by S W Vaughn
“Lemonade,” Clarke repeated. She paused for a beat, folded her hands on the table. “So did you kill her after the lemonade, or did you go back later that night to rape her and slice her up and let her bleed to death?”
Damn, she was good. If this limp prick had been the actual killer, she’d have had the bastard tripping himself up in no time.
Loomis’s face darkened to a nasty shade of brick. “I didn’t kill her, goddamn it!” he shouted. “I never touched anyone. Not her, and not Lynn. What is wrong with you people?”
“Where were you last night?” Clarke fired back, unruffled.
“At home.”
“Alone?”
“Hell, no,” he spat. As if the very idea of him spending a night alone was laughable. “I was with Gina.”
“That would be your girlfriend. The one you cheated on your fiancé with.”
“Yeah, her. She was with me all night.”
“And if I called her right now, she would confirm that?”
Loomis hesitated. And Clarke pounced.
“You weren’t with Gina last night, were you?” she practically growled. “You weren’t with her the night Lynn Reynolds was killed, either. You murdered both of them—”
“Okay! Jesus Christ, I wasn’t with Gina last night, okay?” He slouched in the chair, a scowl on his face. “I was alone. Watching friggin’ Netflix,” he muttered, and then raised his head to glare a stiff-jawed challenge at Clarke. “But I was with her when Lynn died.”
His eyes glazed briefly with something that almost resembled regret, and I believed him.
Clarke didn’t.
She turned to me and fixed a smile on her face. “Detective North,” she said. “Would you mind getting us a couple of coffees? And maybe something for Mr. Loomis, if he’d like a drink.”
A half-sneer tried to form on Loomis’s face. “Can I get a beer?”
I looked at him, and he coughed and turned away. “I’d like some water, please.”
“Fine. Two coffees, one water,” I said as I stood and nodded to Clarke. I knew she wanted me out of the room so she could question Loomis alone — not that it would do any good. He wasn’t the killer. She knew that, even if she didn’t want to admit it.
What she did want was a chance to wipe that stupid, smug grin off his face. Maybe threaten him with obstructing justice or something, scare him into being less of an asshole in the future.
I was happy to give her that chance.
When I left the interrogation room, I closed the door quietly and then went over to the one-way glass. There was the back of Clarke’s head, her blonde hair restrained in an upswept braid and secured with pretty barrettes. And past her, the front of Loomis’s face, blotchy with anger and the beginnings of fear.
He should be afraid. I wouldn’t want to be in his shoes right now.
I moved past the window, down the hall toward the squad room, and realized that I had no idea where to get coffee or water around here. I hadn’t exactly received an official tour of the place — my first day on the job, and I’d been whisked to the conference room, to the car, to the interrogation room. No idea whether I even had a desk I was supposed to work from.
And then I realized that I was thinking like I belonged here. Like I’d been the one to actually accept this job, pack my things, and drive to Vermont planning to catch a serial killer.
I hadn’t done any of those things. All I did was try to escape New York and avoid catching any bullets with my internal organs.
I’d accomplished that, at least. Quite the magic trick.
Even better, though, was the one where I’d turned myself into a cop.
I shook my head at the irony, almost smiling, before the phone in my pocket buzzed and my good feelings left. Another text. I almost didn’t look at it, but maybe there was a slim chance it was an actual tip, someone trying to contact me through the website with information about the case.
But it wasn’t. It was the blocked number again. The killer.
I know who you are.
“Yeah, heard you the first time,” I muttered at the phone. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
As if in response, the phone buzzed with a new text.
Sam Kennedy.
The message was a fist to the gut, leaving me breathless.
That was the name of my last hit. The sad-sack guy I’d wasted in the alley.
Another buzz. Another message. More names.
Bobby Bellisario. Doug Minsch. Viggo ‘Mad Cat’ Alvarez. Jeffery Nutt.
All of them targets I’d taken out.
Now I was getting pissed.
My lip curled as I looked around, spotted a bathroom down the hall, and headed there. I went inside and locked the door, and then tapped out a reply to the bastard.
What the hell do you want?
I waited. One minute, two. I finally got a response, but it wasn’t in words. It was a picture. Lynn Reynolds, tied to her bed, naked and sliced and bleeding and …
Still alive.
Then another image. Chelsea Mathers. The same way.
This sick bastard had taken pictures of the girls while he tortured them.
The phone buzzed.
Leave me alone, and I’ll leave you alone. If you expose me, EVERYONE will know who you are.
I texted back: Fuck you.
This time I got a laughing emoji.
It took all of my considerable willpower not to smash the damned phone into bits. Instead, I set it on the back of the toilet and walked away, paced the small bathroom for a minute, went to the sink and splashed water on my face. The phone didn’t buzz again. Finally, I picked it up and deleted the message thread.
He’d sent me absolute proof, and I couldn’t use it. The bastard knew it too. So I’d just have to catch him the old-fashioned way.
And when I did, I’d make sure he was too dead to expose me.
Chapter Eighteen
Preston
The Goble family dinner was in full swing, but Preston’s mind was a million miles away.
