I gazed upon Shelby’s face and the reality of the situation hit me, spiraling me down the rabbit hole, my body limp and weak like I was made of air. My hand slipped out of Cade’s, and I gripped the side of the table, trying to keep myself from going down.
“Sloane,” Maddie said. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”
“I can’t ... it’s just, seeing her like this ... I’m not ... I don’t think I was ready for ...”
Maddie covered Shelby back up and walked around the table, pressing her hands into the sides of my face. “Look at me, Sloane. Look at me. Forget about everything else and focus on the sound of my voice for a minute.”
“What’s goin’ on, Sloane?” Cade asked.
“She’s having an anxiety attack,” Maddie said. “You know this happens sometimes, right?”
“I mean, yeah, I do. She hasn’t had one in a while.”
I hadn’t had one because life in Jackson Hole was simplistic, nothing stimulating enough to push my nerves to the surface. It had been so long since my last episode, I thought I’d moved past having them anymore. Now I realized I’d been fooling myself.
“Sloane is usually good at managing her anxiety most of the time. She hides it well too.” Maddie pointed to a cabinet across the room. “Grab a glass out of the cabinet and get her some water, will you?”
Cade nodded and walked away.
“Sloane, listen to me,” Maddie said. “I need you to breathe.”
I shook my head. “It’s just hard. I feel like I can’t get any air in.”
“Yes, you can. We’ll do it together—deep breath in, deep breath out. Good. Two more times.”
Cade returned with the water. Maddie instructed him to grab a chair from her desk and bring it over. He did, and I sat down, feeling embarrassed, watching the two of them hover over me like I was the wounded bird. This wasn’t about me, and yet here I was taking the focus away from the precious moments Cade needed with his daughter. I was better than this. And even if I wasn’t, I had to be.
I sipped the water and stabilized my breathing. “I’m so sorry, Cade. I didn’t mean for that to happen.”
He cupped my chin in his hand. “Hey, don’t worry about it, okay? You loved her too. She was a big part of your life. You were more of a mother to her than her own mother, and she loved you for it.”
A mother.
I felt elated and brimming with sorrow at the same time.
Maddie touched my shoulder. “You feeling better now?”
I nodded. “Let’s try again.”
“Do you think you can handle it this time?”
“Of course. Go ahead.”
Maddie returned to Shelby, lifting the side of the sheet up, focusing on Shelby’s hands. “She has fresh cuts on both hands, and I believe these came from her having fallen.”
“How do you know that?” Cade asked.
“When I inspected the crime scene, I found blood next to a rock along the path she walked this morning. I took a sample. I’m sure it’s hers, which would explain the cuts on her hands. My guess? She fell and scraped them against the rock, trying to break her fall.”
“What else did you find?” Cade asked.
“Two sets of footprints in the snow. Her boots left a consistent pattern. It was early in the morning, and the path hadn’t had much foot traffic yet, so I could see where she entered the park and how far she went before her shoe pattern became more spread out. At first she was walking, and about three quarters of the way, it looks like she started running. I believe she fell, and her assailant caught up to her.”
“The second set of prints,” I whispered.
“Exactly. He attempted to smear them, but it was dark, and he missed a few.”
“You say the assailant was a he,” Cade said, “which is exactly what we heard in the background when Shelby ...” He choked on his words, unable to continue.
I jumped in to explain. “Shelby called and left a message on Cade’s phone, apparently just as she was attacked. We could hear a man’s voice in the background before the phone cut off.”
“I didn’t know about the phone call. How horrible for you.” Maddie paused, pursing her lips. She took a deep breath in and continued. “So yes, the prints look to be of a male wearing boots. I had a few casts made, and I’ll be analyzing those today. From the position of the prints, it’s my opinion that he caught up to her, and there was a struggle. She must have found a way to break free, because more of her prints were found a little farther along. It looks like she was running away when he shot her.”
Cade ran a hand down Shelby’s hair. He bent down, kissing her forehead, pausing a moment before standing up again. “Were you able to determine where he went after she was shot?”
“We followed his prints past the pond and into the parking lot. They disappeared after that, leading me to believe he got into a vehicle and drove away.”
“Talk to me about how she was shot.”
Maddie nodded. “The way the bullet entered her body is consistent with a person who had been running, and based on the trajectory, I believe he was at least four feet behind her when he fired. The bullet entered her back, pierced her lung, and continued through her heart.”
“It happened before it was light out. How did he get such a good shot off?”
“The park has a few streetlamps. I found additional blood right below one of them. He could have aimed, waited for her to come into the light, and then shot her.”
“Was the bullet a through-and-through?”
Maddie shook her head. “It’s intact though. I extracted it before you arrived. My assistant is running tests now. I have photos. If you’re interested, I’ll show you.”
Cade nodded.
Maddie grabbed a folder off of her desk, riffled through a series of shots, and pulled one out. “Take a look.”
Cade leaned over Maddie’s shoulder, his eyes focused on an enlarged bullet. “Looks like a forty to me.”
“Yep. It is. A Speer Gold Dot Centerfire.”
“Where was she when you found her?”
