by Cat Connor
Aidan had been quiet for some time. “I’m coming.”
“Fine,” I snapped. “Can we get going?” I could have been nicer, but nice was sliding out of my reach. The whole situation seemed ridiculous. How can you lose someone in Mauryville? One main road, four side streets, and they lost him!
Mac nudged me. “Come on then.” He stopped at the door. “We’ll be back as soon as—”
Caine interrupted him, “Utmost care required.”
Four
Seasons Of Wither
By the late afternoon light, the house didn’t look too bad. There were no signs of life – a good thing, as I live alone. I could see boards over the broken windows in the living room.
“What’s with the boarded windows?” Aidan asked.
“There was a small incident in the early hours of this morning,” I replied. “I’ll tell you about it later, let’s just do this.”
“You will need a copy of the police report for the insurance claim,” Aidan said and handed me his keys.
“I’m not losing my no-claims bonus over a couple of broken windows,” and unlocked the front door.
I left both men in the living room and ran upstairs. The shower I wanted would have to wait. Brushing my teeth, washing my face, then dabbing the area around the wound, I inspected it for the first time. The cut ran in a slight diagonal from my hairline to a finger’s width from my right eyebrow. No wonder it pulled and stung whenever I moved my brow. It didn’t look as though it would scar badly.
I let my hair fall back, removing the wound from sight. I dumped my toothbrush, cleanser and other indispensable female items into a backpack, dragged a hairbrush through my hair, and then tossed the brush in with everything else. I hunted for my mascara and found it in my gym bag. After careful application, my eyes came to life. Satisfied with the lashes, I dropped the mascara into my bag, and then rechecked to make sure I had everything a girl could need.
Changing into a clean blue top and fresh jeans, I threaded a brown belt through the loops, and snapped my spare holster to it. On the opposite side to my holster, I clipped my badge in its black leather cover. Grabbing clothes from my drawers, I rolled everything to fit into the backpack. From my closet, I took a pair of brown leather cowboy boots, tugged them on, and went back to the closet for a tan leather jacket.
I still needed to get my laptop and cell phone from the kitchen.
Mac and Aidan waited at the foot of the stairs; Mac appeared tight-lipped and troubled.
“What?” I asked.
“Come and look at this.” He took my arm and pulled. I handed Aidan my backpack as Mac tugged me some more.
“What’re you doing?” I asked. He kept on pulling until I stood at the kitchen door. The room was a mess. Chairs upturned and wrecked, the table littered with broken china and splintered wood. Smashed glass glinted like fallen stars in the late afternoon sun. Blood covered almost everywhere I could see.
The knife block from the counter had tipped over. I counted seven knives strewn across the work surface. One was missing. My eyes searched for the missing knife.
I found it by the back door, covered in blood. A splatter pattern ran partway around the walls and across the cabinets. A knot tightened in my chest.
“Oh, my God,” I said. “It didn’t look like this last night.” I pointed to the splatter and pooled but not congealed blood by the outside door. “Whoever bled like this is dead.” My mind raced. It was possible that someone’s life ended in my kitchen, but whose and by whose hand? Where the hell was Carter?
Mac pulled me back into his arms and whispered hoarsely into my ear, “It could’ve been you!”
“But it wasn’t,” I replied. “It wasn’t.”
“We need to get out of here,” he said.
I wanted to leave, but I couldn’t walk away from a crime scene. My cell phone and my laptop were splattered with blood. Great! They were now part of a crime scene. The day had just gotten a lot worse.
“Got your cell?” I asked.
Mac released one arm and tugged his cell from his jeans pocket. I took it and punched Caine’s phone number from memory.
“Did you get prints from the kitchen last night?” I asked.
“Yes, the local police handled it.”
“Was there crime tape anywhere or did they finish processing my kitchen?”
“It was completed at first light – tape removed, windows boarded. What’s going on?”
“We need a forensic team,” I told him, “and I need a new laptop and cell phone.”
