Cassie McGraw Box Set: Books 1-3

by David Archer

  I nodded toward the examination room. “Has she been able to say anything?”

  He shook his head. “She’s not conscious,” he said. “Doctor says she might wake up tomorrow, if she makes it through the operation to fix her diaphragm. Then it will be a matter of waiting to see if she’s suffered any brain damage.”

  “Head trauma?” I asked, but he shook his head.

  “Lack of oxygen. With a ruptured diaphragm, I guess you can’t really breathe properly. They’re worried that she wasn’t getting enough oxygen into her blood.”

  Dex had an arm around me, and I leaned into him. “Where was she found?” I asked. Something told me I wasn’t going to like the answer.

  Pennington frowned. “Witness said he saw a car stop in the middle of the street and the back door opened on the passenger side. She appeared to be thrown out, landed on the pavement a couple feet away from the car, and then it took off.” He looked at me and sighed. “Right smack in front of your new office on Admiral Boulevard.”

  “Then we’ve got at least two people involved,” I said, and Pennington nodded. “If she was pushed out the back door, that means somebody else was driving.”

  “Right,” he said. “That’s got us thinking this is related to the situation in St. Louis. There were six officers who went to prison over covering up what your ex did, and four of them are already out. Of those, there are two we haven’t been able to locate, yet.”

  A chill went down my spine and I shivered. “Who are they?”

  Pennington pulled a notebook out of his pocket and flipped it open. “They were uniform officers,” he said. “William Laclede and James Linkletter. Both of them got three years and served it all out, no parole, which means they’re not under supervision and aren’t limited on where they can go. We got their pictures and passed them out to all of our officers. Right now, we just want to know if they’re in Tulsa. If they are, they become our main suspects.”

  I tried to think, but I didn’t recognize either name. “I don’t know them,” I said. “Of course, that doesn’t mean they don’t know me. I was all over the news for a couple of months, there. You think maybe they blame me for what happened to them?”

  “That’s as close as we got to a theory. If they turn up back in St. Louis, or anywhere else other than here, we’re back to square one.”

  “I wouldn’t know them if I saw them,” I said. “If you can get me a copy of those pictures, I’d appreciate it.”

  He glanced down at his phone and poked at it a few times, and my phone chirped. I looked at it and saw that he had sent me the pictures, but I didn’t recognize either of their faces.

  “The funny thing is,” I said, “while they were going through being arrested and charged, I was laying in a hospital bed in a coma. The closest I came to being involved in the case was a couple months later, when they sent somebody down to take a video deposition. I never even testified in court.”

  “That’s because they all ended up taking plea bargains,” Pennington said, and there was a bitterness in his voice. “That was the only way they could hope to get into minimum-security institutions. Ex-cops don’t last long in the prison system unless they’re in minimum.”

  “Lex Stuart didn’t take a plea bargain,” I said. “He was the one who actually did this to me. That son of a bitch went to trial and tried to claim that Mike did it, my ex, and that he was trying to save us.” I snorted, a derisive laugh. “The deputy who arrested him testified that he saw Lex deliberately drop the match into the gasoline. That was all it took for the jury to convict on their first vote.”

  “I read about that,” Pennington said. “I just…”

  The exam room door opened, and we all had to get out of the way because they were bringing Angie out to take her into surgery. I got my first look at her, and Dex had to hold me up to keep me from falling to the floor.

  She looked even worse than Marsha did when I found her.

  THIRTEEN

  The nurses told me that Angie was going to be in surgery for anywhere from 4 to 7 hours, and that she would be moved to intensive care after that. There was no possibility I was going to get to see her before she left ICU, so Dex convinced me that we should go back home.

  The ride back was quiet. I sat in the passenger seat and leaned my head against the window, just staring out at the world going by. I wasn’t actually seeing anything, though, because I was lost in my own thoughts.

