The Killer in Me

by Winter Austin

  Ma sighed. “She’s been through the wringer, and Brent ain’t out of the woods yet. Let her be.”

  How . . . Christian of her. This, coming from a woman who had been nothing but a flagrant thorn in the side of Pratt Meyer for years. Far as Elizabeth knew, not once had she ever lent a giving hand to the Meyers. And the same for them, even after Henry’s and Daniel’s deaths.

  “You, above all people, know the distress your being here puts on Pratt.” Elizabeth stepped toward the Kauffmann matriarch. “And you relished the chance to poke that beast.”

  “I relish nothing. In times of tragedy, I take the high road. Family is family, no matter the distance or the estrangement. When I lost my Daniel, Sophie was there for me.”

  Now that revelation Elizabeth found suspect. Why would Sophie support Ma when the older woman had it out for her husband every chance she got? And was Sophie aware that Ma was still throwing around accusations against Pratt for Daniel’s death?

  This whole thing made no sense.

  Unless there was an ulterior motive on Ma’s part. Elizabeth didn’t put it past the woman. Inching closer to Ma, she lifted a finger to the other woman’s face. “I don’t know what game you’re playing, but I’ll see that it ends.”

  Ma glared at the appendage, and her features tightened. “Fine words coming from you.”

  From the corner of her eye, Elizabeth caught movement. She looked over her shoulder. Hovering in the doorway, features strained, Stephen glanced from his mother to Elizabeth.

  “Mama?”

  “It’s all right, baby. The sheriff was just asking me a few questions,” the old crow croaked.

  Elizabeth backed from Ma. Stephen’s taut expression melted into a lopsided smile.

  His gaze tracked to Elizabeth and settled there. “Mama, we need to depart,” he said, his tone more cultured than that of his family.

  Speaking of which. “Where is Karl?”

  Ma passed Elizabeth to join her son. “He’s working. Like a good boy.”

  Karl, a good boy? Only in the eye of the beholder.

  “Sophie, dear, Stephen has a meetin’ he needs to be at. I’ll be back quick as a flash if you need me.”

  “Thank you, Martha.”

  With parting smirk, Ma left. Stephen right behind her.

  Elizabeth’s taut muscles slackened, and she nearly collapsed. Was this what Joel referred to as situational awareness fatigue? An adrenaline crash of sorts after a tense confrontation. She didn’t like it.

  Her refereeing skills no longer needed, it was time to move on. “Sophie, I will speak with Pratt. Please avoid any more clashes with him.” She quit the waiting room.

  Her forced march slowed the farther she got from the waiting room. The last twenty-four plus hours had been hellish, and the next twenty-four did not look any better. She needed sleep, she needed peace, and she wanted everyone to stop finding ways to drive her batshit crazy.

  Rounding the corner, Elizabeth reached the bank of elevators and caught one going up—alone. Tucked in a corner, she sagged into the juncture and wedged her head inside the V, closing her eyes for the brief ride. Knotted muscles in her shoulders tightened. Prickles raced up her neck, into the back of her head. A jolt of energy would be much appreciated.

  “Fifth floor.”

  Disembarking, Elizabeth followed the signs directing her to ICU. A nurse in dark blue scrubs spoke to Dominic. The doctor turned and lifted his chin to Elizabeth.

  “Thank you for that,” he said in a lowered voice when she joined him.

  “I still don’t get why she was even here, and what Sophie was thinking asking her to be here.” She peeked past his shoulder. “Is Pratt still with him?”

  “Yes. I gave him a few extra moments.” Dominic massaged the back of his neck. “Brent’s blood pressure isn’t stabilizing. If my measures don’t work, I’ll have to take him back into surgery.”

  The exhaustion took on a deeper level. She wanted to sink to the floor and not get up.

  “Honest opinion, Dominic.” Elizabeth leveled her best pleading eyes on him. “Will Brent ever return to law enforcement?”

  “Honest opinion? First, I want to make sure he doesn’t die.” Right there was the reason Dominic Thorpe, even in all his arrogance, was the best.

  “Can I see him?”

