Playing Dead

by Allison Brennan

  Mitch was different. He was surprisingly smart. He didn’t seem like she’d imagine a writer to be, but he did have a way with words. And he was so hot, so sexy, his body hard as a rock. He worked out, and they had spent many hours together playing racquetball on the weekends. He didn’t let her win and he played hard.

  And damn, he looked doubly hot when he sweated in his cutoffs and faded T-shirt.

  Chewy and Yoda liked him. Funnily enough, that made Claire a little less comfortable. She was growing attached to Mitch, and she didn’t want to get close to anyone. Her life was a mess. She was a mess. But she didn’t want to get rid of him, either.

  There was no way she was dragging Mitch into this situation. She didn’t want him being charged as an accessory or harassed by the FBI. She was going to have to figure out what to do about her father’s contact on her own. She didn’t believe her dad, but she wondered if he had actually convinced himself he was innocent. Or maybe . . . he was.

  Her stomach churned, the latte turning sour. What would it hurt to talk to Oliver Maddox again? Find out exactly what he’d been feeding her father? Maybe then she could convince her dad to turn himself in. She didn’t want him gunned down or arrested in a big standoff. She was tough, she’d withstand the media scrutiny, the way her life would be turned upside down like it had been after the prison break. She’d avoided more reporters than cops that awful week in January . . .

  She didn’t want him to die. Not like that.

  What do you want? Him to die by lethal injection? Does that make it better?

  She had time before she had to meet her vet. As always, Claire’s curiosity bested her. She tried the private phone number Oliver Maddox had left her four months before. Voice mail picked up.

  “Mailbox is full. Please try your call again later.”

  The Port of Sacramento was halfway between the Rogan-Caruso offices downtown and UC Davis. She might as well head to the university and try to track down the law student. Maybe find out that he was no longer a law student, that he’d moved cross-country and taken up medicine.

  For fifteen years she’d believed her father had killed her mother. And the guilt remained after all these years. That it was her phone call to her father about her mother’s affair that had started the time bomb that ended with two dead lovers and a man on death row.

  She might as well have pulled the trigger herself.

  Claire stifled a sob as she pulled in to a parking space in the UC Davis visitor parking lot ten minutes later. She slammed the Jeep into park and banged her head on the steering wheel as if that could force the memories from her mind and the stench of blood from her senses. If she hadn’t called her father to rat out her mother’s infidelity, her mother would be alive and her father would never have gone to prison. They might have divorced, they might have hated each other, but they would both still be in her life.

  When Oliver Maddox came to her to ask her to help with an appeal of her dad’s case, she rejected him immediately. She’d been at the trial. She’d walked into the house only minutes after her father killed two people. Maddox said, “There’s a chance your dad was framed. And I think I can prove it.”

  Was she willing to go through it all again on “a chance”?

  She’d be lying to herself if she said Maddox’s visit hadn’t given her more than a few sleepless nights. What did he know? Why was he doing this? But when she found out he wasn’t working with the Western Innocence Project, was just a law student, she’d discounted everything he’d said. One more lying fraud in the world, why was she surprised?

  She banged her head one more time and wished she could just forget she’d seen her dad.

  He’d looked old. Sad. Defeated.

  She couldn’t be wrong about that day. She wasn’t wrong. She’d heard her mother and Chase Taverton alive having sex, called her father, and less than twenty minutes later walked in and they were dead. Who else could have gone into the house and killed them during that short time? Without her or her father seeing anyone? Without leaving any evidence?

  She’d been a coward. If she had walked in on them, her mother’s lover would have been long gone before her father came home. If Claire had had the courage to confront them herself, she’d never have had to call her dad.

  She jumped out of her Jeep and started across the UC Davis campus. She was a proud college dropout after three semesters. College hadn’t been one of Claire’s wisest choices. Not because she couldn’t make the grade—she’d dropped out with a 3.7 GPA—but because she’d hated college almost as much as she’d hated high school. The interpersonal drama irritated her and she tended to get into trouble because she shined the light on truths that people preferred to keep hidden. “Playing nice with others” had never been high on her to-do list. Why play nice when everyone lied?

  Five minutes later, after a brisk, head-clearing walk, she stepped into the main administrative office building and said to the secretary, “My name is Claire O’Brien and Oliver Maddox contacted me about an appeal he’s working on.”

  Everyone lied. Even she did. She was quite good at it when she was searching for the truth.

  The secretary’s eyes widened. “Recently?”

  “A few months ago.”

  Her face fell. “Oliver is no longer here.”

  “He transferred?”

  “No. He’s missing. No one knows where he went.”

  “When?”

  “End of January. I don’t know the exact date. His girlfriend filed a missing person report with both campus security and Davis police.”

  Oliver had been missing since January? Claire asked, “Do you know where I can find her?”

  The receptionist frowned. “We can’t give out private information.”

  “What about her name? I’m an alumna, I can get her contact information from the student directory.” She showed her Davis ID, glad she’d always kept it in her wallet.

  “Well, since you’re an alum.” She walked over to a file cabinet and flipped through some folders. Pulled one, wrote information on a sticky note, and handed the note to Claire.

