by Kate Morris
Lorena paced, wished she could go for a run but knew she couldn’t. There was something they were missing. She felt like she was so close, a breath’s out of reach from figuring it out.
Her phone buzzed. “It’s Craig,” she called out to Jack and hit the speaker button. “Hey, we’re both here.”
“Just got off the phone with Skylar- remember, Hailee’s best friend, the weird, goth kid?” he asked, and they both said that they did. “She saw on the news and called about Victor’s brother.”
“Asshole press,” Jack said.
“The press is already covering Victor’s brother’s death?” Lorena asked for clarification.
“Of course,” Craig said with irritation. “I’m leaving the scene now to go talk to her. She said she told her dad about Hailee and her uncle.”
“What’d she tell him?” Jack asked.
“And why?” Lorena questioned.
“Guess Skylar was talking about her friend with her dad during one of her visitation weekends a few months ago up at his house- she said it was more like small talk. She asked him what she should do if she knew her friend was in danger, and he asked her why. She said Hailee didn’t like her uncle, that he’d groped her a few times when she was younger and that he wanted her to come and stay with him for the summer in California and that she didn’t want to. She didn’t know how to get out of it because she knew her father would push her to go in lieu of screwing around before going to college and doing anything to jeopardize her scholarship.”
“Wow,” Jack said on a sigh of surprise.
“Skylar told her father, and he was very upset over it. She said he wanted to confront Victor, but she convinced him not to do it.”
“Why would she want to implicate her father in Christof’s murder?” Lorena asked.
“I don’t think she realizes that she could be. Like I said, she called me because I left her a card. I think she called because she knew who Christof was and was shocked that he was just found murdered.”
“We’ll meet you at her house,” Lorena said.
“No, don’t. I’m taking some agents. See if you can put pressure on Victor or his wife for information about the brother. This has to link somehow to Skylar’s father, Dermot Chambers.”
They disconnected a moment later, and Lorena was left with more questions than answers. She paced again.
“If you knew that Hailee was being touched, fondled, and who knew what else by Christof Neumann, what would you have done?”
“Beat the shit out of him,” Jack immediately said.
“Uh-huh,” she responded. “That’s what I thought.”
“What?”
Lorena paced again and took time to think before saying, “Would you have waited months to do something about it?”
“No, I would’ve got in the car and drove to California. I’ve got friends down there. I know the bail money’s good.”
She chuckled at his joke, to which he smiled.
“I only wish we had this confirmed last night so that I could’ve beaten his ass then,” he reminisced.
Lorena ignored him and walked around the room. “If Skylar’s dad is Trix, why would he take Hailee and abuse her with the intention of murdering her soon like the others? Why would he care whether or not her uncle was molesting her? What he plans for her, what he’s possibly done to her already is far worse.”
“Code of ethics?” Jack mused. “It doesn’t look good for him, though.”
“How’s that?”
“We talked to him and repeatedly asked him how well he knew Hailee, and he pretty much denied knowing her at all. Now we find out that his daughter discussed her friend being molested by her uncle and we’re supposed to buy it that he…what, that he can’t remember her still? He was so upset he was going to confront Victor about his brother’s behavior, but he doesn’t know her? This guy could be bounced right back to the top of our suspect list.”
“His alibi on the conference call was verified. How’d he race down here, come to this house, manage to explain who he was and why she should go with him, and still keep talking on a phone call?”
“Maybe he didn’t take the conference call,” Jack said.
“His phone is dialed into that company’s number for almost an hour,” she said. “One of Craig’s guys called the number and verified with someone that he was talking to people there on a conference call.”
“What if he had someone else handle the call?”
“He doesn’t have a business partner or employees.”
He took a deep breath, held it and expelled it a moment later. “I don’t know, Evans. This shit just never gets any clearer, and I’d still like to connect Christof to this guy.”
