Cassie McGraw Box Set: Books 1-3

by David Archer

My eye popped open. “Okay, well, don’t listen if it isn’t intended for your ears. Take me off speaker, Dex.”

  “I didn’t put you on it,” Dex said, “he did. Something about how it’s hard to type and hold a phone at the same time. Anyway, be careful. I’m stuck here till five-thirty, and then I’ll be home. See you then, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, ignoring the fact that he’d made the same blooper as me. The apartment was not “home” to either of us, and yet we both seemed to think of it that way when we thought about us as a pair.

  I called Alicia and let her know about Michael Rawlings, then forwarded her the picture I’d gotten from “the hacker” who seemed to like me.

  “You think there’s any chance he’s our guy?” she asked.

  “He’s not the one on the phone,” I said, “or Juanita would have recognized his voice. She said the recording I played for her was definitely not him, but that the voice did sound familiar, only she couldn’t place where she’d heard it before.”

  “But he seems to be connected somewhere. Well, it’s something we didn’t have. Be sure to thank your ‘anonymous’ hacker for me.” She laughed and hung up, and I couldn’t hold back a smile.

  EIGHTEEN

  Dex came back to the apartment at just before six. “Your cat,” he said with a menacing look in his eyes, “has decided that you have deserted her with me, and has decided that it must be my fault. I know this because my pillow was in the living room with the cat on it when I got home, and the look she gave me said that trying to take it back would probably be a fatal mistake.”

  I couldn’t help it, I snickered. “She’s definitely possessive. I always let her sleep on the bed with me, but she likes the couch, sometimes. When she’s on it, she lets me know I can get scratched if I try to move her, so I usually just leave her alone.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I reached for the pillow and she growled at me. I wasn’t brave enough to try to push the issue.”

  “She’ll be fine when this is over. I think she just wants mama back.”

  Dex looked at me. We were sitting at the kitchen table, because I had a turkey roast in the oven and needed to take it out pretty soon. “Any sign of Stinky Stan?”

  I shook my head, stifling the giggle that wanted to come out. “No, nothing. That doesn’t mean he isn’t watching, though. I’m glad no one can see into this part of the apartment, or they’d never believe you’re such a meanie.”

  “Speaking of which,” he said, and then he gave me a wink before raising his voice. “Emily!” he shouted. “Emily, what the hell is this?”

  “What? What’s what?” I yelled back, trying to keep the sound of the grin out of my voice.

  “I told you to make sure you cleaned out the coffee pot today, didn’t I? Didn’t I? Look at this thing, it’s filthy!”

  “Oh, God, I’m sorry, Darrell! Here, I’ll do it now!”

  Dex picked up one of the cheap cups I’d bought and dropped it into the sink so it broke. “Just do it!” he yelled, and I answered that I would, trying to make it sound like I was crying.

  Apparently it worked, because Donna knocked only a few minutes later. I answered it, keeping my left hand out of sight behind the door.

  “Oh, hey,” I said. “Listen, now’s not a good time. Could we maybe talk tomorrow, maybe in the afternoon?”

  She looked closely at my face, and I felt a moment’s panic that the mask might be slipping. I relaxed a second later, though, because she gave me a sad smile and said that would be okay. I pushed the door shut and went back to the little kitchen area.

  “I’ll be glad when this is over, myself,” I said. “I like Donna, I hate having to lie to her like this. I just can’t risk anyone knowing who I really am, right now. If Stan were to overhear anything...”

  Dex took me in his arms and I relaxed against his strong chest. “I know,” he said. “And you won’t be half as glad as I am.”

  The timer went off on the oven and I let go. Dex took the roast out of the oven and set it on the table while I turned off the burners under the mashed potatoes and green beans I’d heated up to go with it. I got a couple of plates out of the cupboard and set them on the table, then got out two cans of red cream soda for us. Dex had already gotten the silverware, so we sat down to eat.

  “So what do you think about this Michael Rawlings guy? Think he’s connected to all this?”

