“I didn’t have to look. Their pictures are hanging on the wall at the school. Noah, it’s the Stevenson twins. They were the ones there that day when Cody was killed.”
“Travis and Trey Stevenson?” Noah asked. “Are you sure? Both of them have been nothing but helpful in this case.”
“I’m sure, Noah. I also saw that one of them touched that knife along with the killer. Did you get prints back yet?”
“Yeah they weren’t a match to anyone in CODIS.” He said.
I glanced out of the curtains to find Trey gone. “Wait here.”
I slipped out of the office. I grabbed a tissue from a box one of the cubicles as I passed. I reached Trey’s desk and picked up the paper he’d just been holding and carried it back into the meeting room. “Have that print tested against the one on this paper. If it’s not Trey’s print then we’ll try it against his brother.”
Noah took the edge of the paper and walked out of the conference room. He took it into the forensic department and handed it over. “Test the prints on this paper against the prints on the knife. This is priority.” Noah pointed at the paper. “Call me immediately with the results.”
The tech glanced at the paper. It was a police report that was signed by Trey Sorenson. “You can’t possibly think….”
“Do it.” Noah demanded. “and whatever you find, keep it to yourself.”
“You got it.” The tech said as we walked out of the department and headed for the door.
“We should go check on the others. Travis took the day off to go hunting.”
“Hunting what?” I gasped, my eyes growing big.
Noah pulled out his phone. He punched in some numbers, and his worry intensified by the second. “He wouldn’t be that stupid to try and kill Carson…”
“Who are you calling?”
“Trey was the one who found the knife at Carson’s house. He probably planted it, and Grant isn’t answering his damn phone for me to warn him,” Noah said, yanking the door open. Noah hurried his steps down the hall. “I’ll drive while you try to reach Sam and the others.”
I tossed him the keys after we stepped outside. I dialed Sam’s number as Noah put the SUV in drive and sped toward the lake.
Sam answered on the third ring. “About time you called me back.”
“Sam, where’s Carson?” I asked.
“He’s with Grant,” Sam answered. “Why?”
“Let me talk to Grant,” I said.
“That’s kind of hard to do. They took his brother Michael’s boat out onto the lake about an hour ago to catch some fish to cook for dinner.”
“He what?” I asked, my voice raising an octave.
“He can’t run if he’s in the middle of a lake, Lucy. It’s not like Grant let him go by himself.”
I swallowed hard. “Listen, I can’t explain, but lock the door, and even if police officers show up, whatever you do, don’t let them in. Don’t even open the door. Just tell them that Noah is on his way.”
“Lucy, what’s going on?”
“Cody’s killer had two accomplices, Deputies Trey and Travis Stevenson. Sit tight, because we’re on our way.”
“I should warn the others,” Sam said.
“You stay put so we know you’re safe. We’ll find the others.”
The sound of a firecracker rang through the phone line.
“Sam, are you outside on the porch?”
“Uh, yeah, and, Lucy, you might want to hurry. I swear I just heard a gunshot across the pond. It was coming from the direction of Carson’s house.”
“Go inside and lock the doors, Sam. We’re coming.”
“I think I’ll do that now, and I’ll start pulling up everything I can on all of the cops that work there. If they were accomplices once, they might have broken a few other laws.”
“Keep me posted,” I said and hung up, trying to call Grant.
It went straight to voicemail three times as we pulled up just outside of Carson’s family home.
A single pickup truck with a Support the Police sticker sat in the driveway. The tag on the front said, Homegrown. The shotgun was missing from the rack. Noah checked his gun clip before reaching into the glove box and handing me a pen.
He still had no idea I’d been given a gun. I took the pen and shoved it behind my ear as I stepped out.
There was only one boat sitting in the middle of the lake. There wasn’t a single soul sitting in it.
“We’re too late,” I whispered as dread filled my veins.
Another shot rang out, and Noah pointed toward the woods in one direction, and he went in the other.
Chapter 23
Noah took off in a fast sprint, pulling out his weapon. I paused, unsure of whether to follow him toward the direction of the gunfire or going the opposite way like he’d instructed.
I did neither.
I pulled open the passenger side door of Stevenson’s truck and climbed inside. The only way to make sure that we caught this guy was if we caught him before leaving, and there were too many big trees. I might have missed him in the forest.
Anger stirred in my gut as I rooted around in the truck for any indication that he’d come here to kill people I cared about. He had a file on the dashboard, and I opened it. It contained dossiers on everyone from our team, although some information seemed to be missing. Obviously, he wasn’t as skilled a hacker as our boy, Sam.
I pulled open the glove box to find an empty shotgun shell box. The vehicle registration was made out to Travis Stevenson. I slipped the gun out of the holster in my leg and waited.
My gaze was trained on the forest around me. I was waiting and watching in the direction of the shot. I hadn’t expected Travis to appear from behind. The driver side door was yanked open, and Travis was about to climb in when he paused, alarmed to find me sitting in his passenger side with a gun pointed at his face.
“I have one question for you, Deputy Stevenson.” I cocked the trigger and gestured for him to drop the gun. “Have you always been a dirty cop?”