  It was pretty obvious that the attack on the Outreach was actually aimed at me. What was driving me crazy was the fact that this killer tried to use a bomb against me, but didn’t hesitate to pull out a gun and shoot two innocent bystanders. Everything I knew about the workings of the human mind said there was something that wasn’t adding up, and I was determined to figure out what was really going on.

  I looked at what we knew for sure, which was that the killer had entered the Outreach and asked specifically whether I was there. When he was told that I was running late, he walked right past Angie and apparently tried to set the bomb down right beside my office door. Angie jumped up and was yelling for him to stop, which caused Marsha, Brenda, and Leanne to step out into the hall to see what was going on. The killer drew a gun and shot Brenda and Leanne, but did not shoot Marsha or Angie.

  Instead, he forced Marsha and Angie to leave with him, put them into a vehicle, and drove for only two or three minutes, then took them out of the vehicle and into a building. He spent all of that day being relatively gentle with them, even somewhat compassionate.

  And then he had taken Marsha, apologized to her for what he was about to do, and beat her almost to death before shoving her in the dumpster behind my new office. Now, he had also beaten Angie and left her in the street in front of my office, with the help of an accomplice who was driving the vehicle.

  When I thought it through, I realized we didn’t know very much, and what we did know indicated that I was the focus of whatever emotion was driving the killer.

  Our speculations were that the killer or killers—we didn’t know whether the accomplice was willing or forced—were after me over something out of my past. The only thing that seemed to be a credible theory was that I had exposed Mike and his friends as the monsters they truly were. If that was the case, then it was reasonable to assume that we were dealing with one or more of those who were indicted as accessories.

  What I couldn’t understand was why, if they were blaming me for the misfortunes that had befallen them, they hadn’t come directly after me. I’m not in hiding, it would have been easier to find out where I live than it must have been to find out where my new office was only hours after I agreed to lease it. Someone fitting the description Marsha gave could have walked right up to my front door and rung the doorbell, then shot me dead as soon as I answered it.

  Or, and I know this is going to sound callous, he could have simply said he needed to speak to me at the Outreach and waited for me to get there. He was obviously willing to kill anyone who got in his way, so he could have shot me down, then killed the others and walked away. Hell, he could have gone into my office with me and shut the door, bashed me over the head with something and strangled me to death quietly.

  For some unknown reason, however, he decided to take out the Outreach. While that would hurt me, the fact that I wasn’t present when the bomb went off meant that he wasn’t accomplishing his apparent goal.

  We pulled up at the house and I started to get out of the car, but Dex laid a hand on my arm.

  “Give me your gun again,” he said. “I just want to check out the house before we go in.”

  Part of me wanted to argue, but I had had so many shocks the last couple of days that I didn’t have a fight in me. I handed over my pistol without a word, and he got out of the car and walked toward the front door.

  I watched as he studied the door carefully for a moment before inserting his key into the lock. He turned the knob carefully, then pushed the door open very slowly. Gripping my gun with both hands, he step
ped inside and started searching through the house. I saw lights come on in each room as he cleared it, and a moment later he came back to the front door and motioned for me to come on in.

  “All clear?” I asked. “I don’t think this guy is ever going to come here. I don’t know what it is he’s really doing, but this is about more than just trying to kill me.”

  “What do you mean?” Dex asked me.

  “The police think he’s out to kill me,” I said, “but I’m not quite buying it anymore. He’s not aiming at me directly, but he’s attacking people and places that are important to me. The Outreach, Marsha and Angie, Brenda and Nicole, even Leanne. I didn’t really know her all that well, but she was important to me because she was a client of the Outreach. My new office, he’s attacked that twice now. Putting Marsha’s body in the dumpster behind it might even have been an attempt to frame me for killing her. These aren’t the actions of someone who’s out to kill me; this is more like somebody trying to destroy me emotionally.”

  “I see what you’re saying. It’s like he wants you to suffer, not die.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. The only question is, what’s he going to do next?”