Her phone buzzed again, and she picked it up to answer Craig. Only, it wasn’t Craig again. It was an unknown, private number.
“Evans,” she said as she always did.
“Detective Evans,” the man on the other end replied. “Detective Lorena Evans. It’s good to finally hear your voice.”
“Who is this?” she asked impatiently because she was too busy to deal with pranks or telemarketers.
“Ha, I feel like I should be insulted,” the man said. “Oh, Little Lorena, are you ever going to tell me your favorite breakfast cereal?”
Lorena felt the color drain from her face. She tapped Jack and pointed to the phone. She mouthed the words, ‘it’s him!’.
“I’m surprised you’d take the risk of speaking to me over the phone. I was just growing so fond of our texting game.”
Lorena hit the speaker button, hoping he wouldn’t be able to tell since it didn’t beep.
“Games can be fun, but let’s leave those to the children, shall we?”
“Why’d you kill Christof Neumann? You didn’t even know the man.”
“That’s true, somewhat. Your message about your father has me intrigued. You didn’t exactly answer my question, though. Why did he kill your mother? You said he was like me. Was he a serial killer?”
His voice sounded slightly muffled as if he was speaking through a cloth.
“Is that what you are?” she asked, avoiding his incriminating, probing questions about her family.
He chuckled, a low, deep sound in the back of his throat. “I think we both know that I am. I want answers, young lady, or you’ll have to find Hailee down by the marsh like Tiffany Gastineau.”
“You killed again?”
“Not exactly. I left her about a month ago, but nobody seemed to notice. They never do, do they? These poor, wretched souls that society has forgotten and for whom nobody cares anymore.”
“Yes, they are poor and wretched, especially after you’re done with them,” she taunted. “Where is she?”
“About two hours south of here. I’ll send you the coordinates.”
“Thank you. I’m sure her family will want to give her a proper burial.”
“I doubt it. If she had family that cared about her, she wouldn’t have been working the streets.”
“Maybe she didn’t have any other choices in life. Not everyone grows up in a life of privilege.”
He chuckled again. “Life is but a series of choices, Little Lorena. Nobody made her become a whore. You and I did not grow up in a life of privilege, either, and look how great we turned out.”
“I don’t think anyone who knows you or me would agree with that statement, sir.”
“She chose to be a whore of her own accord because she needed to fuel her newly acquired drug addiction. Such a shame. Don’t people know that smoking on a crack pipe makes their teeth fall out?”
“Maybe you can make your own PSA video about it and distribute them on the streets,” she suggested with angry humor.
He chuckled a low, deep-throated sound that seemed more cruel than humorous.
“What fun would that be, my dear? Then I’d have to hunt so much farther away from home.”
“But you already do. You dump bodies in other states, not just here.”
“Aren’t you a sly little detective?” he said. “Why did he do it, Lorena? You tell me now, or I end Hailee’s life tonight.”
“How do I know you haven’t already?”
“I’ll send you a picture in just a moment. Tick-tock. You’re wasting my time. I only have so long before your trace sticks.”
She looked at Jack, whose eyes were narrowed at her. She knew Jack was one of the rare people who’d understand why she didn’t want to tell Trix the truth.
Jack used her notepad and wrote, “fake it” on a blank page.
“Tick-tock. Time’s running out, Little Lorena.”
She panicked. He’d know if she was lying. He was a madman. He was also highly intelligent.
“Um…he…”
“Tick-tock, speed it up, bitch,” he said, this time sounding menacing and psychotic.
“He killed her because he was a serial killer, too,” she said. She looked at Jack, who looked down at his shoes and didn’t say anything or even acknowledge being in the room.
“And now you’re obsessed with catching serial killers,” he said. His voice lowered as if a completely other person was speaking and doing so with a smile, “Fascinating.”
The connection was promptly ended, and a second later, a media message came over. It was, indeed, a picture of Hailee. She looked exhausted, afraid, weak, her big brown eyes wide with fear, but still alive.
