Scene of the Crime: Bridgewater, Texas

by Carla Cassidy

  It was obvious Leroy was more than irritated with his uncle as he slapped a handful of onions on the grill, their sizzle and scent filling the air.

  Matt had been in the walk-in refrigerator unit a couple of times before and had always marveled at how clean and organized Michael kept it.

  The pies were on a shelf, lined up in a row and marked with a sticker on the side of the pie tin. He found the lemon and slid it off the shelf and was about to leave the cooler when he saw something small and dark on the floor.

  At first he thought it was a roach and his appetite instantly died. But when it didn’t move, he placed the pie back on the shelf and bent down to look closer.

  His heart stopped.

  A petal.

  A half-dried rose petal.

  His thoughts shot in a hundred directions. Why would there be roses in this cooler? Who had put them in here? Michael? Leroy? Were there others? Was there a vase holding three roses intended for Jenna?

  With his heart pounding, he began to search the walk-in, looking for more evidence of roses. He finally found what he sought in the very back, dark corner—a vase half-filled with water with another rose petal floating on top.

  Positively electrified, he grabbed his radio from his belt. “Joey, you and Abe get over to the café and tell all the deputies to meet me here ASAP.” Matt re-clipped his radio to his belt, his blood like ice flowing through his veins.

  “Sheriff? Everything all right?” Leroy asked from the door of the cooler.

  Matt flew at him. He grabbed him by the front of the shirt and backed him up against the wall. “Why are there rose petals in your cooler?”

  “What?” Leroy’s eyes were wide. “I don’t know what you’re talking about! You’re hurting me!”

  Matt let him go. The confusion, the fear in Leroy’s eyes made him believe he was telling the truth. “Where’s Michael?”

  “I told you before, I don’t know. I came back from my break and he wasn’t here.”

  At that moment Abe and Joey came through the kitchen doors. “There’s a flower vase in the back of the cooler, I want it collected and be careful, I’m hoping we’ll get prints off it. Get the rest of the men to look for Jenna. It’s possible she’s in a store someplace or out on the street. Radio me as soon as somebody finds her.”

  God, he hoped that’s where she was, buying something frivolous, unaware that the case was breaking wide open. “Joey, come with me. We’re headed to Michael’s place. I want to talk to him now.” He looked at Leroy. “And you, don’t leave here until we have this all sorted out.”

  Matt left the café with Joey at his side, a burn of fear searing through him. Michael? Was it possible that Michael was behind all of this?

  He would have known both women who’d been murdered because Miranda had worked for him and Carolyn often ate lunch at the café. Good old Michael, he hadn’t even been on their list of suspects.

  He and Joey raced back to the office where Matt’s official car was parked out front. They got in the car and took off for Michael’s house.

  “I can’t believe it,” Joey said. “I can’t believe it might be Michael.”

  “He and Leroy would be the only people who would know what was in that walk-in and I can’t imagine why Michael would have roses in there.” Matt felt sick to his stomach. What he wanted more than anything at the moment was for one of his deputies to radio in and report to him that they had Jenna.

  “But why? Why would he kill those women? It doesn’t make any sense,” Joey exclaimed.

  “I’m betting there’s a reason. It might not make sense to you or to me, but it will make sense to the killer in some sick, twisted way,” Matt replied.

  Michael Brown lived in a small ranch house on three acres of land north of town. Matt had never driven the distance so quickly.

  He didn’t use his siren. He didn’t want to give Michael any warning that they were coming. As the neat, attractive ranch house came into view, Matt’s stomach clenched with unbearable tension.

  “His car isn’t out front,” Joey said, stating the obvious.

  “That doesn’t mean he’s not here,” Matt replied. “He could have parked it in the garage or someplace else.” He pulled up front and the two of them got out.

  Both of them pulled their guns and approached the front door slowly. Matt’s heart was in his throat. Where was Jenna? Why hadn’t anyone contacted him to let him know she’d been found?