“You’re at home?”
“Yes. My kitchen is dripping in blood.” I ended the call and gave Mac his phone. “Let’s go outside.”
Aidan stood by the stairs, still holding my backpack. His mouth twisted in a way I had never seen before. He leaned on the wall and stared towards the kitchen.
“Aidan, come here,” I said. He moved as if he were sleepwalking. “Snap out of it, Aid! Let’s go.”
He followed us outside and sat on the porch steps. He sat there staring at the ground in front of him. I motioned to Mac and we walked over to the lawn, still in sight of Aidan, but out of earshot.
“He’s acting like he’s never seen blood before.”
Mac gave me a look, followed by, “Cut him some slack that was a big mess.”
“It’s not like there’s a body in the middle of it,” I replied, aware that whoever made that mess might still be around. Mac and I both scanned the trees as we waited. I looked over at Aidan. He hadn’t moved.
Aidan’s voice rang out, “You still worried about losing your no-claims bonus?”
“Not so much,” I replied.
Mac’s cell phone rang. Our shoulders touched as he answered.
“They’re ten minutes away.” Mac’s mouth was inches from my ear, his voice low.
“Good, then we can leave.”
“And ... there is still no sign of Carter.”
We waited as patiently as possible until we heard the distinctive thwokka thwokka of helicopter rotors as a chopper came over the ridge.
I watched it hover above the tree line, black and menacing. It descended just as a black Ford Crown Victoria approached. The helicopter bumped to a landing twenty yards away. The car stopped close by us.
Caine hauled out as soon as the door flew open, ignoring us and waving to the helicopter. Three men jumped out before the rotor blades came to a stop, wearing FBI jackets and carrying black bags.
Caine turned to face me. “In my car you will find a new cell phone, same number as your previous cell and another laptop.”
“Thank you.”
“I want you out of here, now.” There was no mistaking his zero-nonsense tone. Lucky for him I didn’t feel like hanging around. For once I wasn’t about to argue.
“We’ll take Aidan back to Holly’s, then go,” Mac told him.
We all turned to look at Aidan sitting on the step with my bag at his feet.
“Call me later,” Caine said to me. His lip twitched. It wasn’t a smile: It was a stress twitch. I knew when he heard what I wanted next, his twitch would escalate into a major tick.
“I want my car.” I waited for his twitching to stop.
Caine’s expression hardened even more. “Where are the keys?”
I mentally traced events of the last few days until I remembered where I’d left them. “In my office.” I hoped.
“Do something with your brother while I get them.”
I removed the cell and laptop from Caine’s car, while Mac persuaded Aidan to come with us. I took my bag from Aidan.
He looked into my eyes. “What the fucking hell happened in your kitchen?”
“I don’t know. But I think someone died.”
“Is this job related? Did someone come after you because of who you are?”
“I doubt it.”
“Some random stranger decided to kill someone in your kitchen?”
“Get in the truck, Aidan. I have no answers yet.”<
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“You must have some idea.”
“Not yet I don’t. Try a little patience.”
Aidan climbed into Mac’s truck; he was not a happy camper. I waited for Caine.
Caine pulled my car up on the grass and jumped out. “The car’s clean. Get going.”
“I’ll follow you to Holly’s,” I called to Mac.
We deposited Aidan with Holly. I gave her a brief rundown of the blood bath that was once my kitchen and expected Aidan to go into greater detail once we’d left.
Mac and I drove off. This time I had the lead. I found myself watching for signs of Carter or a dead body on the roadside and in ditches. By the time we reached Lexington, I was in dire need of coffee. I could see Mac in my rearview mirror. I called his cell.
“How about dropping into a café.”
“Coffee ...” Mac replied, “… directions.”
“Just stick close. I’m pretty sure my indicators work.”
