by Lauren Carr
“I can’t believe you’d discuss my vasectomy with her,” Mac finally managed to sputter. “I know this woman. She’s a friend and a colleague. The last thing I want to discuss with her is my …” He found it difficult to form the words.
“Do you or do you not love Archie?” Agnes asked firmly.
“Loving Archie has nothing to do with you violating my privacy and discussing my sex organs with other people!”
“If you really loved Archie, you’d do whatever you have to do to give her a baby!” Agnes slammed her hand down on the kitchen counter. “It isn’t like you don’t have the money to have the surgery done by the best doctors money can buy! So the only reason you wouldn’t have it done is because you’re just plain too selfish to do it!”
His eyes wide and his face pale, Hector had backed up to the door.
His tail tucked between his legs, Gnarly scurried to hide in the corner behind a recliner.
Afraid Mac was going to grab for his gun, David rushed around the kitchen counter and took the elderly woman by the elbow. “Agnes, it’s time to go.”
She shook David’s hand off her arm. “Go where?”
“Back to the hotel,” David said. “It isn’t safe for you here …” Taking note of the fury on Mac’s face, he added in a mutter, “on more than one front.”
Doc tore the top sheet of paper from her notepad. “Well, Mac, if you decide to have the surgery reversed, here’s the name of a colleague of mine. Dr. Maura Monroe. She’ll fix you right up.” Her tone was as casual as if she were referring him to a barber for a good clean shave.
When Mac refused to take the note, Doc slapped it down on the counter, snapped her medical case shut, and strode over to the door. “Let’s go, Hector.”
“Agnes, we need to go.” David made another attempt to grab Agnes by the elbow.
“I’m not going anywhere!” She slapped David in the arm with her purse.
“Agnes, it’s dangerous for you to stay here.” David clutched her elbow and kept tight hold of it.
“David is right.” Mac laid his hands flat on the kitchen counter and bit off each word. “It would be dangerous for you to stay here.”
“Archie and your sons are going to be worried about you,” David said.
“Joshua is injured.” Agnes stomped on David’s foot to force him to release his hold on her. “Doc says he has to rest and keep quiet. He needs me to take care of him.”
“Mac will take care of him,” David said.
Agnes laughed. “Be serious. Mac can’t even take care of himself.”
“I take care of myself just fine,” Mac insisted.
“Archie has been taking care of you ever since you moved to Spencer.”
“That’s not true!”
“What brand of coffee do you like?” Agnes shot at him.
“Black,” Mac replied.
“That’s not the brand,” Agnes said. “That’s the way you take it. What brand and flavor do you like?”
Confused by the question, Mac stared at her and then at David, who was waiting for his response. Even Hector and Doc were waiting. Gnarly peered out from behind the recliner.
“You have no idea how much my daughter does for you,” Agnes said with her arms crossed. “Just like every other pampered rich man. She takes such good care of you that you can’t even see it—until it’s not done. Believe me, if you got the wrong type of coffee served to you, you’d know it in a heartbeat. That’s how devoted she’s been to you.”
Taking her hand off her hip, she wagged an arthritic finger at him. “The thing is, Joshua is hurt bad. He needs someone who knows how to take care of him here, because if not, he’s going to die.”
“She’s right,” Doc’s voice came from the door. “It’s preferable that Josh go to a hospital, but if he can’t, then have someone here who knows advanced first aid.”
“I’m certified,” Agnes said.
Mac gritted his teeth.
Agnes glared back at him.
“Doc has a point,” David said in a low voice, “as much as I hate to leave her here.”
“You have no choice,” Agnes said, “because I’m not going.”
With a sigh, David headed for the door. As he passed Mac, he paused to whisper, “I’ll send a couple of officers up here to guard the place.” With a glance back at Agnes, who was matching Mac’s glare at her, he added, “I’ll be back first thing in the morning to check on the survivors.”
