Shadow Fall (Tracers Series Book 9)

by Laura Griffin

  “Ms. Bower? I’m Tara Rushing.”

  “Yes?” she said through the screen.

  “I’m with the FBI.” Tara heard footsteps behind her. “Sheriff Ingram and I are investigating the recent deaths that happened not far from here.”

  “Yeah?” Her gaze narrowed.

  “Would you mind talking to us a minute, please?”

  She looked past Tara as Ingram clomped up the stairs, sending the dog into a renewed tizzy. “I already talked to the deputy,” she said over the barks. “Jason Somebody.”

  “This won’t take long, ma’am.”

  She looked from Ingram to Tara, then down at her dog, which was a large mixed breed. “All right, then, come in.”

  Ingram reached around Tara and pulled open the screen. Tara stepped into the house. Far from the inviting smell of bacon, this house smelled like mildew and wet dog. The floor slanted noticeably, and several of the boards had buckled. A brown rug on one side of the room was littered with toys. A little boy in pajamas knelt there, zooming a truck over a cardboard box. All the sofa cushions had been pulled off and made into a fort.

  The woman dragged the dog into a back room, where he continued to bark as she shut the door on him. When she returned, Tara looked her over.

  Becky Lee Bower was probably twenty-five or thirty based on her son’s age, but she looked fifty. Her cheeks were sunken, her skin sallow, her long hair stringy and dull. Deep lines around her eyes and mouth suggested years of addiction.

  Tara glanced around the house. She didn’t detect any of the typical sights and smells of a meth kitchen. On the contrary, the woman looked to be cooking actual food, and Tara caught a whiff of burned toast.

  “What’d you say your name was?”

  “Tara Rushing.” She slipped a business card from her pocket and handed it to her. “I’m with the FBI.”

  The woman darted a look at Ingram, and Tara wasn’t sure what it meant. Clearly, she didn’t welcome visitors, but she seemed to have some particular beef with the sheriff.

  “Relax, Becky Lee. This won’t take long. How come your boy’s not in school?”

  Whatever “relaxing” effect he’d intended his words to have was instantly erased.

  “He’s sick,” she snapped. Then she turned to Tara. “What exactly did you want to ask me?”

  Barks and yelps came from the back of the house. Tara forced a smile. “The other night—this would be last Wednesday or early Thursday morning—did you see anyone up and down this road?”

  “No.” She shot a look at Ingram. “I already told the deputy.”

  “This was the night before we had that big rain,” Ingram said.

  “I know what night it was. I didn’t see anybody.”

  “You hear anything at all?” Tara asked.

  “No.”

  Ingram stepped closer. “You sure? Alligator Joe said he saw a truck around sunup that morning.”

  Tara darted him a look. Talk about leading the witness.

  But Becky Lee simply crossed her bony arms over her chest. “I didn’t see anything.”

  “See any tire tracks?” Ingram asked. “Shoe tracks, anything like that?”

  She pursed her lips, and Tara could tell he’d hit on something.

  “Anything at all you remember might help us out,” Tara said.

  “I didn’t see anything, but—” She stopped and turned around as the barking reached a fever pitch. “Damn it, Earl!” She stomped down the hall and opened the door. She took the dog by the collar, pulled him to the back door, and nudged him outside.

  “You were saying?” Tara asked. “You didn’t see anything, but . . . ?”

  She leaned back against her kitchen counter and darted a glance at the living room, where her son was still busy with his toys.

  “The night you’re talking about, Earl woke us up, guess it was about four A.M.”

  “Who’s ‘us’?” Ingram asked.

  “Me and Corey.” She nodded at the boy. “We sleep together with Earl at the end of the bed. That morning you’re talking about, he was up barking and carrying on. I don’t know what was wrong with him, but I got out of bed and let him out.”

  Tara exchanged a look with the sheriff.

  “You recall which direction he went?” Ingram asked.

  “He lit out toward the old smokehouse down by the creek. I figured he smelled a possum or something.”

