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

by Charlotte Raine

  “What was her name?”

  “Maggie Thompson,” he says. “I’ve tried to find her again, to apologize, but I’ve never been able to find her.”

  “You were a kid,” I say. “You wanted acceptance. It’s understandable.”

  “I was fourteen,” he says. “I should have done something. And that’s why I don’t want to just stay on the sidelines anymore. That was the day I learned that there are no innocent bystanders if those bystanders don’t do anything to stop a crime from being committed.”

  He covers his face with his hands for a couple of seconds before rubbing his eyes.

  “Should we post this blog entry?” he asks, turning the laptop at me. I look at him for a couple seconds longer. This confession should make me less attached to him, but it’s the first time that I’ve seen him be truly vulnerable and not this flawless, charismatic human that students flock too. This is a man who turned his back on someone who needed him—like I did—and it has dictated a good portion of his life.

  It’s certainly not a story that you fall in love with, but it’s a time when you see someone who is drowning in their shame and you reach forward to grab their hand, pull them toward the shore, only to realize that you were drowning as well and the only solution was to swim together.

  Insomniac Writes & Retreats: A blog by John Zimmer

  Do you ever wonder why humans kiss? It has nothing to do with reproduction. Many cultures don’t do it. Most animals don’t do it. Some scientists say it’s a good way to choose a mate because when we’re that close to somebody, we can subconsciously figure out if the other person is a good match. I’m certain, on some level, that those scientists are right, but I think there’s something more to a kiss than reproductive benefits. When my lips touch Mira’s, when I feel the soft texture of her lips, when I feel her warm breath mixing with my breath—it’s a first union. It’s when the private spaces of two individuals becomes obsolete and is replaced by a private space for two. We have created something new in a single kiss and it’s a beautiful place that lacks the walls and masks that we have around other people. It’s freedom without loneliness.

  Mira has been busy, so that’s where all my thoughts are occupied lately. I don’t mind—I’m glad she has passions other than our relationship because if a woman’s dreams and ambitions only revolved around her relationship with a man, I would think she would be relatively boring. A relationship can’t be whole if the two people in the relationship aren’t whole.

  Mira plans to attempt to grow plants in the old greenhouse behind the college. It’s her newest goal. She’s going to get started tonight because we haven’t gotten permission from the school yet, so she wants to make everything look nice before the Dean can make a decision. I wish I could be around to help her, but I still have to write up final exams (I’m not sure if they’ll actually be able to take them with the school lockdown, but I can always use them another semester). She plans to plant some tree seeds now that will later be used in memory of my deceased students.

  She is truly a blessing. I could not ask for a better woman.

  The greenhouse has dozens of dead plants inside it and one bag of mulch. A couple of hours ago, John settled somewhere behind some plants with massive leaves that have somehow survived several frosts. I don’t look for him. The killer can’t know he’s here. As much as I don’t like it, he’s my only safety net.

  Now I have to look like I’m actually doing what he said I’d be doing in his blog.

  I grab the closest plant, grab the bottom of the stem, and jerk it out of the soil. Its long roots—reminding me of tentacles—cling to most of the dirt. I shake it and the dirt rains down back into the pot.

  Now, I need somewhere to throw it away.

  Minutes tick by so slowly, I expect to actually finish cleaning out these plants by the end of the night. Maybe the killer hasn’t actually read his blog yet—maybe we were too fast to pull the trigger.

  Which reminds me that I really wish I had my gun.

  There’s movement in my periphery, outside of the greenhouse. The killer? Maybe he or she came after all. I grab the pruners and take a step outside. Even at night, it’s so much colder out here than inside the greenhouse.

  I glance around. The greenhouse casts a faint glow, but there’s still a nearly pitch blackness encasing the light.

  There’s no sound except faint traffic coming from what seems miles away. The sky is a blanket of nothingness, and I’m afraid that at any moment, I’ll turn and be face to face with the killer.

  The closest college building is about a hundred yards away and it’s well-lit there, but nobody expects anybody to be out here late at night. That’s how John and I wanted it. We needed the killer to believe they could attack me without anybody seeing them.

  A scream hides in my throat. I never thought of myself as weak or cowardly, but right now I’m questioning this entire plan.

  Something moves just behind me. For a second, all I can feel is stinging pain in my elbow and I drop the pruners. As pain drills through my arm, I realize someone hit me from behind—someone who had seen I had a weapon and needed to disarm me.

  Before I can spin around, the person wraps their arm around my neck, presses their forearm against my throat, and begins to choke me. I try to take in air, but their chokehold is too strong. I twist back and forth, but it only causes them to press their arm against me harder. The person jerks me backward and I hear their back hit against the greenhouse wall.

  I stomp at their feet, but they manage to avoid both attempts. My vision is getting hazy and I can feel unconsciousness beckoning me.

  Just let go, it says. Andre and Sonia are here. They’re waiting for you.

  Something slams into both of us, sending us to the hard, frozen ground. As I grasp for breath, I feel a hand on my arm. I flail my arm at the person, trying to hit them.