Chapter Eight
Evening: State Police Barracks, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
“Josh, I know you’re probably busy with wedding stuff,” Cameron said into her cell phone. Her tone was heavy with worry. “I’ve left you three messages today already, and it’s not like you to not return my calls.” Conscious of her fellow detectives busily working at their desks, she kept her head bowed and her voice low. “I’m starting to get worried. I know it’s just me, but can you please call me back? I need to hear your voice.” Forcing a confident expression on her face, she sat up tall in her seat while thumbing to disconnect the call.
Maybe Mac Faraday dragged Josh into a case. A reassuring grin crossed her face. Josh never has to be dragged into a murder investigation.
She picked up the phone and thumbed through her contact list to Chief David O’Callaghan’s direct line at the Spencer Police Department. She recognized Desk Sergeant Tonya’s voice when she answered.
“Hey, Tonya, this is Detective Cameron Gates with the Pennsylvania State Police,” she said, “I guess Chief O’Callaghan isn’t in his office.”
“He’s on his way to a meeting, Detective Gates,” the desk sergeant replied. “Let me see if he has a minute to talk to you.”
Cameron waited on hold.
“Talking to your hubby?” Detective Butch Howard, a man with a beer belly of which he was very proud and a gray buzz cut and flat top, had sauntered up to her desk. An older man, Butch had never adjusted to women becoming detectives—especially homicide detectives.
Cameron was torn between hanging up or telling Butch to come back later. Before she could decide, Tonya came back onto the line. “Chief said he’ll call you right back, Detective Gates.”
Click!
Perplexed, Cameron looked at the phone and hung up. Tonya hadn’t asked for her phone number. Must be going by the caller ID.
“Yes, Butch, I was talking to my hubby.” Even though she had not actually talked to Joshua, she didn’t want to bother with the full explanation. “This is the first time Josh and Donny have been away since we got married, and I miss them. Don’t you miss any of your ex-wives?”
“Every month when I have to write the alimony checks.” With his knees unable to handle holding up his poundage for very long, Butch plopped down into the chair next to her desk. “I ran a background check on your vic.”
“What did you find out?”
“Nothing.” Butch’s smug expression was begging for her to ask for more.
“No arrests?”
“Nothing as in nothing,” Butch said. “Your vic is a ghost. Reginald Crane does not exist.”
“We found his wallet with his driver’s license—”
“All bogus,” Butch said.
Recalling the West Point Military Academy diploma hanging on his wall, Cameron asked, “Did you check the military database?”
Butch was shaking his head. “VA has no record of him, and his social security number isn’t in the system. This guy does not exist and never did.”
“He must be in the Witness Protection Program,” Cameron said. “Though I never heard of someone in the program being put up in such fancy digs before. They usually want them to blend in with the rest of society.”
“If he’s in the program, the US Marshals office is denying it on every front,” Butch said. “Usually when we end up with one of their witnesses,
they swoop in to chase us away like vultures staking their claim on a carcass. Not this time.”
“That must have something to do with why his assistant, Ethan Bonner, took off.”
“He’s a ghost, too.”
Cameron stared at Butch, who enjoyed a good chuckle at her confusion.
“Fingerprints?” Cameron asked.
“Place was wiped down,” Butch said, “but we did get a hit on prints that they managed to lift off some picture frames.” He slapped a folder down on her desk. “Agnes Douglas from Hopewell, Pennsylvania.”
Cameron picked up the folder and opened it. “Any priors?”
“Not in all of her seventy years,” Butch said with a chuckle. “She’s got a bunch of kids.”
Cameron nodded while reading over the background information. “Six sons—all with clean records. A daughter who died over twelve years ago.” She read. “Kendra Douglas? Where do I know that name?”
“According to Douglas’ driver’s license, she weighs a whole one hundred and ten pounds. Yep, I can see her duct taping your vic to a chair to torture him.”
