Love Kills

by Edna Buchanan

  Then I remembered another compass, the one in the instrument panel of the Ford Explorer.

  With a sense of urgency, I made my way back to our cabin and wasted more time frantically searching for the car keys. Did Lacey take them with him? Then I remembered where he usually put them and, sure enough, found them atop the back tire up under the wheel well.

  The clean fresh smell of Lacey’s shaving lotion made me feel less alone as I drove the Ford back toward Holt’s cabin. I pulled off the road about three quarters of the way there and cautiously continued on foot, watching for him through the trees.

  What I saw made me gasp and prickled the hairs on the back of my neck. The Range Rover had been moved. Now it was parked on the far side of the cabin. No lights. The newlyweds had to be in bed.

  Increasingly clumsy as my energy drained, I slowly but surely worked my way around the cabin, trying to search in a grid pattern. No sign of Lacey. Then, suddenly, there was. A glint of metal caught my eye, about a hundred and fifty feet from the cabin. It was a compass, the little whistle-shaped compass Lacey had shown me. Did he drop it and become lost?

  I eased myself into a sitting position on the forest floor, hoping they didn’t have fire ants in Alaska and that I would be able to get up again. I searched, groping through the undergrowth around me. Suddenly a strong smell assailed my senses and something gummy dripped onto my right shoulder. I stared up and saw sap oozing from a deep wound in a pine tree right over my head. The smell was piney, and the fresh gash appeared to have been made by the blade of an ax. I trained my little penlight onto the ground beneath the wound, not far from where I found the compass. It was as I feared. The ground and its carpet of pine needles were disturbed, as though there had been a struggle.

  My groping hands connected with something wet and sticky, but the uncertain light of the endless dusk made it impossible to determine whether it was mud, blood, or tree sap.

  “Oh, no,” I whimpered, fearing the worst.

  Panicked, I scrambled away on all fours, gripped a sapling to pull myself to my feet, then used the compass to find my way back to the Ford. Standing behind it for cover, at the fringe of the woods, I took out my cell phone.

  We had agreed that I would only call him in an emergency. This was an emergency. I knew his phone was on vibrate.

  No answer. I left a pleading message. “Lacey, please call me. I’m panicking. I’m out looking for you now. I need to know you’re safe.”

  Every sound, every leaf that fell, chilled my blood. How could I protect myself out here alone? Suddenly my heart stopped and I braced, frozen with fear at the whoosh of an ax swing from behind me. The blow never landed. What I’d heard was only the rush of wings, a startled night bird taking flight. I wondered if the creature felt as helpless, endangered, and disoriented as I did.

  Forcing myself to stay calm, I slowly made my way to Holt’s Range Rover, pausing every few steps to watch and listen for any movement near the cabin. I touched the hood. The engine felt warm. I ran my fingers around the doors feeling for blood, body fluids, or other evidence of foul play. I whispered Lacey’s name, in case he was inside and could hear me. Nothing. I lightly tapped a fender with my fingernail. Not enough force to set off a car alarm, but enough for him to hear in case he might be conscious, tied up inside.

  No response. Nothing.

  I steeled myself and crept closer to the cabin. Trembling, I inched my way around to what had to be the bedroom. The windows were too high to see inside, and I couldn’t find anything to stand on. As I stood beneath it, alert, focused, and straining to hear, there came the sounds of muffled laughter.

  The honeymooners were frisky. But where was John Lacey?

  I carefully made my way back toward the Explorer, desperately searching the gloom for any sign. Suddenly a car approached up on the road about forty feet to my left. A patrol car. I crouched as it passed, heart pounding, resisting the impulse to run out and flag them down. No one would believe me. How could I help Lacey, or Nancy, from a jail cell? The police would only complicate matters, and I still hadn’t e-mailed the latest version of my story to the News.

  I began to think clearly as I cut through the trees, moving stealthily on the soft pine needles. With my immediate future uncertain, my mission was to dispatch the updated story to the News, with a copy to Sam Stone. Then the truth would be alive and out there, in case I wasn’t. I prayed the cops wouldn’t spot the Explorer and stop to check it out.