Scott Loomis had been a bust. She’d known that even before they’d taken him in, but she still wanted to stick something to him. First-degree assholery, whatever. In the end they left him in holding for the night. He’d have to be released in the morning — they couldn’t hold him any longer.
She didn’t even get to use him as an excuse to miss dinner. So, here she was. Even though she’d barely made it by nine and was exhausted and would pretty much rather be anywhere else but here.
Mostly, she’d come for Bethy. To prove that she was okay.
As always, their father sat at the head of the table, with their mother at the foot. Her and Bethy on one side, David on the other. And as always, Bethy talked a mile a minute about whatever came into her head, David interjected the occasional wry comment, and Mom smiled and nodded while Dad ate in complacent silence.
Preston was the only anomaly tonight. She usually kept up with her sister, but right now she found herself with nothing to say — even though there was so much she wanted to.
“…so awful,” her brain registered Bethy saying, before her sister placed a hand over hers. “Ry and me volunteered to help the Reverend decorate the church. You know, for the services,” she went on. “I just can’t believe it happened again.”
“Bethy, I’m not sure this is an appropriate conversation for the dinner table,” her mother said uncertainly.
Preston barely heard her. She was thinking about the church, about connections. And how Chelsea went to her sister’s church. Which meant that Scott Loomis did as well. She’d never asked him directly which church he attended. “Hey, Bethy,” she said slowly, keeping her tone casual. “Did Lynn Reynolds go to First Baptist, too?”
“Oh, yes,” her sister said sadly. “Her and Scott were going to get married there.” A flash of anger passed over Bethy’s face, and Preston knew she was thinking about what a cheating bastard he’d been. That particular news had spread through town faster than
the murders. “Why do you ask?”
“No reason.” The last thing she wanted was to panic her sister by telling her what she was looking for — a connection between the victims. Scott Loomis was one.
The First Baptist Church of Landstaff Junction was another.
David chose that moment to join in. “So what, you think the killer goes to church?” he said. “It’s always the quiet one, that sort of thing?”
“David!” her mother gasped, at the same time as Bethy clapped a hand to her mouth.
“Maybe he goes to your church, Mom,” her brother said, arching a sarcastic eyebrow. “That place is full of sinners.”
The Presbyterian church was a bone of contention between David and their parents. They all had one. For Bethy it was the stray cat she’d tried to rescue when she was in middle school. She’d kept Mister Tuxedo — the cat was male, and he sprayed — hidden in her room for three days, and then had a screaming, pleading fight with Mom about keeping him that ended in a stalemate of silence. The next day, when Bethy came home from school, Mom told her that the cat had gone outside and gotten hit by a car. She later found out that Dad had dropped Mister Tuxedo off at a shelter in Greensboro … and not the no-kill kind.
Preston’s bone was the murder they’d never believed her about. As bad as that had been though, she’d always thought her brother’s was worse.
He’d come out to their parents when he was sixteen. They had taken the news … stoically, not angry but not especially pleased. At the time, they all went to church as a family every week. The Sunday after David had announced that he was gay, the sermon happened to revolve around that Leviticus verse about men lying with men being an abomination. And after the service, the pastor had taken David aside and suggested that he might be confused about his feelings, and that he should seek God’s counsel and pray for forgiveness.
Even to Bethy, who’d only been seven at the time, it was clear that their parents had told the pastor about David’s ‘affliction.’ And David had never set foot inside a church again.
He’d eventually forgiven their parents, more or less, but he still jabbed at the topic from time to time.
And whenever it happened — like now, for example — Mom and Dad changed the subject.
“Well, it’s going to be a real corker next Monday,” Dad said over his empty plate with too much enthusiasm. “I was thinking I’d get the grill out, cook us up some burgers and fixings.”
David clenched a fist, and then relaxed it with a sigh. His not-worth-it reaction. “Sounds great, Dad,” he muttered, and then looked across the table at Preston. “I hear you have a new co-worker who’s going to be in the market,” he said. “Want to send him my way? I’ve got a couple of listings that’d be perfect for single guys.”
“Yes, I’ve already mentioned you to him,” she said with a smirk. “I’m not sure when he’s looking to buy, though. Or if he is, actually. He might rent.”
Or he might skip town, she thought. Despite spending practically the entire day with him, she still knew next to nothing about Donovan North — other than he liked his coffee, and he was a hell of a shot.
At this point she disliked him slightly less, but she still didn’t trust him.
“Hey, I might see him tonight on my shift,” Bethy said, avoiding Preston’s eyes. “Want me to give him your card?”
David shrugged. “Sure. Remind me before I leave.”
“And what do you think of the new detective, Preston?” her mother said, unable to keep the hopeful note from her tone. Both of her parents wanted her to move on from Paul, she knew, and it irritated her. They’d never come out and said it, but they didn’t have to.
The purchase they’d made three months ago left their feelings very clear.
“I don’t know yet,” Preston replied, a little curtly. “I’ve been too busy to think much.”
Her parents exchanged a look, and this time it was her father who picked up the baton. “We hope you’re being careful, Preston,” he said. “This … case of yours is the worst thing that’s ever happened around here. We just want to make sure you’re safe.”
