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

by Charlotte Raine

  “You’ve been stalking me and then you come rushing at me on a roof,” I say. “It’s not hard to figure out.”

  He sighs, releasing me. I spin around, rubbing my wrists. He crosses his arms over his chest and watches me, silent.

  Okay, so maybe he wasn’t attacking me.

  “Why were you trying to find me?” I ask.

  “Because I have some information for you,” he says. “Or else, I assume it’s for you. Andre asked for it, I had seen you around him before, and you have the same last name as the victim he was looking into.”

  “You’re Andre’s contact,” I say, realization dawning on me.

  He nods. “Or, at least, one of them.”

  He pulls out a folded piece of paper.

  “Your sister’s killer information is here,” he says.

  I take the paper from him, but I don’t unfold it. “How do you know this person is the killer?”

  “Because,” he says. “We know how to break the rules to get to the truth. He was involved with the investigation. He had an incident when he was young man where he unlawfully imprisoned a woman, who later alleged that she saw photos of young girls in his apartment. She later dropped the charges, but it’s not something someone makes up. The neighbors he had during your sister’s disappearance thought they heard the cries of a young child. A few days before she was found, he bought large black garbage bags and sleeping pills. You don’t want me to go through all of the other details we found, but it all adds up and it’s not just cognitive bias leading us.”

  I flip open the paper. It has his driver’s license along with his employment records from twenty years ago and a receipt for 60 gallon garbage bags and sleeping pills.

  The photo looks familiar, but his name confirms it.

  Ed Bunt

  I know Ed’s address from the Christmas card he sent me a couple weeks ago—I remembered being surprised that his address was so close to my old neighborhood. When I knock on his house door, I’m not sure what to expect. He didn’t have a wife’s or children’s name on his Christmas card. There was just his name and the name of his cat—Raspberry. I don’t what I expect to find, what I expect to do, how I expect him to react. I just know I need to confront him before I involve anyone else.

  He opens the door.

  “Mira,” he says, taking in a sharp breath in surprise. “I—I don’t think you should be here. The police are looking for you. You’re wanted for murder.”

  “Interesting that you should say that,” I say. “But there can only be one monster under each bed and I’m not the monster in this house. Can I come in? I brought you lunch like I promised I would.”

  I show him my paper bag filled with Chinese food.

  “It’s nearly midnight.”

  “It’s a late lunch.” I step past him into the house. “Where’s your dining room? Oh, never mind. I found it.”

  I set the paper bag on the table and begin taking out the containers of food.

  “I wasn’t sure if you’d prefer lo mein, sesame chicken, orange chicken, or beef with broccoli. Isn’t it weird that we’ve worked together for so long and we don’t know each other that well?”

  I turn around as he steps into the room. His fingers linger on his bottom lip and his eyebrows are pulled down in concern or uncertainty.

  “Do you have a preference?” I ask.

  He clears his throat. “No, but I don’t think you should be here,” he says. “You know the police…I should call them.”

  “You should,” I agree. “I have some things I’d like to tell them as well.”

  I sit down. He doesn’t move.

  “What? I’m sorry, but what do you want to tell them?” he asks.

  “Oh, just some things about you,” I say. “It’s amazing what you can find out about a person once you have connections to the right people. You must have been pretty new to forensics twenty years ago, right?”

  “Yes,” he says. “That’s when I was first beginning.”

  “Of course,” I say. “Because you’re somewhere in your mid-forties to early fifties, so you would have been somewhere in your twenties back then. Back in the nineties, you probably weren’t thinking too much about how credit card information left a paper trail. Isn’t that weird that when we use paper money, it doesn’t leave a paper trail, but when we use a plastic card, it does?”

  He stares at me, his stance becoming stiffer.

  “It is strange,” he confirms. “What is this about? What do credit cards have to do with anything?”

  “I’ve lived in New York City my whole life,” I say, touching the beaded bracelet on my wrist. “But you only came here for work. Twenty years ago. I was eight years old back then and I had a little sister named Sonia.”

