“Not a thing,” he answered a bit too quickly.
This wasn’t a discussion he wanted to get into, but what he was actually doing was trying to find Zoe’s flaws. Everyone had them. Some had a lot more than their share. But so far, though, the more he knew about Zoe, the more flawless she seemed to become. She was intelligent, sweet, selfless, kind—the list just went on. It didn’t seem possible that a person of her caliber actually existed, and yet...
Get it together, Colton. You’re looking for a serial killer and trying to find clues to the last known whereabouts of your mother’s remains. You don’t have time for this other stuff.
“Wait right here. Let me just tell Reynolds to have his people on the lookout for a billing statement belonging to a storage facility, and then we can get out of here,” Sam told her.
* * *
When he returned to the living room a few minutes later, he found Zoe on the floor, gathering up the various items that had been packed in the grocery bags she’d shoved at Vine. The bags themselves were no longer of any use, having ripped apart as they first hit their target, then the floor.
Crossing to her, he asked Zoe, “What are you doing?”
Zoe didn’t bother to look up. She was hurrying as fast as she could, stashing things in a large canvas bag she kept in her hall closet.
“Picking up dinner,” she answered glibly.
“I think that’s called tampering with evidence,” he corrected.
“I threw the bags at Johnny. No big mystery there, nothing to examine or deduce. You won’t find any clues here—I certainly didn’t manage to even render him unconscious, because if I had, you would have found him on the floor when you came back instead of just the groceries.”
He laughed. “You know, you’d make a pretty sharp little lawyer. Let me go back and clear this with Reynolds for formality’s sake, although I don’t see him saying no,” he told her. “But just for the time being, leave all that where it is.”
She rose to her feet the way he told her to and left everything alone. She wanted this to be over with as soon as possible.
Sam returned in less than three minutes with the lieutenant right behind him. Rather than saying anything, Reynolds raised the camera that was part of his equipment and at times, practically part of him, as well. He took several shots of the groceries on the floor to preserve the scene, then waved Zoe on.
“You’re free to take the groceries with you,” he told her.
He didn’t have to say it twice.
* * *
“Wow. I had no idea you could cook this well. Hell, I had no idea anyone could cook this well,” Sam confessed, feeling as if he might have overeaten.
Getting up from the table, Zoe began to clear it. “Like I said before, librarians do a lot of reading.” She stacked their plates together, putting the utensils on top. “You’d be surprised how many cookbooks wind up being donated to the used bookstore attached to the library,” she told him.
Sam looked at her, puzzled by the used bookstore reference.
“Not something I’d be aware of,” he admitted. “Last time I remember being in the public library I was a freshman in high school, and the only reason I was there in the first place was because I didn’t want to go to the place that was my current ‘home’ at the time.”
Zoe stopped gathering dishes for a moment. “Why not?”
“I was fifteen and Mrs. Foster Parent kept hitting on me whenever we were alone. Her husband was this big, hulking guy and I think you get the picture.” Too many people, he quickly learned from firsthand experience, were part of the foster parent system strictly for the money.
Moved, Zoe touched his face. It hurt her to think of him in that sort of a situation. She’d known him back then, or at least had been very aware of him. But she’d never had a clue what he was going through at the time.
“I used to feel sorry for myself because I was such a wallflower. I’ll take being sheltered and neglected over what you must have gone through every time,” she told him quietly.
Sam took her hands in his and pulled her down onto his lap.
The dishes and everything else were forgotten about for the time being as they sought comfort in each other’s arms.
* * *
The next morning, Sam lost no time tracking down the name of the storage company that Celia had used. Since he hadn’t heard from Reynolds, he assumed no one had found the billing statement he’d asked about. The next course of action was to access Celia’s checking account. Once he had the list of checks she’d written in the last month, it wasn’t difficult finding one written to a storage facility.
The facility was located just on the outskirts of Granite Gulch.
The person who ran the front office was out when he and Zoe arrived at the storage facility.
“We could wait,” Zoe suggested, nodding at the Out to Lunch sign hanging in the dusty window.
Rather than answer her, Sam doubled back to his car, popped the trunk and took out the bull cutters he kept there.
“Or not,” Zoe concluded as she followed Sam onto the grounds and ultimately, to the storage unit they had discovered, via a further review of her cancelled checks, belonged to Celia.
One quick movement of Sam’s wrists and the lock, rendered useless, fell to the ground.
The surge of triumph over finding the unit and gaining access quickly turned to disappointment when they went inside. Aside from holding what appeared to be every article of clothing Celia had ever owned, there wasn’t very much stored in the unit.
The handful of boxes that were piled up in one of the corners contained various memorabilia that obviously meant something to Celia, but not to the average person looking through them.
None of the boxes contained a key. A quick, more thorough search of the small area neglected to produce the key that seemed to mean so much to Vine.
