by S W Vaughn
I shrugged and dropped my attention to the phone, so I could close the app. “Hope it get us somewhere,” I said as I swiped the voice recorder screen away.
That was when I noticed that I had a new unread text.
“Do you want to head out to the car?” Detective Clarke said. “The chief is working on getting us a warrant to arrest Loomis, and she should be calling me back any minute.”
“That fast?” I said, only half my attention on her. The text worried me. I had no idea what to do if the private number had sent another message, because it almost had to be Nicky. And if it was, and ‘Donovan’ kept refusing to answer him, he’d be furious.
Possibly furious enough to track ‘Donovan’ down — and find out that he wasn’t Donovan anymore.
Clarke smiled. “There are a few things we can do faster than the NYPD,” she said. “Getting warrants is one of them, because everyone in the department knows the judge. And Loomis was already a suspect, so there’s probable cause.”
“Oh. Good,” I said, and meant it, though I didn’t mean the next thing that came out of my mouth. “Okay if I meet you out there in a minute? I just need a quick bathroom break. That coffee went right through me.”
“All right. Hurry,” she said.
As she turned and walked back down the hall, I headed in the opposite direction where I’d noticed restrooms outside the nurses’ station, just past Coleman’s room. The men’s room was single occupancy, an open space with a toilet, urinal, and sink. I went in and locked the door, and held my breath as I opened the text message.
It wasn’t from Nicky. It was much worse.
I see you. I know who you are, and I know who you’re NOT. Expose me, and I will expose you. ‘Detective.’
My mouth went dry and a shiver traced my spine. The sender wasn’t Private, and it wasn’t part of the previous message thread between Nicky and the real Donovan North. This one was separate and had come from BLOCKED.
The killer had sent this message.
I see you. What the hell was that supposed to mean — that I’d met the killer? That he was watching me right now, that he was here in the hospital? Or just that he’d laid eyes on me at some point after I’d arrived in town? It could have been anyone. At least, anyone with access to the internet where Chief Palmer had plastered my number on the police department website. Which was everyone.
I deleted the message, and the thread between Donovan and probably-Nicky, just in case someone managed to get hold of this phone. Maybe some lab tech could have traced that text and found the killer, but I couldn’t take the chance of showing anyone the message and blowing my cover. I flushed the toilet, even though I hadn’t used it, and then washed my hands. I had to stay calm.
Not an easy feat when I could practically feel a gun pressed to the back of my head.
And if I caught the killer, he’d pull the trigger and take me down with him.
Chapter Sixteen
Preston
Scott Loomis lived about three miles south of downtown Landstaff Junction, on Kioga Street off County Route 48. Preston had already been to his house enough times that she didn’t need the GPS to find it, and once they picked up the executed warrant from the station, she’d turned on the lights and siren of the unmarked car and sped straight there.
The excitement over identifying a suspect with a connection to both victims had given way to fury. They’d had the son of a bitch in custody before, but they let him go.
And he’d killed someone else.
North had barely said a word since they left the hospital. Now, as she screeched to a halt in front of Loomis’s pale beige split-level ranch and threw the car into park, he cast a concerned look at her. “This guy might not be the killer, you know,” he said. “He had an alibi.”
“Yes. From his girlfriend, who he was cheating on his fiancé with.” Preston’s mouth twisted in disgust as she recalled the blithe way Loomis had trotted that little gem out, a week after Lynn Reynolds’ death. After he’d had plenty of time to get his story straight and make sure his girlfriend — also a blonde — had it down, too.
So she’d already known Loomis was a scumbag. She just hadn’t been able to make the leap from there to killer, until Donovan North and his photographic memory, or whatever he had that let him recall tiny, insignificant details at will, came along.
She’d have to try not to resent him for that.
“There’s a world of difference between a disrespectful asshole and a killer,” North said, searching her face as if he could read the guilt written there, on the lines between the anger. “This doesn’t necessarily mean you let the wrong man go.”
“And it doesn’t mean I didn’t.” She was close to seething, aware that what she’d said didn’t make much sense but not bothering to try and correct herself. “Let’s just bring him in, okay? We can sort out the rest once he’s in custody.”
She tried not to think too hard about the fact that the suspect’s pristinely restored, fire-engine-red Camaro wasn’t here and there was a better-than-average chance he wasn’t even home to be arrested. It was almost six. If he wasn’t here right now, he probably would be soon. Hopefully. And she’d wait for him as long as it took.
Detective North frowned, but he reached for the door handle. “All right.”
She was out of the car fast, headed for the front door while North was still climbing onto the curb. When she reached the stoop, she waited until the other detective caught up, and then rang the doorbell, one hand on the butt of her gun.
“There’s no car in the driveway,” North said. “No garage, either.”
“I know.” She rang the doorbell again, and then started knocking. “Mr. Loomis?” she said loudly. “It’s Detective Clarke. I’m here about Lynn.”
North looked from her to the door and back. “I don’t think anyone’s home.”
“He could be,” she snapped. “Maybe he knows we’re onto him. He could be hiding in there somewhere.”
“What are you going to do if he doesn’t answer, kick down the door?”