  Panting, I paused to catch my breath. That’s when I heard footsteps behind me. Moving through the trees, gaining on me. I heard his rapid movement and heavy breathing. Too exhausted to run, I turned to confront Holt—and gasped.

  I looked up into the soft brown eyes of a moose. Startled, he stopped. We stared at each other. The huge animal could have stomped me into the ground in a heartbeat. But in that breathless moment of eye contact I felt a connection; it was as if the giant wild creature sensed my fear and despair.

  We stood motionless for several beats, until the great beast snorted, flared his nostrils, broke eye contact, and walked slowly into the dusk. I watched, breathing hard, until he disappeared.

  I prayed to find Lacey, or a note from him, waiting at the Explorer. Nothing. I drove slowly back to our cabin, inching along the roadway, scanning both sides for a clue to his whereabouts. Nothing.

  No sign of him at the cabin either. I locked the door behind me and picked up the fireplace poker to use as a weapon against anyone who tried to break in.

  The time difference between Fairbanks and Miami is four hours. I worked on the story as I waited, counting the minutes until I knew Sam Stone would be in the office. Then I called, praying to hear his voice. He was my last hope. His voice mail answered. Again. Where the hell was he?

  “Stone, you’ve got to help me,” I said breathlessly. “Holt may have killed John Lacey, the man I told you about. He went to surveil Holt’s cabin last night and never came back. I’m afraid he’s either dead or injured. Please call me back.”

  A mindless computer voice prompted me to press nine to send the message.

  I did and was about to hang up when the mechanical voice added: “To speak to someone else, press zero.” I did that too.

  It rang several times as I continued to pray that God and the machine would connect me to a live human being. My heart leaped when I heard a voice. Not a tape, not a computer, a real person.

  “Lieutenant Riley, can I help you?”

  My energy level crumpled; I wanted to weep. Why her, why did it have to be her?

  “Hello?” She said it again.

  Any voice, even hers, from home, four thousand miles away, triggered my emotions.

  “Kathy?” My broken whisper echoed through the vast void between us. “Don’t hang up.”

  I had never called her Kathy. Lieutenant Kathleen Constance Riley had threatened to break the kneecaps of any reporter who called her Kathy, or even Kathleen, in print.

  McDonald had called her Kathy.

  “Who is this?”

  “Britt.” To my dismay, my voice quaked. “I need your help. I don’t know if Sam Stone has kept you apprised of the investigative piece I’ve been reporting.”

  “I didn’t recognize your voice,” she said. “You sound terrible. Are you all right?”

  “No,” I whispered, and began to cough.

  “Is the baby all right?” The concern in her voice caught me totally off guard.

  “I think so.” Fighting tears, I took a deep, ragged breath to regain control. I had never felt so weak and helpless. “One of the victims of suspected serial killer Marsh Holt was a girl from Baton Rouge. A young man, her former fiancé, was here helping me. His name is John Lacey and he’s been playing amateur detective, seeking justice for the girl he loved. He was trying to keep Holt under surveillance. Now he’s missing and may be dead. I can’t call the local police; they’ll arrest me on sight. The News cut me off, canceled my credit card, and I’m sick. I’m broke. I don’t know wher
e else to turn. I need help.”

  She didn’t speak though she was still on the line. I could hear her breathing.

  Dammit, I thought. I pictured her smiling, laughing at my desperation.

  “I need help, goddammit! I think he killed Lacey.”

  “Where are you, Britt?”

  “Alone in a cabin on Old Black Hawk Road outside of Fairbanks. Fairbanks, Alaska.”

  “You’re in Alaska? You couldn’t get into trouble in South Beach? North Miami? Fort Lauderdale? Even Orlando? You are aware that Alaska is out of our jurisdiction.”

  “I know you hate me, Kathy.”

  “Don’t call me that,” she said wearily. “I don’t hate you most of the time. But what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  I explained at length.