“Another wild goose chase,” Sam muttered in disgust, momentarily stumped as to their next course of action.
Just then, his cell phone began to pulse, demanding immediate attention. There were times when he hated that sound, Sam thought.
“Colton,” he answered half a beat after he’d pulled the phone out of his pocket.
Zoe listened to his side of the conversation and watched his face, trying to read between the lines. The lines she discerned were dark and foreboding.
“Got it,” she heard him conclude grimly. “I’ve got something to do first, but I’ll be there as soon as I’m finished.”
With that, he terminated the call and put the phone back into his pocket.
“What do you have to do first?” she asked, an uneasy feeling undulating through her stomach. And where are you going after that?
“Drop you off at my place.” Sam took hold of her arm, ushering her out of the storage unit.
Being around Sam these past few days had made her bolder. The old Zoe would have never asked, “Why can’t I come with you?” But Sam’s lover could, and did.
Sam pulled down the unit’s retractable door and walked with her to his car. Passing the front office, he noticed the manager hadn’t returned yet.
“Because there’s been another murder,” he told Zoe, “and I think you’ve seen enough dead people to last you a lifetime. I’m not taking you to another grisly crime scene.” Sam’s tone made it clear there was no room for argument.
Even so, she had to try just once. “I could be useful to you. I might see something you don’t.”
Sam shot her down crisply. “That’s CSI’s job,” he informed her. They got into the vehicle. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he promised.
She knew what that meant. Any time between ninety minutes and thirty-six hours—or more. But there was nothing she could do about it so she merely made the best of the situation and nod
ded.
* * *
“Her name’s Daphne Picard,” the first officer on the scene told him thirty minutes later.
Sam had just left Zoe in the care of one of the uniformed officers he worked with on a regular basis, instructing the man to be on the lookout for Vine.
All the way over to the house in Rosewood, a town neighboring Granite Gulch, he tried to shake the uneasy feeling that something was wrong.
He told himself what he was focusing on was this murder, which by definition was the “something wrong” since murder was such an unnatural act.
But it felt like something more than that.
The job was getting him paranoid, Sam thought, especially now that there was actually someone whom, whether he liked it or not, he cared about a great deal.
Sam found it was taking more and more of an effort to ignore that simple fact. It kept breaking through his consciousness at the most inopportune times.
Forcing himself to focus exclusively on the details of this latest murder, he took the pertinent information in quickly.
Daphne Picard was a single woman in her early twenties. Like the others, she had long brown hair and, also like the others, she’d been shot and the killer had painted a bull’s-eye on her forehead with an asymmetric red dot in the bull’s-eye, just off to the left.
The crazy SOB’s still at it, he thought grimly.
And, according to the medical examiner’s preliminary approximate time of death, Vine couldn’t have done it. He’d been in custody at the time.
Back to square one.
Sam remained just long enough to review the crime scene and make a few notes to himself. Conferring with the first officer on the scene, he asked to be sent any and all reports the crime generated.
Finished for the time being, Sam went outside and placed a call to Zoe. He had a sudden need just to hear her voice.
His call went to voice mail.
Twice.
Telling himself there were half a dozen reasons why his call hadn’t gotten through to her, he put in a call to the officer he’d left guarding his house.
There was no answer there, either.
At this point, Sam didn’t even bother trying to speculate what was going on and why neither Zoe nor the officer was answering their phones. He needed to know the actual reason why they weren’t.
After hurrying to his car, he jumped in and didn’t even remember starting it up.
The only thing he was aware of was that he had to get there.
Now.
* * *
The police officer’s car was just where Sam remembered having seen it: parked at the curb directly in front of his house. The officer, Allen Davidson, was sitting behind the steering wheel.
So why the hell wasn’t he answering his cell phone?
Sam pulled up beside the police vehicle, several rather choice words hot on his tongue.
He never got a chance to utter any of them.
The officer wasn’t sitting up in the driver’s seat. He was slumped over in it, a fresh bullet hole in his temple.
Cursing himself for leaving Zoe, Sam left his car double-parked beside the dead officer’s vehicle as he raced to his front door.
It was closed, but Sam quickly discovered it wasn’t locked.
He pulled his weapon out as he eased the door open all the way and entered his home.
What he really wanted to do was run through the rooms, calling her name, but he knew if she actually still was on the premises, all that would do would alert Vine, who, the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach told him, was behind all this.
So although it pained Sam to do so, he slowly made his way through his house, sweeping carefully and efficiently from room to room, on guard to the ever-present possibility that the presumably newly minted cop killer could get the drop on him at any moment.
The painful crawl went on until Sam finally cleared the last room.
A sense of vast disappointment mingled with a tinge of relief within him, the latter born of the fact that Vine wasn’t there to get the drop on him. The disappointment came from the same source.
If Vine wasn’t here, where was he?
And much more importantly, where was Zoe?
