Same as it will for me.
The failure will outweigh the relief of having to relive that night over and over again.
“It’s your birthday. You’re on vacation this week. Did you tell him it would have to wait until Monday?”
Birthday? Shit. How could I forget?
“Yeah, and he’s not happy. He knows I’m in town. He knows what this weekend is. He thinks it would be better to close it now and announce that it’s closed at the dedication.”
The room falls silent as we all soak in the reality of Spencer’s statement. Confessing to the entire town that the person who murdered Sam has gotten off scot-free. That they’ll never be caught because we’re giving up.
No. I can’t let that happen. It’s not right. We can do better. Sam deserves better.
“It wouldn’t. Be better to do it at the fountain dedication, I mean.” My words are barely above a whisper but they’re strong. Confident. If only my voice would sound it. “Let me talk to him.”
“He’s not going to listen to you, Andi. He’s a stubborn bastard.” Spencer lets out a guttural growl, and then slams his fist against the counter in frustration.
“Yeah, but maybe I can stall him,” I state, standing. Both of them stare at me in confusion, as they should. “I work for the State of California, but he can grant me special privileges here in Tennessee. I’m a criminal profiler. I interview and study the behavior of criminals after they’re caught. I analyze every detail of their crimes from their choice of weapon to their method of attack. I study their personalities, what aspects of their life made them the way they are, and create a profile. We use those profiles to help catch other criminals. Maybe I can stall him by offering my services. If he agrees, I could put together a profile for your team to use. It’s a last-ditch effort, but if it helps, I’d be willing to put one together. It normally takes me more than a few days but I could try.”
“You interview criminals?” is all Spencer asks after a few seconds.
“Yeah. From serial killers to car thieves and everything in between. The goal is to get to a point where we can predict what a person will do next based on their previous behavior and prevent it from happening.”
“And I thought a degree in psychology was going to be a waste of time,” Mia adds, stabbing a few noodles of her forgotten macaroni and shoving them in her mouth. Her words are muffled, more than likely on purpose, as she says, “I can admit I was wrong.”
“Shall we go have a talk with your boss?” I ask Spencer, who’s still currently staring at me wide-eyed with his mouth hanging open in shock.
After thanking Mia for lunch and promising to meet her for dinner that night, Spencer and I walk the three blocks to the Great Falls City Complex. It houses the police and fire stations as well as the courthouse and city offices. Basically, all the government offices are crammed into the three-story, historic building. In a town this small, that’s more than enough space to accommodate every department.
“Happy birthday, by the way,” I say as we cross the street.
“Thanks. Not much to celebrate yet.”
“Aside from how fantastic you are.” I nudge him with my shoulder. “I get that the timing of … everything is a little shitty but don’t let that ruin your special day.”
“I’ll start celebrating my birthday after this is over. Once the asshole is behind bars. Once I know the people of this town can sleep soundly again at night. When people don’t have to worry about walking in the park alone after dark. Then and only then will I celebrate today.”
The anger in his voice rises with each word. Swallowing past the lump in my throat, I nod my head in acceptance of his answer. If he doesn’t want to celebrate, I’m not going to force him.
Our meeting with the chief is short and sweet but not without conflict.
He pressures Spencer to sign the papers to close the case, thrusting them in his hands as soon as we walk in his office.
Spencer refuses, tossing the paperwork on the chief’s desk, knocking over an empty coffee cup.
They argue about the merits of making the announcement when the majority of the town is gathered for the ceremony. If I weren’t personally affiliated with the case, I’d side with the chief. Telling everyone at the same time will make it easier for some people to take the news. Still, I side with Spencer and explain why, offering my services.
The chief refuses before I can even explain what I want to try and do.
Spencer attempts to make him a deal, agreeing to sign the papers on Monday if he allows me to create a profile. The chief relents after I give him a brief summary of my work over the last four years. How it can potentially help the case. My resume speaks for itself. I’ve worked some high-profile cases in California. One led to the capture of a serial rapist and the other stopped a potential serial killer. He had his victim, and we were able to save her because of the profile I put together in less than two days.
Which is what I’m going to have to do again. I have roughly seventy-two hours to study Sam’s case from beginning to end before I have to present a complete profile to the chief along with Spencer and his team.
“That’s impressive, you know,” Spencer says as he walks me back to my car that’s still parked in front of the Java Bean.
“What is?”
“What you do. Don’t get me wrong, I know there’s honor and merit in being a police officer, but what you do, getting in the heads of criminals and figuring them out, that’s really amazing. Scary at times I’m sure, but amazing nonetheless.”
All I can do is nod.
I can’t confess I took the job because of Sam. Or that I get creeped out sometimes when I’m alone in a room with someone who’s killed twenty people before getting caught. I can’t confess I have nightmares more often than not or that in most of those nightmares the victim is always Sam.
Chapter Five
After parting ways with Spencer, I head back to the Hideaway to do some research before I have to meet up with him and Mia for dinner. Between the files the chief let me borrow currently sitting in my passenger seat and old newspaper articles that covered Sam’s death, I should be able to get a good start on my profile.