Minutes later, we turned into the parking lot outside an innocuous looking double-story, red-brick building. The smell of fresh coffee floated on the autumnal breeze as did leaves from the large oak trees that flanked the building and parking lot. I counted eight cars in the lot, all late models, all tidy. We parked away from the other cars. I reached around, and put the laptop on the backseat, covering it with an old towel. No sense leaving a brand new laptop in plain view to taunt thieves. I took my bag with me. Mac and I entered the café and ordered our coffee.
He looked around the large room then back to me. “A cybercafé.”
“Yeah, so it is … I might check my email while I’m here.” I smiled at Mac. “It’s an illness just like gambling. Hello, my name is Ellie and I am addicted to the Internet.”
“I’ll check mine too, and I think they have now determined there is such a thing as Internet addiction.”
More relaxed now, we took places next to each other at computer terminals. I surveyed the patrons for a few minutes wondering about their lives. Who did they talk to on the Internet? What cars did they own? How many people have they killed?
Mac mumbled something unintelligible.
“What?”
“Glare from the window,” he replied, glancing to his right. The setting sun sent its last golden rays right through the window onto his screen.
“Switch computers.” I inclined my head to my left to an available computer and no glare.
“Nah, it’ll be okay.”
We both checked our mail. I scrolled through fifty emails in my junk folder. The subject lines all urged me to grow a bigger penis. I’m a girl! I moved the two real emails hidden among the spam to my inbox.
There were fifteen other emails in my inbox. My mind stalled when I read the subject line of the most recent.
“Jesus!” Mac exclaimed. He moved closer to his screen.
“What?” I reread the subject line for the fourth time.
“‘Where, oh where, could brown-eyed Carter be?’”
I looked over: he wasn’t reading off my screen.
“I have the same one.” We simultaneously opened the email. No text, just a subject line. I read the subject line again, and looked at the sender’s address. I didn’t recognize it or the name attached, but forwarded it to Caine with a note asking him to check it out.
“Probably Carter being a dickhead,” I said, hoping I sounded convincing, because I had a terrible feeling there was more to it than that.
“Check out the chat room?” Mac asked.
“Yeah, sure.” We both entered the Cobwebs room seconds apart. I typed a quick room greeting and watched the screen as Mac did the same. I took a note of who was in the room. Twelve people, including Stormysky, Bitter_twisted, Metallurgic, Ingesting_donuts, Pebblerock, Fairywing, 4urxtc, DiedMonday, lostAdam, Dhs and us, were all regulars.
Several guests appeared in quick succession; I didn’t recognize any of their nicknames. I glanced at Mac; his frown deepened as I watched.
He looked up. “Check this out, Ellie. Bitter_twisted copied me this instant message she received from Dhs.”
I leaned over and read the message. Dhs seemed to have the hots for Bitter big time. It was just nasty.
“Dhs has always been creepy as hell,” I said, leaning back in my chair. Flashing red on my screen alerted me to an instant message of my own. I felt my heart sink as I saw it was from Dhs. I clicked on it and read the message. He really was creepy and more than a little scary. I wanted Mac to read it and tell me it was nothing.
“Mac, read this.”
He obliged. “‘Oh where, oh where, has the little cat been?’”
It sounded worse when read aloud. “Coincidence?” It seemed weird that two people would choose such similar wording. I’d been in the chat room the previous night and almost certain he’d been in the room when I’d received at least three of the death threats. If that were the case, why did he imply with his message that I had been absent? My only answer was because he was a dickhead.
“Maybe.”
I replied to Dhs with one word, Working.
A minute or so later, he messaged me and said, Welcome back.
I chose to ignore it because he was being an asshole. He knew damn well I was there the night before. I dismissed his weirdness. There were a few poems I wanted to read, all recited in text by Stormysky. And a short, bloody poem had been posted by one of the new people in the room.
“Ack,” Mac said. “Gore. Just what we don’t need.”
Visions of blood splatter danced across my eyes. I typed a polite suggestion to the gory poet asking that he refrain from posting comparable work unless he warned the room first. Similar responses to such poems in the chat room had earned me many death threats. Go figure. My mind toured over the day’s events. Carter used to be a regular in our chat room.