  Even though he told himself that surely Michael would never hurt her, visions of Miranda and Carolyn burst in his brain, stoking his fear for Jenna even higher.

  “Michael?” he called as Joey banged on the door with his fist. The only sound was that of insects buzzing and clicking in the yard and a dog barking in the distance.

  Joey knocked again and then tried the doorknob. “It’s locked,” he said.

  “Probable cause,” Matt said just before he lowered his shoulder and slammed into the door. The lock sprang and the door creaked open.

  “Michael. It’s Matt,” he yelled as he slid through the door into the living room. Joey followed close behind him. “Michael, are you here? Come on out. I need to talk to you.”

  The living room was neat and clean. “Stay here and watch the front door,” Matt said softly as he headed toward the kitchen. He didn’t want Michael sneaking out while they checked this end of the house.

  It took him only a second to see that there was nobody in the kitchen and then he joined Joey again at the front door. “We need to check out the bedrooms,” he said with a sense of dread.

  Please don’t let me find her on the bed with a rose on her chest, he prayed as they slowly advanced down the hallway to the bedrooms.

  He should have insisted she stay in the office. He should have made sure that somebody was with her at all times. Guilt nearly crippled him as he thought of all the things he should have done.

  The first doorway they came to was a bathroom. As Joey covered him, Matt stepped inside and yanked back the shower curtain. A whoosh of relief escaped his lips when he saw only a gleaming white tub.

  The first bedroom they came to was converted to an office with a desk and computer and shelves containing cookbooks. As Joey entered the second bedroom, he gasped and stumbled back against Matt.

  Matt’s heart stopped mid-beat. As he entered the room he realized they’d discovered their killer and the motive. The room was papered with copies of the same photo—one of Michael with a brown-haired, blue-eyed woman.

  “I know her,” Matt said as he stepped closer to the wall. “Her name was Sylvia something. She was an old college friend of Carolyn’s who had spent a month visiting here in town. I didn’t know she and Michael had even dated.”

  “This must have been the trigger,” Joey said and pointed to a wedding announcement thumbtacked to the wall. The wedding between Sylvia Collins and Edward Shaw had taken place a week before the first murder. “She kind of looks like Miranda and Carolyn.”

  And Jenna. The words thundered in Matt’s head. She’d received three roses; there should have been three left in that vase in the walk-in cooler at the café, but the vase had been empty.

  Jenna had believed that he wouldn’t break his ritual and that she still had three days before he’d come for her. But she’d been wrong. He prayed that she wasn’t dead wrong.

  “Sheriff, there’s one more bedroom,” Joey said.

  Matt’s heart pounded so loud that he barely heard the deputy’s voice. His knees felt weak and for the first time in his career he thought he might throw up.

  He reached inside for strength and with a nod to Joey they stepped back out into the hallway and toward the closed master bedroom door.

  As Joey kept his gun leveled in front of him, Matt gripped the knob and flung open the door. He nearly collapsed to his knees as he saw the bed, neatly made with a brown comforter and nothing else.

  No Jenna.

  No roses.

  His relief was short-lived. She was out there som
ewhere and so was Michael—with three roses and the need to kill.

  Chapter Twelve

  Roses.

  She smelled the lush unmistakable scent of roses. A tiny alarm went off in the back of Jenna’s brain, but as she cracked open her eyes and saw her surroundings, the alarm faded and she relaxed.

  She was safe in Matt’s bedroom, in his bed. She’d had the craziest dream—no, it had definitely been a nightmare. It was only when she tried to turn to see Matt next to her that sudden sheer panic set in.

  She couldn’t turn over. Her wrists were tied to the headboard and something covered her mouth. Any thought that this was a dream shot away as memories spilled into her head.

  The café.

  Michael.

  She remembered following him through the kitchen, then stepping out the backdoor, then nothing.

  Although at the moment she was in the room alone, she knew she was in trouble. Roses lay on the mattress on either side of her. Four and five, she thought. And the sixth was the rose of death.

