Chapter 24
The cocaine high was beginning to wear off as the Avenger reached the outskirts of Birmingham. He pulled into a rest stop and went into the bathroom. Three days’ fatigue threatened to crash in on him with agonizing urgency, but he couldn’t let that happen. He didn’t have any come-down drugs like Xanax with him to ease his crash.
Besides, he still had too much to do today. His genius superplan was only partially fulfilled. There was so much more havoc to be wreaked.
He lumbered back to his car, his limbs as heavy as lead. Not good. Time to use again. Thankfully, he had an ample supply, because he’d gotten access to his mother’s bank account. He’d cleaned it out and spent it all on things that mattered.
He poured out another line of coke, snorted it, and waited for it to revive his body. He had to hurry. He had to get to Cassandra before Carter got off work. The timing was essential.
He snorted a second line, then licked his fingers, unwilling to lose one grain of the fine powder.
Power and strength returned to his brain with a jolt.
Cassandra. He wished he’d gotten to know her the few times he’d seen her on visiting day at Haven House. Then she would trust him and let him in. As it stood, he’d have to do some finagling to get into her house. But he could do it.
He flew down I-20 to the exit. Music revved him on, pumping him with purpose. He found Carter’s neighborhood, as run-down and sad as his own.
As he’d hoped, Cassandra’s car sat in the double carport. She was home. Perfect.
He parked his car half a block down, in front of a house that looked like no one was home, stuffed his gun in the waistband of his jeans, and strode to her house.
Plan A was to ring the bell and see if she answered. When she opened the door to a .44 Magnum, he would have no trouble getting in. Once inside the house, he would crank up her stereo to maximum volume and muffle the gun with a pillow. If anyone heard the gunshot, the confusion of guitars and drumbeats might make them question what they’d heard.
At her door, he heard the sound of a television inside. He studied the doorknob. He could easily get in with a credit card if she didn’t open it. And the door looked warped and hollow, easy to kick through if it came to that.
Showtime. He pulled his gun but kept it behind him in case she peeked out. He rang the bell.
“Who is it?” she called through the door.
“UPS,” he said.
She opened the door then, peering out cautiously. He raised the gun and shoved the door open with his shoulder. She stumbled back, and he slammed the door behind him.
“You!” she said.
“Good to see you again, Cassandra. Sorry I can’t stay long.”
Chapter 25
At the kitchen table, as Emily finished her story about the viewing of Strangers on a Train, Kent’s eyes settled on Barbara’s face. The terror in her eyes reminded him of the first time he met her. Clearly, Emily’s recounting of what she knew had pulled Barbara back into a maternal nightmare.
When she finished, Lance breathed out a humorless laugh. “I gotta see that flick.”
Emily seemed to study Barbara — the glisten of fear in her mother’s eyes, the dryness of her lips, the way she wiped her palms on her skirt. “I need for you to believe me,” Emily said.
Barbara’s hand trembled as she brought it to her face. “It’s just . . . too outrageous to be made up.”
Kent slid his chair back, walked into the dining room to the front window, and looked out. He couldn’t escape the feeling that they were being watched, or listened to. The house wasn’t safe. He’d have to get them out of here.
“You thought I’d relapsed,” Emily said.
Barbara didn’t speak for a moment, but Lance did. “You gotta admit, it was looking bad.”
Kent went back to them. Barbara looked drained, wiped out. He wanted to go to her, comfort her, but her mind wasn’t on him. She was locked in on Emily.
“What do they want?” she said. “Was that message threatening you? What does Criss-Cross mean?”
“It was just a line from the movie,” Emily said, looking at Kent. “But why would they want to identify themselves? Even if I hadn’t already thought of them, that message would have reminded me. It has to be either Bo or Carter.”
“Bugs me, too,” Kent said. “It’s like signing their names. Something’s not right.”
“If they hadn’t planted the bomb, I might have gone a long time without knowing about the murder,” Emily said. “Now they’re waving a flag. Daring me to talk.”