“Hey,” Jack said, pulling her phone closer. “Hey, this definitely isn’t Basil Kovak’s shack in the woods. I don’t think Trix meant to send this or else he sent it ‘cuz you were busting his balls on the proof of life and did it in a rush.”
Lorena felt defeated and angry.
“Lorena, look,” he said, pointing to the background of the picture. “There’s a stone wall. Kovak’s place wasn’t like this. Neither was the basement of Kyle Archibald or Dermot Chambers. All of them had cement block walls. I looked. Trust me, I looked. This is cut stone, something a mason would’ve laid for the basement of a log home or a custom, all stone home.”
Lorena peered closer. Jack was right. “That sliver there actually looks like the bottom of a log, too.”
“Yeah, we’ll have Craig’s techs blow this up. I’m sure this is a log home.”
“Right,” she agreed and scowled, bit her lip and glanced off to her left.
“You okay, partner?” he asked softly and touched her elbow.
She nodded and quickly said, “It wasn’t true, you know. I took your advice. I lied.”
“Oh, okay, good. He doesn’t need to know anything personal about you at all. Fuck him.”
She offered a half-hearted grin and nodded. “Let’s go talk to Victor.”
Chapter Twenty-six
Jack
As they were walking to the house again, he called Craig to keep him abreast of the situation and the brief conversation between Lorena and her stalker, since that was what he had become. Craig said they didn’t catch a trace, which pissed off Jack. From the sound of it, Craig seemed just as angry. Lorena’s phone received another message from Trix. It was the coordinates of the location of the body of which he spoke. Jack had been half hoping the man was bluffing, but he should’ve known not to underestimate him. He was an insidious creature.
Lorena was even quieter than usual for her. He felt bad that this man was obsessed with talking to her. He wanted so desperately to catch the sick freak, maybe beat on him a little before the feds showed up to cart him away.
She forwarded the text to Craig and entered the house through the back door again. The scene was chaos. Agents were questioning both of the Neumann’s and apparently his extended family who must’ve flown into town this morning. Elizabeth saw them and excused herself from the group around her. Her small son, probably around five years old or so, was holding her hand and glued to her side. She took them to the kitchen where it was quiet and void of people.
He led the questioning because Lorena was zoned out, “Liz, does Victor own a vacation home out in the woods somewhere, out of the city, near a lake or river?”
“No, well, his family does. They all went together and bought a place in Seaside, Oregon, that’s oceanfront.”
“You do family vacations there?”
“Sometimes,” she said. “I don’t…I’m not very fond of that.”
Lorena wasn’t paying attention but was scanning through the open kitchen door to the living room full of Victor’s family. It wasn’t hard to tell who they were. They were dressed in expensive suits, spoke mostly in German, and were in one stage of mourning or another. His ex-wife didn’t seem too fond of them.
She spoke to him in a hushed tone, “It’s about an hour and a half northwest of here. It’s really a lovely home. You can see the ocean from just about any room, but it’s not my taste. You know me, I like warmer weather if I’m hitting the beach.”
She attempted a smile, but it just came off as sad. Jack could see her life as it was now, and the visual was bleak. She was married to a man who abused her, had a missing step-daughter that she actually seemed to care about, a bunch of in-laws who obviously didn’t care for her as was mutual, and lived in a big, beautiful, pristinely white castle that held dark secrets of misery.
“Probably the company you are forced to keep when you do the family vaca,” he joked.
“Yes, that could be part of it,” Liz said with a grin.
“Is it a log or stone home?”
“No, of course not. Victor only likes very modern architecture. Clean lines, that sort of thing.”
“Got it. And who is this?” he asked, crouching before the cute boy attempting to hide behind her leg.
“This is my son, Klaus,” she answered.
“Hey there, kiddo,” he said, getting a small grin. “I’m Detective Foster. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Are you looking for my sister?” the young boy asked.