  She yanked at the rope that held her wrists, sheer terror coursing through her. Dear God, nobody knew she was here. Nobody knew it was Michael. She had no idea where he was at the moment but knew that sooner or later he’d come back into the room to deliver the sixth and final rose to her.

  A sob rose up inside her as she twisted and pulled at the ropes, but there was no give. She’d thought she had time. She’d believed she’d see him coming, but she’d been wrong, so wrong.

  Where was Matt now? Sitting in his office? Chatting with his deputies? Unaware that she was in danger? Not knowing that Michael was the killer they sought?

  Suddenly her fear of loving Matt seemed ridiculous and childish. He’d been right. Everything he’d said to her was right. She loved him and she wanted everything she knew loving him would bring into her life.

  And now it was all too late. She’d be nothing more than the next file on his desk, the next collection of grisly crime scene photos.

  She began to pull once again on the rope that bound her wrists as new sobs racked her body. She tried to still the sobs, knowing that if her nose clogged up she’d suffocate.

  “You can’t get loose.” The deep familiar voice caused her to freeze. She watched through narrowed eyes as Michael came into the room. In one hand he carried the final rose and in the other the knife she knew would take her life.

  No hope.

  She’d never had any hope and that certainly didn’t change now. There was nothing inside her but a hollow despair. She was going to die here, in the very same bed where she’d found love.

  “I had to change things,” Michael said, his voice a hoarse whisper. He remained standing just inside the door. “I couldn’t wait to give you your roses the way they were supposed to be given.”

  She said his name against the tape across her mouth, but it came out as nothing but a garbled grunt. He took a step toward her and she tensed.

  “You’re probably wondering about all this. She was everything I ever wanted.” His features took on a softness. “She was a friend of Carolyn who had come to visit for a month. Every day she’d come into the café and sit and talk with me. She had the softest brown hair and blue eyes that made me feel so special when she looked at me, when she smiled at me.”

  He stared at the wall just over Jenna’s head, as if lost in memories. “It took me two weeks to finally work up enough nerve to ask her out and when she agreed to the date, I felt as if my life was finally complete.”

  He raised the rose to his nose and smelled it and a spasm of pain raced across his face. “On that first date I brought her a rose, a token of my love for her. The next night we went out again and I brought her another rose and that night we made love. I knew she was the one who would make me whole, the one who would share my life. Five nights in a row we were together, laughing and loving and I’ve never been so happy in my life.”

  As he talked, Jenna continued to tug at the ropes. Her legs were free and she tensed them, prepared to kick if and when he got close enough.

  “It was on our sixth date that everything fell apart.” Thick emotion deepened his voice. “She told me she’d gotten a call from the boyfriend she’d dated before coming here, that he’d told her he missed her and he loved her, and she loved him.”

  A dark rage shone from his eyes and his entire body seemed to vibrate with his barely suppressed emotions. “She told me she’d had fun with me, we’d had a good time, but she didn’t love me. The next day she left town. She used me,” he yelled. “I was playing forever and she was playing for fun.”

  Jenna wanted to scream, she wanted to ask what all that had to do with her? But she knew. She knew that somehow they all had morphed into Sylvia in Michael’s mind. Each time he plunged that knife into some woman’s heart he was killing Sylvia for not loving him, for abandoning him.

  “You’re just like her,” he said as he laid the final rose on the top of Matt’s dresser. “You’re all just like her with your soft brown hair and innocent blue eyes. I watched Miranda flirting with the men, playing with their emotions. And Carolyn, even though she had a boyfriend, when she’d come in for lunch I saw her looking around at the other men.”

  He came closer to the bed, the afternoon sunshine shimmering on the blade of his knife. “And you. I see the way Matt looks at you. He’s crazy about you, but you’re nothing but a love-’em-and-leave-’em type. You’d have broken his heart just like she broke mine.”

  Jenna felt his rage building. It stole the oxygen from the room, made it difficult for her to draw a breath. She saw it in his eyes and knew the end was coming.

