by S W Vaughn
A knot formed in my stomach. If I believed in God, I would’ve prayed that didn’t mean another dead girl had been found.
I parked fast and headed inside to a lot more activity than there’d been around here yesterday morning. Kratt and Chief Palmer out in the middle of the squad room, talking and going over a file. August giving instructions to a pair of uniformed officers.
No sign of Detective Clarke. Her desk was empty.
“Detective North,” August called suddenly, dismissing the officers and heading toward me. He wore a grim expression that I didn’t like at all. “I’m afraid there’s been an … incident,” he said.
I didn’t like that word, either. The last time I heard it was from Clarke on that first day, as a euphemism for ‘butchered girl.’ “What happened?”
His shoulders slumped. “It’s Eleanor Schilz,” he said. “She was murdered last night.”
My first thought was wordless, savage joy that someone had done what I couldn’t. That woman didn’t deserve to live, especially if she wasn’t behind bars. But I didn’t let it show on my face. “Last night,” I repeated, as if to confirm I’d heard him. “That’s…”
I couldn’t come up with a word that wasn’t a synonym for ‘fantastic.’
“I’m so sorry.” August looked like he might cry. “I know she was your … well, I’m sorry.”
I shrugged a little, trying to make it look like thanks instead of good fucking riddance. “Where is she?” I asked.
“At her house. We got an anonymous tip,” he said, his face screwing up slightly. “Thought it was bull, but I send a car out there anyway, and …” He made an open gesture with his hands. “Sorry, it’s not that I don’t appreciate public tips. Just if they make it anonymous, we don’t have any witnesses to interview, you know?”
“Yeah, I hear that.” Not really, but I had a pretty good grasp on the frustrations that came along with doing things by the rules by now. “Guess I’d better head out there, then,” I said. “Where’s Clarke?”
“En route. She wasn’t here when the call came in.” August glanced at Clarke’s unoccupied desk, as if he’d been just as surprised to find it empty. “Kratt called her, though, and she’s going to meet you there.”
“All right. Thanks.” It was on the tip of my tongue to ask for the address, since I hadn’t been the one driving out there yesterday, but I managed to stop myself from making that particular fatal mistake. I should know the address, if I lived there for five years.
I’d just have to hope I could remember the way.
When I left the station, I headed in the same direction that the squad car had gone. It didn’t take long to start picking out familiar landmarks, to recall the right turns. Hypervigilance was helpful for that, at least.
Didn’t help much when I was lost in the dark, but that’s what GPS was for.
It was even easier to find the house, once I got on the right road. The one with all the cop cars and the ambulance out front. I flicked a glance at the nearest house to the Schilz place on the way past, the little white box with the red shutters just before it on the opposite side of the road, but it looked like no one was home — just the way it’d been yesterday when we came out here. Quiet, no cars, no lights.
If anyone had been there, no doubt they’d be out on their lawn, watching the three-ring police circus.
I parked on the side of the road behind another cruiser and walked up to the driveway. Detective Clarke’s dark brown, unmarked sedan was already there, off to one side of the ambulance that’d backed up to the walking path. She wasn’t outside, though.
A few officers moved in and out of the house as I headed for the entrance. Most gave me the nod, and I wondered how far news of my ‘foster mom’ had spread through the station, whether they thought I was upset over her death. Far from it — and I was one hundred percent sure that the real Donovan North would be just as happy as I was.
Officer Henderson was emerging through the door when I reached the steps, an ugly scowl on his football-star face. I moved aside to him pass, but he still bumped my shoulder pretty hard on the way.
The poor dumb bastard was still stuck in high school, if he thought that’d be enough to get a rise out of me.
Finally, I made it inside and found Detective Clarke in the living room, talking to the youthful forensics guy whose name I couldn’t recall. Bobby or Tommy, something like that. She didn’t notice me right away, so I moved around to get a look at the body on the floor — and my core tightened with unease.
Eleanor Schilz been shot in the back of the head, execution-style from a standing position. The same way I took out my targets.
The killer was sending me a message.
“North.”
Clarke said my name and I looked up, startled by something in her tone. She looked badly shaken, almost panicked. And it couldn’t be Schilz’s murder that had her rattled like this. She’d hated the woman, maybe even more than me.
“Sorry I’m late,” I said, searching her face for a hint of what had gotten her so jittery. Maybe it was some kind of childhood flashback, and being in this house set her off.
But she hadn’t been like this yesterday.
“You’re fine. Sorry I missed you coming in,” she said, and just like that she was back to normal. Calm and in control. “And about …” She gestured to the body.
“Don’t be.” With Clarke, at least, I didn’t have to pretend I was mourning that monster. She’d been here yesterday. I still wanted to know what had frazzled the detective, but now wasn’t the time to ask. “So, somebody shot her,” I said, lamely stating the obvious. “I don’t suppose the weapon is here? It couldn’t have been that shotgun she was carrying around.”
Clarke shook her head. “No weapon. No witnesses. Nothing.”