I need to know how much information was disclosed.
How much the police shared with the town.
What details they kept to themselves; details only the person responsible would know.
I don’t remember much of what I was told at the time. My sole focus was blaming myself. I shut myself in my apartment. Stopped taking phone calls after her funeral. Threw myself into the last few weeks of school, and once I graduated, I left. It didn’t matter who or how, the outcome was still the same. Sam was gone and I was to blame.
Had I not missed my flight, she wouldn’t have been working my shift that night. She wouldn’t have been walking home through the park. A place that we’d walked together at night before and never thought twice about our safety.
Had I not gone on spring break she might still be here. We would still be friends. I may never have left Great Falls.
There are a million what-if’s I could debate but none of them change the outcome. No amount of rationalization or beating myself up will bring her back. Because she’s gone. Someone murdered her that night, as I was driving home.
I have to focus on the facts of the case.
The evidence.
Leave my personal feelings out of it. Right now, Sam is a victim. Not my best friend. Not the petite girl with the large personality that forced her way into my life after only working one shift together. The girl who loved to dye her hair crazy colors and write with fuzzy-topped pens. Who smelled like coffee all the time and acted like it was pumping through her veins all hours of the day.
Nope.
Right now, she’s just a victim.
After setting myself up at the tiny desk in my room, I shoot my personal assistant an email asking for profiles on similar cases. Small town murders. It doesn’t take her long to reply, and soon I’
m reviewing three cases that are identical to each other. All the suspects were upstanding community members. All caught because they slipped up and left DNA behind.
The one thing I do find helpful is that in all three of those cases, the murderer was organized. He planned and executed practically flawlessly. They were familiar with the area, their victim. Then, when in the act, they got sloppy. They left behind a piece of themselves because they were excited.
After setting those cases aside, I scour through all the articles published on Sam’s death, jotting down details and making notes for myself. Questions I need to find answers to. Missing information to look for.
Two hours later, I’m about to open the first of a dozen police files when the alarm on my cell phones startles me, causing me to drop the folder, the contents spilling everywhere. Quickly gathering all the papers, I’m shoving them back in the file when a picture that slid beneath the desk catches my attention.
Slowly reaching for it, my hand begins to shake as I read what’s written on the back.
Samantha Bridges
Crime scene photo #2
I stare at the words scrawled in messy black sharpie for a few minutes before I shove the photo in the folder without looking at it. Quickly grabbing my phone, I shut off the alarm, toss it in my purse, and head out for dinner. My hands are still shaking as I slowly descend the staircase. Brandon Royal and his wife, Ruth, are standing at the front desk, chatting when I walk by. They both smile and wave as I pass, but I can’t bring myself to return their greeting. Instead, I rush out the front door, letting it slam behind me.
Once I’m safely behind the wheel of my rental car, I suck in a deep breath and let it out slowly, attempting to calm my racing heart. I knew this was going to be hard. Seeing pictures of Sam. Reliving her murder. I need to turn my emotions off and focus but I can’t treat this like any other case. It’s not. Not even close.
The drive to the diner feels like hours when it actually takes me less than five minutes. As soon as I walk in, I spot Mia sitting at a booth in the back. Her ginger curls bounce around as she waves at me over her head like it’s the first time she’s seen me in years instead of hours. She appears just as excited as she did earlier at the salon. The look of sorrow on her face before Spence and I headed to the police station is long gone, replaced with a huge smile and a sparkle in her eye.
Mia’s always been brave. Braver than I am. She was the one who tried to help me through the grief when it should have been the other way around. She knew Sam longer. They grew up together and were as close as Sam and I were.
The thought makes me realize what a shitty friend I was after everything happened. Not just to Mia but to Spencer as well. They lost Sam, and then I left them with no concern for their well-being. My sole focus was getting as far away from here as possible in hopes of alleviating the pain.
Not that my plan worked. The pain was just as intense from three-thousand miles away, and instead of being surrounded by people who understood what I was going through, people who were also grieving, I was alone.
“Hey, sorry I’m late. I got caught up in research,” I explain as I sit across from her, shaking away the memories of Mia holding me while I cried. “Where’s Spencer?”
“He’ll be here shortly.” Her demeanor shifts suddenly, her response clipped as she averts her eyes, studying the menu in her hand. A menu she more than likely has memorized considering there are only two restaurants in town.
“Something you want to share with me?” I press, nudging her with the toe of my boot under the table.
“Um, no.” She glances at me over the menu but it’s so brief our eyes barely make contact before she’s looking down again.
“You do realize you’re a horrible liar, right? You can’t make eye contact with me, and the pitch of your voice just went up a few notches. So, I’ll ask you again. Anything you want to share with me?”
Letting out a sigh, Mia finally raises her eyes to look at me, only instead of meeting mine, she looks over my left shoulder. I’m about to follow her line of sight when her face lights up again, her mega-watt smile showcasing her perfectly straight, white teeth.