“What were her prints doing at the scene?” Cameron found the answer in her listed occupation. Housekeeping. “She cleaned his house. Maybe one of her sons did it. It was a big house, and he was an older man. They could have been after money or valuables.”
“He’d have to know we’d be talking to Mommy,” Butch said. “Was anything stolen?”
“I’m not coming up with anything.” Dismissing the information as not much of a lead, she closed the folder and dropped it back onto her desk. “What about the computers? I saw a laptop and two desktops.”
“Hard drives had been wiped clean before we got there,” Butch said. “Forensics claims that whoever did it was a professional. He knew what he was doing. Not much hope of retrieving anything.”
“We have a body,” Cameron said. “That dead man in that mansion was somebody, and someone killed him. There’s somebody out there who knows and cares about him.” She picked up the folder with Agnes Douglas’ information. “Let’s check out the housekeeper. Maybe this Crane guy, or whatever his name is, talked to her. I’ll give her a call to see what she knows.”
“Well, good luck with that, Gates.” Chuckling at delivering her an impossible case that he would enjoy seeing her fail at solving, Detective Butch Howard pried himself up out of her chair and sauntered away.
“I hate this case.” Cameron dropped back into her seat with a moan.
The hair on the back of her neck stood up on end. She had been feeling like she was being watched on and off ever since she had left Reginald Crane’s home. On a hunch, she turned around to look out the window. It was dark outside, but she narrowed her eyes and peered through the falling snow and the dim parking lights to see a white Mini Cooper with black stripes parked in the corner of the visitor’s lot.
Didn’t I see that car when I pulled out of the burger place for lunch? Nah, there are millions of Mini Coopers in the big city, and they all look alike. Forcing the thought of being followed from her mind, she pulled away from the window. You’re getting paranoid, Gates.
“Gates,” Lieutenant Miles Dugan called to her from his office door, “can I see you in my office?”
Cameron sat up in her seat and looked over her shoulder to her squad leader’s corner office. Beyond him, she saw two men with heavy coats over suits waiting for her. She was rising from her chair when she heard the cell phone she had in her handbag, which she kept in the bottom drawer of her desk, ring.
Not instantly recognizing the ring, she had to pause to determine from where the sound was coming and what it meant.
My burn phone. It has to be Josh. He’s in trouble.
The phone rang again.
Yanking open her desk drawer, she dug into the pocket and down to the bottom to extract the phone. The caller ID didn’t read Joshua. It read a phone number she didn’t recognize.
For a split second she was disappointed, until she realized it could be Joshua calling from a different phone. She waved her thumb over the answer button.
“Gates, did you hear me?” her lieutenant called to her again.
Cameron felt her body break out in a cold sweat. I’ll need to call him back. Please, God, let him be okay. “Coming.” After setting the phone down in the center of her desk, she hurried across the detective squad room to her chief’s office.
Lieutenant Miles Dugan’s workspace may have been an office, but it was still small. Between the two visitors, dressed in heavy coats and wearing shoulder holsters, and the police lieutenant, the room felt overcrowded when Cameron entered it.
Immediately, one of the men jumped up from his chair in front of the desk to offer her his seat.
“This is Detective Cameron Gates,” the lieutenant introduced her. “She’s the detective taking the lead in the Reginald Crane homicide.” He then went on to introduce his visitors. “Gates, these are Special Agents Leland Elder—” the larger of the two agents, who had remained seated, nodded his head to acknowledge her, “and Neal Black. They’re with the FBI.”
Both agents displayed their badges for Cameron to examine.
Yep, FBI all right.
Both agents were broad shouldered. Square shaped, Elder looked like he was the same size as a refrigerator. With thick reddish-blond hair that was combed with every strand in place and green eyes, Agent Neal Black was an attractive man. Judging by the way he grinned at her, Cameron could see that he knew it, too.
“Your background search on Reginald Crane brought up all sorts of flags in our department, Detective Gates,” Special Agent Black said.
“Not on our end,” Cameron replied. “We got nothing. Not even an ID on him. According to our records, Reginald Crane does not exist.”
