Avengers of Blood (Cass Elliot Crime Series - Book 2)

by Woods, Gae-Lynn

  If her nighttime routine remained consistent with what he had observed over the last few weeks, she would be sound asleep in the master bedroom at the rear of the house. Her bed was a massive four poster with a pale headboard that looked as if it were covered in fabric. She slept propped up on pillows, almost in a sitting position, which he found unusual. Her bed faced uncurtained floor-to-ceiling windows and as he eased closer, he realized that the moonlight had penetrated deeply enough into the room to illuminate her doll-like form. This was easier than he’d dare hope.

  He stepped back from the window, raised the rifle to his shoulder, aimed, and fired. The retort bounced back from the window, making the shot seem louder than it really was. He peered through the spiderwebbing caused by the bullet’s impact and spotted the spatter of blood, bone, and brain matter across the wall behind the bed.

  “Magnificent,” he whispered.

  He checked his watch: barely twelve-thirty. Three down, one to go. Not bad for a night’s work. With a small salute at the corpse, he ejected the spent casing into the catcher and shoved a new round home, shouldered his rifle, and strode back toward his truck.

  CHAPTER 17

  CASS FOLLOWED KADO FARTHER along the path, deeper into Deadwood Hollow. She couldn’t help but feel grateful that she wasn’t leading this expedition as she drank in the way his strong shoulders tapered to that narrow waist. His jeans fit perfectly, tight enough to outline his buttocks and thighs, but loose enough to allow movement. She stumbled over a tree root and bit her lip to hold back a giggle. She seriously had to get a grip before this man caught her drooling over him.

  “Ma’am? Is everything okay?”

  Cass started, then remembered the two officers trailing them. Kado had requested back-up for their venture into the Hollow, and dispatch sent two extremely young officers out to meet them. She vaguely recognized them as new hires who joined just before her suspension. When introduced earlier, they greeted her with a mixture of awe and fear. Kado flashed a querying look over his shoulder. “Everything’s fine,” she said.

  They walked to either side of the curving dirt path, flashlights playing over the dry, packed ground, looking for shoe impressions. Kado squatted and shone his light toward the middle of the path at an angle. “There’s literally nothing here. It’s so dry, the dirt is like concrete.”

  “The shooter had to be off the trail and closer to the Franklin’s house. Maybe he left tracks as he came out of the forest,” Cass said.

  They continued silently forward, using their flashlight beams to sweep the trail and probe the dense brush beside it, looking for a sign that someone had earlier passed this way. Kado stopped and crouched several times, identifying potential impressions in soft sand. He marked them with a flag and took photos.

  Cass moved past him and shone her flashlight along what looked like a hog run worn in the dense brush between two towering pine trees. Kado joined her and peered at the thin dirt trail. “Those could be shoe prints. Let me take a quick look before we all come through here.”

  He disappeared into the gloom and was gone for several minutes. When he returned, his face was grim. “It’s the perfect spot.”

  They followed him around the pine trees and pushed through heavy brush to avoid trampling the hog trail and any evidence it contained. Within moments they arrived at a small clearing. A tall oak stood alone, surrounded by thin swells of grass and wildflowers. A barely discernible path had been worn between the edge of the clearing and the tree’s base. Kado instructed the officers to begin searching the brush along the clearing’s edge, and then inched forward, marking potential impressions as he went. He put his case down and stood at the base of the tree, examining a narrow pole attached to its trunk with a series of cam buckles and black nylon straps. Small metal bars stuck off to each side of the pole at regular intervals. “What is this?”

  Cass joined him. “It’s a climbing stick. They come in short sections, four foot or so. Hunters use them as temporary ladders if they don’t have time to put up a full deer stand.” She leaned closer. “This one looks pretty new.”

  “He must’ve been out here a few times,” Kado said. “There are a lot of imprints here. It looks like they’re all from the same boot.”

  “Are you sure this is the right tree?”

  “Not entirely, but the Franklin’s house is in that direction,” he pointed north. Kado studied the tree, then looked out toward the trail. “I guess that explains how Matt and Mark Grove heard the shots, even though the vegetation is pretty dense here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The path curves around in an ‘s’ shape, so the distance as the crow flies between where the boys were standing and this tree really isn’t that far.” He bent over to open his forensics kit. “No more than forty yards, fifty at most.”