“She had been moved to the side of the path,” Maddie said. “She was face up in the snow. Her hands rested on her lap, one over the other.”
“Like she’d been positioned?”
“You ask me, the way her arms were crossed was almost more of a sign of respect. He could have shot her and taken off, leaving her where she fell. He didn’t.”
Maddie set the folder down, grabbed the sheet, and covered Shelby back up again. Cade stared as if in a trance, his eyes reflecting the pain he had tried his best to hide.
“Is there ... uhh ... anything else I should know?” he asked.
“There is one thing. Tucked beneath her hands, I found a playing card, a Ten of Hearts.”
Cade and I exchanged glances, confused.
“What in the hell is that supposed to mean?” he asked.
“You probably want to talk to the guys working the case, get their take on it. I was just asked to process the card for prints. There is something else I should tell you.”
“Yeah?”
“Written on the card, it said: How does it feel?”
“How does what feel?”
Maddie shrugged. “Who knows? Nothing else was written on it.”
“Did you find any prints on the card?”
She shook her head. “It was clean.”
“Anything else?”
“Her cell phone was found about thirty feet away from her body, in between a few trees, broken. I pulled one solid print off the back side and one partial off the front. Both were Shelby’s. I assume the killer wore gloves.”
“Who’s running the show over at the police department now?” I asked. “I heard they were putting in a new chief of police. Is he anyone I know?”
Maddie looked away. “It’s ... umm ... well ... yeah. You could say it’s someone you know.”
“Why are you stalling? Just tell me who it is.”
“You’re not going to
like it.”
“Why? How bad can it be?”
Judging by the look on her face, I had cause to worry.
“You may as well tell me,” I said. “I’d like to drop in, let him know I’m around, and plan on being a part of this case.”
She bit the side of her lower lip. “I understand. It’s just you’re not going to like talking to the new chief, Sloane, and he’s not going to like talking to you. I’ve been meaning to tell you and just hadn’t yet.”
“So tell me.”
“The new chief of police is Coop.”
CHAPTER 6
Drake Cooper, who went by the nickname Coop, was a former Park City detective and a man who had salted every wound on every case I’d worked on when I lived there. He had also saved my life on one occasion. Not because he wanted to and not because he liked me. He didn’t.
I had been sitting with Cade outside of Coop’s office for the last half hour, waiting for him to return from a meeting. Cade hadn’t uttered a word since we sat down. He’d leaned back in the chair and crossed one boot over the other, staring at the wall like it was playing a movie. I didn’t blame him for checking out. I wanted to do the same.
I rested a hand on his leg. “How are you doing?”
He remained focused on the wall. “Can we talk about what happened earlier?”
“Sure.”
I assumed he meant Shelby. I was wrong.
“We have never talked much about your panic attacks. I mean, we have, but not in depth. I’m thinkin’ we should. Maddie knew what to do when it happened, and I didn’t.”
He was deflecting, choosing a topic he had the ability to discuss instead of the one he didn’t.
“What do you want to know?”
“How many years have you had them?”
I shrugged. “It’s hard to say. They’ve been happening for a long time.”
“Do you recall the first one you had?”
“The first one I remember was when I was a kid. I remember a strange feeling of panic and fear hitting me at once. It was like this horrible pit in my stomach that wouldn’t go away. At the time I didn’t understand what was happening or why.”
“What caused it?”
What had always caused them, my parents, every time their arguments escalated into a yelling match. I handled it by seeking shelter in my room, curling myself into a ball on my bed. It was my safety, my impenetrable bubble.
“I’ve talked to you about the way my dad treated my mom,” I said.
“Yeah, I remember.”
“The nights he lost control, I’d hide under my covers in bed, struggling to breathe. I think the anxiety attacks first started over the guilt I felt.”
“You were a child. What did you have to feel guilty about?”
“I couldn’t protect my mother from my father, from his explosive rants. I was too young. I’d close my eyes and pretend I was older and stronger. I pictured myself helping her, even though I couldn’t.”
“Your childhood was so long ago. All these years later and your anxiety attacks haven’t gone away?”
“They come and go. We’ve been together long enough for you to see they’re not frequent. Stressful situations trigger it. Most of the time I can manage it. Sometimes I can’t.”
“It explains why you grew up to be a private investigator, and why you prefer to take on the more dangerous cases.”
I shrugged. “I guess. Having a grandfather in the FBI also fostered my interest. He used to talk to me about his job, and I wanted to grow up to be just like him.”
Cade glanced down the hallway. “So, what’s the deal with this Coop guy?”
“What do you mean?”
“How hard is it gonna be to work with him?”
Hard.
Borderline impossible.
But I knew I shouldn’t say that, so I didn’t.
“You’ve met him. You remember what he was like. It would be better if you let me do the talking when he gets here, okay?”
“I remember when he helped you find Shawn Hurtwick, the guy who nabbed Shelby a while back. He seemed like an okay guy to me then.”
I crossed my arms in front of me. “Coop’s better with men than women. We have history, and it’s not good.”
“What kind of history are we talkin’ about?”