  I was standing in the living room. Dex set my gun down on the coffee table and put his arms around me, letting me lean against him for a moment.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But I know what we’re going to do next. We, my dear, are going to have dinner. I don’t know if you noticed, but we sort of missed it.”

  I chuckled. “Yeah, we did.” I turned my head to look at the clock over the TV and saw that it was already after eight. “Who’s cooking? You or me?”

  “That depends on what you want to eat. If it’s easy, it’ll be me.”

  “Oh, so if I want something complicated, I have to cook it myself?”

  “Yeah, pretty much. After today, I think I could probably manage scrambled eggs.”

  I pulled my head back and looked at him. “With Swiss cheese?”

  “Yeah, I can handle that.”

  “You’re cooking.”

  Scrambled eggs with Swiss cheese is something of an acquired taste, but mom used to make it when I was young and I had introduced Dex to it. He made a face the first time, but a week or so later he asked me to make it again, and I did. Since then, it had become a regular breakfast every couple of weeks.

  Because both of us had lost body fat from our burns, we both have a tendency to eat a lot. Burning the extra calories helped to regulate core temperature, and this is something burn victims learn to live with. In fact, it’s one of the reasons burn victims rarely end up getting fat, and I personally consider it some kind of compensation effect. I’ve always loved to eat, but I used to have to watch how much. Nowadays, I can eat what I want, and as much of it is I want. Dex and I made heaping plates of our scrambled eggs and carried them into the living room to watch some TV while we ate.

  We watched a couple episodes of Criminal Minds on Netflix, and then decided it was time to go to bed. I was planning to go to the hospital in the morning to see Marsha and check on Angie, and Dex wanted to get started on his new shop building, so we both wanted to get some sleep.

  It’s one of the areas where Dex makes me jealous. That guy can lay down and close his eyes and be asleep within minutes, no matter what’s been going on throughout the day. Me? I’ll end up laying there for a couple of hours, letting everything roll through my mind, trying to spot something I could’ve done differently, wrestling with questions that don’t have answers. Last time I looked at the clock, it said half past midnight.

  Morning comes whether you are ready for it or not. This is probably a good thing, because it means that the world is continuing, but there are a lot of people like me who would just as soon let it stay dark until after ten. Any sunlight coming through the window is going to wake me up most of the time, and that next morning was no exception.

  We decided to get an early start on the day, so we got dressed quickly and got ready to go. I played Critter’s favorite song on the can opener so she’d be content until we got home, and then I followed Dex to the Dunkin’ Donuts shop. We each grabbed our favorites and a big cup of coffee, and then went to the bank to set up an account for the shop.

  Dex insisted on both of us being on the account, and I insisted on having it at Tulsa Maxwell. That didn’t matter to Dex, and it only took a few minutes to get it established. I transferred a hundred thousand from my personal savings account into it, gave Dex a kiss, and took off for the hospital.

  Nicole was visiting with Marsha when I arrived, and I was surprised to hear Marsha talking. Her jaw was still clamped in place, but she was managing to speak intelligibly, even if she did sound a little funny.

  “Hi,” I said excitedly. I leaned over the bed and hugged her gently, and she wrapped her left arm around me to return it. “You’re talking, that’s awesome.”

  “Yeah,” she said through her clenched teeth. “It’s not easy but better than writing.”

  “I think she’s doing great,” Nicole said. She looked at me. “Have you heard anything about Angie?”

  “No, not yet,” I said. “The doctors said she would be in ICU for a while, and probably won’t even be awake until later today.”

  She cut her eyes toward Marsha for a moment and then back to me. “I told Marsha about it this morning. We’re both pretty worried. I asked one of the nurses I know this morning, but all she would tell me is that Angie made it through the surgery. They’re just waiting now to see if she is going to recover or not.”

  I nodded. “That’s what they told me last night. I guess they’re worried that she might have suffered brain damage from lack of oxygen.”