Jack cringed inwardly. The kid was regarding him with such hope in his big blue eyes it made Jack’s stomach muscles tighten.
“Yes, we are, son,” he said.
“Daddy’s been sad and real mad, too,” he said.
“Yeah, I’m sure he is,” Jack said.
A second later, Victor was standing near them with an expression of loathing. He’d come into the kitchen without Jack noticing.
“Don’t speak to my son,” he stated angrily.
His ex-wife immediately took her son to another room without question. Jack suspected Liz was trying to shield him from his father’s anger. Apparently that was already a daily event in this house, and she was pro skill level at it. He also suspected that she played this game of walking on eggshells around her husband and shielding the children from him all the time, too, and not just because he was stressed out about Hailee’s disappearance. It was pissing off Jack that she looked so fearful when she’d fled.
“Sure, but why don’t we go somewhere that we can talk?” Jack suggested calmly.
“I don’t have to talk to you. Look what you’ve done. You’ve fucked up this investigation. Now my brother is dead, too.”
“Sir…” Lorena started, but Victor swung his wrath toward her. She didn’t cower, though. Lorena wasn’t the kind of woman to cower from a man like Victor, but Jack also knew she probably wasn’t much of a match if the asshole threw a punch.
“You shut up, too,” he nearly yelled at Lorena. “You’re the dumb bitch who fucked up the t.v. interview. If it wasn’t for you, Hailee might be home by now.”
“Hey…” Jack stated with his own level of anger and resentment and stood with his feet planted farther apart.
“Fuck you, Foster,” Victor said with new antagonism and pointed at Lorena. “I found out that this bitch has been texting him. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. I’ve got friends in the bureau, remember?”
“Oh, yeah, I remember,” Jack said without any fondness. Victor Neumann liked to throw around his weight everywhere he could.
“Good, because when this is all over, I’ll make s
ure you two idiots are turning in your badges and workin’ hotel security at the local Motel 6,” he stated with emphasis.
“I doubt that,” Jack said quietly. “But while you’re at it talking to all of your connections and friends, why don’t you ask them what the sentencing is for spousal abuse, child abuse, drug importing, and election rigging?”
“Fuck you!” he spat, literally hitting Jack in the face with his spittle. Then he lunged.
He hit Jack in both shoulders with his hands, but Jack countered and grabbed the man by his suit lapels and slammed him up against the cupboards behind him.
“Not so tough now, are you, Neumann?” he hissed in Victor’s face, reading the surprise and fear there. Jack could tell he wasn’t used to being roughed up. He preferred to be on the giving end instead of the receiving. “It’s a lot harder than hitting women and children, huh?”
“You’re so dead, asshole,” he warned.
Jack shoved away and stepped back.
Lorena stepped between them and said, “Did you just threaten a police officer with death?”
“Get the fuck outta’ my house,” he ground through his teeth.
“Not until Liz and her son are safely removed,” Jack said. “Or I can get the local police involved if you want.”
He shot a quick glance toward his ex-wife, who’d slinked back into the kitchen behind Lorena without her son, and prayed she wouldn’t argue or put up a fight in leaving. Her eyes were filled with fear, but she nodded and grabbed her purse and keys from the counter. Then she nearly ran from the room. He and Lorena waited by the front door, earning a lot of nasty glares from Victor’s family as they did so. Twenty minutes later, two female agents escorted Liz and Klaus, and six pieces of luggage from the house and out into her white Land Rover. He followed her to the vehicle and made sure she knew where to go so that Victor wouldn’t find her. One of the agents was going to follow in her own car and make sure she was safely hidden from her husband.
When he turned back, Lorena was gone. It made Jack uneasy, but he found her a few minutes later. She was standing on the back veranda, the same one that Jeremy Titus had helped pour and finish the concrete.
“Sorry about that, partner,” he said as he stood next to her. “Guess Neumann’s not gonna talk to us now.”