“Just like the others,” I said, meaning the lack of evidence. I wanted to plant the seed early that the serial killer had done this, because there was no way for me to explain how I knew he had, even if I was crazy enough to blow my own cover.
The detective stared at me. “This is nothing like the others.”
“I just meant …” I trailed off with a sigh. It was going to take more than vague hints to put her on the right track for this one, and I had nothing concrete to offer. Yet. “You already looked at the body?”
She nodded. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay. I’ll just have a look now.” I’d remembered to keep up my own supplies, and I had the mini-crime scene kit in my jacket pocket with fresh gloves. I pulled them on and crouched next to Eleanor Schilz’s body, near her head. The hole in the back of it. Looked like it came from a nine-mil, in my not-so-inexpert opinion based on having killed several people with several different guns.
I flashed to the nine-mil Glock in North’s glovebox, the one I hadn’t touched since I found it there that night after the gas station, and the tight unease returned.
The killer knew who I was, who I was pretending to be. He would’ve known my vehicle. And he could’ve taken the gun.
It was registered to North. If he’d used it on her … I was screwed.
“Did you get the bullet out?” I said in a conversational tone.
Clarke hesitated. I looked up, and she was frowning. “Tommy said he couldn’t find a bullet,” she told me. “He says it looks like whoever killed her dug it out.”
“That’s … bizarre,” I said.
And smart, saving the damned bullet. This guy had let me know just how much he had on me, but he’d still made sure there was no way to implicate me — unless he chose to. He’d given himself an easy plant to take me down if I ‘exposed’ him. Probably left it somewhere it could be found if anything happened to him.
He was trying to prevent me from killing him.
I planned to do it anyway.
“Tell me about it,” Clarke said, exhaustion evident in her tone. “How can there be no violent crime in this town for so long, and then suddenly there’s a landslide of murder, and all the killers
know how to avoid leaving evidence?”
I didn’t comment on that. I’d let her think it through, and hopefully she’d come to the right conclusion — because it was all the same guy.
After a minute, the stunned look on her face suggested she’d gotten there.
But she didn’t say it out loud.
“Okay, so we’ve already gone through most of this place,” Clarke said eventually. “There isn’t much left to do here. Did you want to head back to the station, and I’ll wrap things up and meet you there soon?”
That jittery, half-panicked edge was back in her voice. This time I couldn’t ignore it. “Is there some problem I don’t know about?”
She flinched like I’d tried to slap her and stood frozen for a moment, before she finally let out a long breath and averted her gaze. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just … you being here, it could be a conflict of interest.”
“Why?” I asked as a flicker of anger stirred in me. “Am I a suspect?”
“No! No, you’re not,” she said a little too quickly. “It’s your record. History, I mean. You living here with … her.”
Maybe it was, but I still sensed there was something more she wasn’t telling me. I couldn’t exactly interrogate her about it, though.
There was plenty I wasn’t telling her.
“All right. I’ll go back,” I said. “Get to work on that call list for First Baptist.”
She looked relieved. “Thank you. I’m really sorry about this.”
“It’s fine.”
It wasn’t fine, but I didn’t have leg to stand on. Even if I was right.
After all, I wasn’t really a detective.
So I left. But before I started the Jeep and headed back into town, I leaned over and opened the glove box. A dull weight settled in my gut as I discovered exactly what I’d expected to find.
The absence of one clean, fully loaded, nine-millimeter Glock 19C Gen4, legally registered to Donovan North.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Preston
She had every intention of being firm with North, maintaining a professional distance. Having him leave the scene for perfectly legitimate reasons. And for the most part, she had done all of those things.
The only problem was how bad she’d felt about doing it.
She knew that she shouldn’t feel bad. He’d been lying to her, to everyone, about … something. She still wasn’t sure what. There’d been nothing at county records about Donovan North. No birth certificate on file. Of course, that probably just meant that he hadn’t been born in this county. Now she’d have to run a statewide search, and if that didn’t turn anything up, the whole country was fair game. Hell, maybe even the whole world.
And the county offices still couldn’t find Eleanor Schilz’s foster care records. Whoever had sent those copies to her must’ve made them a while ago, before they lost the records. Maybe they’d been saving them for a long time — since at least before she’d gotten married.
When it came to Donovan North, she was still short on information, but long on speculation.
Too long. She was speculating everything that could possibly explain him, from illegal Canadian immigrant to the witness protection program to deep-cover CIA spy.
Or maybe he was just a liar, and possibly a murderer.
As far as considering him a suspect in his foster mother’s death, she actually hadn’t been. Right up until he mentioned it. Now, she was kind of considering. He had every reason to want this horrible woman dead. But then again, so did twelve other foster kids, a husband who’d changed his name and gone into hiding, and probably any decent human being who’d ever come into contact with her.
Much as she hated to do it, she’d have to make sure North had an alibi for last night.
She’d probably hold off on asking him until she’d exhausted every other possibility, though. Right now, she could barely get through a simple conversation with him without giving away her suspicions.