  “For a few minutes. Brent is still out of it, so he won’t talk.” He turned and started walking down the hall. “Did he say anything to Deputy Dayne about who shot him?”

  “No. She didn’t even think to ask.”

  Elizabeth followed Dominic to the lone room with beeping and whooshing machines. She lingered outside the sliding glass door, glimpsing the IV in the hand of her young deputy when the doctor parted the curtains. A moment passed before Pratt and Dominic exited the room.

  Coming to a halt at her side, Pratt stayed facing the wall behind her. “Elizabeth.”

  “Pratt.” She kept her gaze glued to the slit in the curtains revealing a sliver of the young deputy’s body connected to all those machines.

  “The deputy who was with him.”

  “Deputy Dayne.”

  “Thank her for doing what she could to save him.” He closed his sheeny eyes. “Please.”

  Gripping Pratt’s shoulder, she squeezed. “I will. She and Brent were getting along well together.”

  They stood that way for a few clicks of the second hand. Pratt straightened his shoulders, and Elizabeth’s hand slipped away.

  “Do you have any regrets?” he asked a moment later.

  “More than I care to express.”

  “How do you cope with them?”

  She sighed. “I let them go.” Shoring up her walls, she took a step into the ICU room. “Pratt.” She looked back, meeting the man’s troubled gaze. “I will find who did this. And they will pay for their sins.”

  A mere twitch of his head was all the acknowledgment she got before he walked away. Elizabeth didn’t bother to watch him leave. Instead, she stepped into the sterilized atmosphere.

  “Hey there, Brent. It’s Ellie.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  She was going cross-eyed from all this reading and thinking.

  Closing her eyes and lowering her head, Lila rubbed her forehead. She couldn’t recall the last half hour’s worth of reading.

  A clack on her desktop. Lundquist swung a chair around, slid up flush to her desk, and straddled it. A cream-colored cup sat between them.

  “What’s that?”

  “Chai tea.” Lundquist scooted the cup closer to her. “My sister says it’s better for you than coffee.”

  The Viking had a sister. Was she as imposing and nosy as her brother?

  Lila took the hot beverage and sipped. Hallelujah! The sister knew how to make a proper cup of chai. Lila’s last good one came from a little hole-in-the-wall café in a part of Chicago only the foolishly brave ventured. Two weeks before the attack, she’d been there running down a lead on a turf dispute that had killed a ten-year-old girl. If incidents like that had been the only type of homicides she’d had to deal with, she wouldn’t have come onto her attacker’s radar.

  “You still with me?” Lundquist’s inquiry dragged her back to the present.

  Setting the cup down, she shuffled through her notes. “I never left.”

  “Looked like you were off somewhere.”

  Head cocked to the side, she crisscrossed her arms over her mess. “Is there a reason why you’re bothering me?”

  “I got results on the DNA.”

  “That quick?”

  “I asked a favor to get it fast-tracked. Having some comparable evidence helped move it along.” He reached over to his desk and snatched a sheet of paper dangling on the edge, then held it out to her. “Our freezer guy matches the semen sample from Regan.”

  “Which makes sense if he was her boyfriend.” Lila took the page and studied it.

  “As a bonus, his prints were in the system.”

  Her eyes widened. “He had a rec
ord?”

  “Meet Robert ‘Bobby’ Pelham. A notorious Narcos wannabe. It seems he wanted to get into the big-time drug dealing game, but mostly ripped off small-time dealers.”

  “You called the Romeoville and Oak Park police departments?”

  “Part of my job description. Mr. Pelham decided to take on the wrong gang and ended up on the bad side of an undercover operation that landed him in jail. He did his time and when he got out, he met Regan.”

  “In the middle of this comes Maya, who thought her cousin hung the moon. And all three formed a group of drug buddies.”

  Drugs. It always came back to the drugs. The girls using, the meth lab in the middle of nowhere, the sheriff’s determination to end the drug and criminal problem in the county. Drugs. What was it Cecil had always drilled into her?

  Follow the most obvious angle.

  In this case, it was the drugs. The girls had a history of using heroin or cocaine. Meth wasn’t their preferred drug, but it wasn’t out of the question for them to change it up. Try something new. More exciting than the same-ole, same-ole.

