“Oh my gosh, Spencer…I didn’t even see you come up. What did you do to him? Is he dead?” she whispered, hands at her throat.
“No ma’am, he’s merely taking a little nap,” the Marine replied wryly.
“How did you do that?” she looked at him with a combination of admiration and awe.
“Pressure points, ma’am. Would you like me to secure the residence before you go in?”
“No, I’ll be okay, Spence, thanks. It’ll just take me a minute.” She disappeared inside and came back out shortly with her bags packed.
“All set?”
“Yes, let’s go,” Echo nodded. “And Spencer…?”
“Yes ma’am?” he picked up her bags as though they weighed nothing.
“Thank you.”
“Anytime ma’am,” the Marine softened and cracked a smile.
Watching the tail lights disappear, the unseen presence cackled darkly.
Chapter 13
Carla Mayhew wanted a drink so badly that her skin practically itched. Though she knew that being sober, particularly right now, when she desperately needed her wits about her, was the right thing to do, she craved a drink so badly that her body literally ached. Every sound, every creak that her house made as it settled or as the wind blew, seemed as loud as a gunshot, and she found herself jumping at shadows.
The widow had gone from living a safe-feeling, secure life as a cop’s wife, knowing that the man that she lay beside every night was fully capable of handling any sort of boogeyman that might come her way, to being alone. Completely and utterly alone. Always. She refused to make the fear go away by turning once again to the bottle, but that meant that she had to face the fear. Every miserable second of it. She cried, she raged, she screamed into her pillow in frustration – just in case there might be someone lurking outside, waiting for her to snap – and she dealt with it as best she could.
She’d been doing pretty well until the day that her bedroom had been trashed. That violation had knocked her for a loop, but rather than driving her back to drink, it had made her even more resolved to stay awake, alert and sober. She wasn’t going to let some dark force overpower her while she stumbled through life in a drunken stupor.
Locked up tight in her home, with the alarm set and every door and window locked, Carla had quite a lot of time to reflect upon how she’d handled her life since her husband and son had been killed, and she was deeply ashamed. Missy was one of the few people that she could actually call a friend, and Carla had shamelessly flirted with her handsome husband and treated the sweet southern belle with scorn and derision more times than she cared to count. Yet Missy was undaunted, coming to the rescue whenever her decorator was drunk, hungover, or so depressed that she refused to leave home.
And then there was Echo Willis. Carla had despised her from the moment that she’d laid eyes on the carefree Californian. She resented the happy hippie-chick’s unbridled optimism and belief that somehow, things always work out. Things hadn’t always worked out for Carla, in fact, if she were keeping score, she’d say that, overall, things had particularly sucked for the past several months, and sometimes she despaired that they might never work out.
The successful decorator also resented Echo’s easy, natural beauty – the flame-red, naturally curly hair, her svelte figure, the way she seemed to be able to wear a burlap sack and make it look haute – it just wasn’t fair. Carla took pride in her appearance, but she had to work for it. But jealousy over Echo’s optimism and looks were just surface justifications, she finally admitted to herself. What really bothered her about the woman who had become her nemesis was the fact that she posed a threat. Carla had exactly one real friend, Missy, and Echo was Missy’s best friend. That friendship was a powerful one that made her insecure to the extreme. If she lost Missy, she’d have literally no one who cared about whether she even lived or died.
The lonely decorator hadn’t even considered the possibility of making her rival a friend, until they were both in the same boat, being stalked by someone who may or may not be dangerous. She had never seen Echo as vulnerable, had never stopped to consider the fact that she may have her own insecurities, and that she might be lonely too.
Suddenly, standing on Echo’s doorstep, hoping that she wouldn’t have the door slammed in her face, she began to notice that the woman she’d thought of as her enemy, had the same lines in her face from smiling and from worry that Carla did when she looked in the mirror. The woman in front of her suffered from fatigue and dealt with pressure and pain too. Although they were very different, they were both single forty-somethings, each fighting their own battles to keep their heads above water.
The decorator contemplated these things as she desperately tried to resist the urge to self-medicate, fully realizing that when she wasn’t pickled by spirits, she had to look at herself in the mirror and see truth. Sipping her coffee, staring into the distance, she knew that she could do it, that she was better than her recent behavior would have folks believe, and that from this day on, she was going to live a life that showed it.
Something tapped against the glass of the floor to ceiling windows of the sunken living room and Carla froze, her cup halfway to her mouth. The blinds were drawn over the windows, making it impossible to see in or out, so she had no idea as to the source of the tapping. Telling herself that it was just a tree branch, she set her cup down gently, making sure it didn’t even clink on the counter. Any sound that she heard could shatter the tight rein that she had on her fear and send her screaming into the night.
Tap, tap. There it was again. She licked her lips and swallowed, her dry throat making a clicking sound, not knowing what to do, and wondering why the alarm hadn’t registered the motion that produced the tapping.
Her phone rang, moving across the counter a bit, causing her to nearly jump out of her skin. Heart pounding, she answered breathlessly in a hushed voice, her eyes glued to the window.