  As he takes a step toward a wood file cabinet, I stand back up, lurching toward him. He flinches away from the cabinet.

  “I wouldn’t do anything too rash,” I say. “The gun the police found near Alex wasn’t the only one I own.”

  “Whatever you think I’ve done, you have it all wrong,” he says.

  “I haven’t even accused you of anything,” I say. “But as soon as I mention my sister’s name, you got scared. What’s in your cabinet? Do you own a gun? You don’t seem like the type to own a gun.”

  “That’s because I’m not a violent man,” he says. “You’re confused. All of the evidence points to you being a killer. Of course I’m frightened when you show up here, talking about credit cards and how long I’ve lived in this city.”

  “It’s funny that you talk about evidence because all of the evidence points to you being my sister’s killer,” I say. “How come you never told me that you were the one who worked on her case? You can’t tell me that you forgot about that case. I remember every single case I’ve worked on that involved a child and I am certain I will never forget a single one until I die.”

  “It didn’t seem appropriate,” he says. “How would I have even begun that conversation? It’s like you said, we weren’t that close to each other. We didn’t talk about personal things. It was strictly professional. I didn’t…I didn’t want to make our work dynamic awkward by mentioning your sister. You would have wanted to hear all of the details and that’s not something I could have told you. It would have broken your heart.”

  “What breaks my heart is that you killed her and you had the nerve to act like we were friends,” I snarl.

  He lunges toward the cabinet. He just manages to open the drawer by the time I tackle him. He tries to push me off him, but his age, combined with years spent in a laboratory, has made him weak. I pin his arms under my knees and press the palm of my hand over his throat. I apply enough pressure that he can feel the restriction of oxygen.

  “She was just a little girl,” I hiss. “How could you take her life?”

  “I didn’t mean to,” he gasps. “I don’t even know what happened. She just…I came back after giving her a snack and she was dead.”

  “Bullshit,” I say. “You told me to trust you as you took her, and she was smothered to death. You killed her. You didn’t want her to return home and tell my parents what you did to her, so you killed her.”

  “That’s not what happened. I just…I don’t know. The devil took over or something. I wouldn’t have hurt her, Mira. Ask anybody who knows me. I wouldn’t have hurt her.”

  I punch him in the temple. His body goes still under me, but I can feel the rise and fall of his chest as he breathes.

  I stand up. In the top cabinet of the drawer is a KM2000—a combat knife.

  I pick up the file that Andre’s contact gave me, and leave it on the table. I walk into the kitchen and find his home phone. I set the handset on the counter and dial 9-1-1. The dispatcher will send someone when nobody responds to him or her.

  I walk out of the house. I don’t feel at peace with what happened, but I don’t feel destroyed by it, either.

  At the very least, I still know who I am and I haven’t compromised who I am. I’ve w
anted justice for the innocent all my life, but that doesn’t mean I want to be the judge, jury, and executioner for anybody else. I’ll leave that to law enforcement.

  I can only hope they don’t fuck this up like they’ve messed up the students’ murders.

  My whole life has revolved around my sister’s disappearance. For awhile, Andre was a distraction in the sense that he brought something new to my life that allowed me to see myself as more than an extension of a family tragedy, but he knew how important my sister was to me. He knew I couldn’t put my pain on a shelf and run off into the sunset with him. That’s why I loved him—he didn’t eclipse the sad parts of me, he just amplified the happy parts.

  His soul—or whatever it is in us that stretches beyond our thoughts—has moved onto a place that I can’t follow quite yet.

  I know who my sister’s killer is now. Soon, her killer won’t be able to wander free like he’s been able to for the last twenty years.

  I’ve held onto this dominant part of my life and now I’m not sure how to stand up and move away from it.

  “Here’s the Patriot’s Dish,” the waitress says, setting down a plate of over easy eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns, toast, and a tiny muffin with blueberries and raspberries in it. “Do you need a refill of your coffee?”