“You got this all wrong. I’m out here making sure nothing happens to Carson.”
“On your day off?”
“I was chasing a perp through the woods, and I fired a warning shot. You can’t prove anything else.”
“She doesn’t have to,” Noah said from behind Travis. “On your knees, hands behind your head.”
“I haven’t done anything wrong.”
I stepped out of the truck and rounded it to face Travis. “Except for maybe that one time you helped kill Cody Anderson. I wonder what your sheriff is going to do knowing he hired his son’s killer. I bet you don’t last forty-eight hours in that jail before some backwoods justice takes place.”
Travis’s brows dipped as Noah cuffed him. “You don’t have any proof.”
“I know there were three of you. I’ll find the proof.”
“You already did, Lucy. The lab just called. “It wasn’t Trey’s fingerprints on the knife so I had them run Travis’s and it’s a match.” Noah leaned over him. “You really should wash the outside of the coffee cup on your desk.”
“So, what, I was there serving a search warrant.”
Noah tsked. “We all wore gloves and your brother was the one who found the knife, not you. Trey must have forgotten to wipe it for prints.”
“Did you find Carson and Grant?”
Noah gestured with his head toward the lake. Grant and Carson had climbed back into the boat, and it was headed in our direction.
“One down, two to go,” I said.
Travis pulled out of Noah’s grip and charged me like a bull with his hands behind his back.
One swift kick and I knocked his feet out from beneath him. It was either that or use the pen, and I didn’t want to leave a trail of dead bodies everywhere I went. That would just make things awkward if I ever came back to visit Carson.
Noah grabbed Travis off the ground and shoved him into the back of the SUV.
“He’s right y
ou know. We’re going to need more proof to figure out who the other person is,” I said.
“I guess that means we’ll have to work faster. Once I take him in, you can bet that the community is going to want answers, or they might turn on us.”
“Keep interrogating him and hold off on giving the public answers as long as you can,” I said.
“God forbid he and his brother decide to retaliate. It might turn into the Wild West out here.”
“Maybe you can get him to fess up if you offer a reduced sentence or maybe threaten his twin too. Maybe one of them will give up the third person.”
“It’s going to be long night.” Noah sighed. “If I book him and put him in jail, chances are an inmate might view this as an opportunity for payback. If I keep him at the sheriff’s department, it’s only a matter of time before a lynch mob takes matters into their own hands. You’ve got twenty-four hours to find me something on the other brother, in the meantime, I’ll serve a search warrant on Travis’s house.”
“Maybe we’ll get lucky.” I was being foolishly optimistic. We didn’t need luck; we needed a Hail Mary, and I was fresh out of those. I couldn’t part the Red Sea or, hell, even the lake to see what other missing treasures might be hiding beneath.
As the boat neared shore, I headed back through the woods toward the lake house to check on Sam. He’d locked the door just like I’d told him.
Chapter 24
I knocked and called his name for several minutes before he let me inside. “Did you catch him?”
“Roth arrested Travis Stevenson, but we still need to pick up his twin and identify the last person, not to mention find some additional evidence.”
“Give me some time, and I might be able to help you with that. I’ll start cross-referencing all of the deceased with the twins, and maybe we’ll find the missing link.”
Grant and Carson returned soaking wet and shivering. They’d jumped out of the boat at the first shot, making themselves harder targets. I cooked everyone dinner. It was a luxury I didn’t have in Camp Cupcake. I was going to have to get reacclimated with my life when this was over.
Noah stayed at the sheriff’s department, and I’d fallen asleep on the couch. Grant woke me up to take his bed again. I’d gone from dreaming of being chased in the woods by psychotic chemistry club members to dreaming of Carl Chisolm.
When I woke, I could feel him. Carl’s energy had neared, not enough to pinpoint him, but the connection was stronger. He was getting closer, and we were running out of time to find the proof we needed.
Everyone had already dispersed when I came downstairs. The only one in the house was Sam, who was behind his computer again. He lowered his earphones when he spotted me. “I don’t have anything for you yet, but I’m getting close.”
“Great. Just call me. I want to go to the school and ask Amber about those other kids that went missing.”
“Noah served the search warrant on Travis’s house. They found drugs in baggies. Lucy, he was dealing. So, they’ve got some charges to hold him on. He isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.”
“Thanks.” That was a relief they had more charges to stick on him.
I pulled into the school parking lot again and headed into the office. The woman behind the counter didn’t even have to ask my name this time. She buzzed Amber’s office, and she walked out with the chemistry kid again.
“Perfect timing.” She held the door open. “I heard you stopped by yesterday and left before we had a chance to talk.”
“Yes, thanks to that picture outside of the Stevenson twins. I recognized them as being around when one of the murders took place.”
“How did you do that?” Amber asked, her brows lifted.
“It’s classified, but I didn’t get a good look at the third person. I guess with a little more digging, I’ll figure it out. They arrested Travis Stevenson last night, and they now also have him on drug charges.”
“Wow,” she said. “That’s a shock.”
The phone buzzed, and she answered. “I’m sorry, but can you give me just a few minutes? A few of the kitchen staff are arguing, and I have to go take care of it.”
“Take your time. I can wait.”