“This is so dangerous,” Barbara whispered, turning her glistening eyes up to Kent.
“And that poor woman, Cassandra,” Emily said. “I tried. I approached her and tried to warn her. She accused me of having a thing for her husband. She wouldn’t listen.”
“So . . . if Devon is dead,” Lance said, “then Carter would have done it. Maybe Carter is the one who planted the bomb, since it must have happened during the same hours that Devon was murdered and Bo was at work.”
“Had to be,” Emily said.
“So today, would it be Bo or Carter who broke in?” Barbara asked.
“I don’t think it could have been Bo,” Kent said. “I was questioning him most of the morning. Then I went by his parents’ house to ask him more questions this afternoon at about 2:30. His mother said he’d been with his kids at her house since leaving the police station. She could be covering for him, but I have pretty good instincts, and she seemed sincere. The Birmingham police are looking for Carter. They’re going to question him about all this. Meanwhile, I want you all to get out of here.”
Barbara stood up, strength hardening her face. “We’ll go to a hotel.”
“You could stay at my place,” Kent countered. “And I could stay here and watch your house. Might be able to catch them if they come back.”
She slammed her hand on the table. “No, Kent. I don’t want you here, either.”
“Barb, it’s my job. It’s part of a case. This guy has to be stopped, and he’s getting sloppy. You and the kids can get some rest at my house, and he won’t know to look for you there.”
“But he could kill you.”
“I’m armed. This is what I do.”
She stared at him, and he slid his hand into his pocket and felt the ring. “I don’t want two people I love in danger,” she said.
The words sent a warmth through him. He slipped the tip of his finger into the ring, then dropped it to the bottom of his pocket. “Barbara, I’ll be okay. I don’t want you to worry.”
But she would. He rarely told her about the dangers he entered into weekly, if not daily. The truth of his job strained relationships. His first wife couldn’t take the stress. She’d left him for an accountant.
He took out his keys, pulled off his house key. “Here. The house isn’t all that clean, but it’ll do. You and Emily can take my bed, and Lance can have the guest room.”
She took the key. “Are you sure?”
“Of course.” He wanted to say that they were his family, but he restrained himself.
Emily looked back at her mother. “Mom, I’m sorry I lied to you today.”
“Don’t do it again, Emily. I understand why you did it, but it was dangerous and didn’t accomplish anything.” She let out a long, weary sigh. “I want this whole drug thing to be done, with no residue. It’s infected our lives like toxic mold. We can’t clean it off. We have to rip out all the sheetrock and start over with the rafters to get rid of it.”
Kent saw the sorrow on Emily’s face, as if she thought she was the sheetrock . . . or the mold.
“I didn’t do anything,” Emily said. “I was just working. And those guys, they seemed okay. They seemed . . . nice. Not like people who could kill their wives. I never thought in a million years that they were serious. I thought they were just trying to get a rise out of me.”
Kent glanced toward the kitchen, where that message still stained the wall. If t
he prowler had taken anything, they couldn’t tell it yet. His eyes swept the counter. A stack of mail lay there. A FedEx envelope lay open next to the stack. An alarm went off in his head. Getting up as Emily went on, he stepped toward it, saw Emily’s name on the air bill. He lifted up the open edge . . . and saw a bottle of pills.
His heart jolted. Most of Emily’s drugs in the early days of her addiction had come from online pharmacies. So what drug would she be getting in the mail?
Kent pulled the pills out.
Barbara turned at the shaking sound. “What’s that?”
Kent set the bottle down. “Oxycontin. It has Emily’s name on it.”
Suddenly Emily shot to her feet, throwing her arms up in self-defense. “No way! I didn’t order that stuff.”
“Well, I sure didn’t,” Barbara said.
“Mom, do you honestly think that’s mine — after everything I told you?”
Barbara went to the stack of mail. “Did you bring the mail in today? The rest of this is yesterday’s.” Barbara grabbed the envelope. “It’s addressed to you!”
