Particles of Obsession (A Shadow of Death Romantic Suspense Book 2)

by Charlotte Raine

  “Mira,” she calls up, saying my name so slowly that I watch her lips form each letter. “I didn’t expect to find you here. I thought you would have been at your office.”

  She hasn't released my name to the media yet. I suspect it's because she doesn't want all of the attention--the endless headlines questioning if the police are giving me special treatment because I worked beside them, or about how a simple science nerd committed murder right after Detective Stolz had seen me ready to kill the victim. It must be an embarrassment for her and I'm sure she wants to redeem herself by arresting me.

  But, now, she's just toying with me. Either she has another plan or she wants to get a confession out of me while there's a witness.

  “Well…I just thought you might be busy,” I say. “So I thought I’d question some people for you. With Alex Shirokov's murder, it seems like somebody who didn't realize they would leave forensic evidence behind, right? If I were going to commit a murder, I can't see myself ever leaving evidence behind.”

  "If you committed murder, I would think you were in an extreme mental state, so I suspect you would leave evidence behind," she says. "Alex's killer could have been in a rush. It doesn't matter. The killer left forensic evidence behind in multiple areas that they wouldn't be able to explain away."

  "Maybe your suspect was at the crime scene, but after the victim died."

  "That would be a very short time frame," Stolz says. "But if you have suspicions, why don't you come to the police station with me?"

  “I have no need to go to the station.”

  “Yeah, but it’s Macmillan’s birthday and I thought you might want to come by and celebrate with some cake.”

  Macmillan’s birthday is in March.

  “I’m really busy,” I tell her. “But I hope you’ll wish him a happy birthday for me."

  "You don't want to tell me about your suspicions?" she asks, her question almost a taunt.

  "It doesn't sound like you're ever going to believe me, so what's the point?"

  "The point is that you can’t keep disappearing," she says. "I'll do what it takes to serve justice. I will keep visiting your parents and track down everyone you know if I have to.”

  “You sound a little blinded by single-mindedness,” I say.

  “Or maybe I just want justice. If you really want something, you get creative, and I really don’t want to let you walk free after I let you get away once.”

  There’s a bang that feels like a knife in my ear drum and for a second, I’m disoriented enough to think Justin knocked over his vacuum again. But the truth sinks in and I can see the realization hit Stolz at the same time.

  I watch her sprint into the building. As I move toward the door, Justin grabs my arm.

  “What was that?” he asks.

  “Gunshot,” I mutter before running out of the room. I should take this time to escape, but it can't be a coincidence that Kiona left with a gun and a gunshot went off in her dorm building.

  I don't see anybody on the second floor, so I continue on down to the first floor. I find a crowd gathered around room 130 with Stolz pushing her way through the crowd.

  I approach the room, making sure to stay as hidden as possible behind the students. I peek around everybody. It looks like a young, deceased woman with long blond hair. As Stolz crouches over the woman’s body, I turn and leave.

  “Witnesses?” I hear Stolz bark. “Did anyone see the shooter?”

  “The person was all in black, wore a mask.”

  “I think it was Kiona!” another hysterical voice shouts.

  “Dammit,” Stolz says.

  I’m already running down the hall. I have to find Kiona.

  Everything is an illusion.

  My father used to tell me that, but it isn’t because he believed in solipsism. He didn’t believe that the external world and other people were just a creation of the mind. He had simply studied magic enough that he questioned everything he saw. While I’m not a fan of conspiracy theorists—creating whole concepts out of minimal evidence that could lead to a dozen theories—I have an immense amount of respect for those who question everything they hear or see. It’s the arrogance of the conspiracy theories that bothers me.

  “Maybe Kiona and Victoria had some kind of issue with each other,” John says, his fingers splayed over the top of his piano fallboard. “Kiona killed her, and now she’s decided to kill my other students because she knew I was Victoria’s mentor.”

  “If you stretched any further, you could grab onto the aliens that are part of your next theory,” I drawl.

  “It could happen,” he insists. “She could have killed Victoria in a moment of rage and it caused her to become unhinged.”

  “And what about this latest death?” I challenge. “You said she wasn’t one of your students.”

  “I don’t know,” he says. “I had Eliza Brandt for an introductory class, but she didn’t talk much. I barely knew her. But, clearly, the girl was shot, so this murder was meant to be different from the others. It’s like she wanted people to know she was willing to use the gun she took from her parent’s house.”

  “You think that’s why she chose to use a gun now, instead of the poison she had been using before?”

  “It could also be because she killed Alex, her poison expert,” he says. “She’s using a gun because she couldn’t make the poison.”

  “Okay, still, that’s a drastic change,” I say. “The poison was so subtle, the police thought it wasn’t murder until the third death. If she was part of the plans, she didn’t want to create a lot of attention around the deaths. Now she’s shooting people? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Like I said, maybe she wanted to scare people. Maybe she decided she didn’t care anymore about being subtle.”