“Great,” Amber said.
Amber walked out the door, and I ran my fingers across the spines of the yearbooks on her bookshelf, pulling out the year Carson graduated. I opened it to find that this was Amber’s personal yearbook. All of the notations about graduating and her friends were written in various places throughout.
My phone rang, and I glanced at the caller ID. Sam’s name popped up.
I answered and pressed the phone to my ear. “Yeah.”
“I may have found something,” Sam said, earning my interest. “You know that Drake Tines was the odd ball in the equation, but the others are somewhat loosely connected. Sort of.”
“What do you mean sort of?”
“Well, we know Cody was the school bully. He’s sort of the odd man out too. The rest, even though they had very different lifestyles, were all in the Chemistry club, just not in the same years. Two of the deceased, even though they look to be Cody’s age when he disappeared, were actually reported missing only two years ago. Gretchen Smith and Joe Northington.”
“I haven’t tried to connect with their energy yet. Are they from Carson’s school days?”
“Same age bracket, different years.”
I hadn’t been expecting that. Recent kills mixed with older ones. I’d thought they were from the same time period. That changed my thinking entirely. I flipped through the yearbook.
“Did the last two victims die of knife wounds? If they did, then I’m sure Carson has an alibi for that time period.”
“No,” Sam answered. “The medical examiner report said they had broken syringes in each of their arms as if they’d been doing drugs, but he’s afraid the toxicology report isn’t going to tell us much.”
“Drugs?”
I stopped in the yearbook on the picture of the chemistry club that Carson had been in to get a look at the twins again. A heart was circled around Carson’s face.
Proving my initial observation that night at dinner that Amber was hot for Irish.
“What year did you say the other kids went missing?”
“Two years ago,” Sam answered.
I pulled a yearbook from the shelf from two years prior and looked up both names. They were cute kids. Kind of dorky, but I wouldn’t have guessed drug users. Their faces were clean and bright. No bags beneath their eyes and no bloodshot eyes. If they were using drugs, it didn’t show in their pictures.
I flipped to the Chemistry club and paused. Both of them had been members, along with one of the Dawson kids. Amber was smiling at the camera, even though the others weren’t.
Amber was the constant between all of the deceased. Cody had been picking on her. All of the others were in the chemistry club through the years, and that left only Carson’s dad to try and figure out. With the heart around Carson’s face, was it possible that she’d gotten rid of his father in an attempt to get him out of the picture before he messed up Carson’s career.
“I haven’t figured out the drug connection yet, but you’re right. There is definitely a chemistry club connection.”
“In a search of Deputy Travis Stevenson’s home, they found drugs in plastic bags ready to distribute. They believe he was dealing drugs. This could connect him to the two recent missing teens.”
My jaw dropped as I processed the idea. I grabbed both yearbooks and jogged out of Amber’s office, doing this run-walk thing so I didn’t look suspicious. “I think I’ve got it. Call Noah and have him ask the sheriff if he thought his son might be using. Tell Noah to apply pressure. I think he might have been covering for his son’s indiscretions. I think we have more than a serial killer here. I think we have a drug operation.”
“That’s a leap, isn’t it?” Sam asked.
“Nope. Think about it. The cop had drugs ready to distribute, two died
from drugs, the rest were in the chemistry club. I’m betting they were cooking more than experiments. They were cooking something far more deadly and profitable, and if I had to guess, the others got in the way. The odd ball out is Drake Tines, which helps me to narrow down his killer.”
“I’ll tell him, but he’s going to want to proof.”
“And I know just where to get it. I’m going out to the Dawson property,” I said, glancing over my shoulder to find Amber hurrying in my direction.
I hung up on Sam and yanked open the door. Starting the engine, I peeled out of the parking lot while putting on my seat belt.
I turned onto Main Street and felt the metal barrel of the gun jabbed into my ribs.
“Keep driving.” Carl’s voice was calm and calculating.
Chapter 25
“How did you find me?” I asked.
“The same way you found me, Lucy. We’re connected,” he said as he moved off the floorboard to sit in the seat, pressing the barrel deeper into my side. “You should have killed me.”
He was right. I should have.
I slowed on Main Street, looking for an obvious way out and not seeing one. “Keep driving to the woods, Lucy, because if you don’t, I’ll kill everyone in the lake house.”
Fear clogged my veins as I drove toward the outskirts of town.
“Why did you lie to the cops and tell them it wasn’t me who put you in the coma?”
“You don’t know?” Carl asked, his voice turning deep and dangerously menacing. “You should ask your friends.”
I’d pulled down the long road that led to the Dawson property when a plan formed in my mind. If I stopped the car, he was going to kill me, plain and simple. I wouldn’t even have time to reach for the weapon resting in the ankle holster. If I took him to where the others were, Carl would kill anyone that was a witness. Well, a witness he could see. There was one place, once chance.
As I got closer to where we’d parked in the SUV with Grant on the dirt road outside the Dawson property, where the cameras watched the property line, I slammed my foot on the gas, making Carl jolt backwards in his seat. I braced myself as I swerved the car off the road and headed straight for a tree.
Killing Justice (Fractured Minds Series Book 2) Page 11