  “I think he has to be,” I said. “We know he was in Provo when it was happening out there, and we know he was in Tucson when they were going through it. It’s just too much to be a kind of a coincidence. He’s around here somewhere, I feel it.”

  “I saw the picture Alfie got,” Dex said. “Guy looks pretty stout. Alfie said he’s about six feet, two hundred pounds and he looks like he’s probably a weightlifter. Definitely a guy who works out, anyway.”

  “He’s probably the second person,” I said. “We know that Stan has an accomplice, so it’s probably him. The thing that bothers me is that the police in Tucson checked him out and said he was clean. I’m trying to figure out how he could manage that.”

  Dex shook his head. “You’d have to ask Alfie a question like that. He might be able to find out, I don’t know.”

  “That’s a good idea.” I took out my phone and dialed Alfie.

  “Sing me a song,” he said. I rolled my eye.

  “It’s me,” I said, knowing he would have seen the caller ID. “I’m calling about Michael Rawlings. When I was out in Tucson, Juanita Garza told me that the police checked him out and thought he was legit. They said his uncle lived in Tucson, and I guess that’s who he was supposed to be staying with. Can you check that out? I can’t believe the Tucson cops would have missed the fact that he wasn’t who he claimed to be.”

  “Yeah, give me a minute. Uncle, you say? I’m checking the history on the real Michael Rawlings, and he has no uncle. Couple of aunts, but no uncles. Now, let’s flip this around. Ronald Orloff, on the other hand, who he was claiming to be, does in fact have an uncle named Charles with a Tucson address. Let’s see what I can find on Uncle Charlie. Hmmm. Okay, this is interesting. Charles Orloff lived in a travel trailer on twenty acres of his own outside of the city. About a month ago, neighbors reported that they hadn’t seen him in a while and the sheriff was sent out. Deputies got there and knocked on the door but got no response, so one of them tried the doorknob and it was open. They went inside and found no sign of Mr. Orloff, and the trailer was pretty much empty. They decided to do a search of the grounds and checked out an old shed out behind the trailer, where they found boxes full of what proved to be Mr. Orloff’s personal property. Clothes, shoes, personal stuff, even his wallet. That made them a little suspicious, so they kept digging around and stumbled upon an old chest freezer back in the back of the shed, with all kinds of crap piled on top of it. They pulled down the junk and one of the officers noted a smell, and when they opened the freezer the smell got a lot stronger all of a sudden, and they found a very putrid mass that turned out to be Mr. Orloff. He was not frozen, because there was no power in the shed, resulting in a couple of deputies tossing their cookies and a panicky call for the medical examiner and a hazardous material team. They estimate he had been dead for over a year and would have been pretty much mummified if he hadn’t been sealed into an airtight container. The body, if one can call it that, was sent off to the lab for testing, but there’s nothing about any results coming back yet. Lab’s probably backed up and hasn’t gotten to it yet, or else nobody has a strong enough stomach for the job. I’d personally bet on the latter.”

  “Holy cow, Alfie,” I said. “Could you be any more gross? I almost got sick just listening to you describe it.”

  “Yeah, and you can’t even see the pictures I saw.”

  “Oh, god, shut up! Hey, wait... Neighbors said they hadn’t seen him in a couple of months, but he’d been dead for a year? That means whoever they were seeing wasn’t really him.” I looked across the table at Dex, who was staring at me with his
eyes wide as he followed my side of the conversation. “It had to be Stan. That’s why the police thought he checked out, because while Michael was impersonating Ronald Orloff, Stan was impersonating Charlie. That’s how it has to be, there’s no other explanation.”

  “I’d bet on it,” Alfie said. “I’m looking around, but I don’t think there’s any way I can get a photo of this guy. The only reason I got one of Michael was because I got the timestamp off one of his paychecks that he cashed at Walmart, so I was able to go into their security video archives and find him. Luckily, Walmart keeps security video for at least a year, or I never could have gotten it.”

  “You don’t think Charlie shopped at Walmart?” I asked, and I felt stupid as soon as I did.

