by Blake Pierce
Laura shook her head and rolled her eyes. “I don’t think I would like to get used to it. You should come to my gym. They actually clean it.”
“They clean mine,” Nate protested. “It’s just we take working out seriously. The scent builds up again, you know?”
Laura shook her head again, pointing to a sign on the wall that indicated the direction of the locker rooms. They passed along a narrow hall with Lino floors, smooth and polished, and the scent only got stronger. “I think what you’re trying to tell me is that boys smell.”
“I think you could have worked that out a long time before now,” Nate laughed. It was a strange sound to hear just then. Considering how long it had been since they’d been relaxed enough to laugh together, it was odd for it to happen right when they were approaching a suspect. But Laura felt it, too. The adrenaline. Being close to your quarry was a rush. Knowing you might have to be prepared for anything – but in this case, there was less fear, because they had no indication that the killer would be armed at all. It wasn’t as though they were investigating gunshot wounds or stabbings. For all they knew, he didn’t use any weapons at all in claiming his victims.
Just rope and gravity.
They stepped through an opening that led down a twisting hall and back on itself, a kind of privacy feature that left the locker rooms somewhat open while also preventing anyone from seeing in from the hall. Laura let Nate go first, figuring that if she was about to get an eyeful of something unexpected, at least Nate’s frame would block the view until the guy had had a moment to scramble for something to cover himself with.
But as she emerged behind him and took in the scene in front of them, she couldn’t see anyone at all.
The room was set out almost exactly as she’d imagined it: rows of lockers all around the outside, then benches in front of and between them so that players could sit down to change, most of them already strewn with discarded bits of clothing. A rack divided the center of the room, hung with all kinds of coats and jackets, no doubt left there by the players who’d come dressed for winter. It concealed the back half of the locker from their view, but as Nate looked around it –
He gave a shout, distracting Laura from her glance around the rest of the room. Before she could even react, he took off running, and Laura had no choice but to follow him. She didn’t know what he’d seen, but she knew what she would bet on: Bradley Milford, running for it.
CHAPTER TWELVE
As far as Laura was concerned, the locker room was a series of tripping hazards, one after the other. There was a bench set at an angle, maybe left there messily or maybe nudged deliberately before Milford ran, and Laura caught one of her shins on the very edge of it as she attempted to take the shortest route she could across the back of the room. There was another of those winding corridors on the other side, leading to a shower room – thankfully, with none of them turned on, there was no steam obstructing their vision. Nate ran past but Laura hesitated for a moment, checking the large communal shower space was empty, not knowing if he still had Bradley in his sights or not.
It was only a moment’s pause, but when Laura chased after him, Nate was already fully around the next bend. When she’d turned it, he was there in front of her again, his large and tall frame filling up the corridor enough that she couldn’t see around him. She cursed herself in her head, wondering why she hadn’t stopped to grab something in the locker room. If she’d been able to get a vision of where Bradley was going…
She threw herself down the hall as fast as she could, aware that she was little help right now. Nate was closer, and there was no way past him anyway. But she had to keep up. If the path diverged at all, it would be important for them both to be close. To be able to chase him down, no matter where he went.
Nate shot out of a doorway ahead, and when Laura followed, it again took her a moment to get her bearings in the new setting. There were corridors branching off in all directions, doors everywhere, from a wider hallway that was more decorative: plants at set intervals in pots, a noticeboard with things pinned to it, labels on the doors describing whose office they were… The sound of her own shoes squeaking on the polished floor echoed back to her, obscuring any clue of the footsteps ahead.
Laura raced ahead, putting on a surge of energy to get up to Nate again, then realizing it was only because he had slowed slightly. He was looking around, and Laura knew then that he had no idea where their suspect had gone.
“Left,” Laura panted out, darting in that direction down the hall that split off to the side. She didn’t wait for his reply, but she heard him running onwards, towards the rest of the halls and wherever they led.
Laura was lost quickly. She had no idea where she was. It felt like they had gone downwards on a slope after leaving the field, and by the turns they had taken since, she guessed they were underneath it now. Or at least, she was. Nate could have been in Kansas by now, given how far and sprawling the corridors seemed.
There was light up ahead. Laura put on another burst of speed, feeling that if she were on the run, she’d want to move towards the outside as soon as possible. Get back to her car. Be gone before anyone could figure out that she was no longer on foot.
Laura stumbled upwards into the daylight again, a strange contrast to the yellow lights of the underground halls that made her head hurt. The players were still on the field, carrying on like normal. But a few of them, those closest, had turned and were looking up. Looking…
Looking at the stands, where Laura could now make out the figure of Bradley Milford running, zigzagging across rows and leaping over chairs to get higher, with Nate running behind him.
They must have emerged from another doorway, somewhere nearer to where she’d left Nate, right into the stands. Laura was below them now, picking up speed again after a momentary pause, tracking them along the flat surface of the field. There were no impediments in her way like they had, nothing stopping her from getting up to full speed. She looked ahead, calculating, trying to strain to make out the unfamiliar layout of the field.
