by L. T. Ryan
“You can take a seat,” the guy said.
Hell with that. I paced from his desk to the first bank of chairs, and back again. A minute passed. Then another. What was this bullshit?
“Can you call back there again?” I said.
“He’ll be up when he’s up,” the officer said.
“Sonofabitch,” I muttered under my breath.
“What’d you say?” He rose from his chair. “You think I can’t hear you?”
“Nah, man, I—”
“Tanner.” Cervantes rapped on the counter, startling both of us. “What’re you doing here?”
“Where’s Cassie?” I said.
He shrugged. “How should I know? Last I saw her was yesterday back in interrogation. You left with her.”
“So neither of you called her to come down here this morning?”
“Nah.” He turned and started toward the hallway, stopping about halfway and glancing back at me. “That all?”
I hoisted the paper up for him to see. “You taken a look at this yet?”
Cervantes did a one-eighty and rounded the counter. I felt each of his steps under my feet. He grabbed the paper from my hands and studied the photo.
“Shit,” he said.
“Yeah, shit is right,” I said.
“No, Tanner, you don’t understand.”
“What don’t I understand?”
“This is bad.”
“I’m not thick, man. I know it’s bad.”
“Come with me.” He turned and waved two fingers over his shoulder and started off without me. I didn’t wait for any further invitation. The desk officer called out something about a visitor’s pass, but if Cervantes wasn’t concerned with it, neither was I.
Cervantes glanced into each room we passed. Finally, he halted, turned, extended his arm. “In here.”
It was an empty office with a desk littered with paperwork and three worn-down chairs. Family photos revealed a middle-aged black woman with three kids and a husband twenty years her elder. Framed accolades said she had reached the rank of lieutenant.
Cervantes stepped in after me, letting the door fall shut.
“All right, you got me alone,” I said. “What’s up?”
He rubbed his temples with his thumb and middle finger. He kept his eyes clenched and worked his nostrils in and out with deep, raspy breaths. When he glanced up at me, I got the distinct impression that he wished the situation would just go away.
After a few seconds, he spoke up. “The name Novak mean anything to you?”
I felt the blood draining from my head. The world went a bit fuzzy, hazy, like shining a flashlight into fog. It came in from the front and sides. Cassie had told me the chilling story on a couple of occasions, with each retelling going into more detail. The pain and then numbness with each subsequent thrust of the knife into her flesh. How she bled out in the graveyard and could sense the slow soaking of her blood into the soil. She spoke of the feeling when her soul departed her physical being. She compared the sensation of it returning to that of slamming your body into a concrete wall.
“By the look on your face, I’m gonna say it does,” Cervantes said.
“He’s doing life plus some for killing those women and leaving Cassie for dead, right? Pled out of his death sentence.”
“Yeah.” Cervantes’ face paled. His forehead shone with sweat. “He was.”
“What do you mean ‘was’?”
“Escaped.”
“When?”
“Before the storm.”
I fell back into a seat and stared up at the recessed lighting. The bright LED looked out of place in a precinct building. They must be going green.
“You mean to tell me that this guy’s been on the loose for some three-plus weeks now and you haven’t told Cassie?”
He raised a defensive hand. “Novak doesn’t know her real identity. It was blocked at trial. He doesn’t know where she lives. They told him she’d been relocated by the FBI. Last thing on his mind is her.”
I somehow doubted that. She was probably on his mind dawn till dusk. She put him away. I snatched the paper off the desk and shoved the photo in his face. “You still think that? Huh? Holy shit, man. We gotta find her and get her under protection before this psycho reaches her!”
The color returned to his cheeks. They burned red. Was he angry at me? The situation? The system? Or himself?
“Let’s take my car,” he said. “We’ll go by her house.”
“I was already there. She wasn’t home. Car wasn’t in the garage.”
“House was unlocked?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve never known Cassie to be like that. She’s the most uber-cautious person I know.”
“I didn’t see any signs of foul play. Nothing broken. No tracks left behind.”
Cervantes fumbled with his keys. Said nothing.
“Let’s go to the crime scene.” I stopped at the door and looked back. “Maybe something happened overnight after I left her house.”
“What if she went out for coffee?” Cervantes moved past me into the hallway. “I think we need to go to her house first. If Novak is able to get the address, that’s the first place he’s gonna check.”
“You’re wrong, man.” I fumbled my keys out of my pocket. “Tell you what, you go there. I’ll carry my ass to the crime scene.”
I bolted past him, shrugging off his attempt at stopping me, and made my way to the front of the building. Cervantes followed close behind, calling for me to stop. I did at the front door.
“What?” I said.
“You step one foot inside that house, and I’ll have you arrested.”
“Do what you gotta do, then. Hell, follow me over there. I don’t care. My gut tells me she’s there, and this guy knows it.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Cassie hadn’t realized that the air conditioning had cut on. She felt the cool air forced through the vent as it brushed past her, chilling the thin veneer of sweat on her face. She paused and looked up at the ceiling. It had been so hot inside on each visit. If the AC had been on its cycle, that wouldn’t have happened. Come to think of it, had the house even had power?