“Hello?”
“Hey Carla…it’s Missy. Echo and I are having a girl’s night with popcorn and cocoa since Chas is out chasing bad guys, and we’d love to have you join us if you’re up for it.”
The decorator could hear the smile in the voice of her friend and could have cried with relief and gratitude.
“Can Spencer come pick me up?” she asked quietly.
“He’s already on his way, darlin,” Missy giggled. “And pack an overnight bag, because it’s going to be a movie marathon.”
The figure in the shadows darted away when Spencer’s car approached, but the Marine’s hawk-like eyes had missed nothing.
Chapter 14
“Detective Beckett, there’s a call on line three that I think you might want to take,” the Calgon PD desk sergeants voice came through on his desk top phone.
Chas depressed the button to answer. “Roger that,” he said, picking up the receiver and pushing the blinking button.
“Detective Beckett,” he answered brusquely, a bit irritated at having been interrupted as he tried to sort through the details of both the murder in Semblas county and the seemingly related stalking of Echo and Carla.
“Uh…hello, Detective. Look, I don’t want to give you my name or anything, because, I have a job that I don’t want to lose, and one of the big things about my job is privacy, so…” the caller began nervously.
“You don’t have to give your name, sir, just tell me what you need to tell me,” Chas interrupted, trying not to let his frustration show.
“Oh, okay…good. Well…so, I’m a chauffeur for a private limo company, and I had something kinda sketchy happen tonight that just gave me a bad feeling, so I wanted to call and tell you guys about it, in case something weird is going on.”
“Lots of crimes are solved because regular folks with a “bad feeling” have done the right thing and called in, so I appreciate your help,” the detective encouraged, hoping that the man would get to the point sometime soon.
“No problem. So, I picked up these two dudes at the Ca
mbridge Club tonight…”
“What time was that?”
“Around seven.”
“Do you have names?”
“I have one, but I’d get fired if I gave it to you, so…”
“Okay, go on then,” Chas was beginning to think that the man might actually have something of value to contribute.
“Anyway, both dudes seemed to be fine when they got in the car, then one of them passed out, like he was drunk or something. He was the one who hired me. So then the other dude tells me that we’re not going to the original address, and has me drive way out into the country. He slipped me a hundred, so I wasn’t going to argue. The customer is always right, right?”
“Sure, go on,” Chas prompted.
“So, we get out to the middle of nowhere, and the guy says his friend just needs some air. I pull over, and when I stop the car, he thanks me for the ride and says he doesn’t need me anymore. He slips me another hundred and tells me to have a good night. I ask him if they’re going to be okay out there, and he waves me off, so I leave him standing there with his unconscious buddy draped over his shoulder.”
“Where did you leave them?” Chas demanded. The man provided the location and Chas jotted it down.
“Did you see where they went, or what they did as you were leaving?”
“They just stood there, with the one dude passed out and the other one watching me drive away,” the caller explained. “Do you think there was something sketchy going on?”
“I think that you’ve given me some information that is certainly worth checking out, thank you for your assistance. Is there anything else?”
“Oh, yeah. I always clean out the limo after a customer leaves, and when I got it back to the shop to do go through it, I found this little case that has all these instruments in it, like dentist stuff or something.”
“What did you do with the case?” the detective asked urgently.
“I put it in the lost and found, I figured it slipped out of the dude’s coat when he lifted up his friend.”
“Where is the lost and found located?” The caller gave him the address of the limo company.
“Okay, thank you sir, you’ve been quite helpful. We’ll check this out,” Chas assured him, hanging up as soon as possible.
Chapter 15
Detective Chas Beckett picked up the desk phone again and dispatched officers to the limo company to take the case of instruments into evidence, then arranged for backup to follow him to the location in the middle of nowhere, hoping that it wasn’t too late to save the man who had been drugged by the serial killer. The pieces were falling into place. Forensics had been trying to pinpoint the instruments used to torture Judge Gambrell’s girlfriend, so far without success, but the precise and strange wounds could quite possibly be explained as having been inflicted by dental instruments, and the killer’s precise method and steady hand could be attributed to having trained and practiced as a dentist.
Since time was of the essence, the detective gave the coordinates to officers in a marked unit, and followed behind the lights and sirens as they sped out into the country. Grinding to a quick stop at the side of the country road, Chas got out of his car and began scanning the area with his flashlight, while the others did the same.
He thought he heard something, and held up a hand to both silence and stop the motion of the officers around him.
“Hello?” Chas heard faintly from the steep downward slope behind the guard rail.
“Down here,” he called out to the other officers as he stepped over the rail and made his way carefully down the brush covered slope.
Detective Beckett saw the form of a man in the fetal position and hurried over to him. Shining his light in the man’s face, he was startled.
“Kel?” he asked, astonished, when he removed the blindfold that had been fashioned out of one of the artist’s sleeves.
“Chas Beckett,” he replied weakly. “I don’t know that I’ve ever been happier to see you.”