  “I’m hearing a lot of maybes right now,” I say. “We need to find her. I don’t care about the motive. She’s killed two people with a gun now—which creates a whole new question. Why would she use my gun to kill Alex, but then disappear with her own gun? She could have just disappeared with my gun. She could have not disappeared at all—nobody was investigating her.”

  “She could have gotten skittish.”

  I rub my temple. “That’s still just a theory without any evidence to back it up.”

  There’s a knock on John’s door. He walks over to his window and looks out.

  “It’s just the mailman,” he says.

  “I’m surprised the police haven’t come by yet,” I say.

  “They did,” he says. “When you went to your lab.”

  “You’re just telling me this now?”

  “You have enough to worry about,” he says. “I handled it. I acted shocked that you could be involved in a crime and I swore that you hadn’t been here. I even had a cup of coffee with Stolz. She was a bit suspicious when she first came around, but she seemed relaxed by the time she left.”

  “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me this.”

  “It’s when I wasn’t sure if I trusted you, okay?” he says. “I still wanted that option to go to the police.”

  I shake my head. “You can create entire conspiracy theories, but you can’t trust me.”

  “You didn’t trust me when these murders first started either.”

  “You were the one connection between them all!” I snap.

  “I’m going to get the mail.” He walks away.

  I go to the window and watch him retrieve the mail. As he’s taking it out of his mailbox, I see a man with pale blond hair wearing a black jacket and jeans and standing across the street, reading a map.

  Who reads a map anymore?

  When John walks back into the house, I grab his arm and drag him to the window.

  “What the hell—”

  “That could be an officer,” I hiss, indicating to the man. “Maybe you weren’t as convincing as you thought.”

  “Well, do you recognize him?” he asks.

  “No, but they could have brought someone in from a
different area, so I wouldn’t be able to recognize them,” I say. “The police aren’t stupid when they’re determined.”

  “You’re overreacting,” he says. “Just stay away from the windows if you’re worried, and only leave the house when you don’t see him.”

  He sets two envelopes and a box onto his coffee table. The box doesn’t have a return address and John’s address is typed out.

  “Who sends you packages without a return address?” I ask.

  He shrugs. “I have no idea.”

  My heart stops. “Shit. Shit. This could be from the killer. Don’t touch it again.”

  He takes a few steps back. “What makes you think it’s from the killer?”

  “It has no return address and they didn’t use their own handwriting for your address,” I say. “That’s a sign that someone doesn’t want you to know who sent this.”

  “Why would the killer send a package?” he asks. “Should I call the police?”

  “Yes. No. No,” I say. “Let’s figure out what it is first. ’It's too risky to have cops crawling around your house. We don’t need the police to figure out that I’m here.”

  John gets a pair of scissors from his desk. He kneels down beside his coffee table and slices through the long piece of tape that seals the box. He opens the two flaps and pulls out a small cardboard box covered with words.

  “It’s Edgar Allan Poe’s poem The Raven,” he says.

  “Do you think that has some kind of significance?”

  “Well, the poem is about a young scholar who is mourning the loss of his lover, Lenore,” he says. “So…I don’t know. Maybe Kiona is upset about Alex’s death?”

  “You mean the guy she murdered?” I mutter. John sets the box on the coffee table. He lifts the top off and recoils.

  I step closer to see inside the box.

  At first, I can’t figure exactly what it is because the blood is all I see. But as I take in the bright gold hoop attached to something smooth, I realize what it is.

  A woman’s ear.

  While the police are at John’s house, I stay near an old abandoned train station. I let hours pass by, time moving so slowly that I can’t help but create some conspiracy theories of my own.

  Kiona had been wearing similar earrings when I first saw her.

  Kiona cut off her own ear.

  Kiona has a second accomplice who has turned against her just like she turned against Alex.

  It’s Kiona who is the accomplice, which is why she needed her own gun because the mastermind behind these murders killed Alex. Then, this mastermind turned against her and cut off her ear.

  But why?

  What makes any of this worth it?

  Some people are just crazy and want everyone to suffer, but the first few murders were too specific to explain that.

  The sun is nearly setting by the time that I return to John’s house. There’s no out-of-place cars nearby, so I knock on the door. He opens it and ushers me in.

  “They left about an hour ago,” he says as I sit down on his couch. “They’re going to test the DNA of the ear, but they think it belongs to Kiona. They saw similar earrings in her house.”

  “Yeah, I already figured that out,” I say. “But that’s all I’ve figured out.”

  “There’s something I need to tell you,” he says.

  “If this is something about you cutting off a woman’s ear, so help me God, I will hurt you.”

  “No,” he says. “I think…I know why this person sent me Kiona’s ear.”

  “How could you know why?” I ask. “There wasn’t a note or anything.”

  “That’s because the killer knew I would make the connection,” he says. “I didn’t think about it until later, but it makes sense. I keep a blog. It’s not professional or really meant for public consumption, it’s just a way for me to get all my thoughts out and share poems or stories I like with anyone who wants to subscribe to my blog.”

  “Please skip to the point.”

  "Ravens," he says. "This is why the killer included Poe's poem."