Her skin pricked at the realization someone might be there. Spirits she could handle. They could only do so much damage. But someone in the flesh? She reached into her pocketbook for the small 9mm.
Cassie sucked in a few deep breaths and steadied her nerves. It could be a glitch, after all. Maybe the unit had shorted after the storm, and now that it had dried out, it was working again. Why would the crime scene guys cut it off intentionally? Wouldn’t the uncontrolled temperature damage the remaining evidence?
For all she knew about her part of the investigation, Cassie knew little about the rest. She often felt she had it best considering she didn’t have to rely on logic, science, or even deductive reasoning. Voices spoke. She listened and passed on the information. For that, they called her a hero. She rolled her eyes at the title. There were real heroes in the world. She was not one of them.
She took another trip around the room in search of whatever the dream had sent her back for. The trip had turned into a dud. Nothing had happened. Nothing had been left behind, at least not that she hadn’t seen in person on the previous trips.
What the hell had Seth been doing there yesterday? He came with nothing. Didn’t appear to have tried to take anything. Perhaps she interrupted him. But what would he have been looking for? She had checked under the mattress, in the closet, and gone through all the drawers. There was nothing.
Cassie sat down on the edge of the bed and stared up at the vent. Strands of hair fluttered in the forced breeze. “Come on, Alice, or anybody for that matter, talk to me.”
Seconds passed before she heard a creak on the floor. Cassie turned to the open doorway and stumbled as she tried to get up from the bed.
“Hello, Cassie.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
“Tanner!”
I stopped
on the concrete walkway and turned back toward Cervantes, holding my hands out. “What, man? We’re wasting time here.”
He jogged up to me. “Why do you feel so strongly about this?”
“Why don’t you?” I said. “I already went by the house. She wasn’t there. Yeah, maybe she’s returned. But we both tried calling her and neither of us got an answer. We go over there, we’re wasting time. Let’s get to the house before something happens.”
He rocked from foot to foot, fingers twitching, like a linebacker over the A gap ready to blitz the moment the center snaps the ball. The hell was the guy’s problem? I could get him not trusting me since I was from a different area. The ‘Big City,’ as he’d referred to it. But my argument was sound and logical. And Cassie was in danger.
“I can’t wait all day, man,” I said. “And neither can Cassie.”
“Get your car and meet me by the rear entrance,” he said. “I’ll lead the way.”
And he did. Like a pulling guard he cleared a path through the city with his lights swirling and siren blaring. No easy feat, either. Seemed every second intersection we came to required us to slow down or stop all together and wait for a pedestrian or two to get out of the way. The squares made it tricky as well. There was no speeding at eighty miles per hour when you had to turn sharp right every hundred feet.
We finally broke free when it happened. Cervantes didn’t hear my blaring horn. And he didn’t see the oncoming truck that had failed to hear the sirens or spot the flashing lights.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Ice streamed through Cassie’s veins. Her heart ramped up to two beats every second. There wasn’t enough air in the room. Her extremities began to tingle and her head felt light. Thirty-seven scars on her neck and torso and arms raged with fire. Though she’d been shielded from his view, she would never forget the sound of his voice. She’d heard it every day in the courtroom for two straight weeks. It grated against her soul every day since.
“I thought I’d never see you again, Cassie,” Novak said. “It always made me so sad. No, frustrated is a better way to put it. I’d sit in my cell thinking over our special night. Over and over and over.” His head bobbed with each utterance of the word. “What more could I have done to you to achieve my goal of killing you? I mean, I stabbed you, what, forty times?”
“You…” She choked on the word. “You know how many times you stabbed me. And you did kill me.”
“Yet here you stand.” The floorboards creaked as he stepped closer. “Here you crumble.” He laughed softly. “I don’t believe all that ‘died and came back’ shit, either. Just lucid consciousness. Know what I mean?”
Cassie fought her frozen muscles and turned to face the man who’d left her for dead. All she had to do was slip her hand into her pocket. The pistol was there. Use it, girl!
“What are you doing here?” she said. “They sent you away. Locked you up.”
He shrugged, both hands out. One clutched a knife. “I escaped. Imagine that. They blinked for a second too long and I was gone.”
“How did…how’d you find me?”
“Please,” he said. “It wasn’t that hard. They took your picture in front of this house, my special house, and put it in the paper. They begged me to find you, for Pete’s sake.”
“Your special house?” She retreated backward, stumbled over her feet and fell. His image in her dream had been more than simple imagery. They were telling her who did it. “You did this?”
“I’m sure you saw the crime scene photos if the police went through the trouble of bringing you here. Aren’t I the reason they involved you? The similarities? Young women, stabbed and assaulted violently. I suppose that’s not quite a single person’s MO, but really, in this small town, it’s not too much of a stretch. Especially when you consider how long I’ve been out of jail.”
Through his babbling she determined he didn’t know about her ability. He thought she was there because of him. What did the paper say? What did the photo show? It had to have been taken yesterday, with the crowd surrounding the house. They saw an arrest at a house where three, maybe four, women had been murdered, and she was caught in the photographic crossfire.
