“No, don’t.” He said something to Grimaldi, something I couldn’t hear, before he came back on. “Go home, darlin’. Or go to Beulah’s if it’ll make you feel better. Somewhere with more people. We’ll be at the house in ten minutes.”
“He’ll be gone by then,” I said, calming down enough to think and not just run. “Won’t he?”
“If he knows what’s good for him, yeah.”
After a second he added, a little less grimly, “Did you see him?”
I said I hadn’t. “Just heard a noise in the back of the house. I called out, and I got that feeling, you know, like someone was standing there listening. But I didn’t go any closer, so I didn’t actually see anyone.”
“Good,” Rafe said. And added, “That you didn’t go any closer. If it was him, and he killed his girlfriend, he’d have killed you too.”
I already knew that, thank you very much for pointing it out.
“But if he knows you spotted him,” Rafe added, “or at least that you heard him, then yeah, he’ll get outta there. Prob’ly gone already.”
“Then I’m going back,” I said, now that the panic had subsided and I was far enough away to feel safe. “I’ll wait for you outside.”
“Don’t you think you oughta go home instead?”
“No. I want to see if he was there.”
“If he was there, he ain’t gonna be there anymore, darlin’,” Rafe told me, “but turn back by all means. Just don’t get outta the car.”
I promised him I wouldn’t, and then I found somewhere to turn the car around, all the while promising Carrie that once this last errand was over, we’d go home and she could eat and take a nap.
Everything looked quiet when I made my way back down Fulton Street. Of course, it had looked quiet when I got there originally, too. I pulled to the curb and left the engine running, but I stayed in the car, watching the house and waiting for Rafe and Grimaldi to show up.
It was only three or four minutes before I saw them come around the corner on two wheels, but it felt longer. Any second, I expected the muzzle of a rifle to peek through the broken window in the front bedroom and blow me to kingdom come.
Or not really, although the thought crossed my mind that it might happen. So I was keeping an extra-close eye on the windows and broken parts of the house, so no one could stage an assault from there. Even though I was almost sure that Rafe was right and that Lance, if had been him, was long gone.
The Chevy came to a stop halfway in the driveway and halfway out. Grimaldi and Rafe burst out of the doors, both of them with guns at the ready. Rafe didn’t even spare me a glance before he sprinted up to the hole in the wall and bounded from there into the living room without breaking stride. Grimaldi, meanwhile, legged it around the corner, long legs pumping.
I rolled down the window, the better to hear anything that might happen—like gunshots, or orders to drop the gun and get down on the ground. But nothing happened. Two minutes later—another eternity—Rafe came back out the front and Grimaldi came around from the back, and both of their guns were back in the holsters.
I opened my door and got out, and met them in the middle of the lawn.
“Nobody there,” Rafe told me, not even winded.
I opened my mouth to say that someone certainly had been there, but before I could, he added, “Water droplets in the sink and stains on the toilet bowl in the master bath.”
My face twisted. “He can’t shoot straight?”
“I guess he just didn’t bother to lift the seat.”
“Pig.”
He shrugged. “Good for us.”
“How so?”
“DNA,” Grimaldi said.
Well, yes. There was that. But— “That takes weeks, doesn’t it? Or months, even. That won’t help us find him by tomorrow.”
“No,” Rafe admitted. “But when we do find him, and if we take him alive, it’ll help prove he killed Jennifer Vonderaa.”
I supposed that was something of a silver lining. Although I’d rather catch him today and stop whatever he was planning to do tomorrow.
“Maybe I should have confronted him. Maybe I could have done something to keep him here—”
“No,” Rafe said. “You did just what you were supposed to do. You don’t put yourself and Carrie in danger to catch the bad guys.”
“But if I had—”
Grimaldi shook her head. “This isn’t a guy you want to mess with, Savannah. He snapped Jennifer Vonderaa’s neck with no problem. He could do the same to you, just as easily. Or shoot you. Or do something else to you. Your husband’s right. You did what you were supposed to do. You got out of there and called us.”