  Ingram stepped to the door. He pushed the screen open and looked outside. “That little shed out to the west there?”

  “Out behind the septic.”

  “Show me.”

  She heaved a sigh and went to the door, and the sheriff followed her outside. Tara stepped to the window and watched them disappear around the back of the house.

  Tara glanced at the little boy, still playing with his trucks on the rug.

  “Hi, Corey.” She walked over, and he glanced up. “I’m Tara.”

  He wore green and blue Incredible Hulk pajamas, and his sandy brown hair was tousled from sleep. He didn’t look feverish.

  “How you feeling?” she asked.

  “Fine.”

  “You making a fort?”

  He shrugged.

  She lowered herself onto the sagging green armchair. “Tell me about your cars.”

  He shrugged again.

  “What’s your favorite?”

  He stopped and looked at his collection. Many were police cars, and she wondered if he was reenacting the scene he’d seen the other night. No doubt all the sirens and strobe lights had captivated his attention.

  He plucked a red sports car from the shaggy carpet. “This one.”

  “A Corvette. Nice.” She picked up a red fire truck and fiddled with the ladders.

  Her presence seemed to make him uncomfortable. He scooted closer to the pillow fort and started playing with action figures.

  “You ever notice any pickup trucks around here? Maybe a black one?”

  He shrugged. “Just Joe’s, but his is white and blue.”

  “You ever see any people around who didn’t belong?”

  He picked up two Spider-Man figurines and had them face off on the coffee table.

  “Corey?”

  “I saw the Hulk down by the creek once. But turned out it was just Joe coming back from his traps.” He looked up at her. “You know Joe killed a alligator?”

  “I heard.”

  “He showed me the teeth. They’re in a can in his house.”

  The screen door squeaked open, and Ingram poked his head in. “You want to come see this.”

  Tara went outside and followed him across the yard. Becky Lee was standing by a rickety wooden shed sucking on a cigarette.

  “This is where the dog ran to that night.” Ingram pointed back toward the road. “You make a beeline from that tire track we lifted, straight through those trees, you get to the path he took to get to the dump site.”

  The term dump site annoyed her, but Tara let it go. “Okay. So?”

  “So, the dog woke everyone up about four A.M. Joe saw the black truck through here when he went to clear his traps. We just whittled our time frame down to two, three hours.”

  Becky Lee’s arm dropped to her side, her cigarette dangling between her fingers. “Are you saying he carried that girl right through here?”

  Ingram looked at her. “That’s what it sounds like to me.”

  She looked stricken. “But . . . what if he comes back?”

  “We’ll catch him before then.” He gave a confident nod that set Tara’s teeth on edge. “Till then, you better lock your doors.”

  AS THEY MADE their way back to the highway Tara gazed out the window.

  “How old is she?”

  Ingram looked surprised by the question. “Becky Lee? I’d say twenty-five.” He rolled to a stop at the highway and hung a left. “She’s been clean about three months now. Probably won’t take, though.”

  Tara looked out the window again, her chest tightening at the thought of Core
y in that house.

  “You know, it’s the kids that get me,” Ingram said.

  She looked at him.

  “Every time we call protective services, it’s the same old same old,” he said. “No place to put ’em and they end up back in the house or with relatives. Half the time the relatives are just as bad.”

  Tara looked out the window as a familiar anger gripped her. She thought of Corey in his too-small PJs playing hooky from school. She wondered what his mother was like when she was strung out. And what the men were like, the ones who inevitably came around looking for drugs or sex or maybe even skinny little boys.

  Her mind drifted to a crappy little apartment in Nacogdoches. Tara had had her own bedroom and shared a bathroom with her mother and the occasional loser her mom happened to bring home. They were all the same—pseudo-intellectuals with goatees and thrift-shop clothes—and her mom would stay up late with them, drinking Scotch and smoking while Tara lay in bed with acid filling her stomach. Most times she could slip away to school in the morning, but the summers weren’t so easy, and more than once she’d awakened to find her mother had gone out on errands and left Tara with some hairy, hungover man in the next room.