For the first time in recent years, Sam stood all but frozen in place, his next move completely and frustratingly eluding him.
When the phone in his pocket vibrated, he jumped as if he’d been poked with a cattle prod. Pulling it out of his pocket, Sam almost dropped the cell before he had the chance to hit the green square, allowing him to accept the call.
“Colton!” he barked into the phone.
“I got something of yours, Colton,” the voice on the other end of the call said with a sneering air of superiority. “But, lucky for you, I’m willing to make a trade.” There was a long, dramatic pause. Vine, Sam thought, was loving this. He fisted his free hand at his side, struggling with his temper as he heard Vine ask, “Are you interested?”
“What do you want?” Sam snapped.
“Right to the point. I like that. You know what I want, Colton,” Sam heard Vine say.
Though it killed him to do so, Sam waited, knowing the longer he took to answer, the more off-balance Vine would become.
And he was right.
When he made no immediate response, Vine angrily filled in the blank for him. “The key. I want the freaking locker key!” Sam heard him take a breath, as if trying to calm himself. When Vine spoke again, he sounded a little more in control. “You give me the key, and you get her back in one piece. Otherwise, I get to try out all these nifty new tools I’ve got. You get my drift?” he asked with a blood-chilling laugh.
Chapter 18
A sizzling white rage seized Sam, all but cutting off his air and temporarily interfering with his ability to form words.
Getting the rage under control, Sam issued a warning to what he considered to be the loathsome piece of garbage on the other end of the line.
“You hurt her, you even touch a single hair on her head, and there won’t be a rock you can hide under, or a corner of the world you can run to where I won’t find you. And when I’m done with you, nobody’ll ever be able to identify the pieces.”
“Well, well, well, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree after all, does it?” he heard Vine laugh. “Don’t worry, Dee-tec-tive,” Vine deliberately drew his title out, “you do your part and you can have her back just the way you left her.”
And then Vine’s voice hardened. “And if you don’t get me the key, then whatever happens to her is on your head, not mine. You’ve got three hours,” he snarled, then, as if they were having a friendly conversation, Vine said pleasantly, “I’ll leave you to your work now.”
“Wait a minute,” Sam cried, trying to make him remain on the line. “Let me talk to her. How do I know she’s even alive?” he demanded.
He heard the same bone-chilling laugh on the other end of the line. “Leap of faith, brother. You’ve gotta have a leap of faith.”
“You expect me to—”
But the phone had already gone dead. Vine had hung up on him.
Sam curbed the sudden, almost overwhelming desire to throw his cell phone against the wall. He knew if he broke his phone, he’d have to waste precious time getting a new one and the insane man he’d just been talking to could call back in the interim. There was no telling what Vine was capable of doing if he didn’t get hold of him when he called, Sam thought.
Frustrated, Sam started to curse, then abruptly stopped. There was no point in wasting his breath. He had work to do.
Where the hell was this damn key Vine was going on about?
Searches had been conducted in both Celia’s condo and Zoe’s house by the forensics team and no one had uncovered an unaccounted
-for key in either location. He had personally gone through the storage unit with the same results. There was no key to a locker, or any key at all to be found.
But Vine seemed convinced there was a key, so for now, he was going to work with the assumption that there actually was a key.
He got back on his phone and called Reynolds to tell him about the cop who had been killed. With a minimum of words, he explained what was currently going on, asking the head of the crime scene investigative division to go over both residences again, this time with a fine-tooth comb if need be.
Reynolds listened patiently, then said in a voice that never seemed to reflect any sort of agitation, “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but another victim turned up today in Rosewood. Same MO. I’m on my way there with my team.”
Sam knew the unit did double duty for both Granite Gulch and Rosewood since the latter town couldn’t afford to support a unit its own.
“Yeah, I heard.” Sam made his pitch, trying his best not to sound as desperate as he was beginning to feel. “But the girl in Rosewood is already dead. This involves someone who’s still alive. But if that key isn’t found, then she won’t be alive for long.”
He heard Reynolds sigh. “Okay. I’ll see who I can spare.”
“I owe you, Lieutenant,” Sam told him.
“Yeah,” he heard the man reply in a totally unsympathetic voice, “you do.”
* * *
Like a man possessed, Sam drove back to Celia’s storage unit.
An hour later, he had gone through everything, searching all four corners of the small unit, taking apart and moving the metal shelves she had put up herself from one side to the other, emptying out all the boxes and putting everything back, one item at a time in case he had missed the key the first time around.
He’d even gone through all the clothing Celia had hung up on the expandable, moveable rods, going through the pockets and then checking the hems to make sure nothing had been sewn into the linings.
The handful of books he found on the shelves had been leafed through systematically, all with the same results. No key.
“Damn it, where the hell is it?” Sam cried, taking a swing at the mobile clothes rack. His punch landed squarely on the metal rod that was holding part of the rack together.
Colton Copycat Killer Page 18