The Third to Die

by Allison Brennan

  Dammit. He’d fucked up again. He shouldn’t have slept with her in the first place. If he hadn’t, would he have reacted any different? Maybe. Maybe not. He couldn’t put the genie back into the bottle, so he was going to have to suck it up and deal. He’d offended her, and that wasn’t his intention. She’d devoted nearly as many hours as he and his team had—and certainly more than any of the local cops except maybe Andy—to working this case. She’d even come by last night and helped read through the dozens of lawsuits, a tedious and time-consuming chore that he honestly hadn’t expected her to volunteer for. He owed her—and yet he’d pissed her off.

  “Fix it,” he mumbled to himself, though he didn’t know how.

  First, find this killer.

  He met Andy at the police station. Andy had sandwiches, chips and coffee waiting. “My fiancée, Gracie, thought we might be hungry.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Abigail spent all day pulling the hard copies of every file from the years in question, then she went the extra mile and organized them by arresting or responding officer. They’re labeled in the conference room. I’ve already started going through them and weeding out those that don’t fit.”

  “Great.”

  “I’m surprised you came yourself.”

  “Jim is forensics, and Michael’s getting two agents who came in from Seattle tonight up to speed. Maddox is home working with the superintendent to get all the files for Marston and identify that employee he fired. The fact that he knows Zachary Hamilton—had a run-in with him—makes me nervous. Catherine thinks Hamilton is too old, but I’d still like to find out what he’s been doing since he got out of jail.”

  They sat down and started reading reports. Matt pulled the stack that was labelled Maddox—he wanted to read the report on the foreclosure in particular.

  Andy said, “I went to see Kara this morning.”

  Matt didn’t want to talk about Kara. But he said, “She forgave you.”

  “Not really, but I guess in her own way. Told me to, essentially, grow a pair. To either quit or stop feeling sorry for myself.”

  “Sounds like her.”

  “Reminded me why I became a cop. I like to help people. To listen. To have a safe community. I wasn’t expecting this violence, but it could happen again. Abigail is researching some training programs for me.”

  “You’re not quitting. Good.”

  “No. But I recognize now that I have work to do. People do feel safe here and I helped with that. After this, I’m going to have to make them feel safe again. You’re probably not used to that—you’re from a big city. But here, it’s important.”

  “It’s important everywhere.”

  Matt frowned as he flipped pages. Included in the report was a list of contents that the bank prepared when they took possession of the house, and a note that a relative came over to retrieve personal items for Hamilton’s son.

  “Do you know anything about Hamilton’s son?”

  “No. Just that Maddox mentioned his son was sent to live with his aunt, I believe.”

  Matt made a note. “We should find out what happened to him. I don’t have a name or age, but he would have been a minor.”

  “CPS will have records. I’ll work on that first thing in the morning.”

  Andy made his own notes.

  “The place was a mess, according to the reports. Guy loses his wife, loses his kid to the system, loses his job. I can see him doing something out of anger and hopelessness, but this level of planning? Not seeing it.”

  “I have the report from the accident on March 3.” Andy got up and retrieved a box. “I was going to ask Kara to join us, because this is a lot of work, but I think she’s still upset with me.”

  “She’s fine,” Matt said. She was more upset with Matt than anyone. “But I’ll take it back to the hotel with me. I want to finish going through these reports and then we can tackle that. Why is no one else in your department helping?”

  “Chief Dunn has everyone doubled up and keeping the police presence. No one has time off until after the ninth. I kind of agree with him, because right now we’re looking for a needle in the haystack.” He made a note about something. “However, I assigned the patrols. They’re doubling up at the lake—since both Manners and Ogdenburg were found near the lake. And doing regular patrols by every cop who lives here.”

  “Good.”

  Matt paused to take a call from Jim. He was processing the cold case homeless murders, and so far, forensics matched up with the limited physical evidence they had in the Triple Killer case.

  “You get me a suspect, we have him solid on Ogdenburg and two of the three homeless men,” Jim said. “Spokane has an excellent system, state-of-the-art storage facilities, so no defense lawyer is going to be able to cry contamination or degradation.”

  “They’ll try,” Matt said.

  “And fail. Be safe, Matt.”

  Matt ended the call and went back to the Hamilton file, making notes. There were a few oddities and he had some questions. Maybe Maddox would know. He’d call, but since he didn’t live far from the Liberty Lake PD, Matt decided to drive by on his way back to the hotel.

  * * *

  Kara never felt comfortable in a family setting, even with people she liked. And she really liked the Maddox family. Julie was down-to-earth and never made Kara feel like an outsider. She had her own in-home business that she started after her second child, Teddy, was born. First, she made wooden puzzles for kids and sold them at craft fairs. Then a few years later, she started selling on the internet. Recently, she’d branched out into a collection of beautiful cutting boards in the shape of states. She had a website and went to craft fairs in the summer and currently employed two people full-time to help her keep up with orders. Julie gave Kara a tour of the garage, which they’d converted to her workspace. “We’re going to build an add-on this summer when the weather is nice, so we can put the cars inside, but this is what it’s been like for the last two years. Kind of crazy.” But she clearly loved it. Julie was the single most organized person Kara had ever met. “Brian wants to work with me when he retires. That’s quite a few years from now, but I think we’d want to kill each other. I’ll convince him to get his teaching credential.”