Special Agent Black looked over his shoulder at his partner. Special Agent Elder cocked a dark heavy eyebrow back at him.
“Well,” Agent Black drawled, “that’s because he doesn’t exist. You see, Reginald Crane was one of our agents. He’s been working deep undercover on a case for quite some time, and we thought he was about to finally get a break. Obviously, he must have, since someone tortured him to death.”
“What kind of case was he working on?” Cameron asked.
“We can’t tell you that,” Elder said. His voice was so low that it sounded like a disembodied voice from a demon in a movie—devoid of any human compassion.
“The case is much too sensitive to discuss,” Special Agent Black said. “The fact is, I’m afraid the FBI is going to have to take over this investigation. We’re here to ask that you turn over everything that you have gathered on it so far, including any leads you may have. Possible suspects.”
“Or other agents involved in the case?” Cameron asked. “Like Ethan Bonner? Am I correct in assuming he was working with your man Crane? He’s probably the one who scrubbed the place down and wiped all of the hard drives.”
Special Agent Black grinned at her. “You’re good, Gates. That’s exactly what happened.”
“Why didn’t he just identify himself as an FBI agent?” Cameron asked.
“Because he was working deep undercover,” Agent Black countered. “His partner had just been killed.” He laid his hand on her shoulder. “I’m sure you understand how the sudden death of someone you are close to can make you not think straight, Detective Gates. It can even make you unsure of who you can trust.”
Cameron leaned away from his touch. “What division of the FBI are you with, Special Agent Black?”
“Detective Gates,” Lieutenant Dugan interjected before the agents could respond. “The fact of the matter is that the FBI is now taking the lead on this case, which will free you up to take a few days off to go meet Josh and attend the Faraday wedding.”
“Faraday wedding?” Special Agent Black’s green eyes brightened. “As in Mac Faraday
, the multi-millionaire? I had no idea that we were in the midst of high society.” He made a big display of bowing in front of Cameron, who felt her cheeks turn pink. “How do you know Mac Faraday?”
“We’ve worked together on a couple of cases,” Cameron said.
“Her husband is one of Faraday’s groomsmen,” Lieutenant Dugan tossed out. “Joshua Thornton.”
“Thornton?” Special Agent Elder croaked out. “Where have we heard of him?” he asked his partner.
“He’s the prosecuting attorney in Hancock County in West Virginia,” the lieutenant said. “He was also a JAG lawyer in the navy and prosecuted some very heavy-duty cases before retiring.”
While her chief spoke, Cameron was feeling increasingly uncomfortable with how Special Agent Black was eying her. She felt like a piece of meat. Meanwhile, Special Agent Elder’s dark eyes looked menacing. She had met some unsavory characters who worked for the FBI and other federal agencies. As a matter of fact, she had discovered that being slightly unsavory yourself gave you an edge in solving a case. You had an easier time getting into the killer’s head.
“I’ll get you everything we have.” Cameron stood up from the chair.
“Wonderful,” Special Agent Black said.
“Then I’ll approve your leave starting tomorrow,” Lieutenant Dugan said. “I’m sure Josh will be thrilled to see you.”
“And I’ll be thrilled to see him.”
Spencer Police Department
Located along the shore of Deep Creek Lake, Spencer’s small police department sported a dock with a dozen jet skis and four speed boats. For patrolling the deep woods and up the mountain trails, they had eight ATVs. Their fleet of SUV cruisers was painted black with gold lettering on the side that read “SPENCER POLICE.”
Hurrying through the front door and out of the cold, Police Chief David O’Callaghan fingered the business card in his pocket that Joshua Thornton had handed him. He dreaded the thought of calling and speaking to the unnamed woman.
He felt like making the call would be on par with opening a Pandora’s Box to let all the demons of his past escape to wreak havoc all over again. As long as he didn’t dial the phone number, then he could pretend they didn’t exist.