  “It’s me, Mira,” John hisses. “It’s fine.”

  I flip over to see him reaching for the figure who attacked me. It’s the same person who had shoved that literary quote into my mouth—evident by the body figure and the clothing—and their face is covered with a ski mask like before. They were prepared—he or she knew there was a risk of being caught.

  “I don’t want to hurt you.” It’s an unmistakably female voice.

  “Who are you?” John demands. He reaches for her mask. She ducks her head away from him and grabs his wrist. She twists him around by jerking his wrist and pushes him away from her. She sprints away from us.

  I pursue her. Like last time, she proves to be much faster than me, but adrenaline allows me to stay about five paces away from her. Once she reaches the school building and it’s getting hard for me to breathe, she jumps up to a fire escape. Her weight doesn’t pull the ladder down. As I reach out to grab her, she pulls herself up to the next rung on the ladder. She continues to pull herself up until her feet hit the bottom rung and she scrambles her way up to the top. I watch as she reaches the top of the fire escape. She gets on top of the railing, jumps up grasp the ledge above the window, pulls herself up, and uses it to get on top of the roof.

  “What are you doing?” John asks, stopping beside me and gasping for breath. “Where did she go?”

  “She’s fucking Spiderman,” I say, pointing to the roof of the building. “She’s up there. She can reach a shit ton of buildings by being on the roof. There’s no point in rushing. This—superwoman…she climbed up the first half of the fire escape ladder with just her arm strength. That has to slim down the suspect pool—what woman do you know who can lift her own body weight without breaking a sweat?”

  “I’m sure I know some, but it’s generally not a question I ask in polite conversation,” he says, sighing. “So…now we know it’s a woman.”

  “Yes, a woman who is strong as hell and can beat both our asses,” I say. “That’s great. First, we had a guy who could secretly poison people, and now there’s a ninja. What kind of people are you associating with?”

&n
bsp; He turns around, heading back toward the greenhouse. “Come on. Let’s go back to my house and sleep. I don’t want to think about this for the next eight hours.”

  I don’t want to leave, but I know staying any longer will only increase the likelihood that the police find me. I follow him, hoping he doesn’t lose faith in me as fast as I’m losing faith in finding this killer.

  John left to go to a meeting about the school lockdown and how it’s going to affect final exams, so I’m alone in his house. I wish I could check on my brother, but I’m certain the police will be keeping an eye on him in case I show up. My only other option is to check on someone else’s family and I have two options: Kiona’s or Alex’s.

  I can’t be certain that Kiona isn’t another victim, so I’ll have to go with Alex. Shirokov isn’t the most common name around Tuskmirth. I find only one number in the phonebook with the same name. Gerard Shirokov.

  The house is about three miles away, but I decide to walk there. I need as little human contact as possible in order to avoid the police. At this point, it almost seems more sensible to get arrested because then I could at least use the prison library to research everything.

  It didn’t occur to me that the family would be having a wake today.

  Their driveway and the front of the house is packed with cars. I’m surprised that a man who had been accused of committing multiple murders would have so many people here to mourn him, but I suppose the people are here more for his parents than him. Plus, the fraternity likely came.

  No one will be around to have a ceremony for Andre. The mafia he had been accompanying would likely pay for a nice casket, but they wouldn’t make a big show of it. He wasn’t important enough for them to act like he was part of the family.

  I’ll have to bring flowers to his gravesite every day to make up for it.

  When I walk into the Shirokov’s house, the first thing I notice are his parents, evident by the fact that they’re the ones everyone is giving their sympathies to.

  I’m wearing the same black pants and top I’ve had on for days, only removing them for sleep and the couple of times I’ve run them through John’s washer and drier. At least they’re the right color for mourning, although they’re too informal. Too bad. I don’t have time to be worried about my appearance. Instead, I take a closer look at Alex’s parents.

  Alex’s mother reminds me of Marilyn Monroe if Marilyn Monroe had aged older than fifty and was shaped like a grandfather clock instead of an hourglass. His father looks like a dick—figuratively and literally.

  His mother looks up at me. She stares at me with such intensity that I get a sinking feeling that she knows the police are looking for me. I was banking on the idea that the police wouldn’t have told Alex’s parents that they suspect someone who had been working with them had killed him, but I’ve been wrong before.

  She looks away. If she knows something, she’s not going to confront me. Alex’s father glances at me, but he doesn’t recognize me from anything.

  I came here to find out more about Alex—to see if his family knew more than his fraternity brothers, but now I feel like I’m a rat that has just taken the cheese off of the mouse trap.

  “Hello, Dr. Zimmer’s friend.”

  I turn around to see Dominic, Victoria’s boyfriend. Or at least, he was her boyfriend until Alex killed her.

  “Dominic,” I say. “I’m surprised to see you here.”

  “Why? Because Alex killed my girlfriend?” he asks. “Well…I suppose I should have known. He was acting weird for the last couple of months.”

  I straighten up. “Really? Do you know why?”