  He grabs his laptop and hands it to me. I set it on my lap.

  Insomniac Writes & Retreats: A blog by John Zimmer

  As some of you know, a student at Tuskmirth College has disappeared with a weapon. The college has shut down, likely until she’s found. It’s such a complex event that I’m not exactly certain how to express everything that I want to say.

  If she chooses to commit violence against any person—innocent or not—it will be devastating and tragic. She will absolutely deserve to serve whatever sentence a jury gives her.

  Yet, at the same time, I cannot help but feel that there is more to this story. This woman has a history—maybe a history of pain, of mental illness, of something that triggered her to disappear with a gun. I’m not pleading for sympathy; I’m just confused. I didn’t know her personally, but I knew one of her close friends, who seemed quite affectionate of her and considered her a moral person. I’ve heard from other people that she was a good person. I had also talked to her once after that friend died, and she seemed to completely understand the sanctity of life.

  Now, she is gone with a weapon and an angry e-mail to the school.

  Kiona is Native American—I’m not certain what tribe—but I saw a raven at the college and my first thought was that this was a message from some higher power about her because ravens are an important symbol to many Native American tribes. While many cultures consider ravens a symbol of evil or bad luck, as in Edgar Allan Poe’s poem, some Native American tribes consider it a Creator or a trickster deity.

  Let us hope that this is the beginning of something new or a simple trick because if it is something evil, then we must fathom that idea of evil in all people. If she could pretend to be good with such perfect replication, then anybody could pretend to be good, and safety in numbers is a joke.

  I hope it’s not because everyone needs each other more than ever. Lean on each other and show Kiona that she has a place to return to when she’s tired of running.

  “I still don’t see the connection,” I say.

  “Ravens. I mention ravens in this blog post, as well as Poe’s poem, and the ear is in a box covered with lines from The Raven.”

  “And what’s this about showing her that she has a place when she’s tired of running?” I ask, handing him back the laptop. “She shot a person.”

  “I wrote it before she shot that girl,” he says. “You don’t know if she was the one who killed Alex. That could have been someone who wanted vengeance for him killing Victoria, Iris, or Everett.”

  “How would they have figured it out before us?” I ask.

  “They could have had a different clue,” he says.

  I shake my head. “So…this person who sent you the ear reads your blog. Kiona’s accomplice or the person who Kiona is helping out is reading your blog.”

  “We can’t be sure she’s involved,” he says. “Nobody saw her leave. She could have been kidnapped. And the killer took her gun because he or she wanted everyone to think Kiona left on her own volition and had plans to commit violence.”

  “That is the craziest conspiracy theory you’ve spun yet,” I say. “Sometimes, things are exactly the way they seem.”

  “How else do you explain Kiona’s ear being sent to me?” he asks.

  “Clearly, Kiona is crazy,” I say. “Her murder rap sheet already proves that. It’s not that much further of a step to cut off her own ear.”

  “People murder each other all of the time and some of their motives are at least understandable,” he says. “Nobody would understand why anybody would cut off their ear and send it to a professor in the mail.”

  I want to accuse him of inventing more conspiracy theories, but it actually makes sense. The killer has already tried to frame me for a murder. The killer is smart, but they don’t seem overly adaptable. They would see how effective it was to frame me for murder and continue with that pattern. Maybe they realized I wasn’t a
good enough patsy because I would continue to search for clues.

  “This killer is obsessed with you,” I say.

  “I think we figured that one out a while ago.”

  “I have a plan,” I say.

  He stares at me for a few seconds before groaning. “I’m going to hate this plan, aren’t I?”

  “You’re going to despise it,” I say, clapping my hand against his shoulder. “But if you don’t do it, I’ll find a way to do it on my own, so you may as well help me. First, I need you to start a new blog post.”

  Insomniac Writes & Retreats: A blog by John Zimmer

  I have wrestled with many things in my life: depression, fear, anxiety, anger, a man who thought I was flirting with his wife at a banquet. But this—this is a different struggle. It’s a struggle that is in the hands of happiness, but with fear clinging to its body.

  I am afraid to confess my love because once everyone knows where my heart is, my heart becomes an exhibit. People can judge my love, my intentions, her intentions, her love, how well we may or may not stand together. Love is strong—it endures wars, famine, disease, and tragedy—but it can become distorted if the people within the relationship aren’t strong and I must confess that I’m weak. Still, I cannot hold back my feelings anymore because they have started to dominate my life and this joy feels like it needs to be spread. It’s a kind of joy that could cause my whole body to explode and all of my atoms to float up into the atmosphere, seeping joy into the air.

  I’m getting mushy now. I promised myself I wouldn’t get mushy.

  I am absolutely, irrevocably, uncontrollably, immeasurably, and miraculously in love with a woman named Mira Solano.

  Mira and I met after the tragedy of Victoria Glassman’s death, and her presence has been a light in my life that has been as monumental to me as the first flicker of light for mankind. The moment she walked into my office, everything in my life changed, so I felt that I owed it to my readers to tell you about her.