  Kado checked for trace and dusted the climbing stick for prints, holding his flashlight in his mouth and stepping up the narrow ladder to reach higher rungs until he was at the top. “Nothing. He wore gloves or wiped the climbing stick down,” he called. “I’m going to check out this branch. Pour casting mix in those impressions, Cass, and check for brass.”

  She examined each of the flagged impressions with her flashlight, selected three, and took the casting materials from Kado’s forensics case. The two young officers watched from the clearing’s edge as she worked, holding their flashlights to provide illumination. “Stop your flashlight right there,” she called.

  The men froze and watched as she left the imprints and squatted to eyeball a scraggly patch of weeds near the tree. Cass slid the end of a pen inside a metal cartridge and held it up to the light. “You were right, Kado. He’s shooting .30-06 rounds.”

  “Brand?”

  “Nothing special. It’s Winchester.”

  One of the officers cleared his throat. “How do you know that’s from the guy who shot the Franklins?”

  “Good question.” She held the brass cartridge up into the beam of his flashlight. “For starters, it’s still shiny so the case hasn’t been exposed to the elements for long. It was nestled in the weeds, not mashed into the ground, which means it hasn’t been here long enough for someone to step on it. And if Kado can prove this is the tree he fired from, chances are pretty good this came from the rifle that killed the Franklins.” Cass studied the ground. “I wonder if we can find the other casing?”

  The officers adjusted their flashlights, and Cass glanced over at them. They had identical crew cuts, square jaws, and bulging biceps. “Ready to do some real detective work?”

  They nodded in unison.

  “Go back to Kado’s truck and get the flood lights. Stay off the trail.”

  The two held a short conference before one turned and disappeared. Cass was pouring mix in the last impression when Kado’s phone rang. He was sitting in the crook created where the branch met the tree and directing a laser pointer out through the woods. He cursed, reached to pull the phone from his back pocket, and dropped it. “Answer it Cass, would you?”

  She picked it up and brushed debris from the cover. “Tom Kado’s phone.”

  “Who is this?”

  Cass closed her eyes as Sheriff Bill Hoffner’s voice barked from the earpiece. What a great start, she thought. “It’s Cass, sir.”

  A pause. “Elliot? Where’s Kado?”

  “In a tree trying to find the shooter’s line to the Franklin’s house.”

  “What are you doing at a crime scene?” he sputtered.

  “John Grey hired me as a temp. Apparently the county doesn’t have enough officers to handle three homicides in one night.” The words came without thought, and it was only when she glanced up in the tree to see Kado staring down at her, his gray eyes amused, that she realized what a smartass she’d sounded like. “Sir,” she added into the phone.

  Hoffner’s breath came in short gasps. “I’ll deal with you and Grey when I get back. Give the phone to Kado.”

  She raised it toward him but Kado waved her away.
“Brief him. I’ve almost got it.”

  “Kado can’t get down from the tree, sir. I can give you an overview, if you’d like.”

  Silence.

  “Sir?”

  “Start with Whitehead,” he grunted.

  “From what I understand, Calvin Whitehead was hanged and gasoline used to set him on fire. Grey doesn’t have a time of death, but Martinez assumes it was some time after the last sale at the gas pumps, a little after five o’clock.”

  “Who’s working with Martinez?”

  “Scott Truman.”

  “Who found Whitehead?”

  “Goober.”

  Sheriff Hoffner sighed. “I should’ve guessed. What happened to the Franklins?”

  “Two shots fired from Deadwood Hollow through the kitchen window at approximately eight o’clock. Mrs. Franklin was hit first, and then Joseph when he came into the kitchen to check on her.”

  “You’re sure it’s Joseph? Not Moses?”

  “Yes, sir. He confirmed his identity with Porky Rivers earlier.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “In Deadwood Hollow. Ernie Munk’s nephews, the Grove twins, saw the shooter run past. Kado put out a BOLO on a dark truck, but we don’t have a license plate for it. Thanks to the Grove boys, we think we’ve found the shooter’s tree.”

  “Any ideas on motive?”