  “No,” I say. “Thank you, though.”

  “Hey, can you turn up the news?” someone calls from the other side of the diner.

  Suddenly the TV in the corner blares, “…now an announcement from the police about the potential kidnapping of Dr. John Zimmer.”

  I turn toward the screen as it shows Detective Stolz and Macmillan standing in front of a lectern.

  “Good morning,” Stolz says, although her voice doesn’t deliver any warmth. “We are now officially stating that Dr. John Zimmer is a missing person. We are using all of our resources in an attempt to find him. We’re currently pursuing leads.”

  “We have thoroughly gone through Dr. Zimmer’s house,” Macmillan says, stepping up closer to the lectern. “We’ve gone through every inch. We will continue to search and we all want you to know we are doing everything within our power to ensure that this beloved professor is safe. We have alerted people all over the state and we are certain that they won’t be able to cross state lines.”

  “We are also releasing the name and photo of a suspect for another crime,” Stolz says. Macmillan’s face scrunches up in distaste, but she doesn’t notice. “Her name is Mira Solano. She used to work for the police’s forensic team. If you see her or have any tips about Dr. Zimmer, please call the police station at the number listed on your screen.”

  My driver license photo flashes onto the screen with my name printed below it, and the station’s number. Well, shit. I run my fingers through my hair and let it sway in front of my face. I would leave now, but it would only draw more attention toward me.

  The news switches back to the weather.

  I get up. I pull out a few wadded dollar bills I had leftover in my jeans. As I leave the diner, I can feel eyes on me, but nobody makes a move. Somebody will have called the police. I need to get as far away from this place as possible.

  Yet I have nowhere to go. I only had one place to go last time and now it’s an active crime scene.

  Or is it?

  We have thoroughly gone through Dr. Zimmer’s house. We’ve gone through every inch.

  Macmillan was going out of his way to say that the house was done being investigated and he normally doesn’t talk during announcements.

  Did he want me to go to John’s house?

  He knew I wanted to investigate this on my own.

  I might as well check it out. I need to get out of the public eye.

  There’s nobody around John’s house except a teenager walking a poodle, a Great Dane, and a Yorkshire terrier. I can be fairly certain she’s not involved with the police because she can’t spy on John’s house for more than a few seconds before the leashes get tangled up or the Yorkshire terrier begins growling at the poodle.

  I find his key under the lamp with the rock base, where it’s always been. I wonder if the forensic team had thought to look outside the house—if they found the broken glass from when I broke into his house through the basement window, or if it even matters. Probably not.

  I unlock the front door and step in. After closing the door, I find relief in being somewhere familiar. After being held captive and wandering around with no place to go, it’s nice to be in a place where I had felt safe before.

  As I’m almost to his living room, Macmillan steps out from the kitchen.

  “Jesus,” I mutter. “What the fuck. Did you know I’d show up here?”

  “I was hoping you would.”

  “So, you were setting a trap. That’s as clever as I’ve ever seen you.”

  He frowns. “No, it wasn’t a trap. I figured you’d want to investigate and I thought I’d help you. I made sure that nobody else would come here today. I’m glad you got the message. I wasn’t sure what you were going to do if you never saw the announcement.”

  “I would probably still have come here at some point as a last resort,” I say. “Aren’t you mad at me? I stole your handcuff key.”

  “Yeah, I realized once I got into the elevator,” he says. “But, I figured…I think you’re innocent, and if you can save an innocent life, that’s all good. But if you get caught, I’m going to say I wasn’t involved at all.”

  “Fair enough,” I say. “Did forensics find anything interesting other than perfume bottles filled with blood?”

  “Well, it is your blood and there is evidence that you slept here, so I guess you were telling the truth before,” he says.

  “That’s not interesting to me,” I say. “I know that I was telling the truth.”

  “While I was waiting for you to show up, I found something that could be a hint or could be nothing.”