  Her mother was book smart but unforgivably stupid when it came to men.

  Tara thought of Corey again. Not so different from the girl they’d found under the sink last week. Not so different from anyone.

  Ingram drove the rest of the way in silence, and Tara spent the time planning. By the time they got back to the sheriff’s office, she was ready to get to work and in no mood for bullshit. Ingram pulled up alongside her SUV, probably thinking he was about to be rid of her for the day.

  “Guess you’re headed back to your office?”

  “Actually,” she said, “I need a conference room.”

  He looked surprised. “What for?”

  “Work.”

  Ingram passed her off to a deputy who, after much hemming and hawing about space constraints, finally found her a windowless space that seemed to be a temporary holding pen for obsolete computers. Tara loaded everything onto a pushcart to be relocated and then went about the task of setting up her war room.

  She taped a timeline to the wall. Then a list of suspects with notations about where the team was in the process of interviewing each one. She combed through the files and compiled a list of the physical evidence down to the last beer can. It was a long list, and she felt cautiously hopeful as she stepped back to look at it. Any one of the items might be the key that unlocked the entire case. Finally, Tara hijacked a deputy’s computer and printed out satellite maps of each crime scene, including the truck stop up on U.S. 59. She’d always been a visual person, and it helped her to see everything laid out in front of her like a giant jigsaw puzzle.

  When she had everything listed, mapped, pinned, and displayed, she stepped back to study it.

  “Shit, what’s that?”

  She turned to see Jason standing in the doorway.

  “A case board,” she said. “You ever use one before?”

  “No.” He stepped into the room and approached the board, immediately zeroing in on the satellite map of the truck stop.

  He tapped the picture. “I just came from there.”

  “How’d it go?”

  “Dead end.”

  “They don’t have security cameras?”

  “Nah, they have some. That’s not the problem. Problem is, they’re run by some outside company and the manager there wouldn’t turn the tapes over.”

  “So get a warrant.” Tara’s phone chimed and she pulled it out. “Rushing.”

  “It’s Kelsey. We have the report back on that shard of glass.”

  Tara caught the excitement in her voice. “Did you get DNA?”

  “Yes, but only the victim’s,” Kelsey said. “We got something else, though. Our experts analyzed it and turns out it’s optical glass.”

  Tara thought for a moment. “You mean like glasses?”

  “Not eyeglasses, but it’s some kind of lens.”

  Tara looked at the satellite image of the woods where Catalina’s body had been discovered with a shard of glass embedded in her hamstring.

  “What kind, exactly?”

  “That’s the interesting part,” Kelsey said. “Evidently, it’s from a scope such as you would use with a rifle. It’s a specialized type of glass and we were able to trace it to a particular manufacturer.”

  “Okay.”

  “It’s a very small shop and they make all sorts of gear for the law-enforcement agencies, the Defense Department, private companies.”

  Tara waited, holding her breath. She knew what was coming.

  “One of their clients is Liam Wolfe.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Liam loaded the last of the weapons and secured the gun locker at the range. He called Jeremy as he started up his truck.

  “I’m on my way in,” he said. “How’d it go with the ammo?”

  “Everything’s here except the long-range tactical rounds,” Jeremy reported. “Should be in Thursday.”

  Liam swung onto the dirt road leading back to the gym, avoiding the ruts to keep from banging up his cargo. Between now and next weekend, every firearm he owned had to be stripped and cleaned for a training session.

  “They know we’re on a timeline,” Jeremy said, predicting Liam’s next question. “I told them if there were any more delays we’d cancel.”

  “Okay, good. Anything else?”

  “Tara Rushing.”

  “What about her?”

  “She’s here,” Jeremy said. “Tailgated me in.”

  Liam felt a buzz of excitement. “What’s she want?”