  “Joseph was recently released from prison in New York for some sort of white collar crime. That could be a link. Or someone could be after Moses and simply mistook Mrs. Franklin or Joseph for him.”

  “Where is Mojo?”

  “Staying with Porky.”

  “Ask Detective Martinez to arrange protection for him.”

  “Already done.”

  She heard him grunt. “Fine. I’m on my way to Texas but can’t get a flight until early morning. I won’t make it to Arcadia until tomorrow afternoon. I’ll call Kado when I’m on the ground in Dallas.” He hesitated and Cass heard the phone shift. “Has the press shown up?”

  Typical, she thought. “Yes, sir, but only a few local reporters so far.”

  “Have Martinez and Kado hold them off until I’m back.”

  “I’ll tell them.”

  She shut the phone and watched as Kado came down the climbing stick. “Anything?”

  He looked north. “It’s close to a hundred yards to the Franklin kitchen from here. I’ll have to check the angle where the bullets penetrated the window, but I think this is it. The laser indicates the shooter had a clear line of sight to the kitchen. It’s a narrow path through the canopy, but there’s nothing to block a shot from that branch.”

  “Why didn’t the kitchen window shatter?”

  “Bullet velocity and the distance between the entrance holes.”

  She looked over her shoulder at the sound of the returning officer. He stopped at the clearing’s edge and the two men began assembling the lights. “The casting mix needs another twenty minutes,” she said. “I’ll ask the officers to look for the other casing. Can I do anything else?”

  “We’ll take photos when the lights are up. It’s almost one o’clock. That’s about all we can do tonight and we might as well get a few hours sleep.” He turned to the two officers. “Grab some crime scene tape and flip a coin to see who searches for brass and who tapes the path.”

  One of the officers lifted a roll of yellow tape from Kado’s forensics case. “How much of the path, sir?”

  “All of it.”

  “All of it to where?”

  “All of it from wherever it begins to wherever it ends.” He looked at the half-used roll in the officer’s hand and offered a small smile. “You’ll need more than that.”

  CHAPTER 18

  THE SHOOTER STEPPED FROM the pickup’s cab and scanned the neighborhood. His final target’s house was dark, and the old lady who lived to the left slept without her hearing aids. The house to the right was up for sale and empty; the next family down the line was on vacation. Beyond that distance and this late at night, he doubted anyone would stir at the sound of a rifle’s retort.

  The moon’s fat face was out fully now, bathing the neighborhood in a clear white light and spilling deep shadows beneath the trees. The shooter took his rifle from the truck and moved along the driveway’s edge to the house, pausing to inspect the carport. Still only one vehicle. This was a relatively new arrangement for the couple; through his periodic visits to the backyard in the late evenings, he had learned that some sort of tiff had the wife staying with her mother. Which suited him perfectly – his quarrel was with the man.

  After checking the houses and the woods on the opposite side of the street again, he crept past the small pickup and into the wide backyard. Celia Hedder was a stickler for keeping the bedroom curtains tightly closed. Although the house backed onto the golf course, she must have a fear of peeping toms. A reasonable apprehension, given her appearance. But it seemed that in Celia’s absence, her husband Emmet wasn’t as particular about who might be watching. All to the good.

  The master bedroom was at the far end of the house and the thick grass helped muffle his movements. He reached the windows and was gratified to see the curtains still tied back, exactly as they’d been since Celia left. He lifted the rifle to his shoulder in a smooth movement and sighted on the motionless form in the couple’s bed.

  A chill flush of paranoia swept up his spine as his finger moved from the guard to the trigger. Tonight had been easy. Almost too easy. It was only earlier this afternoon that he’d decided to murder three people, and he was about to achieve that goal. All that remained of their unholy trio was this man. And he was about to die. No hunting trip had ever gone this smoothly.

  His unease intensified as he applied pressure, pulling the trigger steadily toward his shoulder. He wasn’t sure which happened first – whether the round left the barrel or the man rolled over. Regardless, once the round was discharged everything moved in slow motion. A neat hole surrounded by a halo of cracks appeared in the window, blood flared up and out, and the headboard splintered with the slug’s impact.