“I haven’t even been back home today. I didn’t bring this in.” Emily picked up the bottle, read the label. It had her name on it, but it wasn’t a pharmacy she had ever used. “Kent, I didn’t do this. Maybe the guy who broke in left this to make it look like I’m using. If it was Bo or Carter . . . maybe they’re getting some perverse pleasure out of making it look like I’ve relapsed. But I’ll take a drug test right now. Test me.”
Tears starting in her eyes, Barbara went for the bottle.
“No, don’t touch it,” Kent said. “I have to log it.”
“Yes, take the bottle,” Emily told Kent. “See if you can find fingerprints. Maybe they’re his.”
Kent hoped there was still something there. He bagged the bottle, then led the others around the house, looking for anything else the prowler may have left. They found nothing.
The doorbell rang, its chime sounding throughout the house. Everyone turned to Kent. “Go pack,” he said. “I’ll answer.” He went to the door, peered out the small window. Two uniformed cops stood on the porch — the same ones who’d been here earlier. He opened the door. “Forget something?”
One of them wet his lips, as if he dreaded what he was going to say. “Kent, I know you’re close to this family. But we have an arrest warrant for Emily Covington.”
He heard the family coming up behind him. “What?” Barbara cried.
Kent held his hand up, as though he could shield them from this. But he dropped it to his side. “A warrant? What’s it for?”
“For the murder of Cassandra Price in Birmingham.”
Kent turned back to Emily as the officers stepped into the house. Her face was white.
Chapter 26
The police officers who had been there as protectors earlier were now Barbara’s enemies. “Get your hands off my daughter!” she shouted as they tried to cuff Emily. “What is going on?”
“Hold it, guys,” Kent said over her yelling. “I want to talk to the one who issued the warrant.”
One of them gave him the arresting officer’s name — Detective Stone, from Birmingham, whom Kent had already talked to once today.
Emily looked as if she might hit the floor. “She’s dead?” she asked, face twisted. “He killed her? I tried to tell them. I tried to warn her!”
“Sit down, Emily,” Kent said, punching out the number on his phone. “Everybody just calm down. Guys, just give me a minute.”
But Barbara couldn’t calm down. “How can they think she did this, when she’s the one who’s been waving a flag all day long? Did they tell you that? Do you even care?”
Kent waited as the phone rang at the Birmingham police department. “Barb, it’s not their decision to make. They’re just doing their job.”
“Don’t defend them!” she cried. “This is insane, and we’re supposed to accept it because there’s a warrant?”
Someone answered for the BPD, and Kent asked to be transferred to Detective Stone. Finally, she picked up. “Detective Stone, Kent Harlan again. I understand you’ve issued a warrant for Emily Covington.”
“That’s right. Have your people brought her in yet?”
“We have her here.” All five people in Barbara’s living room gaped at him, hanging on every word, so he opened the door and stepped out onto the front doorstep. “Tell me about Cassandra Price.”
“Her neighbor found her an hour ago,” Stone said. “Shot through the head in her living room.”
He closed his eyes. “Just like Emily predicted. Why is she a suspect?”
“Because there was a necklace with the initials EC found on the floor a few feet from the body.”
His heart crashed.
“It had her fingerprints on it. And she was stalking Cassandra today.”
“Stalking?”
“Yeah. Cassandra Price called the police department twice today. The first time she reported that a woman left a message on her machine telling her that she was going to die. That call came from Emily Covington. Later, Price reported that Emily approached her. The neighbor who found the body identified Emily as the woman she talked to at the Price house earlier today.”
Kent forced back the urge to defend Emily. He had to be professional. “I’m aware of that. According to her statement, Emily wasn’t threatening her, she was warning her. Did you check Cassandra’s husband’s whereabouts?”
“He was at work. He works at the steel plant, and all the people on his shift were able to vouch for him.”