I made a face, but didn’t argue further. They had a point. I obviously don’t have what it takes to tackle the bad guy, neither when it comes to training nor fortitude. I’d run away from him; they’d arrived and run toward.
“What happens now?”
“I’ll send somebody out to grab the DNA,” Grimaldi said. “There might be fingerprints, too. That could help. And he left a couple of things sitting around, that he didn’t take the time to grab when he had to clear out quickly. Some empty fast food wrappers and a couple of other small things. I’ll have someone go over the place.”
“I don’t figure we need to go to Laurel Hill now,” Rafe added. “The camp won’t be his. Not if he was in Nashville until two days ago, and he’s been here since. Lawrence County can handle the camp.”
Grimaldi nodded. “You two go on home together. You—” She gave Rafe a look, “should be resting.”
“By now, I’m sure this guy has figured out that Rafe isn’t dying,” I said. “He must have recognized me. And if I’m here, and not in the hospital with my dying husband, Rafe must be OK.”
Grimaldi nodded. “He could still use some rest. There’s nothing anybody can do right now that isn’t being done. Lance is gone again. We have people watching Rodney and Kyle. If they go anywhere, they’ll be followed. I’ll take care of this crime scene. Lawrence County will handle the tent. Unless something else comes up, we can do without you for a couple hours.”
Rafe looked like he wanted to argue, but he also looked like he was in some pain. He’d bounded out of the car and into the house like nothing was bothering him, but I hadn’t missed the wince and the hand he’d held against his ribs for a second as he came back out.
“Come on, Rafe,” I told him. “Come home with me and make sure the mansion is safe. He probably won’t go there, but it’s not like it hasn’t happened before, and I’d hate to walk in and find him hanging out in the parlor, now that Pearl isn’t around to protect the place.”
Rafe nodded. A little grudgingly, but he did it. “You’ll let me know if something happens, right?”
“Of course,” Grimaldi said. “Anything breaks, you’ll be the first to know.”
I tugged on his hand. “Come on. You can drive, if you want.”
“I do want.” He turned to the car and then back to Grimaldi. “You staying?”
“Until the crime scene techs get here. Just in case this guy’s waiting around, and decides to come back for the rest of his stuff once we’re gone.”
“Want me to stay with you?”
“No,” Grimaldi said. “I’ve got a gun and a badge, and I don’t think he’s going to take a shot at me in broad daylight. Go on home and get some rest.” She went to sit in the Chevy while Rafe and I got into the Cadillac and, once again, headed for Sweetwater.
Twenty-One
I changed Carrie, and fed her. And then I left her with Rafe, both of them stretched out on the sofa, and went to the kitchen to put something together for lunch. Five minutes later, when I came back in with a tray, they were both asleep. Rafe had a big hand on Carrie’s back, keeping her snug against his chest, and she was dead to the world, her little pink pacifier working and her lashes—both of their lashes, if it came to that—sooty against golden skin.
I covered them both with a blanket, and then I sat down
on the other end of the sofa and ate my lunch. I didn’t want to go too far, just in case Rafe moved and I had to keep Carrie from falling.
That didn’t happen, though. They both stayed asleep for the next hour and a half. And Carrie woke first. As soon as she started twitching, Rafe’s eyes popped open. He blinked a couple of times, and looked adorably shocked to realize that he’d been sleeping on the sofa. The smile he gave me was more than a little sheepish. “Morning.”
“Afternoon,” I told him. “Getting close to three.”
“Man.” He stretched, as best he could without dislodging Carrie. She was making noises now, and I moved to take her away from him so he could sit up. “I was out.”
“Like a light,” I confirmed. “I went ahead and ate. Are you hungry?”
“I could eat.” He sat up—not without a grimace as his ribs protested—and twisted his head this way and that. “Getting old.”
“Not noticeably.” I gave him Carrie back. “Hang on to her for another couple of minutes. I’ll take her upstairs and change her when I’ve brought your food.”