  ____________

  HE’D BEEN A LIGHT sleeper since his days in the military, drifting in that hazy world between the conscious and unconscious and able to snap from one to the other in an instant. Emmet Hedder rolled over and felt a searing heat in his upper right arm. The disturbing sensation of being watched had interrupted his dreams moments earlier, and the fire in his arm brought him to full wakefulness. He reacted instantly, shoving his left hand under the pillow, grabbing his Glock, and rolling out of the covers to the floor in a smooth movement. Ducking his head under the bed, he looked for feet and legs, saw none, and fired high through the window, the bullet piercing a top pane.

  A scrambling sounded from outside. Emmet tightened his stomach muscles to raise his upper body and peek over the window sill. No one was visible in the moon-drenched backyard. Adrenaline screamed through his body and his left hand trembled as he reached up and ripped two extra magazines from the bottom of the bedside table drawer, then found his wallet on the table itself. His tennis shoes were near the bed and he slipped his bare feet into them, then pulled the small duffel from beneath the bed with his uninjured arm.

  Again, he looked over the window sill and saw no movement. He breathed deeply and then rolled onto all fours, hissing against the pain, and crawled to the bedroom door, standing only when he was away from the windows.

  The hall seemed to bend out and away when Emmet gained his feet, but he rested against the cool wall to let his vision clear before hurrying toward the kitchen. He crouched as he passed the open bathroom door so as not to be seen through the small window. Emmet stopped at the end of the hallway and poked his head into the kitchen for a quick look through the windows above the sink. Nothing.

  Squatting, he duck-walked across the linoleum floor, wincing as his tennis shoes squeaked against the clean surface. A cool sweat bathed his face and he took a steadying breath, then grabbed his keys from their hook, yanke
d open the outside door, and dove for his truck.

  ____________

  THE SHOOTER DROPPED WHEN the shot exploded from the bedroom and crab-walked along the house to a shadowy cluster of trees, a startled smile on his face. As quietly as possible, he ejected the spent casing into his homemade brass catcher and slipped a new round home. This was an unexpected turn of events, but a strangely exhilarating one.

  He heard a door bang open and the pickup’s engine roar to life. Running through the carport, he lifted the rifle to his shoulder and aimed, following the little truck’s tail lights as it careened out of the drive, bounced over the curb, and sped down the road. Slowly, he lowered his weapon and watched to see if lights went on in any of the nearby houses. All was still and dark.

  He trod quietly to his truck, placed the rifle in its special compartment, and drove away. The smile was still on his lips, for the hunt was on.

  “You want to play, Emmet? Let’s play. Run, little rabbit,” he whispered, “run.”

  CHAPTER 19

  HER HEADLIGHTS FLASHED ACROSS three sets of tail lights and an unusual lump by the front porch. Cass looked closer and a riding lawn mower materialized from the gloom. Her brothers and father were home, and it looked as if Goober had come out for a late night visit. She wondered what in the world could’ve brought Goober out after dark. It was a time of day he studiously avoided, due to his fervent belief in the monster-world. She climbed from her pickup’s cab and waved at the solitary figure marching back and forth in front of the house across the road. The shotgun Herman the German carried bounced on his shoulder as he lifted a hand in salute without breaking pace.

  She stretched and admired the Elliot’s porch roof. During the first few days of the banishment, Cass was in a state of perpetual motion, running and lifting weights first thing in the morning; pacing the house as she scoured the newspapers; and doing some long neglected deep cleaning, stopping only in the evenings to devour Bruce’s collection of thrillers by Daniel Silva, John Connolly, and an indie author called Russell Blake. It was only when Bruce came home and found his bedroom spotless, his closet arranged by color and season, and the books on his shelves organized by author and subject matter that he took drastic action. He borrowed tools from the college and as soon as Cass came in from her run the following morning, the two of them started work on the sagging front porch. Together they leveled it with a jack and rebuilt worn supports; pried out rotted lumber and replaced it with pressure-treated wood; laid shingles; and finally, sanded the rough spots where paint was peeling, used caulk to fill the seams, and covered the entire area with fresh paint. Although Cass had played the role of apprentice, she felt some pride of ownership for the work. And if she focused only on the porch, she could imagine a normal, functional family living here.