  “Oh, he probably does,” Alfie said. “The problem is that I would not have the slightest clue when to look for him. In Michael’s case…”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said, “I knew it was a stupid question as soon as I asked it. I caught what you said, about getting the timestamp off his paycheck and how that told you when to look for him there. Walmart really keeps their security videotapes that long?”

  “Yep. I know of one case where somebody bought something at Walmart and used it in the commission of a crime a year later, and they went back through old security video to identify the guy. They don’t keep security video on tape anymore, it’s all digital on servers at their base in Arkansas. Some of it goes back years. All you got to know is the store number, the camera number and the time, and you can look at exactly what was happening at a particular point in the store a year ago or more.”

  “Damn,” I said. “I need to call Alicia. Talk to you later, Alfie.” I cut off the call without waiting for him to reply and dialed Alicia immediately.

  It took me all of two minutes to explain to her what I had just learned, and she didn’t even ask where I’d gotten the information. “I’ll call the Pima County Sheriff out there and see if any of the neighbors could give a description of the man they saw. Most likely, this guy was enough of a hermit that the neighbors probably never saw him up close, so it’s possible no one ever got a good look at the man who impersonated him. On the other hand, if the police verified that he was supposed to be Orloff’s uncle, there’s at least a chance the officers could describe him. It’s worth a try. I’ll let you know if I find anything out.”

  She cut off the call and I put my phone down. Dex looked at me with his eyebrows up.

  “She’s going to call out to Tucson and see if anyone can get a description. It’s possible the officers who checked out Ronald Orloff actually spoke to the guy pretending to be Charles. It’s possible they could describe him, or at least that’s what she hopes. If we could get a description of Stan, that would at least give us another shot at getting him.”

  He didn’t say anything for a moment, just looked at me. “Do you realize,” said after a minute, “that you have gathered almost all of the real information and evidence in this case so far? The police haven’t really come up with anything, other than what you’d given them. Can you see why I told you I think you have a calling for this kind of work?”

  I felt a little bit of pleasure zip through me, and I smiled at him. “Okay, so maybe this is something I’m good at. I can be okay with that.”

  “I guess I could be, too,” he said slowly, “except that I thought of you working on things like tracking down missing persons, finding out who pulled a scam, that sort of thing. I never thought you’d be going after a serial killer.”

  “Dex,” I said, “what I’m doing is exactly what I need to do. I’m trying to save these women whose lives are in danger, and there’s absolutely nothing else in the world I could do in this case. If I sit back and do nothing, and they end up dead, I’ll never be able to look anyone else in the face again. I wouldn’t even be able to look myself in the face, can you understand that?”

  “Of course I can,” he said. “If I remember correctly, I’m the one who told you you were the only person who could possibly solve this case before it’s too late. That doesn’t mean I’m not concerned for your safety. Sooner or later, you’ve got to understand that the people who care about you are going to worry when you are in danger.”

  “And maybe I don’t want anyone to care about me that much,” I blurted out. “Maybe I couldn’t handle it if someone got hurt again just because they care about me, can’t you understand that? I didn’t even get to go to my best friend’s funeral, because I was in a coma slowly getting better while she was being dropped into a hole in the ground and covered up with dirt. Can you imagine for even one second what it feels like to know that your best friend is dead and you’re alive, but it should really have been the other way around?”

  He just stared at me. He didn’t say a word, and the expression on his face didn’t change, but there was something in the air that told me I had gone too far. I had expressed the same feelings before, but this time I had thrown them in his face. This time I had attacked him, and neither of us could understand why I had done that.

  I sat there and tried desperately to think of something to say, something to take the hurt and heartache and probably the feeling of betrayal out of the words I had just spoken. I opened my mouth twice, but nothing would come out, so I simply closed it and sat there.