“No problem.” He leaned back, carefully, hanging on to the baby. I got up and went to the kitchen to reheat the tomato soup and make another grilled cheese sandwich, since the first one had gotten soggy.
That done, and delivered, I took Carrie from him, and dealt with her. By the time I got back downstairs, he had polished off the soup and sandwich, and was trying—very carefully—to stretch out some of the stiffness, not all of which was from sleeping on the couch. “Any news?”
“If you’re wondering if your phone rang,” I answered, “the answer’s no.”
“Nothing new, then.” He reached for it anyway. “I’m gonna check in.”
“Knock yourself out.” I put Carrie on the floor to give her some tummy time on the rug. Any day now, she’d be turning over and pushing up, and after that, it was full speed ahead toward college.
Rafe took the phone and wandered off down the hall, probably in search of a bathroom.
“Anything?” I asked him when he wandered back in a few minutes later, phone in hand.
He shook his head. “Tammy waited for the CSI techs and got them working. Then she met up with Mendoza before he turned around and went back to Nashville. He still has a murder and a crime scene to deal with in that jurisdiction.”
Of course he did.
“Kyle Scoggins is still hanging out at his parents’ house. Rodney Clark is still hanging out in his apartment. Clay’s in his apartment, waiting to hear from Rodney.”
“Did he report in?”
He nodded. “That’s the report. He’s waiting to hear from Rodney. Apparently Rodney has no other way of getting in touch with Lance than the phone number that’s disconnected. So Rodney’s waiting for Lance to get in touch with him, and then he’ll get in touch with Clay and Kyle. That’s how they left it.”
“So we’re waiting.”
“Pretty much,” Rafe said, with barely concealed impatience. He’s not good at waiting.
“Sit down.” I nodded to the sofa. “Let’s talk about this. See if we can come up with anything.”
He looked reluctant, but he sat.
“So Lance—for lack of another name—killed Jennifer on, probably, Tuesday night, and came down here. Without the Tannerite. Maybe—we think—because he didn’t have room for it in the car.”
Rafe nodded.
“There might have been more, and he loaded up as much as he could, but he still had to leave what you found yesterday.”
Rafe nodded. “Or what was in the garage was all there was, and he didn’t take any of it. No way to know.”
“Then, Thursday night, Lance told Rodney to go get the Tannerite in Nashville. Probably because he didn’t want to risk being caught there himself, with the dead body.”
Rafe nodded.
“But when Rodney and Kyle and Clay didn’t come back with the Tannerite, he figured something was wrong, and disconnected his phone.”
Rafe nodded.
“He hasn’t been to Kyle’s parents’ house or Rodney’s apartment, since they’ve been under surveillance. We think he might have spent the past couple of days at the house on Fulton. Or at least he was there today. So he’s sticking close to Columbia. Which tallies with what Clayton said. Something’s happening tomorrow, and it’s happening here.”
Rafe nodded.
“Will he still go ahead, even if he doesn’t have all the explosive?”
“Depends on what it is he’s trying to do,” Rafe said. “If the explosive he has is enough to do what he wants to do, then yeah. He’ll go ahead. He’s still here. That sounds like he’s planning to go ahead.”
“Will he try to get his hands on more Tannerite?”
“He might.” Rafe reached for his phone. “I should make sure somebody sent a notice to all the outlets within an hour’s drive or so.”
Grimaldi would have already done that, if I knew her. Or Bob. It didn’t come as a surprise when Rafe lifted his eyes from the screen and told me, “Already done.”
“So we can hope Lance will be stupid and will get caught trying to buy more. Although I doubt he’s that stupid.”
“Me, too,” Rafe agreed. “But it won’t do no harm to hope.”
No, it wouldn’t.
“Do you have any idea what he’s planning to blow up?”
He shook his head. “We don’t even know for sure that the Tannerite is part of whatever’s happening tomorrow. The Tannerite might just be for target practice. It’s a helluva lot of Tannerite to practice with, but maybe he got a good deal on it. Or maybe the target practice was for something else, and that’s what’s happening tomorrow.”