Kent heard Barbara’s angry voice on the other side of the door. He hoped she didn’t get arrested, too. “You guys must have something on the DA if he gave you a warrant with this little evidence.”
Stone didn’t appreciate that. “That isn’t helpful, Detective Harlan.”
He rubbed his eyes. “What was her time of death?”
“The case is still new, and we haven’t gotten a time of death yet. But it happened sometime between 2:30 and 4:30. She was discovered just before 5:00.”
Kent tried to think. If the murder scheme had been carried out, Bo would have been tasked with Cassandra’s murder. But his mother said he’d been with her and the kids all day. Kent had been with him around 2:30 to 3:00. It was a stretch to think Bo could have made it to Birmingham within that timeframe. But if he’d flown over the speed limit, it was possible.
“I’ve been interviewing Emily since she got back to Atlanta at 4:30. She left Birmingham just after 2:30.”
He rubbed the bridge of his nose and tried to think. A necklace at the scene? Emily did often wear a necklace like that, but she hadn’t been wearing it today. He’d noticed this morning because she’d been wearing the cross necklace that he’d given her for her birthday — the one she was wearing now. “Listen, I can’t help wondering about this necklace. It’s just too convenient . . . her leaving evidence with her initials behind. She’s been in contact with the police like four times today. She called you this morning, and she told me exactly what she’s been doing. That’s not the MO of someone who’d just committed murder, or planned to commit murder. If her story is true, then Bo Lawrence would have been the one who’d want Cassandra dead.”
“You just said he has an alibi.”
Kent wiped a drip of sweat from his temple.
“This story Emily Covington is telling,” the detective said. “It’s pretty out there, don’t you think?”
He tried to control his voice. “Why would she call our attention to herself if she was the killer? If she’d just kept her mouth shut we never would have connected her. Even the necklace probably wouldn’t have led you to her.”
“Maybe she’s playing a game. Drugs do bad things to people, Detective. I don’t have to tell you that.”
Kent didn’t want to tell her that he knew Emily, that he’d seen her spiritual growth, that he hoped she’d be his daughter soon, that she wasn’t on drugs. “There was an attempt on her life this morning, too
. Somebody planted a bomb under her car, then later there was a break-in at her home. The necklace must have been stolen then.”
“She could have set that up herself to make herself look like a victim.”
He wanted to kick something. “But she didn’t even notice it was missing! Everything’s a possibility, but it has to make sense. We can’t just dismiss her story.”
“I agree with you,” Stone said. “Why don’t you drive over tomorrow and we can put our heads together? I assume they’ll transport her tonight?”
Kent glanced back at Barbara’s front door, trying to think. Somehow, he had to delay her transport. “No, I can’t let her go. If she’s a suspect in the Price murder, then I have to question her further about the Lawrence case here.”
The woman gave a disgusted sigh. “All right, Detective, but do it tonight.”
Kent’s head was throbbing by the time he got off the phone.
Chapter 27
Emily tried to hold back the tears as Kent intervened for her, telling the arresting officers that he would transport her in and that she didn’t require handcuffs. At least the neighbors wouldn’t see her being marched to a police car like a lowlife criminal.
Her mother was hysterical, yelling at the cops as if they’d killed Cassandra Price and pinned it on Emily.
She tried to think. If Bo was with his mother and children all afternoon, as Kent believed, then Carter had to have done this. Surely when they found Cassandra dead, they’d checked on him first. She thought of the man with leathery skin who looked much older than he was. He’d been skinny and small, not the violent kind. But when someone was in active addiction to a drug, their body screamed out for more. And if they couldn’t get it, they were unpredictable, and anyone who got in their way could be in danger.
But this had been murder, calculated and deliberate, not a crime of passion committed because Carter had lost his temper or craved drugs. And why would he have taken the time to drive here and plant the bomb or break into their home, if drugs were all he really wanted? If he truly hated his wife, why not just divorce her? There were no children to complicate things.
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