Too Close to Home (The Forensic Files)

by Tressa Messenger

  “I’m not at liberty to say at the moment.”

  Marshall put both hands in the air and said, “With all due respect, ma’am, you’re asking me to help you, which I’m willing to do. However, the look you’re giving me makes it seem like this is a dangerous situation. I’ve known Rob most of my life and we’ve played football together for the past four years. So, I can honestly say that he is not a good dude and is capable of just about anything, no matter what mask he chooses to hide behind. Now, with that being said, I need to know what I’m getting myself into.”

  “You’re right. He is not a good person and this could be a dangerous situation.” Carma stared deep into his face trying to read his thoughts. “Surely you remember the Melissa Cooley and Ronald Marks murders?”

  “Yeah, Kristen’s dad went crazy or something, right?”

  “That’s what we all thought, but tonight we found out otherwise.”

  Marshall’s eyes grew wide as the words set in. “You think Rob did it?”

  “I can neither confirm nor deny that.”

  “Kristen! She was here, too. I left her sitting out in Rob’s truck earlier tonight.”

  “Kristen’s all right. I have spoken to her and she is somewhere safe, for now. But we have to find Robert as soon as possible. So, will you please stay right here by this exit while I go look upstairs?”

  “Okay,” Marshall said in a shaky voice.

  Carma turned and walked back through the dining room and living room to the front door where Harold was still standing guard. “There are three exits, this one, that one,” she said, pointing to the glass door where Marshall was standing, “and another through the garage. Marshall lives here and is going to stand by the back door and signal if he sees Robert. I want you to stay here and watch this exit while I go upstairs to check it out.”

  “You really shouldn’t go up there alone.”

  “There’s no other choice. The exits need to be watched and there are only three of us. Besides, I want you to keep an eye on Marshall. He’s just a kid and not prepared to handle this kind of situation.”

  “All right, but be careful.”

  “Of course,” she said with a smile before flipping her long copper hair over her shoulder as she quietly walked up the stairs to the top level.

  Once she disappeared around the corner on the top landing, Harold’s heart began to pound with anticipation, wanting nothing more than to be by his partner’s side for backup if she needed it. Harold’s eyes darted back and forth around the front yard, to Marshall’s terrified face by the back door, to the top of the stairs. His heart pounded in his ears as he watched and listened for any little sound, which only made every little sound stand out.

  What seemed like an eternity later, Carma came walking back down the stairs, seeming more relaxed than before as she holstered her gun back on her hip. “The house is secure.”

  Harold let out his breath for what seemed like the first time once he saw her. “Damn! Where can he be?”

  “I don’t know, but we should probably go get Kristen. She’s been out there in the cold, dark woods for a while now.”

  “Ya’ll are leaving?” Marshall asked.

  “Yeah, the house is secure. We have to make sure Kristen is all right and put a search out for Robert.”

  “But what about me?”

  Harold looked at him and tilted his head. “What about you?”

  Marshall’s face grew white as he stared at the detective. “He was in my house earlier. What’s going to stop him from coming back?”

  “I seriously doubt he will at this point. But if you are that worried, you should lock all your doors and I will send a patrol car over to check on you,” Carma said to the scared boy.

  They turned and made their way through the front door, leaving Marshall standing where he was. Walking down the long driveway, Carma got out her phone and dialed Kristen’s number while fumbling for her small flashlight. Thankfully, she answered after the first ring.

  “Hello?” she whispered.

  “Kristen, it’s Detective Carma. Are you okay?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Good. We just searched Marshall’s house and Robert is nowhere to be found.”

  Kristen’s heart sunk with the words. “What does that mean?”

  “It means we are coming to get you and take you back to the station to keep you safe, then put a search out for him.”

  “What should I do?”

  “Just stay where you are for right now. My partner and I are coming out to you. Where exactly are you?”

  Kristen looked around the dark woods, “I have no clue. I turned left out of Marshall’s driveway and walked maybe a mile. I can’t be sure though.”

  “Do you remember any landmarks, a sign or house?”

  “No. There aren’t any houses close by, that’s why Marshall’s house was ideal for the party. It’s very quiet, no cars or anything.” Kristen thought about her peaceful walk, “Wait! There is a real estate sign. I guess they are trying to sell off some land around here.”

  “That’s great, Kristen! I’ll look for it. We’ll be there as soon as we can, all right?”

  “Okay, but please hurry.”

  “We will.”

  Kristen hung up the phone and sunk back down into her hiding place. She was so preoccupied with her rescue call that she stopped listening to the woods around her. Everything sounded so still and quiet, causing goose bumps to flare on her arms. The breath caught in her throat when she heard a branch crack from somewhere very close by, breaking the eerie silence around her.

  “BOO!”

  Kristen jerked her head straight up when she heard the familiar voice and saw him standing above her.

  “Rob!”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Rob bent down and grabbed Kristen by her messy long brown hair, pulling her out of her hiding spot between the earth and the fallen tree branches and pinned her up against the rough bark of a massive pine tree. She struggled as she pulled at her hair trying to release it from his tight grip.

  “Stop it, Rob! You’re hurting me!” she yelled.