“I might. I have a warrant.”
She rang the doorbell. Knocked. Shouted.
No response.
North sighed. “He’s not here,” he said. “Listen, do you know what kind of car he drives?”
“Shouldn’t you know that?” she retorted, partly aware that she was being irrational. “It was in the report somewhere. And you seem to have a photographic memory.”
He shook his head. “I don’t, really. It’s … something else,” he said, a frown tugging at his mouth. “Can you just tell me about his car?”
She almost sniped at him again, but she stopped short, closed her eyes and took a deep breath. There was no need to take her frustration out on him, when she was actually upset with herself. Besides, hadn’t she just said less than an hour ago that they were on the same side? She wanted to catch the killer. So did he.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “He has a restored ’78 Camaro. Bright red.”
Detective North nodded and closed his eyes for a moment. He smiled when he opened them. “Burdick’s Tavern. We drove past it on the way here,” he said. “That car was in the parking lot.”
Preston gaped at him, but she couldn’t help smiling back. “How do you do that?”
“Lots of practice,” he said distantly as he looked away from her, and darkness flashed through his expression. But then it was gone and he was heading for the car. “Let’s go bring that asshole in.”
This time, she was the one rushing to keep up.
She started the car, backed into the empty driveway, and gunned it down the road. She didn’t bother with the lights and sirens. If Loomis was at a bar, he wasn’t likely to leave the place anytime soon.
This nightmare could be over today.
Even as she raced down the county road, headed back toward town as fast as possible, her instincts told her that it wasn’t over. That Scott Loomis wasn’t the answer. Yes, she’d suspected he was lying ab
out his alibi, and it seemed clear from the cut grass and the errant business card that he’d been to Chelsea Mathers’ home, but none of that meant he was definitely the killer. It was all circumstantial.
Did she really want to be one of those cops? The ones who didn’t care whether a suspect actually committed a crime or not, as long as they could make the evidence fit enough to get a conviction? No. She didn’t want that.
But she did want to be thorough. Right now, that meant bringing in the suspect and questioning him.
Even if his only crime was making false statements and being an all-around scumbag.
“There,” Detective North said when Burdick’s Tavern came into view, pointing toward the back parking lot and the bright red classic car that Loomis bragged about endlessly, even when he was being interviewed about his fiancé’s murder. “That’s the one, right?”
Preston nodded. Burdick’s was on a corner with the building facing Main Street, but the lot was fairly large and had three entrances — one opening onto Main, the other two connecting with Summer Street. Already there were quite a few vehicles parked here, more than two dozen including Loomis’s gleaming muscle car.
“You okay?” North asked as she pulled up to park at the curb in front of the place.
For some reason the question irritated her. She wanted to snap that she was fine, of course she was, why wouldn’t she be okay — but she wasn’t. Not really. And part of her hated him for noticing. “I’ll be fine, once we have Loomis in custody,” she said.
He nodded and watched her. Waiting to follow her lead.
She wasn’t sure she wanted to be in front of this one.
But she got out, stepped onto the sidewalk, and waited until he came around the car to join her. “I know you weren’t here when we interviewed Loomis before,” she said as she started for the entrance to the place. “You know what he looks like, though?”
“Yeah. Saw his picture with the reports, and on the board at the station,” North said. “Big guy, dark hair, crooked nose, million-dollar teeth.”
“That’s him.” Loomis did have a disarming smile.
And when they walked into the dimly-lit tavern, she spotted him right away, using that smile on a pretty young blonde at the bar. A blonde that definitely wasn’t the girlfriend who’d given him an alibi.
All Preston could see was a possible killer chatting up a potential victim.
It made her careless.
“Scott Loomis!” she shouted over the chatter and activity of the bar. Her voice rang out louder than she expected, and most of the background noise ebbed away as Loomis snapped his head around. His eyes widened when they found her.
“Shit,” North said under his breath. “He’s going to run.”
She frowned. “What—”
It was all she got out before Loomis sprang from the bar stool and bolted toward the back of the building, almost pushing the blonde he’d been chatting up to the floor on his way.
North was already sprinting after him before she knew what was happening.
She cursed and took off as the noise in the bar swelled with confusion, exclamations, and people shifting around, trying to either get out of the way or follow the unexpected action. “Move it!” she heard North shout just ahead of her, and saw him elbowing his way through a knot of gawkers who’d turned to watch Loomis flee.
Their suspect had a strong head start, and he was yanking the back door open when North still hadn’t gotten halfway across the place and she was two tables behind the other detective. The loud buzz of an alarm filled the bar, adding to the panic — apparently, the back door was an emergency exit.
There was no time to calm the onlookers, though. Loomis was getting away.
Somehow Preston managed to fight her way through to North, and they both reached the back door at the same time. He held it open for her, and she rushed outside to a gunning engine and the squeal of tires as the red Camaro lurched forward, accelerating across the parking lot toward Summer Street.
“Damn it!” she shouted as she broke left along the building. “Come on, we have to get back to the car. We can catch him—”
There was a blur of motion as Detective North sprinted out into the gravel lot toward the fleeing Camaro. Loomis had already swung into the turn onto Summer, his tires spraying stones and dirt as the car’s back end slid out and snapped into place.