  “WHERE COULD HE BE? Where could he have taken her?” Matt said aloud as he drove toward the café.

  “Maybe Leroy knows more than he’s saying,” Joey replied.

  “Maybe.” Matt clenched the steering wheel as his brain filtered through the other crime scenes, through everything he knew about Michael Brown. Where would Michael take his next victim?

  He had to face the fact that Michael had Jenna. Nobody had seen her since Michael disappeared from the café. He had to work on the assumption that she was in mortal danger and he prayed it wasn’t already too late for her.

  “Beds,” he said suddenly.

  “What?” Joey looked at him in confusion.

  “He’s killed both the other victims in their own beds.”

  “But Agent Taylor doesn’t have a house here in town, she doesn’t have a bed anywhere,” Joey replied.

  Matt grabbed his radio. “Abe, get a couple of the men to check out the motel, unit seven. Approach with caution. We’re looking for Michael Brown and we can assume he’s armed and dangerous.” Matt dropped the radio and stepped on the gas. “And we’re going to Miranda’s place. Jenna owns it now. Michael might consider it Jenna’s place and that’s where he left the first three roses.”

  His heart thrummed a rhythm of panic and he remembered the last time he’d felt this way. It had been in the moments after he’d received the call that a gunman was holed up in the social services offices with hostages.

  The scar on his cheek itched and burned and he fought the impulse to tear into it with his fingers. He couldn’t do this again. He couldn’t live through this again. She had to be all right. Jenna had to be okay.

  Seconds had never felt so long, each minute an agony as he raced to Miranda’s house. Thankfully Joey didn’t speak because Matt didn’t want to waste his energy talking.

  Michael. How many times had the man smiled at him, served him food and shot the breeze and never had Matt caught a glimpse into the darkness that must reside in the man.

  How had he missed it? How had Jenna missed it? He knew the answer, Michael had been smart, cunning and he hadn’t made any mistakes until now.

  Matt’s blood froze as he thought what might have happened if he hadn’t gone into the walk-in refrigerator, if he hadn’t noticed that single rose petal on the floor. How many more bodies would he be dealing with if he hadn’t wan
ted a piece of pie?

  There was only one body he cared about now. Jenna. His heart cried her name as he wheeled to a halt in front of Miranda’s house.

  Once again he and Joey advanced cautiously on the place, their guns at the ready. The door was locked and this time it was Joey who put his shoulder to the wood and managed to get the door open.

  They went in and Matt immediately bee-lined to the bedroom where he knew Jenna had slept while she’d been in the house. The room was empty. He headed toward the master bedroom, the place where Miranda had lost her life. That room was empty as well, and it didn’t look as if anyone had been inside.

  Think. Think! A voice cried in his head. Where could he be? Where would he have taken her? A horrifying emptiness filled him.

  Too much time had gone by. It was probably already too late. No, he couldn’t think that way. He had to have hope. He had to find her. Somehow he had to figure this out.

  His radio crackled and Abe’s voice came over the line. “Motel room is empty. Doesn’t look like anyone’s been in here at all.”

  “Thanks, Abe, keep looking for her,” Matt replied.

  “Where do we go from here?” Joey asked.

  Matt’s mind raced. He killed them in their beds. They’d checked the beds where Jenna had slept while she’d been in town.

  Except yours.

  The words thundered inside his brain. Was it possible? While he and his deputies had been running all over town, was Michael bold enough to take Jenna to Matt’s house? To his bed?

  He grabbed Joey by the arm. “My place. Let’s go.”

  As he ran out of Miranda’s house Joey was right behind him. It was at that moment that Matt recognized the killing rage building inside of him.

  If Michael had hurt Jenna, then he’d never see a trial, he’d never spend a day in prison. Matt would save the judicial system the trouble of a trial. Sheriff or not, Matt was first a man and he would make sure that Michael Brown paid for Jenna’s death with his own life.