  Tammy Amunson, Clark Hall #25A.

  Beneath was a phone number.

  “She lives on campus?”

  “Yes.”

  Claire glanced at her watch. She might have time to talk to her, if she could find her now. Clark Hall wasn’t far. “Did Oliver have an advisor?”

  “I’m sure he did, but I don’t have those records here. I can have someone call you with the information later today.”

  “That’s okay, thanks.”

  Claire didn’t push it. Oliver’s girlfriend might know, and if she didn’t Claire could go to the law school herself. The fewer people who knew she was looking for Oliver, the better.

  She left the administration building and walked briskly while dialing Tammy’s number. A sleepy voice picked up. “ ’ello.”

  “Tammy?”

  “No, it’s Jennifer. Who’s this?”

  “Claire. I’m looking for Tammy.”

  “Wednesday . . . she has biology at some god-awful hour. She’s out at 10:30.”

  “At Messenger?” It helped having a familiarity with the campus.

  “Yeah.”

  “Who does she have?”

  “Oh, God, I—Thompson.”

  “Thanks.”

  It was nearly 10:30 now. Claire had no idea what Tammy looked like, but she hightailed it to Messenger Hall where the science labs were. She put her blazer back on to look more professional, even though it was far too hot for a jacket. She brushed her hair as she walked, glad that she’d left her backpack in the car. Backpack said student, not private investigator.

  Claire mentally thanked her boss at Rogan-Caruso for urging her to get her PI license. With it came official-looking documentation, when all being a PI really meant was using common sense.

  The first student she asked about Professor Thompson’s class gave her the room number, and Claire walked into the classroom three min
utes before class was over. She marched up to the front and the professor—an older, gray-haired woman with a stern face—frowned at her. Claire didn’t falter. She showed Professor Thompson her PI license and whispered in her ear, “Name’s O’Brien. I’m looking into the disappearance of a student here, Oliver Maddox. I was told his girlfriend Tammy Amunson was in this class.”

  The stern face softened, and the professor glanced at a blonde in the front row. “Tammy, you may leave with Ms. O’Brien.”

  Tammy looked skeptical and a bit skittish, but she gathered her things and followed Claire from the classroom.

  “Hi, Tammy, I’m Claire, a private investigator looking into Oliver’s disappearance. You filed the missing person report, correct?” She showed her the license, but pocketed it quickly. If Tammy knew what Oliver was working on she might connect Claire’s name with her father and become suspicious.

  “You haven’t found him yet?”

  “No. Let’s go outside and talk.”

  They sat on a bench a ways from the main doors and Tammy said, “I’m so worried about Oliver. Something was wrong, but he didn’t want to talk about it.”

  “Let’s start at the beginning. Why did you file a missing person report in the first place? How long had he been missing?”

  “The last time I saw him was January 20. It was Saturday night and we had a date. He’d been so busy I—” Tears sprang to her eyes. Normally, when a woman started crying, Claire became suspicious. Girls used tears to get any number of things they wanted, or to avoid getting into trouble. But watching Tammy—her demeanor, her posture, the way her hands clenched and unclenched her biology book—Claire decided the emotion was authentic.

  “It’s okay,” Claire said, not sure how to console her. Claire never cried. Especially in public.

  “I told him I was going to break up with him if he didn’t spend more time with me. That was awful of me, I know, but I missed him, and I missed us.”

  “What was he working on that kept him so busy?”

  “He’s a third-year law student. He had a full schedule, plus he was working on his thesis.” She paused. “You know, I told all this to the police when I filed the report. Did you talk to them?”

  “Yes, but they’re not actively looking for Oliver. It’s been nearly four months, it’s a cold case. And he’s an adult.” Though Claire hadn’t actually talked to the police yet, it was sad but true that the missing persons department in many cities was understaffed. Children were, rightfully, given priority. And while the police always looked into a disappearance, the more time that passed, the colder the case got.

  Several tears escaped and Tammy wiped them away. “That doesn’t seem right.”

  “It’s not,” Claire agreed. “What was Oliver’s thesis on? I have down that he was working on something for the Western Innocence Project. Could he have left to do research? Maybe not told you?”

  Tammy looked down. “Oliver lied about that.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “He wasn’t working for the Western Innocence Project. That’s his dream job. Oliver is so compassionate. That’s why I love him. He cares so much about people and doing the right thing. Sometimes too much.”

  “Why would he lie?”

  “He interned for the Project last summer and found a file when he was boxing up cases for storage. He read the whole thing and went to the director and asked to look into it. The director said the case had been reviewed and they’d decided not to get involved. Oliver tried to change his mind, but couldn’t. So he thought he’d look into it himself. He was obsessed, decided he would write his thesis on the case. He called it ‘The Perfect Frame.’ ”

  Claire’s heart thudded. “Why?”

  “I’m studying to become a veterinarian. Legal stuff doesn’t interest me so I really didn’t pay much attention to the details. All I know is that he was really excited about it, and thought he had it figured out. He said he was going to talk to his advisor Monday morning, try to convince him, but even if he didn’t, he planned to go to the director of the Project with another appeal to look into the case.”