North had his gun out.
She watched in stunned silence as the detective bolted on a diagonal across the lot and leaped the double-rail wooden fence that ran between the two Summer Street entrances without slowing, like an Olympic runner clearing a hurdle. He half-twisted in mid-air and landed on the road, directly facing the back end of the rapidly accelerating muscle car.
Two shots rang out. Two explosions followed as the back tires burst and the Camaro fishtailed wildly, the back end bouncing and lurching up into a dangerous tilt. Then the screech of brakes, rubber tracks burning into the asphalt as the car wobbled to a stop.
Holy shit. They definitely didn’t teach that in the academy.
Preston broke into a run after North, who was walking calmly toward the disabled car as he replaced the gun in his holster. He reached it before she caught up, just as the driver’s side door swung open and Loomis burst out with a snarl, blood trickling down the side of his face. “You shot my fucking car!” the bleeding man roared as he drew back a ham-sized fist.
North caught the swing and jerked Loomis’s arm up and back, forcing him around with apparent ease to slam him face-first into the side of the Camaro. Within seconds, he’d pinned both the man’s wrists behind his back and held them as he struggled. “And you ran from the police,” he said. “I guess we’re even.”
When Preston finally reached them, North flashed her a smile. “You got any handcuffs? Think I left mine at the hotel.”
He wasn’t even breathing hard.
She shook her head with a smirk, pulled the cuffs from her belt, and snapped them on Loomis’s considerably thick wrists. “So, is that how you do things in New York?”
“Sometimes.” He shrugged and glanced back at the bar. “What should we do about them?”
She followed his gaze to find a small, but rapidly growing, crowd of people spilling from the back door of Burdick’s Tavern, most of them staring and pointing and talking all at once. It was a serious case of the lookie-loos. High-speed car escapes and shootouts in the street were not things that happened in Landstaff Junction. The whole town would be talking about this — probably for years to come, the way they still talked about Greg Hardesty’s drunken Dukes of Hazzard flight over the side of the creek bridge.
“We should call in for someone to take statements,” she said. “I’m not hanging around here. We’ve got a suspect to process.”
Scott Loomis, who’d gone quiet for a minute, renewed his struggles. “Suspect for what?” he nearly shrilled. “I was just having a goddamned drink!”
“For the murder of Chelsea Mathers and Lynn Reynolds,” Preston intoned as she jerked him upright and steered him into a shuffling walk. She didn’t even need North’s help with that — her anger and disgust gave her strength. “You have the right to remain silent.”
Her heart sank a little as she recited the rest of the Miranda warning. Even the fact that he’d tried to run didn’t mean he was guilty … of the murders, at least. It sure as hell didn’t help his case. But in spite of the circumstantial evidence, the chances were not high that Scott Loomis was the serial killer.
This wasn’t over yet.
Chapter Seventeen
Marco
Scott Loomis was not the guy. I’d known that pretty much from the moment I’d laid eyes on him in the bar. He was a player, a womanizer, a privileged prick used to getting his way—but he wasn’t a killer.
No matter how much Detective Clarke wanted him to be one.
The Landstaff Junction PD had an interrogation room, and it was pretty much like the ones in TV cop shows. One table, three chairs,
a camera in the corner, one-way glass along the front wall with the mirror side in. Loomis sat handcuffed and alone on his single-chair side of the table, facing me and Clarke across from him and the mirrored glass behind us. He kept looking from the camera, to the window, to Clarke’s face, but he avoided mine.
“So, you left Chelsea Mathers’ home around seven last night, after mowing her lawn. For free,” Clarke was saying. They’d already gone through all the indignant arguments — this is harassment and you ruined my car and I’ll goddamned sue you all — and now Loomis alternated between sullen and smug as he answered the detective’s questions. Yes, he was at Chelsea’s house yesterday. Yes, he’d given her a business card and cut her grass, didn’t even charge her, what a great guy, how could he possibly have butchered anyone.
Part of him probably wanted Clarke to think he had. That he was bad-ass enough to commit the highest possible crime, and maybe that would tone her smart mouth down a peg or two. Get this bitch off his back.
But I knew killers. I could recognize one from a thousand paces, and he was not it.
“Yeah, that’s right,” Loomis said, easy-breezy now. “I talked to her at church, and she was complaining that her lawn looked like crap and her worthless boyfriend wasn’t going mow it until Wednesday or Thursday. So I offered to come over and help out.” He shrugged. “It’s a thing I do sometimes, like a free trial. People like the service, and they ask for me next time.”
I could practically read the thoughts behind the smile he flashed after that. Me, instead of her worthless boyfriend, and I’d have done more than her lawn.
Lech, yes. Killer? No.
“Okay,” Detective Clarke said, “let me see if I’ve got this straight. You arrived at Chelsea’s house around four P.M. You mowed her lawn, which is … what, about the size of a postage stamp? And you left around seven.”
Another shrug. That slow, suggestive smile. “She invited me in for lemonade.”