  “A teacher?”

  “He loves working with teenagers especially. But he’ll be chief of police next year, and while it’s a lot of hours, it’s not as physically demanding. He’ll probably stay until mandatory retirement age—which is the same year JP graduates from high school.”

  JP was their youngest, six years old. Brian told Kara that he was a “oops” baby, but kept them on their toes.

  If only she had parents like Brian and Julie, she wondered how different her life would have been.

  Or maybe, she was exactly who she would have been no matter who her parents were.

  Somehow, she doubted that.

  They went inside. Brian was grilling steaks on the patio, even though it was freezing and Kara was pretty sure by this time tomorrow there would be snow. His oldest son, Trevor, was helping, and Kara watched them through the glass. Brian was a good dad. He was a cop, through and through, but be loved being with his family.

  “Hey, Kara! I made a racetrack in my room! Wanna see?” JP did nothing quiet or slow. He ran upstairs, expecting Kara to follow. Which she did. She wasn’t a kid person as a rule—the kids she encountered were damaged. Lex had always said she was good with kids—and maybe she was. Mostly because she didn’t put up with their bullshit and talked to them on their level. But most of the kids she encountered were in gangs, running drugs, abused, in the system. Not fun and carefree and happy like Brian’s family. So to watch JP be what she thought of as a normal kid—when she hadn’t been one, and she didn’t see normal kids in her job—it was good. Good for her to remember that she did her job to give these options to more people. Th
e option to be safe, to have a family, to live a happy life.

  After inspecting a rather death-defying Indy 500 track complete with loops and hairpin turns, Kara went down to eat with the family. She listened to Trevor talk about college and Teddy talk about his girlfriend—who he was going to see right after dinner. For two hours only, because it was a school night, per his mother. It was so normal. So...natural.

  She didn’t feel like she belonged.

  “Trevor will help me clean up,” Julie said. “You two talk. You don’t get a lot of time to chat.”

  Kara and Brian went out to the back patio with a couple of beers. He turned on two heat lamps, which was nice. They had a pool, now covered for the winter—a luxury here in Washington because it only got hot enough to swim in the summer. There was also a lot of space—no houses behind them, only an open field sloping up to the mountain.

  “This is nice,” she said.

  “It is.”

  “Julie’s business is doing well.”

  “Yep. She makes as much money as I do,” Brian said.

  “No shit?”

  “By next year she’ll be making more, even after my raise. I’m really proud of her. She started it as a one-woman shop, and now has this amazing business. And she loves it. Pays Trevor and Teddy to help, especially during Christmas when it gets hectic.”

  “You didn’t tell her that you might be a target.”

  “No.”

  “Brian.”

  “She doesn’t need to know.”

  “Yes she does. This is serious.”

  “I know it’s serious, Kara. I’ve been a cop almost as long as you’ve been alive.”

  “Then tell her.”

  “She knows that there’s a killer out there. She knows that the killer may target a cop. She doesn’t know that it’s a cop connected to Liberty Lake.”

  Unbelievable. “Fucking tell her, Brian.”

  “You’ve gotten bossy.”

  “I’ve always been bossy.”

  “If I truly thought that I was the target, my family wouldn’t be here.”

  “You have to consider it, Brian.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “I am.” He paused. “This guy isn’t going to come after me until Tuesday. If I get any sense that I might be on his list, I’ll send them away tomorrow. Okay? But it just doesn’t make any sense.”

  “He’s a psychopath. It doesn’t have to make sense to us. It makes sense to him because his brain is twisted.”

  The sliding glass door opened and Matt stepped out. “Your wife said I could come out. I hope I’m not disturbing anything.”

  “Not at all. Just in time for dessert,” Brian said.

  “I don’t want to put you out.”

  “You’re not.”

  “Well, I have something to discuss before we go inside, if that’s okay,” Matt said.

  “Give it to me straight. You found something?”

  “Maybe.”

  Matt felt intensely uncomfortable under Kara’s gaze. It wasn’t that she was looking at him in any specific way, just that he couldn’t read her.

  He wouldn’t have come over at all, if he didn’t think it was important.

  “Brian, I am concerned that you may be the target.”

  “We were just talking about that,” Kara said.

  Brian shook his head. “You’re going to have to have some damn solid proof.”

  “I don’t have proof—yet. But Zachary Hamilton, the Liberty Lake guy you evicted after the bank foreclosed some years back? I went through the file completely—including everything that the bank had submitted as part of the documentation to get the warrant. The house is located at 369 Vine Street.”

  “You’re basing your threat assessment on the address having a three in it?”

  “No. It’s just one piece. Hamilton was fired from Spokane High School only a week before a terminated employee attacked Marston in the parking lot—based on a witness statement. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. So now I have confirmation that you, Marston, and Anne Banks all had a confrontation with Zachary Hamilton.”