  And then Dex smiled. At first, I thought it was the kind of smile you get from someone who’s about to say they’re done, that they’ve had all they can take of you, and that they’ve decided the best thing they can do is just walk away. I wanted to say something, anything, to keep those words from coming out of his mouth, but mine wouldn’t open again. I just sat there, knowing I was about to lose the only real friend I had, but even more than that, I finally knew that what I was most afraid of was losing Dex, not just a friend.

  But I couldn’t say a word. Nothing would come out, and I cringed inside as he opened his mouth to speak.

  “Cassie,” he said softly, “I’m not going to try to tell you I know how that feels, because I don’t. I’ve lost friends, but not under any kind of circumstance that could even come close to what happened to you and Abby. What I am going to say is that you can put up a wall to block me from getting too close, but you can only build that wall in your own mind. You don’t have any control over what I feel, or what I think, or how much I care about you. I’ve kept my mouth shut about that for the most part, because I know how you feel about it, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have those feelings.” He stopped and just looked at me for a moment, and I tried again to make my mouth say the things that were running through my mind, but it wouldn’t.

  Then move over and let me drive, Abby’s voice said in my head, and I burst out laughing. Dex stared at me for a second, his face almost showing shock, and then I’ll be damned if he didn’t start laughing with me!

  We probably laughed for a good five minutes, and then I wiped my eye and managed to get myself under control. Dex did the same, and there was something different between us all of a sudden, and then I suddenly was sober again.

  I looked at him and reached slowly across the table with my left hand and put it on his right. He wrapped his fingers around mine and just looked into my eye, waiting for me to speak.

  “Abby is still with me,” I said. “Not really her, but sometimes I hear her voice inside my head, giving me advice or telling me when I’m being stupid. Those times you said I was arguing with myself? I was arguing with her, or with the psychological construct I seem to have created to help me live with her loss and the guilt I feel over it. She tells me things I should be able to see and know for myself, sometimes, things I either can’t see because I’m too close or things I refuse to see, because I’m afraid of getting hurt.”

  He nodded his head. “I’m not surprised,” he said. “I knew there was something like that going on. So, what did she say that made you laugh so hard?”

  I chuckled. “I was trying to think of how to say what I’m wanting to say, and I couldn’t find the words. She told me to ge
t out of the way and let her take over, and it just suddenly struck me as so incredibly funny that I couldn’t hold it in.”

  He stared at me for a second. “Can she really do that?”

  “No, of course not,” I said. “I’m not a split personality, she’s just a part of my own mind that tries to tell me things in a way that I respond to. It’s not necessarily a sign of a problem, so do’t go thinking I’m crazy.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t,” he said. “I’ve heard voices in my head. Sometimes I still do, particularly when I’m trying to figure out a problem with a car I’m working on. Usually, it’s Bob Westgate, he was the shop instructor at my high school. I can hear him clear as day, asking me if I checked this or that, or did I bother to tighten something.”

  I sighed. “Okay, yeah, she’s kind of like that. She’s a part of my own psyche that presents ideas to me that I might not see on my own.”

  Dex was nodding. “And you told me about her because...” There was an invisible question mark at the end of that sentence.

  I sat there and looked at him for another moment. “Dex, Abby’s been trying to tell me for a couple of weeks that you’re in love with me.”

  He didn’t blink, he didn’t flinch. “And if I am?” he asked.

  I tried not to feel the rush of pure joy that came through me. Maybe he thought he was being coy, but he had just admitted it. Now it was all on me.

  “Then I guess I want to know how sure you are about that. Because, she’s also been shoving it down my throat that I feel the same way about you, but you know how that scares me. The last man I fell in love with tried to kill me, and when he couldn’t do it, he was willing to let someone else do it for him. That makes it kinda hard to let go and accept those feelings, you know?”

  “I can see that,” he said, “but I want to go back to Abby telling you that you feel the same way.” He stared into my one good eye. “Do you?”

  I sat there and looked back at him, and tried to sort through the jumble of feelings that were running through me. Only moments ago, I was all but dying to tell him that I loved him, but my mouth refused to let me do it. Now, when it mattered most, I was having as much trouble getting it under my control as I did then.