The stands – there were openings at the tops of each side, no doubt leading to staircases. People would file up those stairs with their tickets and their snacks when they were coming in from the outside. That must be where Bradley was heading – to get down the stairs and out to the parking lot through the visitor entrance, hoping to use his knowledge of the stadium and his fitness to outpace them!
Laura dashed headlong towards the spot where she and Nate had entered the field in the first place, putting her all into concentrating now. Above her, she could hear them clattering across the metal stands and didn’t need to look up. They were still on course for the far edge of the stands, the opening she had seen. She took one glance as she reached the corner, saw Milford almost reaching it, Nate falling behind. He must have tripped or stumbled getting over some of the seats, letting Milford take more of an advantage.
It had to be on her now.
Darting down the narrow opening between the two stands was the biggest risk of it all. Laura was cut off, unable to see either Milford or Nate now, only hoping that her theory had been correct, and she was about to emerge in the right place. She aimed for the place where the wall of the stands beside her stopped and the path opened up again, towards the entrance, running as fast as she could –
She was knocked to the ground as she went bodily into him, colliding just as Milford came to the bottom of the stairs and leaped outwards. He had been looking behind him, the only piece of information she managed to gather in the flash of seeing him before they hit one another. Laura rolled, saw him sprawled across the ground next to her and threw herself forward again, only for him to recover his senses enough to lunge out of the way at the same time.
Right into Nate, who was barreling down the stairs fast enough to leap for him.
“That's enough!” Nate shouted, pinning him to the ground successfully this time. Laura assessed herself quickly, checking for injuries. She had probably a go
od enough bruise developing on her right shoulder, but that was all in. She grabbed her handcuffs from her belt and used them to restrain Milford, allowing Nate to get up.
She looked over in time to see the young security guard, the one who had let them in, walking out a few paces from his post and staring at them wide-eyed. He blanched immediately, as if realizing that he had been caught leaving the place they had told him to stand watch and disappeared back towards the gate.
“I swear, it was just for me,” Milford said, his words coming out high with panic and strained as he turned his head against the ground. “I wasn't going to give them to anyone else. I'm not distributing, or anything like that. You have to believe me!”
Laura blinked.
“What are you talking about?” she asked.
“The drugs,” Milford said, as if it was obvious that was what they were all here to talk about.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Laura stepped back to allow Nate to haul Milford to his feet, setting him back down again at the foot of the metal stairs. Propped up like this in a sitting position, with his hands still cuffed behind his back, it was easier at least to talk to him.
“Okay,” Nate said. “Start talking. Now.”
“W-well,” Milford stuttered, looking between the two of them uncertainly. “I, I don't know, what...”
“Cat’s got your tongue now, has it?” Nate said, his words sharp and angry. “You've as much as admitted that you have drugs in your possession. I think you'd better start telling us everything.”
Milford nodded, his shoulders sagging in recognition of the fact that they had him dead to rights. If he had been smart, he would have kept quiet right from the beginning, instead of trying to clear his name and only incriminating himself even further. “Okay,” he said. “They’re in my pocket.”
Nate stepped forward, quickly patting both sides of Milford's hips until he found a pocket that rattled. He pulled out a small bottle of pills, unmarked except for a mysterious letter printed in large font right on the front.
“What are they?” Laura asked. They would probably have to run a full toxicology report on them at the lab in order to make any kind of arrest stick, but it would be better to hear it from him first. To know exactly what they were dealing with.
“I just...” Milford sighed. “I needed a bit of an edge, you know? Something to make me faster, stronger. I wanted to make it to the majors. One of the boys on the team has this supplier, he told me they can't be traced yet. They won't show up in any tests they make us do.”
Nate opened the bottle, shaking it a little and eyeing the pills suspiciously. He tipped one out into his hand, examining the markings on it closely. Then he barked out a laugh. “If this is what I think it is,” he said “you’ve been tricked. They absolutely are testing for these kinds of things now. You’d have been caught within five minutes of stepping anywhere near a major league team.”
“What are they?” Laura asked, frowning. “Side effects?”
Nate shook his head. “They’re not steroidal. No violence or aggression expected.”
She sighed, folding her arms across her chest. It would have been nice if they could chalk all this up to drug induced rage. It would have made a nice neat little court case, the kind of thing that a jury could sign off on pretty quickly. But, no. Apparently, they were going to have to work for it.
“Wait a second,” Milford said, looking between them with an owlish expression. “You didn't come here about the drugs?”
“They do, however, come with a nice serving of paranoia,” Nate commented dryly.
“No,” Laura said. “We didn't come here about the drugs. We came here to talk to you about your girlfriend.”
“Oh,” Milford said, dropping his head down to the ground again. “Veronica. Damnit. I’ve been so jumpy ever since all the cops and you guys came to the house, I thought you must have figured it out about the drugs. I thought that’s why you came here, instead of finding me at home.”