“He doesn’t respect what I do for a living. When I lived in Park City, he always thought I got in the way of his investigations, even though I managed to help him with every case he had that I’d been hired to work on.”
He raised a brow. “If things aren’t good between the two of you, I should talk to him.”
“I know how to handle him, and I know what sets him off.”
Coop’s oversized, oval-shaped head rounded the corner, heading in our direction. He passed us without making eye contact, stepped into his office, and closed the door, even though it was obvious by the disgusted look on his face that he knew I was there.
And so it begins.
I did a knock-and-walk, entering his office without waiting for him to summon me in first. Cade followed. The familiar scent of Old Spice saturated the room. I lifted a hand to my mouth and coughed to keep from gagging. “Hey, Coop. Long time.”
“Yep.”
He kept his eyes glued to a stack of paperwork on his desk, still refusing to acknowledge me.
“I need to talk to you,” I said.
“Yep, I’m aware.”
“We’ve been waiting for almost an hour.”
“Aware of that too.”
I plopped down on a chair. Cade did the same.
“Ignoring me isn’t going to work,” I said. “We’re talking to you whether you like it or not.”
He looked at me and grinned. “Well, well. There’s the bratty girl I remember.”
And there was the asshole I remembered.
Cade held a hand out to Coop. “I’m Cade McCoy, Shelby McCoy’s father.”
Coop glanced at Cade’s outstretched hand and did nothing. “Yep, I remember you.”
“We would like to know what’s going on with Shelby’s case so far,” I said.
“Oh, would you? And you just thought you’d come on down here and I’d spill it all because it’s personal, right? You just came from seeing your gal pal at the lab. I’m sure she told you more than you need to know.”
“Everything Maddie knows isn’t everything you know though, is it?” I said.
Coop tapped his big, fat thumb on the edge of the desk. “I’m not sharing anything with you, sweetheart. I’ll do everything I can to catch the guy, just like I always do.”
“So will we,” Cade said.
Coop sighed, turned toward Cade. “Sorry about what happened to your kid. It’s a harsh world out there, and it sucks. But I don’t want you here. I don’t have time to babysit you. Either one of you.”
“I’ve never asked you to,” I said.
Cade leaned forward, pressing a finger on the desk to emphasize his next words. “I don’t think you understand. This is my daughter we’re talkin’ about. I’m the chief of police in Jackson Hole, which I’m sure you know. I’m not just some guy off the street who doesn’t have a clue what he’s doin’. If you refuse to talk to me or work with me, it won’t change a thing. I’ll find the guy myself.”
Coop leaned back in his chair. “My new lead detective is out of town. He’s been apprised of the situation and is headed back now. I’ve asked him to sit down with you both when he returns to see if you have any information that will help us identify your daughter’s killer. Then I want you to go home. The last thing I need right now is an overzealous father hindering my investigation.”
“I’m not leavin’,” Cade said.
“Suit yourself. But if I see you around, interfering with my case, I’ll have you arrested. You think you’re some Wyoming big shot, and you’re not. You’re in Utah now, and I run the show around here.”
Cade slammed his fist onto the desk. “If you knew what it was like to lose a
kid, maybe you’d have a bit more decency and wouldn’t be such a prick.”
Coop’s eyes narrowed, and I prepared myself for the reply I knew was coming.
“My daughter was shot and killed in the line of duty,” Coop said, “so don’t ever come into my office talking to me about loss like I don’t know what it is. Now get up and get the hell out of my office.”
CHAPTER 7
An exhilarating feeling pulsed through the man as he tapped on the window with the tip of his fingernail. He’d tap four or five times and then stop, just enough to make Sloane and Cade stir in bed, but never enough to make either of them suspect he was standing there, looming outside the bedroom window of Maddie’s house, watching them sleep.
He risked exposure this way, but he didn’t care.
Besides, he liked it.
He liked it a lot.
He envisioned doing a lot more than standing idly by, merely taunting them. He envisioned killing them while they slept. He’d even pressed the barrel of his gun against the window, thinking of how easy it would be to murder them both right there in bed. But the timing wasn’t right, and neither was the order, even though picking off two birds with two bullets at once would definitely be efficient. But he failed to see the satisfaction of finishing what he’d started tonight. It was premature. Better to hold off and wait for more opportune moments. He needed to be patient, even though he didn’t want to be.
Today had been a good day. He’d watched Cade and Sloane arrive, witnessing the hurt on their faces as they joined with friends and law enforcement to mourn the passing of Shelby.
Shelby.
He had to admit he’d felt badly when he shot her, a sense of regret, her last words playing over and over in his mind. But it had to be done. A point had to be made, and she was the perfect one to make it. They had all been blindsided, just like he had been blindsided a short time ago.
One down.
Four to go until I’m finished.
Sloane tossed and turned in the bed, and just as he raised a finger to toy with her again, headlights beamed in the distance, a car driving up Maddie’s road and turning toward the house. It was unexpected. Who would be visiting at this hour? He pulled the top of his hoodie over his head, glancing once more through the window before disappearing into the night.
Gone Daddy Gone (Sloane Monroe Book 7) Page 3