  “What was Pelham’s drug of choice?”

  Lundquist sorted through some notes and pulled out the page he wanted. “He was a bit of an all-arounder but preferred cocaine.”

  “What were the dealers pedaling when he tried to steal their wares?”

  “Coke and crystal meth.”

  There was the connection. Yet, Maya showed no signs of using either one of those—she was a heroin user. And they still didn’t have the toxicology reports back on either one of the girls. Lila had to connect these threads.

  “Maya’s parents wanted to separate her from Regan.” Lila tapped a steady rhythm on her files. “Regan was dating a known criminal with aspirations of being a kingpin. What am I not seeing here?”

  “Money?” Lundquist provided.

  Lila ceased her drumbeat. “With Pelham’s record, their little group decided they wanted more than to just get high.” She slapped the top of her notepad. “That’s it!”

  Her outburst startled Fontaine, Georgia, and Fitzgerald, who had come in an hour ago.

  Lundquist scowled. “What’s it?”

  “Our little trio wanted to be a merry band of thieves. That’s why Maya was asking around the school for information on who was selling in the area.” She stood up. “Think about it. Why would Regan and Bobby come over here when they could have their choice of any place in the Chicagoland area?”

  “Because all of you Illinoisans think we Iowans are backwoods hicks,” Fitzgerald said.

  “There’s that, I guess,” Lila conceded. “No, it’s exactly what they would have thought. Easy targets. They’d think if there was any operation worth taking over it would be in some small town with a tiny police presence. Few gangs—”

  “Try no gangs,” Fontaine corrected.

  “Okay, no gangs but crooked cops. Or at least there used to be.”

  “But if that Morton building we found last night is any indication, we’ve got more than just a simple, small-time operation going on around here,” Lundquist said.

  “And somehow Bobby, Regan, or Maya found out about it. Here was their pot of gold.”

  “We don’t even know who was running that lab.”

  Lila stepped out from behind her desk and marched over to the huge corkboard Fontaine had been tacking on pictures and information throughout the morning. An old-time version of the present day dry-erase evidence board.

  “We all agree that building had someone with deep financial pockets funding that operation. Who around here has that kind of money? Or, better yet, who didn’t before but is now suddenly flush with cash?”

  The three men blinked at each other. Lila glanced to Georgia, sitting back in her chair, arms crossed, watching the four deputies, amused.

  “Who, Georgia?” Lila threw at her.

  “Pratt Meyer is the only one in this entire county who has that kind of money.”

  “But?”

  “But he’s too far above soiling himself with the likes of drug manufacturing.”

  Lila smiled. “Ma Kauffmann then.”

  Fontaine barked. Lila looked at the man.

  “You’re smoking weed if you think Ma has any kind of capital. That family barely has two pennies to squeeze between all three of them.”

  “So you think.” Lila leveled him with a point-blank stare. “The ones who are sophisticated and smart don’t flaunt their fortunes. They kept it all lowkey and out of the public eye.”

  He scowled. “Pratt Meyer is more likely to be the man behind that operation than Ma ever will be.”

  “I find that insinuation suspect.”

  They all turned as Bentley tore into the office with a bark, her owner hot on her trail.

  “On what basis, Sheriff?” Fontaine snapped.

  “The basis of seeing that man in utter shellshock after witnessing his son hooked up to a bank of machines keeping him alive.” Sheriff Benoit joined Lila in front of the corkboard. “And finding out that Ma has somehow ingratiated herself with Sophie Meyer.”

  “Come again?” Fontaine sounded incredulous at this bit of news.

  “Yeah, had me confused too.” Benoit looked at Lila. “You’re onto something. What is it?”

  “She thinks our three victims were trying to rob or take over that meth operation,” Fitzgerald said.

  Benoit’s gaze didn’t waver from Lila. “And?”

  “And . . . I’m not off base with this.”

  Shifting to put her back to the board, Benoit gestured for Lila to take the floor. “Prove it.”

  Public speaking had not been her forte. Lila glanced at the people in the room, heat consuming her body.