  Marsha made a sound, and I looked over to see that she was crying. I laid a hand on her shoulder. “Angie’s tough,” I said. “One of the doctors last night said she was determined to live, no matter what. I think she’s going to surprise everybody and come back from this.”

  “But it was so senseless,” Marsha managed. “Why did he do this?”

  I shook my head sadly. “I don’t know,” I said. “Marsha—the police think that it’s all about me, somehow. They think that this guy is someone who hates me over something from the past, maybe from back when I got burned. There were a bunch of cops who got in trouble back then for covering up evidence about my ex, and Detective Pennington thinks it might be some of them.”

  Marsha looked at me for several seconds, then closed her eyes. “Why didn’t he go after you, then? Why do this to us?”

  The anguish in her broke my heart. “I just don’t know,” I said. I rubbed her shoulder, but she suddenly pulled it away from me.

  I glanced at Nicole, and she shook her head. I stared at her for a long moment, then looked back at Marsha. Her eyes were still closed, and she was still crying.

  “Marsha, I’m sorry,” I said. I turned, picked up my purse from where I had set it down on a chair, and walked out of the room. I made it almost to the elevator before the tears started to flow.

  I pushed the button for the elevator, and the doors opened instantly. I stepped inside and pushed number one, and they closed as the elevator began to descend. I leaned against its wall and let the tears out, then quickly tried to pull myself together as it came to a stop on the ground floor.

  People were running. As the elevator doors opened, I heard voices shouting and saw people running toward the emergency room doors, and as I stepped out I could hear sirens. Down the hall, where it opened into the ER itself, I saw six paramedics running out the door toward their parking area.

  “Hey,” I said to a nurse who was trying to push past me, “what’s going on?”

  She looked at me for just a second, her eyes going wide when she got a good look at my face, and then she forced herself back under control. “I’m not really sure,” he said. “There’s been an explosion somewhere on the edge of town. I guess it’s pretty bad, they’re calling every ambulance out.”

  My eye shot open wide. “Another b
omb?”

  “I don’t know, they just said an explosion. Excuse me, I have to go.” She ran off toward the ER.

  I snatched out my phone and dialed Pennington.

  “Jim, it’s Cassie,” I said. “What’s this about another explosion?”

  “Yeah, our bomber has struck again,” he said. “New Beginnings Family Shelter. I’m on the scene now, and my God, this is a nightmare.”

  My vision blurred, and my knees felt weak. New Beginnings was exactly what it sounded like, a shelter for women with kids. “Oh, God,” I said. “How bad...”

  “Oh, geez, we got people hurt all over out here. Adults, kids… I’ve got three ambulances on site, and eight more coming, and some of them are gonna have to make double trips! Scotty? Get that boy, he’s headed for the street! Sorry, Cassie, didn’t mean to yell in your ear. I gotta go, there’s too much to do here.”

  “I’m on the way,” I said. “Maybe I can help.”

  He was already gone, so I shoved the phone into my purse and kept walking. I got to my car and climbed in just as my phone rang with an incoming call.

  It was Dex. “Have you heard?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I just talked to Detective Pennington,” I said. “It’s New Beginnings, and he says there’s a lot of people hurt so I’m heading out there.”

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll meet you there.” I heard his car fire up, and then he was gone.

  FOURTEEN

  New Beginnings Family Shelter was in a huge old house on the western edge of Tulsa. It sat on twenty-four acres of land, and could house fourteen families at a time. There were eleven counselors who worked there full time, switching up their shifts and hours so that there were always at least two of them there. It was one of the prettiest places around.

  Or it used to be. What I saw when I pulled in that day looked more like movie footage of a war zone. The building was mostly standing, but a large section of the front center was gone, and I could see right into the interior of both the first and second floors. Three fire engines were there, and firemen were working furiously to put out the blazes that were burning inside. By the time I arrived, Pennington’s three ambulances had multiplied to a dozen, and I had to swerve out of the way so one of them could race out of the driveway with its siren blaring.