“Call an ambulance,” Chas said quietly to a nearby patrolman.
Phillip Kellerman was in need of medical attention, but he also had information that the detective needed.
“Who did this to you?” Chas asked urgently.
“I have no idea. I don’t know where I am or how I got here.”
“Fortunately, I know both of those things. Who did you have dinner with tonight at the Cambridge Club?”
“Echo and my client, Robert Crump, why?”
Chas got up and spoke for a few minutes to one of the uniformed officers who nodded and headed for his patrol car.
Returning to the artist’s side, Chas shone his flashlight on Kel’s splint and ankle binding.
“Who patched you up?”
“I don’t know, I never saw him. He put a knife or something to my temple to keep me from moving, then he blindfolded me.”
“Looks like he’s had some medical training,” the detective mused, looking at the expert wraps.
“He didn’t sound like a doctor.”
“What did he sound like?”
“Rough, not terribly educated or eloquent. Scary,” the artist admitted. “I honestly thought that he was going to kill me, but he worked on my injuries, then just disappeared.”
Chas nodded, then stood and walked away, to a distance that was far enough to have a private phone conversation.
“Spence, if I were a serial killer who had just left someone by the road to die…where do you think I might be?” the detective wasted no time with formalities when the Marine answered his phone.
“Well, Chas, I wouldn’t know for sure, but I would think that, since what goes around comes around, you might be in the general area getting a taste of your own medicine,” Spencer answered cryptically.
“Understood. I think that it would be very important to be alive and well enough to stand trial for atrocities,” he directed.
“Agreed. If you were discovered soon enough, that might actually be the case.”
“Good to know – thanks Spence.”
“Anytime.”
Chapter 16
Janssen had seen all kinds of injuries before, and knew that the ones Phillip Kellerman had sustained after being tossed down a hillside while drugged, while painful, were not life threatening. He’d patch up the poor guy a bit to make him more comfortable and bring his laser-like focus and special skills to bear on the bastard who had tossed him over.
He’d come up from behind the man who was straightening the sleeves of his sport coat after having tossed an innocent man down a hillside, and took him to the ground with a strategic application of pressure. While he lay slumped along the side of the road, Janssen secured him so that he couldn’t fight when he came to, tossed him over his shoulder, and made his way down to the injured man, who looked like he’d be out for a while.
His plan was to take the trussed up criminal further into the swampland and begin showing him a bit of what his victims had felt when he did his handiwork. After a while, he’d then go back to the injured man to put him into a splint and attend to his fractured ankle. The man who had been tossed down the hill proved to be smart enough to comply with no resistance, and his wit in the face of such circumstances was refreshing and something that Janssen admired. Upon treating and leaving the injured man, he returned to the criminal, whom he’d stashed a little over a couple of miles away.
“Stop, please. You can’t do this to me. I’ll do whatever you say, I’ll pay you a lot of money…just let me go, please,” the dentist pleaded as Janssen sharpened his knife next to his captive’s ear, drawing out every long, metallic scrape. He just barely touched the razor sharp edge to the soft, thin skin of the criminal’s cheekbone when his phone buzzed in his pocket. Sighing, but leaving the knife in place while the creature below him squirmed and begged, he reached into his pocket and saw a new text. Reading it, he sheathed his knife.
“It’s your lucky day, dirtbag,” Janssen growled. He disappeared into the night w
ithout a sound, leaving the killer writhing in the brush, bound and blindfolded. The next face he saw was that of Chas Beckett, when the duct tape that had sealed his eyes shut was torn away.
Chapter 17
“A dentist?” Echo shook her head. “Who would’ve guessed that?”
A fourth member had joined their morning coffee group, and she nodded in agreement.
“That just makes it that much creepier,” Carla said, taking a sip of hot coffee.
“It turns out that, although Robert Crump is a dentist, he actually had several aliases when he traveled, and he chose things that would put him into contact with creative women,” Missy filled them in on a bit of background.
“But why?” Kel asked, looking pitiful in his sling, cast and bandages.
“Because he was a serial killer whose “trigger” was women who reminded him of his former wife. She was a red-haired textile designer, who committed suicide and left a note blaming him for it. The theory is that he tortured and killed creative women because he could no longer abuse the woman that he loved. She took away his power over her by dying, and he asserted his power over other women like her, killing them when he was done making them suffer.”
Echo paled and Carla shuddered again.
“So that’s why he targeted Carla and me,” Echo said. “I have red hair and worked for an artist, and Carla is a decorator, so even though she didn’t exactly fit his “preferred victim” list, apparently she was good enough.”
“The scary thing is that his kills were increasing and getting closer together. There’s no telling how many women he would’ve slaughtered if he hadn’t been caught,” Missy shook her head in horror and gripped her coffee mug.
“How did Chas manage to catch him?” Kel asked, having been spirited away in an ambulance before Crump was found.
“He figured that he couldn’t have been too far away, since he didn’t have a car, so he searched the area around where you were found and captured him pretty quickly.”
Sugar Cookies and Murder Page 5