  “Was it urgent?”

  “Oh, yeah, the guy’s on death row. He has no appeals left.”

  “And you didn’t talk to him after Saturday?”

  She blushed. “Well, Sunday morning. I stayed at his place. He has a town house on F Street.”

  “Rented?”

  “Owned. His parents died when he was just a kid. He lived with his grandmother most of his life, but he had an inheritance—wrongful-death lawsuit. His parents were killed by a drunk driver.”

  “How awful.”

  “The police went there and said it looked like he’d packed up, but I know Oliver wouldn’t have left without talking to me. I know it.”

  Claire believed her. She was starting to get a very bad feeling about Oliver Maddox’s fate.

  “Who’s his advisor? It wasn’t in the report.”

  “It wasn’t? I thought I gave that information to the police. Professor Don Collier. He’s a law professor and does pro bono work for the Project. Oliver absolutely worshipped him.”

  The assassin was not happy.

  He drove fast, away from the opulent, gated mansion where he’d just met with two of the three men who’d blackmailed him into murder. They called him “our assassin” and it pissed him off. Not that they thought of him as an “assassin,” but because they considered him their property.

  Fifteen years ago he’d made a choice—and huge sacrifices—to stay near the woman he loved. He’d thought one murder (okay, two murders) would have bought his freedom, so when he made the decision to stay in Sacramento after killing the prosecutor and his whore lover he expected to be left alone.

  But they wouldn’t let him go. Holding that one ancient accident over his head, they made him their hatchet man. And they had the evidence to send him to prison. Or to death.

  He shivered involuntarily as a glimpse of his body, dead and rotting, flashed in his mind.

  He feared death. In death there was nothing but cold, damp dirt and carnivorous bugs. In death, he would watch his body be devoured with time and the elements. His skin would slough off. He knew what happened to the dead. He’d seen it.

  When he was a rookie, the first time he went to the morgue to view an autopsy he saw firsthand what they did. The pathologist cut the body open. Removed everything—stomach, brain, heart—and weighed it. They looked at everything, a fucking full-body rectal exam. Then they put everything they took out back in, dropping the mess into the torso, and sewed the body up. Put it on a metal gurney and twenty-four hours later the body was taken to be buried or burned.

  He also knew what happened to the dead after they were buried. After the flood in 1997 when he had major drainage problems around his house, he had to move one of the bodies. She’d been underground fourteen months.

  He didn’t know why, but he had expected her to look pretty much as she had when he’d dumped her in the hole. He thought she’d be dirty, maybe a little foul-smelling, but he hadn’t expected her to be half-skeletal. And then the worms . . .

  Rubbing hands over his body as if brushing off an ant attack, he almost crashed the speeding car. He still had nightmares about that day . . . sometimes, his body was being eaten, and his skull stared back at him with empty eye sockets.

  His own future death gave him frequent nightmares.

  It wasn’t because he killed people—he didn’t really mind that. And they paid him—pretty well actually, after he’d called their bluff. The assassin learned who one of the principals was, and the slimy developer certainly didn’t want his dirty secrets spread around town. Yeah, they paid him now, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that they controlled his life. They knew his true identity. It didn’t matter that he cleared twenty grand with every killing; he was stuck in involuntary servitude, which sucked.

  Now he knew who all the players were and he considered taking them all out. Pop pop pop! They’d be sorr
y they fucked with him. He was a better killer today than fifteen years ago. They’d made him one.

  But they had leverage on him. Solid evidence that he had killed Jessica so long ago. And that was what made the bastards so good at the conspiracy game: blackmail.

  But everything would come crashing down if Thomas O’Brien wasn’t stopped. And now that Oliver Maddox’s body had been found, there could be other people looking into things better left dead and buried.

  What had angered him was his blackmailers’ reaction to the discovery in the river. That they felt Claire had to be watched, that she would be a threat if she got wind of what that idiot Maddox had been working on.

  He would not let them touch Claire. Claire was his. He’d protected her, taken care of her, practically raised her since her father went to prison. He made sure unworthy men stayed away. He felt no guilt for killing her mother and framing her father—her mother was a slut, and obviously her father couldn’t keep that whore in line. If it had been his dad? He’d have punished her. But his mother would never have strayed in the first place. His mother knew her place.

  And then she died.

  He would never let them touch Claire. If she had to die . . . he would personally take care of it. It would be another sign for him, that the time was right for sacrifice and change.

  Claire was living on borrowed time, anyway. He hadn’t killed her fifteen years ago when he had the opportunity. So that meant that the assassin owned her.

  And he could take her whenever he wanted.

  SIX

  Claire thanked Dr. Jim for coming during his lunch break to examine the stray dogs she’d taken in while she found their owners or new homes. In addition to Yoda and Chewy, Claire had two strays right now: a Lab mutt and what Dr. Jim was certain was a purebred Jack Russell terrier. She couldn’t pronounce the veterinarian’s last name, but it didn’t matter since he had dr. jim emblazoned in blue on the breast pocket of his white lab coat.