Spencer’s here. Great. It’s wonderful that she still looks at him like that after all this time. They’ve been together since I met them my junior year. I’m actually surprised they’re not married yet.
“You’re here!” Mia screams, bouncing out of her seat.
Turning my entire body expecting to watch Mia jump into Spencer’s arms, my jaw drops open when a familiar pair of hazel eyes meet mine at the same moment Mia wraps herself around him. My inhale of breath is barely audible over the beating of my heart. It’s the only thing I can hear as I continue to stare at the man who owns my heart.
The same man who was off limits.
Forbidden.
The one man I couldn’t have, and the only one I wanted. So I tried to avoid him. When that didn’t work, I acted like I could barely stand him. He made that practically impossible. There’s no way you couldn’t be drawn to him. His personality was magnetic.
I settled for being his friend, which was harder than I anticipated. I didn’t trust myself alone with him. Hell, I didn’t trust myself to stand next to him in a crowd. I was afraid my true feelings would show. That I’d do something like reach out and take his hand when it wasn’t mine to hold.
Basically, I lived on edge whenever he was around for almost two years. Because I couldn’t admit to my best friend that I was in love with her boyfriend. Because I didn’t want to lose her even though I wanted him.
My eyes are still locked on Jay’s as Mia takes him by the elbow and drags him over to the booth. He silently slides in across from me as Mia continues to chatter on in the background.
“You look good, Drea,” he finally says, cutting Mia off.
Drea.
He’s the only person I’ve ever let call me that aside from my grandmother.
“Thanks, Jay. You look …” My voice trails off as my brain refuses to feed me a word appropriate enough to describe how delicious he looks.
Time has been good to him. He’s always been attractive, but in college his body was still filling out. He spent a lot of time at the gym but he had a runner’s body. Strong legs, toned muscles, impressive abs. Fit and trim.
Now he has the body of a god.
His plain black T-shirt is stretched tight across his chest, covering his broad shoulders and defined chest muscles. The corded muscles of his left arm are covered in an intricate tribal tattoo from where his sleeve ends down to his wrist. The black ink against his bronzed skin draws my attention and captures it, making me wonder if he has more artwork hidden beneath his clothes.
Jay lifts his ink-covered arm, brushing his unruly, dark brown hair away from his face, breaking the spell he has on me.
“You were saying?” Mia interjects, a devious smile on her face that clearly says I was caught checking Jay out, as Spencer squeezes my shoulder.
I forgot Mia was even here. And where did Spencer come from? Did he arrive with Jay? And when did he sit down? He’s next to me, his arm slung over the back of the booth seat.
“You look different,” I finally say, clearing my throat as I attempt to find somewhere to stare except across the table at the gorgeous man who’s found a way to render me practically speechless after all this time.
It’s not the first time he’s managed to do it. It won’t be the last. With him this close after all these years, I better get used to communicating without words. Maybe I’ll start carrying a dry erase board and markers. Then I’ll never have to speak again in his presence. I doubt it would save me from making a fool of myself, though.
Thankfully, the waitress comes over to get our drink order, saving me from having to explain my lame answer.
After ordering, Mia interrogates Jay about what he’s been up to since they saw him last, which was only a few months ago. I’m not surprised they’ve stayed in contact now that I know he went to the academy wit
h Spence.
If I wasn’t privy to that information I would have been shocked to know they still talk. He handled Sam’s death about as well as I did. He was depressed and blamed himself for not being there. For not protecting her. For not making sure she had a car to drive home that night.
Then he was brought in as a suspect in her death even though he was two hundred miles away when it happened. I remember them interrogating him for hours, trying to get him to confess to something he didn’t do. They talked to his boss at Apollo Hardware, co-workers, and friends, trying to find a flaw in his story. His father eventually came to his rescue with a lawyer.
His alibi was solid but the police wanted someone to blame so they could close the case. When they couldn’t pin it on Jay, the boyfriend, they started pointing their fingers in other directions. Practically everyone in town was interviewed in the first few weeks. When they ran out of leads, I remember it feeling like they’d given up.
After reading some of the articles this afternoon, I now know why.
There was a lack of evidence left at the scene. No DNA to profile, even though they swabbed everyone when they were interviewed. Not a single hair or fiber found on Sam’s body. The rain washed it all away that night.
“Spencer tells me you interview crazy people,” I hear Jay say as I pick at the mashed potatoes on my plate with my fork.
“Something like that.” I keep my attention focused on my plate, afraid to look in his eyes. To see the surprise. Hell, to see any kind of reaction.
“Don’t let her downplay it, man. She psychoanalyzes killers. I have her looking at Sam’s case now. Maybe she’ll see something we didn’t.”
We?
Jay looked into Sam’s case? I thought he left town.
Would they even let him look at the files after he was a suspect? After meeting the chief, I have a feeling Jay would be blacklisted from getting near the case. He seems like an old-fashioned kind of guy. You know, the one who doesn’t like to try new things because the old way has always worked.
“This isn’t good dinner conversation,” Mia interjects. “Let’s talk about something else. Anything.”
A Moment Too Late Page 5