  “Your persistence always has annoyed me,” she said coolly. “But it’s also why I often wished you worked for me. I know you didn’t ask for my advice. But don’t ever become so discouraged that you stop—or so stubborn that you won’t. I always tell my detectives that when you wear yourself out, trouble comes sooner and stays longer.”

  “Too late,” I said. “Trouble is here, and I’m already worn out. Did Stone ever look into Gloria Weatherholt’s scuba death?”

  “No.” She sounded businesslike. “We’ve been focused on Spencer York, the Custody Crusader. Where did you say you were? The address?”

  I told her. “Promise not to let the local police know where I am. I don’t want to go to jail again.”

  “Let me think about this,” she said. “I’ll get back to you.”

  COLD CASE SQUAD

  MIAMI, FLORIDA

  “I need you to make a call to the Fairbanks, Alaska, police department,” Riley said.

  “Sure.” Nazario looked up from his desk. “Any word yet from Stone and the sergeant?”

  “Not yet,” she said. “Let’s hope they get lucky in Texas.”

  WACO, TEXAS

  Three spotted hound dogs dashed from the house to meet the detectives’ rental car. They were wagging their tails.

  Spencer York’s sister, Sheila, a tall and plain strong-jawed woman in her fifties, stood on the front porch wearing a simple cotton housedress and sensible shoes.

  “I’m the detective who called you from Miami,” Stone said, introducing himself and Sergeant Burch.

  “Come on in, git yourselves outa this heat,” she said, leading them into her parlor.

  “We’re working on your brother’s case,” Stone said. “We have some leads, but we need a few things clarified.”

  She served hot, strong, delicious coffee and homemade cake topped with chopped pecans and cinnamon, before they talked. She insisted. The detectives got the distinct impression that Sheila Whitaker had few visitors.

  Her husband, she said, was away a lot. So was her son.

  “Spencer told a Miami newspaper reporter that he had marital and custody problems of his own, which motivated his crusade,” Stone said. “I doubt the reporter misunderstood. Unlike most, she’s usually accurate and right on target. So it surprised us when you said that Spencer never married and had no children. If that’s so, why do you think your brother would tell her that?”

  She thought for a moment, hands placidly in her lap. “Most likely because it would make sense. It would give him…” She fumbled for a moment. “What’s the right word?”

  “Credibility?” Burch said.

  “That’s it.” She nodded. “Exactly.”

  “So what would his real motivation be?”

  “Spencer always was a hard man to understand.”

  She lifted her delicate china coffee cup, dwarfed in her large callused hands, and sipped daintily.

  “He just got ideas, couldn’t get them out of his head until he followed through.”

  “We suspect,” Burch said, “that a woman might be involved in his murder. We recently found a sort of diary that he kept. He wrote that he thought she had followed him to Miami. That would rule out anyone he may have met in South Florida.”

  Spencer York’s sister put down her cup.

  “So our thinking,” Stone said, “was that perhaps she might be an ex-wife or former sweetheart, a woman he knew well in some sort of intimate relationship. He referred to her as M.”

  Something odd flickered in the woman’s eyes. She looked away, self-conscious.

  She knows, Stone thought.

  “He wasn’t married, never came close,” she said softly, eyes still averted. “Not that I know of. Had two or three dates as a young man, but never with the same girl twice. None of ’em would ever go out with him a second time.”

  “Did any have the initial M?” Burch asked. “You know: Marilyn, Marie, Maureen?”

  She sighed and paused again. “Not that I recall.”

  What is she hiding? Stone wondered.

  “Can you help us figure out who this woman might be?” Burch asked.

  “He stole children from lots of women. I don’t know their names.” She got to her feet. “Here,” she said. “After that reporter called, I drug out the old family scrapbook.” She took the book from a sideboard and opened it on the coffee table between them. “There he is, about seven years old.”

  Spencer York, his hair dark blond in childhood, sat bare chested on the back of a pinto pony. He was scowling.

  She began to leaf through the black cardboard pages. “Wait,” Burch said. “Is that the two of you?”