“Hey, Mac, has anyone else mentioned strange emails?”
“No. They all would have sent us an instant message if they had.”
“True.” Lucky us, we were the chosen. Chosen because Carter was a moron – my current theory and so far, it worked for me. “I’m feeling twitchy.”
Mac’s hand covered mine. “I know. Me too.”
A shadow fell. A hand clamped down on my shoulder.
I jumped almost clear out of my skin and snarled like a rabid dog. Mac hissed out a curse as we both turned to find Aidan grinning behind us.
“Moron!” I snapped at him.
“I just came in for a latté on my way home and saw you both looking awful cozy.”
“I’m glad you have recovered,” I said with open sarcasm. “Summoned up enough guts to ask my best friend out yet?”
“I will,” he replied, “when the time is right.”
“Suppose you need to wear big-boy pants and not pull-ups before you ask someone out, huh?”
“You need to get laid,” Aidan whispered into my ear.
He peered over our shoulders for quite a while, with the occasional slurp as he sipped at his latté.
The sipping and slurping stopped, replaced by a gasping, choking sound.
“What the hell?” I mumbled, more to myself than anyone else. I turned to face Aidan.
“You all right?” Mac asked him.
He didn’t look all right – pale and becoming paler by the second. His finger pointed to the windowpane next to Mac. “Look.”
A foggy patch had appeared on the glass. In the middle of the fog, someone had written “Hi.”
I smiled. “Probably a kid.”
At the sound of an email alert, my attention turned back to the computer screen. Life drained from me as I stared at the new mail.
Mac’s voice broke the spell. “‘I know where you are located. IP tracer. PS. I like your blue car. I see you. Do you see me?’”
I looked at him expecting to find him reading from my screen, but he was looking at his own. “I have the same email.”
A weird squeak came from Aidan. We all stared at the window: numbers had appeared under the word, 208.8
5.487.
“What’s that?” Aidan pointed.
“Oh, shit!” I reminded myself to breathe. “That’s an IP address.”
Pulling my new cell from my pocket, I hoped that Caine had at least added his cell number to the address book on it.
Mac’s eyes and mine met. I mouthed, “He’s here.”
Mac stood up. I watched as he went over to the counter.
It took forever for Caine to answer. When he did, I spoke first, “We need police. We’re at the Interscape café on Waddell Street, Lexington. Carter may be here.”
“Sit tight. Do not leave the building.” That may have been a direct order … hard to tell over a cell phone. Instructive tone can be confusing over distance.
“I need to have a look around.”
“From the inside only. Local police are on the way.”
“Thanks.” I ended the call before he demanded to know why we were at a café and not halfway to Fairfax.
Mac came back. “They have their own servers, I just asked. That is one of the IP addresses they use.”
“Ping and trace routing software,” I said.
“More than likely,” Mac replied.
Aidan still stared at the window. Mac looked at me, and I saw his gaze veer as he said, “What the fuck?”
I followed his eyes to the far window, to another windowpane, another message: C u soon.
A chill ran down my spine. I shivered.
I’m okay.
“I’m going to have a look,” I announced. “You both stay put.” With a degree of trepidation, I dragged myself to my feet.
“No,” Aidan said. A few heads turned among the patrons. He lowered his voice. “We all go together or not at all.”
I considered his response. It sure sounded reasonable from where I stood. No way in hell was I going to let either of them step out the café door.
“I have a thirty-five mil camera in the glove compartment of my car. I need to get it to photograph these windows.”
“Oh, man,” Mac said. I knew he didn’t like my plan. “Are you armed, Ellie?”
“Always.” I flashed him a wink and opened my jacket to reveal my Glock 17 snug in its holster at my hip. “Can we do this before the evidence evaporates?”
They nodded. I sensed a lack of enthusiasm as they accompanied me to the door. I felt my pockets. No keys. Aidan must’ve lifted them.