  “I’m hurting you?” He laughed in her face. “What about me? You whores are all the same. All you care about is yourself.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about you being no different from your little slut friend, Missy, both of you whoring around behind my back.”

  Kristen stared at him in shock.

  “You didn’t think I knew about her, did ya? Yeah, I knew. I watched her as she flaunted herself all over with different guys, even your daddy, her filthy hands all over them, screwing them in our spot, and then having the nerve to pretend like she still loved me. Just like I watched you with Marshall tonight.”

  “Marshall?” she asked, confused.

  “I watched you laugh with him as you talked. Looking at him and undressing him with your brown, sultry eyes.”

  Kristen stopped struggling, stared at him and whispered as if he was a complete stranger, “You really are crazy.”

  Rob laughed again. “Maybe I am, maybe I’m not. But from my perspective, it isn’t very sane to flirt with another guy when your boyfriend is around. You never know who may be lurking in the shadows. You know now, don’t ya, just like Missy found out. Your perverted daddy made an unexpectedly good fall guy.”

  “Bastard!” she yelled in his face and tried to lunge for him, but was stopped by the tight pull on her hair.

  She brought her knee up and drove it into his crotch. He untangled his hand and released his tight grip on her hair to bend over and grab his crotch for comfort. She took the momentary distraction and ducked around him to run for her life through the dark woods, but she only got a few feet away before she felt her head jerk back and a painful ache in her head as he grabbed her long hair again. He yanked her back and slammed her head into the nearest tree. With her vision fading to black, her legs gave out and she crumbled to the cold ground. Rob coul
dn’t hold up her dead weight but he refused to let go. They both fell into the safe hiding spot that saved her from him earlier, with Rob on top of her, his weight threatening to crush her.

  He pulled a long knife out from somewhere under his coat. Kristen spotted the shiny steel blade glimmering in the moonlight and her eyes grew wide.

  She found a reserve of air in her lungs and screamed a loud, blood curdling scream and started to cry. “Rob, what are you doing?”

  “Shh…” he said, running the cold blade across her cheek.

  “Please stop,” she begged.

  ***

  Carma stopped walking and her head jerked up. “Did you hear that?”

  “Sounded like a scream.”

  “Shit! Kristen!” They both took off running down the dark road blindly, except for the bouncing light from the flashlight. “Do you know where it came from?” Carma asked.

  “I can’t tell, but it sounded very close.”

  They stopped running, but continued to walk at a fast pace, scanning the ever darkening woods with the flashlight. “Shh…wait. Be still so I can hear,” Carma said, stopping in her tracks. She strained to hear but all was silent. “Dammit, Kristen! Where are you? Wait…!” She pulled out her cell phone and hit redial on the pad, her heart pounding through the quiet night as it rang in her ears. “Come on, Kristen. Pick up. Dammit! Voicemail.”

  “Keep trying,” Harold said.

  “She has it on vibrate, though.” She hit redial again anyway and held her breath.

  ***

  Through the tears, Kristen felt a vibrating in her hand. Confused, she looked down thinking her hand had probably fallen asleep from lack of blood flow caused by Rob’s crushing weight, but instead she saw a light coming from it.

  Still confused and looking at her hand, she asked herself, what is that?

  She tried to block out Rob and his big shiny knife to focus her attention on the vibrating and dim light in her hand. She stared at it hard, trying to comprehend what it was, but then it stopped vibrating and the light faded. She turned her head forward to look into Rob’s cold blue eyes, but jerked her head back to the side when the vibrating started back up, clicking her brain into focus.

  My phone.

  She had forgotten about her cell phone. Once she hung up with the detective and Rob appeared, she never let it go. She quickly flipped it open and wrapped her hand around it again to cover the light and muffle the voice on the other end, hoping Rob hadn’t noticed it.

  Rob bent down close to her face and took a big whiff of her hair. “Such a shame! I thought you had such promise. You definitely played a good game. I thought we could have gone a long way.”

  With silent tears streaming down Kristen’s face, he ran the blade down her cheek again, pressing down slightly and letting it cut into her skin. She screamed out as a light trail of blood trickled down her cheek.

  “Please stop.”

  “No one will want you with a nasty scar on your face, will they?”

  She held her breath as he gently slid the blade across her neck then down her chest leaving a trail of red whelps as he did. With the help of the knife, he pushed the front of her coat aside to expose the skin of the top of her plump breasts. He ran the blade across her chest, causing goose bumps to flare on her quivering body. He made another deep slit across the top of her left breast, causing her to scream out in pain again.

  “Put it down, Robert!” Carma yelled, pointing her gun directly at him.

  Rob jerked his head up at the sound of the voice and covered his eyes from the intrusive light of the flashlight and stared into the eyes of the detective. Rob got to his feet, pulling Kristen up with him. He thrust himself against her back and wrapped his arms around her chest, using her as a shield with the knife pressed close to her throat, so close if she swallowed hard enough the blade could cut straight through her flesh.

  “Do you really think you can stop me? I showed you before that I can easily dominate you.” He smiled at Carma and ran the blade across Kristen’s cheek again, then put the blade back on her throat.