Those words. The same ones he’d used all those years ago when he refused to believe what she’d seen in the woods. Her temper flash-boiled, but she tamped the lid down and turned to him with a neutral expression. “You mean like that girl who was killed out on the TR-28?” she said. “The one we found last night?”
Her father flinched and dropped his gaze. “Preston … you have to understand.”
“Understand what, Dad? That I was right?” This was crazy. First David, and now her. She half expected Bethy to chime in and start lobbing accusations about Mister Tuxedo. She knew that if she didn’t calm down, the night would end in horrible, tense silence that would last until next Monday, when they’d all come back and pretend this never happened.
But there was one thing she had to know before she dropped this for the last time.
“Just tell me. Please,” she said. “Tell me what you said to Eleanor Schilz.”
Her father’s expression froze. “How did you get that name?”
“I’m a police officer, Dad. It wasn’t hard.” She refused to drop her gaze.
He drummed his fingers on the table. Stared off into the distance. Finally, he let out a slow breath and looked at her. “I told her to keep that boy of hers under control,” he said.
“What boy?” she half-whispered.
“I don’t know his name. One of those foster kids she took in,” he said tightly. “Something not right about that boy.”
Her heart constricted. What if North was right about his theory that whoever had killed Jane Doe was the serial killer they were chasing now? “Dad, did you think this boy was the one I saw in the woods?” she asked. “Do you know anyone who might know his name?”
Her father said nothing. She recognized the shutdown in his face, the look that proclaimed the conversation over, before her mother carried the censure to its predictable finish by saying brightly, “Who’s ready for dessert?”
Apparently everyone was, except Preston. And she’d go along with it, like always.
She’d just have to find someone else to tell her what her father wouldn’t.
Chapter Nineteen
Marco
The suite at the Whispering Pines already felt like home, and I was more than happy to get there. Even though I still had work to do tonight. No rest for the wicked, I reminded myself — I was pretending to be a detective, and I needed more to go on than observations and dumb luck.
I needed to catch the guy who was out there threatening me, mocking my inability to act against him, while he slaughtered women indiscriminately.
But first, I needed a shower.
I stayed under the water until it started to cool down, and then dried off and scrounged through the luggage for a t-shirt and shorts. At some point, I reflected, I really should put all these clothes away somewhere. And I still needed another pair of shoes, since my boots were the only footwear that fit me.
Just the thought of doing all that exhausted me, though. I’d take care of it tomorrow, hopefully after I’d gotten a good night’s sleep.
I went out to the main room and thought about turning the television on, but I doubted anything would interest me. Instead, I grabbed Donnie-boy’s laptop, now fully charged, and sat with it on the couch. If it was password-protected, it was probably useless to me.
It wasn’t. And as I waited for Windows to log in, I knew the lack of password meant there wouldn’t be anything work-related on the laptop that might help me find the killer.
But at least I could get to the internet.
Like his phone, Donnie’s laptop was bog-standard, nothing installed except for the programs and apps that came with the system. Either he hadn’t been on any kind of social media, or he kept his accounts so well hidden that he’d have to jump through hoops every time he accessed them. It was strange, and it smacked of paranoia.
Then again, a cop w
ho was in bed with the mafia had good reason to be paranoid.
My browser options were Microsoft Edge or nothing. I clicked on it and found that the home page was set to the default Yahoo News page. No bookmarks, no saved passwords, no personalization — no browser history. Did he not even use email?
Shrugging, I went to Google and ran a search for “shooting gas station new york state exit 34” because I couldn’t remember the name of the place where the gas station was, and I only knew the exit number because of the texts between Nicky and North. That rat bastard.
The first result was an article with the headline: Massive Blaze Covers Multiple Murders in Parish, NY Gas Station
Fire? That place was definitely not on fire when I left.
I clicked through to the article and started reading.
Four people were killed in what appears to be a shoot-out on Sunday night at a Mobil gas station in Parish, New York, which was then consumed by fire.
State police have confirmed that the blaze was most likely arson, the fire ignited with kerosene pumped from an island situated just in front of the store. Firefighters battled for six hours to put out the flames, and at first the victims found inside were believed to have died in the fire.
However, police confirmed, all four people had been shot to death prior to the start of the blaze.
One local person and three residents of New York City were killed inside the gas station. The victims have been tentatively identified as Lorna Bellevue (35), an employee of the Mobil station; and Vincent Cancio (39), Dwayne Bitsakos (42), and Marco Lumachi (34), of NYC.
Though it is unclear at this time who shot whom, police believe that at least two of the NYC victims were engaged in a gun battle, and further speculate that the local victim was merely an innocent bystander caught in the crossfire.
“I’ve never seen a mess like this,” said Trooper Joseph Wilson with the New York State Police. “Whatever this fight was about, no one managed to win it. This is a horrible tragedy.”
Police are searching for the arsonist responsible for starting the blaze, whom they believe was not among the victims inside the building. Anyone with information regarding this crime is encouraged to contact the state police through the tip line number that appears at the end of this article.