“Now, Cassie—lovely name by the way, and you know, they never told me that. I’m surprised I can even remember your face. It was so dark out there that night, and they never let me see you in court. I get this feeling we’ve been meeting in another world, in our dreams. Anyway, I’ve been thinking since I saw your picture this morning, what to do with you?”
She backed up to the window to create some space between them. It would take a few seconds to draw on him with the pistol. He’d come at her with the knife. “Let me go. Please. You’ve done enough already. I’ll lead them in a different direction. I promise.”
“Lead them? What?”
The last thing she wanted to do was let him in on her secret, and she’d almost blurted it out.
“I’ll tell them it’s not the same,” she said. “Just go, Novak.”
“Hmmm, let me think about that.” He turned and walked to the door. Slammed it shut. “How about no.”
She reached into her pocket when he turned his back, but the pistol snagged when she tried to pull it out. Novak spotted it and rushed forward with the knife leveled at her throat.
“Remove your hand at once.”
She choked down a sob to go with the tears flooding her eyes. This was how it ended? Why? And then it happened. Something gripped at her soul and pulled.
Not now!
She needed her wits about her more than ever before. Novak was not without reason. As insane a person as he was, Cassie knew she could buy some time and get him to take her out of the house.
But it didn’t matter. The walls closed in and immobilized her. She was on the floor. Had he hit her? She couldn’t tell. Her body was numb. A voice, loud, distinct, female, spoke to her. The same woman she encountered the first time.
“Him. It’s him.”
Then it was over. He yanked the 9mm free and laughed. “Safety on. Half-loaded magazine. You did yourself a favor letting me see you reach for this. Had you pulled it on me, you’d be dead right now.
She rolled over and shuffled backward on her elbows, scraping her feet against the floor, until her head touched the wall.
“Where are you going?” Novak approached, no longer wielding the blade. In its place was the pistol. He racked the slide and thumbed down the safety. He moved a few more feet forward, aiming the weapon at Cassie’s head.
“Don’t,” she whispered.
“So many choices, Cassie. I could kill you.” He paused while his gaze traveled to her chest, then crotch. “Or I could have fun with you, then kill you. Damn these decisions.”
Think, Cassie. Throw him off.
“What did you do with Alice?” she blurted out.
Novak cocked his head and smiled. He tapped her forehead with the pistol. “What do you know about Alice?”
“I know this is her room. I know you were in it the night of the homicides and her disappearance. What did you do with her? Is she dead, too?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry too much about Alice. She’s doing just fine. Better than you at the moment, that’s for sure.” He took a step back, nodded at her. “In fact, I think it’s time you found out, Cassie. Get up.”
Fear immobilized her, but after a few seconds her limbs responded to his demands. Did she have a choice? She could handle herself, but he was bigger and stronger. The deciding factor was he had armed himself with her weapon. Combine that with a confined space that had only one means of egress leading to a long corridor, and she knew her chances of survival plummeted.
“Now I want you to turn around, cross your legs, and hold your hands behind your back.” When she didn’t respond, he shouted at her. “Do it!”
Novak twisted a towel and wrapped it around her wrists, binding them together. It wasn’t foolproof. Once outside, she could throw her weight to the side or the ground and take
him with her.
“Good girl, Cassie. Now let’s get out of here. I’ve got someplace special to take you.”
His hand grabbed her hip, pulling her back tight to him.
“What are you doing?”
He said nothing. His fingers worked their way into her pocket. They wriggled against her leg. She tried to jerk away, but that resulted in Novak tightening his grip. He found what he wanted and pulled her car keys out.
They walked through the house, stopping at the end of the hallway, and again by the back door. The towel went slack. Her arms parted and swung freely to her side.
“You run,” he said, “Alice dies. If I don’t return to where she is, she dies. Got it?”
It was a punch to the gut, and Cassie felt as though the wind had been sucked from her lungs. She tried to breathe, but her muscles were too constricted. Her one chance to get away was on the line. Was he serious? Would he do it? And would he just let her go? She could risk it. Now that she knew who did it, there might be enough there to help lead them to Novak and Alice. But would it happen fast enough?
Cassie knew it wouldn’t. So she opened the door and led him through the back yards to where her car waited, slipping in behind the wheel, while Novak kept the pistol aimed at her.
Chapter Thirty-Five
I yanked on the crumpled door, but it refused to budge. Cervantes hunched over the steering wheel with the deflated airbag in his lap. Tiny rivers of crimson flowed down it. “Cervantes,” I yelled into the splintered glass. “Are you all right?”
He looked up at me. Had a small gash on his forehead and a bloody nose. He didn’t wear his seatbelt. The accident could’ve been a lot worse for him.
The other driver hopped out of his truck and ran over. “Shit, I’m sorry, man. I didn’t hear the siren. Is he okay?”
I redirected him back the way he came. “I suggest you go wait over there. Don’t think about leaving, got it?”
Cervantes climbed over the passenger’s seat and exited the mangled vehicle. With his feet on the ground, he looked like a beaten fighter, staggering until he placed his hand on the hood to steady himself. Even then I thought he might drop at any moment.