  He leads me to the living room. The sticky notes and index cards are all there, but as he indicates the lower left corner, I notice all of the index cards are neon yellow.

  I pick off the index cards—four of them in all.

  Card 1:

  Strong/athletic—on a Tuskmirth sports team? Most likely: basketball, swimming, track and field, cross country, softball, gymnastics.

  Card 2:

  Who was in my classes that was also in athletics? How do I find out? Yearbook.

  Basketball: Jodi Pugh, Jennifer Frost, Camila Gómez, Tara Hindley, Maiko Kimura

  Swimming: Keisha Bonner, Rachel Terrios

  Track and field/Cross country: Jacqueline McLoughlin, Lakshmi Misra, Kate Millington, Samantha Campbell, Ramira Cuevas

  Softball: Sarah Sanders

  Gymnastics: Anna Hartley, Jillian Irving

  Card 3:

  Eliminate suspects—who seemed mentally unstable?

  Abusive parents: Jodi, Jacqueline, Anna, and Sarah (maybe? Made a remark about past violence, but didn’t elaborate).

  Drug abuse: Rachel

  PTSD: Keisha served in military—didn’t exhibit any symptoms, but possible

  Maiko—possibly raped?

  Card 4:

  Who was attached to me? I worked with Jodi, Camila, Tara, Rachel, Kate, Ramira, and Anna all one-on-one multiple times. Worked with Jodi, Camila, and Ramira the most.

  I don’t think Jacqueline or Keisha liked me at all. Anna dropped out before her last year. Rachel and Sarah failed one of my classes.

  “Wow,” Macmillan says, reading the notes over my shoulder. “These students are messed-up. You’re certain she’s female?”

  “Well, she’s either female or it’s a man with a feminine voice who likes to wear Victorian mourning dresses,” I say.

  He shrugs. “It’s possible.”

  “He did good work here,” I say. “Do you think you can look up these people’s driver’s license? The killer was a couple inches shorter than me. I’m 5’5”, so she would be around 5’3”.”

  “Sure,” he says. “But you k
now people lie about their height on their driver licenses all of the time, right?”

  “I didn’t lie on mine.”

  “I said I was 5’11.” I’m 5’9” on my toes,” he says. “But, yeah, I’m sure we can eliminate some of these people. I’m sure most of the basketball players are tall.”

  “I need you to do something else, but this favor needs to stay as hidden as possible,” I say.

  “What?”

  “There’s this man with pale blond hair, a stocky guy…he had helped Andre get information in the past. I feel like he could help us locate John. I was a bit preoccupied the last time I saw him, but I’ve been thinking about it and he’s our best bet. He has resources everywhere.”

  “The police also have plenty of resources,” he says.

  “Well, this guy and his friends don’t always do things legally, so—”

  “Got it,” Macmillan says, cutting me off. “I’ll look for a big blond guy that was associated with Andre. I’m sure Stolz has the information somewhere since she was his contact. So, uh, how are you dealing with that? I know you two used to be close, and you must have gotten reacquainted with him if he was involved—”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I interrupt. “We need to find John. That should be our only focus right now. If we can find the killer, there’s a bigger chance we can find out where she is or where she’s heading.”

  He nods. “I’ll call here once I have any information.”

  “Thank you, James.”

  As he leaves, I remember how I had always assumed he was an extremely moral person that wouldn’t ever break the rules. But maybe he has a higher sense of morality over his authoritarian personality. Maybe under extraordinary circumstances, we find out what’s in the heart of every man.

  I pull my hoodie up as I walk into the hospital. I keep my eyes down in case any police officers are wandering the halls, but I remain vigilant. Macmillan said that the blond man is most likely Henryk Kamiński, who doesn’t live in the place he listed as a permanent residence. His grandmother was currently in Tuskmirth hospital, though. Macmillan also said five of the students that John had listed were shorter than me: Kate Millington, Rachel Terrios, Maiko Kimura, Anna Hartley, and Jillian Irving.