  “I don’t know, but she looks pissed. I told her to wait at your house.”

  Liam reached the training center, and the floodlights flashed on as he pulled up to the door.

  “Want me to get rid of her?” Jeremy asked.

  “I’ll handle it.”

  “That case, I’m heading out.”

  “See you at 0800.”

  Liam climbed out and went around to the tailgate. He unloaded the guns and crossed the darkened gym to the armory. On his way back out, he switched on some lights in the weight room. He stepped outside and nearly bumped into Tara.

  “Where have you been?” she demanded.

  He looked her over and decided pissed was an understatement. Her cheeks were flushed despite the cold. Dressed in jeans and assault boots, she looked ready to kick down a door.

  “Working.” He stepped around her.

  “I’ve been trying to reach you all night.”

  “Well, you’ve reached me now. What do you need?” He unloaded another two guns, and she followed him into the gym.

  “I need you to cut the crap. No more stalling. I want a list of your employees, past and present, along with a list of every man who’s ever been through one of your training camps.”

  He stowed the rifles in a cabinet and glanced up at her. She was standing in the doorway gaping at all the weapons.

  “That all?” he asked.

  “No. I also want those psych evaluations.”

  He squeezed into the doorway, forcing her back against the jamb. “And I assume you have a warrant signed by a judge?”

  “No, but I can get one.”

  “How?”

  “A shard of glass recovered from one of the victims’ bodies has been traced back to your rifle scopes.”

  “Mine?”

  “A scope like the ones you own, yes.”

  He stared down at her for a long moment, trying to read her expression. He could tell she was dead serious. “I own a lot of stuff.” He squeezed past her and crossed the gym again. “What makes you think some judge is going to sign off?”

  “Because this piece of evidence traces back to a certain manufacturer that only does business with a handful of companies, and one of those companies is yours.”

  “So?”

  “So?” She stalked after him
. “Don’t you get it? How many more ways does this UNSUB need to link back to you before you admit that it’s someone you know?”

  He picked up two more rifles and tucked a third under his arm. “Grab that last one, would you?” He walked back to the gun room and stowed the weapons, then took hers off her hands because she seemed distracted by something in the other room.

  “What the hell is that?” she asked.

  “Boxing ring.”

  “Why do you have a boxing ring?”

  “Because we do boxing, defensive tactics. Sometimes Ultimate Fighting when the men are bored.”

  At the mention of his men, her gaze snapped back to his. “Why do you keep doing this?”

  He walked over and leaned a palm on the doorframe. “What, exactly?”

  “Stonewalling. Doing everything possible to impede this investigation. I could have you arrested for obstruction.”

  “You could try.”

  “Liam . . .” She squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed her forehead.

  “Hey. Look at me.” He pulled her hand down. “What’s got you so wound up?”

  “You.” She snatched her hand away. “Do you realize how much trouble you’re causing me?”

  He’d been enjoying her little temper tantrum, but now he was starting to get annoyed. “By insisting you do your job?”

  “By refusing to cooperate!”

  He looked her over and noticed the deep furrow between her brows. She was really stressed about this.

  She darted a glance at the sparring ring again, and something came into her eyes. It looked a whole lot like lust, and Liam’s pulse picked up.

  “Come here,” he said, taking her hand.

  “What?” She jerked free of him but followed him across the gym.

  “You look like you want to smack somebody. Why don’t we climb in, go a few rounds?”

  “Liam, I’m being serious.”

  “So am I. Sounds like you’ve had a shit day, and I have, too, so let’s blow off some steam.”

  She shook her head and muttered something, and he stepped closer until he was definitely invading her personal space. She glared up at him.

  “Come on,” he said. “Sometimes you just need to pound it out.”

  Her eyes sparked, and he could tell she liked the idea even if she wouldn’t admit it. She glanced at the ring again. He could see it in her face. She wanted a fight. It was something primal, something she needed. He didn’t know why. But he understood it completely.