“No,” Laura said, finding it difficult not to start yelling at him for his selfishness. His girlfriend was dead, and he was worried about his drug habit? He was looking more and more suspicious in her eyes by the minute. Surely, only a psychopath would care this little about her. “Not Veronica. Stephanie.”
There was a pause. Milford looked up at her, frowning and squinting his eyes. Then his expression cleared a little, though he looked no less mystified. “You mean, Stephanie and Ross, kind of Stephanie?”
“Stephanie Marchall,” Laura confirmed. “Your ex-girlfriend, isn't that right?”
“Yeah,” Milford said, but he shook his head again. “I mean, a long time ago. She's married now. To Ross. They've been together for ages. We ended up staying friends, all three of us. I wouldn't even think about calling her my girlfriend anymore. It was so long ago, it barely even registers.”
“It would seem so,” Laura said. “You're not even that upset about it, are you?”
Milford frowned again, his brow turning into a jagged line. “Upset about her marrying Ross? No, not really. He's a great guy. From what I heard, they're happy together. I’ve moved on, anyway.”
“Not about her marrying Ross,” Laura said. “About her dying.”
Milford’s face dropped, almost comically so. The color drained out of him once again, and he looked over at Nate as if he was trying to figure out if Laura was telling the truth.
“She's dead?” he asked, his voice dropping to barely a hoarse whisper.
Laura felt an impatience growing at the back of her mind, in the pit of her stomach. He would have to be one of the best actors the world had ever seen to be able to pull this off. First there was the whole thing about the drugs, and now this. It was like he really didn't know that Stephanie was dead. She had seen a few local news reports, knew that they were just naming the dead as ‘local women’ for now. Captain Blackford had given some kind of statement to the press a couple of days ago about not being able to give the full name of the first victim before her whole family had been notified.
The shock on his face, in his voice, it seemed genuine. Which was very bad news for them, because it meant that Bradley Milford was probably innocent.
“Where were you yesterday between the hours of eleven AM and midnight?” Laura asked, deciding to get right to the point.
“I was at my coach’s house,” Bradley said. “We had a team party.”
“Did you stay all day?” Nate asked. “Or did you come and go to the store, like you were doing earlier today?”
“No, I was there all day.” Milford shrugged his shoulders. “Coach needed help with this bathroom upgrade he’s doing, so we all pitched in and then afterwards we cracked open some beers and had a good time. I was still there late, so I slept in the spare room, then in the early hours I got woken by the phone call about Vee and headed right to her parents’ place instead. That's why I had to go to the store to get supplies. I needed to brush my teeth, all of that kind of stuff, before coming out to practice. After your visit earlier, I ended up just coming straight here and using the showers. Luckily, I usually keep a spare uniform and change of clothes in my locker, just in case. But, is it true? Is Stephanie really dead as well?”
“I'm afraid she is,” Laura said. It seemed like it was cut and dry now, no way to avoid the truth. He had an alibi. He couldn't possibly have put Veronica in position on that platform if he was working hard on a DIY project all day. And, yes, there were sometimes issues with allowing someone to use their parents as an alibi. There was a certain amount of bias involved. But that stacked up against the way he was acting… it was a convincing show. “And two days before that, what were you doing?” she added, just to be sure.
“I was here,” Milford said. “We had practice, and a game in the evening.”
That ruled him out for Stephanie Marchall, too. He wouldn’t have needed to be there at the end, when he could have snuck away after the game to get to the gas station before midnight. That wasn’t the t
imeframe they were most concerned about. It was earlier in the day, when Stephanie was set up on the platform. That was when it was sure the killer had to be around.
And if he’d been here, there were enough witnesses and doubtless enough security camera footage to back him up.
“I’m going to call Blackford, get someone down here to take him in for the drugs,” Nate suggested. From his tone, Laura could hear that he’d come to the same conclusion she had. He wasn’t their killer.
She watched Milford in silence while Nate walked away a distance to make the call. Her mind was on the vision she had seen earlier. The clock ticking down. The killer had to have his victim in place already by now. That meant that every false lead, every dead end, was ticking down her life.
If only Laura’s vision had given her more information, a wider view. Some clue about the location, even the identity of the victim. Any flash at all of the killer themselves. But she had nothing.
Not for the first time, and almost definitely not for the last, she found herself wishing she knew how to control this. It was getting into the early evening already, the lights over the field starting to tick on in the early darkness of the winter day. It wouldn’t be long before real dark set in, even though people were only just starting to leave their workplaces and travel home.
Laura had always thought of darkness as the domain of killers. There was something about it. The way it hid. So many of the cases she worked involved people who were attacked and killed at night. This one was different, and yet the same. The abduction may have been happening during the day, but it was the night that held the death.
Midnight. A firm deadline. One they couldn’t ignore.
They were going to have to work fast, now, to get this done.
Nate walked back over to join them, his cell phone still in his hand. “What are you thinking?” he asked Laura, in a low tone. They both glanced at Milford, who showed little sign of listening in, and walked a couple of steps away anyway. Not far enough that he would be able to get any great distance on them if he decided to run again, but far enough for a quiet conversation to remain mostly private.