  “Perhaps because he’d begun his transformation into a homicidal maniac?” Dominic suggests.

  “No, I mean…did something happen in his life? Did he happen to meet someone that triggered him to change?”

  Dominic tilts his head. “Why are you so curious? He’s dead. It’s over.”

  “I just need to know. Come on, Dominic. You have to want to know the whole story. Why would he kill all those people?”

  Dominic rubs his bottom lip. “I can’t be certain. The way he was acting…I don’t know. He was always a fun guy, but I think he suffered from major depressive disorder. There was always a bit of sadness underneath his facade. But in the last couple of months, he seemed genuinely happy, and he’d take off and lie about where he was going. One of our brothers would ask where he went and he would tell us some bullshit story about his family or going to a bar. Why would he go to a bar alone? One time, he told us he was going to Blue Crystal bar, but Daniel was there that night and he said he never saw Alex. Something was going on, but it wasn’t our business to pry into it. Maybe he had joined a Satanic group or he had a boyfriend. We may never know.”

  I glance back over at his parents. It never really occurred to me that it could be a guy who was dating Alex and obsessed with Dr. Zimmer.

  “What do you know about Kiona?” I ask.

  “She was Victoria’s roommate. She’s a good woman. She’s not a violent person. I don’t know why she ran off with a gun, but…it’s certainly strange,” he says, frowning. “There’s something else going on, isn’t there? I’m not going to give you any more info until you tell me. My girlfriend was killed and if there’s more going on, I think I should know.”

  I shake my head. “I was just curious.”

  “A man doesn’t kill a bunch of students and, in the same frame of time that he’s killed, a female student doesn’t disappear with a gun,” he says. “Do you think Kiona killed Alex?”

  “It’s possible,” I admit. “Do you think she was attached enough to Victoria to want revenge?”

  “No,” he says. “They were only close to each other in the way roommates are close…They had to like each other to survive sleeping a few feet away from each other. She was upset at her funeral, certainly, but it’s not like she’s going to be wearing black all year.”

  Unless she’s dead and locked in a casket.

  He opens his mouth to say something else, but several people’s cell phones begin vibrating or ringing. He pulls his phone out and checks it.

  “Jesus H. Christ,” he mutters. “Not only is the campus on lockdown, now the whole downtown is.”

  “What?” I ask.

  He gestures to his phone before putting it back in his pocket. “Campus police just sent out a text to all students that we have to stay away from Costume Artillery, some costume shop on Main Street.”

  It feels like an anvil rammed into my chest. Costume Artillery is right beside my parent’s shop, Magician’s Suitcase. I leave the house so quickly that I can barely hear the echo of Dominic asking, “What the fuck is she doing?”

  Chapter Six

  The Killer

  I danced around the main room of Alex’s apartment. The music wasn’t even upbeat and it had a slow tempo, but I felt too happy to not dance. I felt like I had never experienced true happiness until I had started planning these murders. I knew how psychotic that sounded, but I had purpose and I was actively trying to solve my problems for the first time in my life.

  Every dream, every thought, every breath

  It’s all about what I would do to get you by my side

  Call me obsessed, call me naive, call me whatever you want

  I’ll follow you to the grave, another Bonnie and Clyde.

  I heard the apartment door open and close. I turned around to see Alex. I shouldn’t have expected anyone else, considering neither of us had told anybody about this place, but there was always that bit of anxiety ramming in my brain, telling me that a SWAT team could come bursting through the door at any second.

  I lowered the volume on the radio and rushed over to him. I wrapped my arms so tight around him, I could feel his chest rise and fall with his breathing. He ran his hand down my hair.

  “You act like you haven’t seen me in a decade,” he said.

  “I’m just so happy,” I said.

  He stared me, trying to r
ead every detail of my face.

  “She’s dead, right?” I asked. “I know you thought after Victoria and Everett, it would be harder to get it done, but since she’s at a different school, it was easy, right?”

  He frowned. “I wouldn’t use the word easy. I had to break into her apartment, but I managed to leave the pen there. I saw ambulances racing to the school as I left…but anyway, yeah, it’s done.”

  “How can you be sure she’s dead if you didn’t stick around?”

  “You’ve seen the results of the poison,” he said. “It kills within a couple of minutes. I ensured it was right where her hand would grip it, so if another person picked up the pen, it wouldn’t hurt them as badly because the poison had all been absorbed. I promise you: she’s gone.”

  I jumped onto the kitchen stool and drummed my hands against the counter. Joy was impossible to contain.

  “We should go do something,” I said. “Dr. Zimmer is doing a reading in the student union in an hour. We should grab some dinner and go listen to him.”

  “Really?” he asked. “I just drove back from the middle of godfucking nowhere and you want to go run and see your professor? I thought at the very least that we would spend some time together alone tonight. Do you ever think about that? The two of us, together? Or is your professor always involved somehow?”

  I flushed, but I kept my head bowed so he couldn’t see my face. I looped my finger through his jeans pocket and pulled him closer to me. He leaned away.