  “We are all colleagues here.”

  Lila frowned at the sheriff. How did that woman—? Never mind. Drawing her shoulders back, she took command, laying out her thoughts. As she reached her conclusion, there was an expression of pride on Benoit’s face.

  “Neva McKinnley? How do you place her in all of this?” Benoit asked.

  “Her autopsy showed she’d been restrained, and her death was caused by a fall down the steps, which we can conclude she was most likely pushed.”

  “Well, though she’s not here to confirm it, we can rest assured that Neva McKinnley heard what she heard Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning.” Benoit tapped the side of her thigh. “We just need to figure out if Maya was actually in that house and who had her there. And was she killed there?”

  Lila turned to the board. “The house is in the general vicinity of that meth lab. I think she ran from the lab when Regan and Bobby were killed.” She looked at Benoit. “She was hiding from their killers in that place, but they found her.”

  “Seems logical to me,” the sheriff said.

  “But why leave Maya’s body in that open field?” Fitzgerald asked.

  “She was a message,” Benoit supplied.

  “To who?” Fontaine asked.

  Lila’s gaze traveled to the notations on Meyer’s shooting. She turned to the sheriff. “You say Martha Kauffmann and Sophie Meyer are suddenly buddy-buddy.”

  “Ma claims family support.”

  “But why would Ma want to have anything to do with a Meyer? Even if Sophie is her distant cousin?” Lundquist asked. “It makes no sense.”

  “Brent knew his shooter.” Lila’s gaze strayed back to the board. “Neva McKinnley knew her killer.” She tapped her chin, squinting at the pictures and reports hanging there, conjuring them together to give her the answer. “She’s keeping tabs on Brent’s situation.”

  “Why?” Benoit asked.

  “Because she knows who shot him. If Brent talks . . .”

  The sheriff’s features paled. “Deputy Dayne, are you certain?”

  “Her husband dies under suspicious circumstances. Her son is killed in an accident she claims is more than it seems. Both men were connected to drugs in some way. That’s an awful lot of coincidences piling up with her name on them.”


  “I still say you’re barking up the wrong tree,” Fontaine interjected. “There’s no way Ma has any kind of financial means to create a meth lab like that.”

  “She would if she went into a partnership with someone.”

  “We find that partner,” Sheriff Benoit said, “we find our shooter. And we find our killer.” She turned to Georgia. “Call the police chief. I need to talk with him.”

  She gripped Lila’s arm and escorted her into her office. Once through the door, Benoit kicked it shut and freed Lila to circle behind her desk.

  “Give me your honest assessment. Who do you think is Ma’s partner?”

  “It can’t be Pratt Meyer—they hate each other. And she keeps lobbing complaints against him.”

  “Maybe it’s someone from outside the community?”

  “That could be possible, but my gut says it’s local. How does one get to Ma?”

  Benoit faced her windows that looked out on the courthouse lawn and the backside of the veterans’ memorial. Pensive lines marred the sheriff’s features. “Ma is crafty, a regular old pit viper. You don’t come at her.” She pressed her knuckles to her lips.

  “If I’m right about her, then maybe she isn’t wrong about how her son died.”

  Benoit lowered her hand. “But who would have wanted to see Daniel dead? Surely not her partner in all of this?”

  “Do you see Pratt Meyer doing it?”

  “What would he have to gain by killing off Daniel?” Benoit rotated. “Do you think Pratt is in the drug business?” She frowned and shook her head. “I just can’t see him lowering himself to that level. Fraud, now that I can see him doing.”

  “Sheriff, what caused the rift between Pratt and Brent?”

  Sighing, Benoit pulled out her chair and sank into the large leather beast. “Anything I tell you is speculation on my part. Brent has never revealed to anyone what drove him and his father apart.”

  Grabbing a chair, Lila slid it closer to the desk and sat on the edge. “Would his wife know? Would she be willing to say?”

  A knock on the door preceded Georgia’s entry. “Police chief on line one.”

  Benoit grabbed up the phone and punched the blinking button. “Ed, I need a favor. Would you be able to spare an officer or two to stand guard outside my deputy’s hospital room?”