“A mass shooting?”
He shrugged. Not because a mass shooting isn’t a big deal, because of course it is, but because he didn’t know the answer.
“Where would you go if you wanted to shoot a bunch of people and you wanted attention? That’s what these people are after, right?”
Rafe nodded. “It’s usually a church, or a school. Maybe a concert or outdoor festival.”
“If Alexandra is out for spring break this week,” I said, “Maury County schools might be, too. So there might not be any school tomorrow.”
It would be nice not to have to worry about that, at least, so I pulled out my phone to look it up while I kept talking. “Mule Days won’t take place for another month, or that might be a possibility. Lots of people here for Mule Days. But not until April.” And Southern Baptists don’t congregate on Fridays. “Are there any concerts going on tomorrow?”
“Not sure,” Rafe said, also using his phone to look things up, “but I’m trying to find out. The crowd ain’t likely to be big enough to interest a mass shooter, though. Not here. And not when he could drive an hour up to Nashville and find a lot more targets.”
“So it’s something he can’t find there. Something specific to here. Something at the courthouse? A trial? Or hearing? Some guy who thinks he got a raw deal? Or someone Lance thinks got a raw deal?”
Rafe contemplated me—and the idea—for a second before he went from research to dialing. I listened with half an ear while I kept scrolling. “Todd Satterfield,” Rafe said into the phone, and added a belated, “please.”
My eyebrows rose, but I didn’t comment.
“Satterfield? Collier. Is there anything going on at the courthouse tomorrow that might interest a shooter?”
That was straight to the point, anyway. And interesting that he’d call my ex-boyfriend for the information. Although it was going straight to the source, since Todd is an assistant DA and would have that info at his fingertips.
“No school this week,” I informed him while he waited for Todd to respond. “So at least we don’t have to worry about anyone opening fire into a crowd of students.”
He nodded, and then turned his attention back to the phone when Todd came back on. After about half a minute, he said, “Appreciate it.”
Todd said somethin
g else, and Rafe told him, “I don’t think so. Don’t sound like anything that would interest this guy. But talk to your dad about it. He knows what’s going on.”
He hung up.
“Nothing going on at the courthouse?” I said.
He shook his head. “Nothing that sounds like it’d be related. And you said school’s closed?”
“For spring break. So we don’t have to worry about anything happening there.” And it was a relief. Nobody likes to contemplate children in harm’s way. “Any concerts?”
“Nothing I could find.” He leaned back, with a sound that could have been frustration, or pain, or both. “For all we know, he’s going after a private event. A family reunion. Or a wedding. Maybe his girlfriend dumped him for a black guy, and now they’re getting married, and he’s planning to shoot up the wedding. It could be as simple as that.”
And as hard to pin down. “I’ll call Aunt Regina,” I said. My father’s sister, she writes the society column for the Sweetwater Reporter. “She might have some idea if anything like that is going on. At least in Sweetwater, but maybe in Columbia, too.”
He nodded. “There’s just no way to police everything.”
I shook my head, in the process of dialing. There wasn’t. We could blanket a church on one side of town with SWAT and police, and all along, Lance could be across town targeting a McDonalds or a meeting of the Daughters of the Confederacy. And there wasn’t enough manpower to target everything at the same time.
Aunt Regina picked up, and I told her what I needed and why. She said she’d get back to me, and I hung up. “Can you think of anything else?”
He shook his head.
I contemplated him for a minute, and then I told him, as cheerfully as I could, “Tell you what. If you’ve rested and you feel OK, why don’t we give Carrie a few more minutes on the floor, and then we load up the car and go visit your grandmother and Audrey? I’m sure Mrs. J heard that you got shot, and although everyone must have told her you’re OK, I’m sure she’d appreciate seeing you for herself.”
That did it. He nodded. “Gimme a couple minutes. I think I need a shower to wake up.”
Collateral Damage: A Savannah Martin Novel (Savannah Martin Mysteries Book 19) Page 24