  She nodded.

  A dark-haired, big-boned woman wearing a severe suit and a perky hat with a small veil sat on a couch against an inside wall with two small children, a boy and a girl. The woman held a Bible in her lap. All three solemnly stared straight into the camera’s eye in that moment captured a half century ago.

  “That your mother?” Burch asked. “Attractive woman.”

  She nodded. “A very religious woman, strict Southern Baptist. Had a hard life.”

  “What about your dad? I don’t see any pictures of him in here.”

  “He left right after my little brother, Emmett, drowned. He went off to work for the railroad and never did come back. Spencer was about eight and I was five.”

  “Sorry to hear that. It couldn’t have been easy,” Burch said.

  Stone had flipped to a later page in the scrapbook, to a photo of Sheila, her husband, a tall, lean mustachioed man, and their small son.

  Back then she looked much like her mother had in the earlier picture, minus the Bible and the perky hat.

  Her son was curly-haired, chubby-cheeked, and grinning.

  Stone smiled back at the toothy toddler. “Where’s your boy now?”

  “Over in Killeen, doing right well. Twenty-six years old.” She smiled proudly. “Engaged to a schoolteacher, a fine girl. He’s a firefighter for the county. They come to dinner every Sunday. It’s hard to believe. Child raising,” she said, “is never easy.”

  “Tell me about it,” Burch said. “I’ve got three, two girls and Craig Junior, the middle child. He’s thirteen. My oldest is sixteen and starting to date. That keeps me awake nights.”

  “What it all comes down to,” she said, looking Burch straight in the eye, “is influences. When a strong-minded individual exerts a negative influence, things happen. No matter who it might be, you have to keep that negative influence out of their lives.”

  Burch nodded.

  Her eyes dropped meaningfully to the scrapbook as the men rose to leave.

  Burch handed her his card at the door and asked her to call him or Stone if she thought of anything that might help.

  Something unsaid remained in her eyes. The detectives lingered.

  “When did you lose your mother?” Stone said. “When did she pass?”

  “Oh, she didn’t. She’s alive.”

  “Sorry. I just assumed…”

  “She’s seventy-five years old now, in a nursing home up in Grand Prairie.”

  “Where is that exactly?” Stone said.

  “About a two-hour
drive northwest up Highway Thirty-five.”

  “Think she’d remember anything that might help us?” he asked.

  The woman shrugged, eyes blank. “Her memory has not failed.”

  The dogs followed them out to the car. So did their owner. “Want some more cake? I’ll wrap it in plastic and fix you a thermos of coffee, to hold you over during the drive.”

  GRAND PRAIRIE, TEXAS

  The nursing home sweltered in the Central Texas sun. The long white one-story building had a tall front gate, wheelchair ramps, ragged hedges, and a dry fountain.

  They rang a bell and an overweight woman in a white uniform emerged from behind swinging doors to meet them at the front desk. Her eyes widened in surprise when they asked for Roberta York.

  “She doesn’t get many visitors.” She opened a register for them to sign. “Poor thing doesn’t even have a roommate right now, what with her being so difficult and all.”

  She summoned a sandy-haired aide, a pleasant-faced young fellow in rumpled scrubs and sneakers, to show them to Mrs. York’s room.

  “She still reads the Bible every day. Watch out,” he warned, “or she’ll start quoting from Revelation. Some scary stuff in there. I guess Jesus loves her, but the rest of us think she’s an asshole. Good luck.” He knocked, then opened the door.

  The detectives caught their breath as they stepped into the dimly lit room. It was at least ten degrees hotter inside.

  Roberta York sat in her wheelchair as if it were a throne, her back straight, the room nearly dark, drapes blocking the sun. She was frowning at a soap opera that flickered silently in a corner, the sound on mute.

  She turned the TV off with the remote and studied her visitors curiously.

  The dark hair, the perky hat, and the unsmiling faces of her little children were long gone, but the Bible remained, well worn and well read. Several, in fact, were within her reach, along with spectacles and a large magnifying glass.