said, “Got a pen?”
His head came up, and the beaming expression returned. “Oh, you bet!” the other man said as he produced one from his pants pocket, and then handed me both pen and book. “Thank you so much, sir. This is amazing.”
I worked to maintain a pleased face, which felt wooden as I got a look at the thing he’d given me. The cover was, for want of a better word, ugly. Across the top, printed in eye-watering bright yellow letters against a black background, was Stab and Shoot: The Hyperbolic Paradigm of Serial Killers in the Modern Epoch. I wasn’t entirely sure what at least three of those words meant … and I didn’t think Donnie had been, either. The name Donovan North ran across the bottom in all capital letters, the same bright yellow as the title. Between the title and name was a big light-gray box split diagonally in half, with a picture of a gun in the top half and a butcher knife with badly Photoshopped blood splatters all over it in the bottom half.
The book itself was rumpled and dog-eared, the binding heavily creased, as if it’d been read and re-read a hundred times. None of the pages seemed to lie flat anymore.
Still trying to smile, I flipped the cover open to a copyright page, and carefully turned it. The next page was just the title and author name with plenty of white space, so I hoped that was the correct place to sign. I clicked the pen open, thought for a few seconds, and wrote: To my friend and fellow police officer, August. Looking forward to working with you. As if I had any idea how authors were supposed to autograph books. Then I signed the same D-squiggle N-squiggle I’d used when I checked into the resort and looked at August. “How’s that?” I asked.