  “What about the cop who arrested him for his third drunk driving charge? I just put him in county lockup for three days. The other cop put him in prison for a year.”

  “Andy’s talking to her now—that was Spokane PD. That cop has no connection to Liberty Lake. She’s never lived here, never worked here.”

  “But you’re still just making a guess that the Triple Killer is targeting a cop from Liberty Lake.”

  Before Matt could argue, Kara said, “For shitsake, Brian, you’re deflecting. This is real.”

  “I just don’t think this is enough to put me on the list. Hamilton is older than me. Your initial report said the killer would be under forty. I’ll be fifty next year.”

  “Criminal psychology is not perfect, but it does give us a place to start. Hamilton is fifty-five. But what bothers me is that I can’t find him. I’ve found McCafferty, the other guy I was looking at. He’s living in Massachusetts. Is married, has two kids. First thing in the morning I’ll talk to him, but if he’s in Foxborough tomorrow morning, I don’t see him traveling cross-country to be home with his family in between killing a couple of people.”

  “But it might not be Hamilton at all. It could be someone else.”

  “You’re right. But too many things are lining up with him. I need you to take it seriously.”

  “I am.”

  “I’m moving in,” Kara said.

  Brian sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Look—just let me talk to Julie before you dump this on her, okay?”

  “Of course,” Matt said. He gathered up his folder. “And I hope I’m wrong. But if I’m wrong then we have a complete unknown out there and we’ll be starting at square one. I have the box of reports from the pileup. My people and I are going through everything again tonight, along with two additional agents sent in from Seattle. Fresh eyes, to see if something else jumps out. I’ll talk to McCafferty in the morning. And we’re working on tracking Hamilton down. He moved to Montana after the house was foreclosed, but there’s nothing on him for the last ten years. He could be anywhere.”

  “Can I go through that tonight?” Brian gestured to the folder.

  “Of course. It’s a copy.” Matt handed it to Brian.

  “May I?” Kara said.

  Brian gave it to her. “Let’s get some dessert,” he said.

  They all went inside and Julie Maddox dished up apple cobbler, which was delicious. Kara was quiet—unusually so. Matt was distinctly uncomfortable. He wanted to talk to her about earlier today, but he had a whole bunch of work to do, and it was already after eight.

  Brian walked him out thirty minutes later. “You have a nice family,” Matt said. “Thank you for your hospitality.”

  “Your job doesn’t afford you much of a family life, does it?” Brian said.

  “It’s why I was picked—no personal attachments.”

  “Don’t you miss having a home base?”

  “I was in Tucson for five years early in my career and have a little house down there. That’s where I go to relax. For quite some time I’ve been moving from office to office, then working out of headquarters in DC for the last two years. And I have a brother who stayed in Miami, a niece and nephew, and another on the way. Christmas with Dante and Layla and Layla’s huge family holds me over. Dante’s a successful doctor and I have an apartment over his garage whenever I want it. It works for me.”

  Mostly. Sometimes, Matt wondered what it would be like if he had something like Dante had. He would get antsy. He always did. It’s why he couldn’t commit to a woman. He’d once cared for Catherine’s sister, Beth, but there wasn’t anything deeper than a basic affection. He saw true love when his brother looked at his bride. That, Matt had never fel
t.

  He didn’t feel comfortable discussing his personal life with this man. He had a great respect for Brian Maddox—he was one of the good cops, one of the people Matt felt he could trust, though Matt wished he took this threat more seriously. But Matt liked to keep his personal life to himself.

  As if Maddox sensed what he was thinking, he said, “I’ll read over your notes. Talk to Julie. Send her to visit my parents in St. George. Or down to Scottsdale—my boys love baseball, and they’d love to get out of school for a couple of days to watch spring training.”

  “So far, the killer hasn’t gone after families, but we definitely don’t want to risk anyone. I can put a patrol on your house, or an agent inside.”

  “Kara said she’d watch my back. She’s a good cop, Matt. You can trust her.”

  “I’m sure she is, but she’s here on vacation. Pulling bodyguard duty for a couple of days?”

  Kara walked up to them.

  “I’m doing it,” she said. “I wasn’t joking earlier.”

  Matt hadn’t seen her step out of the house.

  Brian laughed. “A patrol will be sufficient, Kara.”

  “Like hell. Your house is remote. Access from all sides, including the backyard and a thousand acres of open space behind you. I’m good, I’m not letting anything happen to you. I think Costa’s right—and I think you’re a fool if you don’t think so.”

  Brian was irritated. “I already told Costa that I’m sending Julie and the boys away.”

  “Good. I’m going to Em’s. I’ll explain to her I’m moving in with you for a day or two, and I’ll be here bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the morning. I’m your partner in this, I owe you.”

  “You don’t owe me, but—”

  “You think because I’m a girl I can’t watch your back?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then shut up.”

  She glanced at Matt and he wanted her to wink at him like she’d done the other day, but she didn’t. All he saw was the cop Kara. Because that was all she wanted him to see.