  Carma stared at him through narrow eyes. “That was you?”

  Rob continued to smile at her. “Your sweet naked body was so tempting. I could have easily done anything and everything I wanted to do to you. My erection grew so hard every time I swung at your pretty face. I’m telling ya, it was almost unbearable, but knowing you were screwing the same guy as Missy drove my rage.”

  Kristen shuddered at the thought of her father and the anger she had felt for him all that time. He was guilty of sleeping with Missy, but he didn’t kill her. It saddened and relieved her all at once.

  “I told you once and I will only tell you one more time, put the knife down!” Carma yelled.

  Rob smiled at her defiantly, and in that instant, it was like another person took over him. His smile faded and his face became cold and sinister, even his eyes seemed darker, if that was possible. He raised the long blade above his head and Kristen closed her wide eyes tight waiting for the end to come.

  A loud thunderous crack pierced Kristen’s ears and she opened her eyes wide in shock and stared at Harold’s gun smoking in the chilly night air. Blood trailed down Rob’s arm where the bullet plunged into his shoulder. He raised his arm again, being driven by the pain and pure hatred. Carma noticed it right away and pulled the trigger of her own gun.

  Rob crumbled to the ground, taking Kristen down with him. Kristen looked at the blood spouting out of the bullet hole in his forehead and screamed, trying to escape from under his heavy weight. She crawled a few feet away on her hands and knees and wiped at her face, trying desperately to remove the warm blood splatter.

  Harold ran up to her and held her in an embrace, sheltering her from the gruesome sight. “Shh… don’t look. It’s okay now.”

  Carma walked over to Rob and stared down at his lifeless body. She crouched down and put two fingers on his throat trying to feel for a pulse that she knew wasn’t going to be there. She shook her head sadly and said a silent prayer and stood back up to look at Harold and Kristen. She closed the distance between them and wrapped her arms around Kristen’s rigid body and hauled her up and embraced her in her own hug, not really for Kristen’s sake, but for her own. She had loved Mike most of her life. He left such a shady legacy behind. His scandal had overshadowed all of the good he had done, but at that very moment it was all forgotten. Mike was guilty of his affair with Melissa, but he never hurt anyone, other than himself.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Carma looked around her empty house and sighed. The house had been her dream, her sanctuary, her home, but after today, no more. She walked out onto her back deck and closed her eyes, listening to the natural world around her. She would no longer sit out back on the deck and stare at the peaceful river and listen to its heavenly music or shower under the private outdoor shower with unsheltered freedom. Someone else would now have the opportunity to fall in love with it like she did.

  “I think I got the last one,” Harold said from the open door, breaking her spell. “Are you going to leave the patio furniture?”

  She opened her eyes and turned around to stare at her partner. “Yeah, I won’t have anywhere to put it.” She turned back to the river and smiled sadly. “I’m sure going to miss this place.”

  “I bet. You had a pretty sweet set-up here.”

  “Yeah, well, now someone else will.”

  She walked over to her trusty wicker loveseat and plopped down. Harold followed her with his eyes, then sat down beside her and noticed the book in her lap.

  “Why do you still have that?”

  She looked down at the book, “I haven’t read it since all that happened with Mike in fear of reading something I didn’t want to know, but after that night with Robert and Kristen, I decided to read it again. Towards the end she started to come to the realization that Robert had different personalities. She seemed scared of him. I wish I had read it before now.”

  “Are yo
u all right?”

  “Yeah, I guess. It’s just all too surreal. I’ve never left home before.”

  “You’ll be okay, though. Before long you’ll have forgotten all about us here,” he said with a soft smile.

  “Yeah, right.” She looked up from the book to look at him, her eyes full of worry. “What if Kristen needs me?”

  “I know you two have been spending a lot of time together these past couple of months. You both went through an extraordinary ordeal, but like you, she’s a fighter. I think she’ll be okay, too. Besides, isn’t she leaving soon for college?”

  “Yep, in a couple more months.”

  “So you see, you can’t use her as an excuse.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “It’s normal to be scared.”

  “I’m not scared,” she said.

  Harold laughed. “You’re so hard ass, but it’s all right to be scared. I’m scared, too.”

  “You are?”

  “Of course. I’m still new around here. You’re my only real friend and now you’re leaving me. I’ll have to start all over again with a new partner. Those are some pretty big shoes to fill.”

  Carma bumped his shoulder, smiling widely. “Okay, I think we better go before I start crying. It wouldn’t be pretty.”

  Carma slowly walked through the empty house and stood on the front porch and stared back into the open doorway and looked around her quaint cottage one last time before closing the door behind her.

  They made the drive into New Bern to the airport in silence, both lost in their own thoughts, as if in a different world. Once inside the airport, they sat quietly in the uncomfortable little plastic chairs close to her gate as they wait for her plane to arrive. Carma’s mind snapped back to reality when she heard her name being called from behind. She turned around and saw Kristen rushing up to her. Carma jumped up from her seat and threw her arms around her.

  Carma pushed her back to arm’s length and studied her pretty red face. The cut on her cheek was still evident. “I thought you weren’t going to come.”