That would have to change. She was a professional, and she had plenty of experience masking her emotions to get through crime scenes and witness interviews fairly and impartially. It was her job to keep emotion out of the equation, to let justice prevail.
He just made it so hard to hate him.
At least she hadn’t been lying when she said they were almost through here. There really wasn’t much to catalogue or investigate. Someone had come in the front door — once again, no forced entry — gone to the living room, shot Eleanor Schilz in the back of the head, dug out the bullet, and left.
It was the bullet that bothered her. Not just missing, but deliberately taken.
She couldn’t imagine why the killer would do that. Unless he’d used a gun that was registered to him.
But why bother, when it was so easy to get an unregistered firearm?
That was basic Shooter 101.
So maybe it was a crime of passion … the passion, in this case, being pure rage? She couldn’t imagine anyone loving Eleanor Schilz, so it had to be fury-driven. Again, that matched everyone on her tentative suspect list.
Or it could be that North was right, and the serial killer had done this. Even though it was so far outside his M.O. as to be laughable. The manner of death, the victim herself—nothing matched up.
Unless he was also right about Diamond Schilz being the killer’s first victim. That made the connection a lot more solid.
God, what an utter mess.
Preston walked out of the oppressive, unpleasant-smelling house and stood outside, taking long, deep breaths of fresh air as if she could somehow cycle the essence of that place out of her body. It was going to be another long day today. She had to force herself to stop walking on eggshells around North, and then there were a lot of calls to make, a lot of potential leads to chase down. Not to mention all the waiting.
Waiting for the canvassing interviews from all two of the Schilz’s closest neighbors, which thankfully wouldn’t take long. Waiting for the court order that would unseal Douglas Schilz’ name change records. Waiting for the NYPD files on the Kid Glove Killer case, so she could compare them with what North sent over.
Waiting to know whether or not she could trust the man she was supposed to call her partner.
The stark buzz of her phone ringing startled her. She fished it out and saw her sister’s number on the screen. Oh, God. Bethy couldn’t possibly know about the latest murder already … could she?
“Hey, sis,” she answered. “Shouldn’t you be asleep? You just got done with work, what, two hours ago?”
“Yes, Mom, I’m going to bed in a minute,” Bethy retorted good-naturedly. At least she didn’t sound like she’d heard about yet another violent death in Landstaff Junction, which would no doubt frighten the population into demanding curfews and protection from the National Guard when word got out. “I just wanted to invite my favorite sister out for a drink at Crazy Susan’s tonight.”
Preston laughed. It felt good after the past few days of nothing but awful. “It doesn’t count if I’m your only sister,” she said.
“Well, if I had another sister, you’d still be my favorite,” Bethy announced. “Besides, David counts.”
“You’re horrible!” she giggled.
“Seriously, though,” Bethy said in her Elizabeth-Ann-Goble voice — what Preston privately called the dramatically solemn tone her sister used when she was Very Concerned about something. “I know how much you’ve been working lately, and you need a break. Don’t even try to tell me you haven’t been bringing your work home with you, either, because I know you.”
Preston sighed. “You’re right. I have been,” she admitted.
“See? That’s why you need to come out with your favorite sister and have a drink! It’s on me.”
“Who says you’re my favorite sister?”
Bethy snorted laughter. “You know you love me. So I’ll meet you at Crazy Susan’s. Eight o’clock sharp.”
“Fine,” she said, feigning irritation.
“Are you dragging Rylan with you?”
“Nope. Tonight it’s just you and me, Prezzy-baby.”
Her heart warmed. Little sisters were so much better as adults, when they didn’t have to tag along everywhere you went and you could hang out because you both wanted to, not because your parents made you. “Sounds awesome,” she said. “Love you.”
“Love you too.”
Preston hung up and stretched her arms, straining against a yawn. Going out with Bethy would be a nice break from the relentless horrors that her job had been serving up lately. Maybe she could even catch a nap after work before she headed to the bar.
Provided the good people of Landstaff Junction could refrain from murdering each other for at least the rest of the day.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Marco
Chief Palmer had called another meeting in the conference room to discuss the Eleanor Schilz case. This time I was ready, even though I suspected no one was going to like what I had to say.
That included Detective Clarke, who’d been acting like I was just diagnosed with the plague all morning. She didn’t say it, but I could tell what her problem was, despite the fact that I wasn’t sure why.
She didn’t trust me.
It was surprisingly painful to get that sense from her, considering I’d known her for such a short time. The worst part was knowing I had absolutely no right to expect anything less. She shouldn’t trust me. I was a hitman, and a liar. No better than the real Donovan North. He was a cop who’d worked with criminals.
I was a criminal working with cops.
Honestly, I couldn’t tell which of us was worse.
But I still had my good intentions, for however many miles of road to Hell they’d pave me, and I wanted to stop this killer. Not just because he’d threatened me and made it personal. Because he was a monster, killing innocent people for fun. For pleasure.
Because he gave hitmen a bad name.
And that was the least of his crimes against humanity.