by Jana DeLeon
“Then you’re going to be great at it. Thanks again for your help. I’m going to get this information to the police and see what they find.”
“I hope they find Ethan and that he’s still alive,” Brittany said. “Can you let me know?”
“As soon as the police say it’s okay to release information, I promise to call you.”
Shaye shoved her laptop into its case and hurried out of the sorority house, dialing Jackson’s number on the way to her car. This could be the big break they’d been looking for.
Jackson answered on the first ring.
“I’ve got something,” she said.
20
Jackson studied the GPS as Grayson drove down the narrow dirt road into the swamp. He’d been floored when Shaye called him to say she’d broken the code and even more surprised that it revealed GPS coordinates. They’d been looking for something to break, and this might be the thing that brought down the house of cards.
“Still no sign of Frazier?” Grayson asked.
“No. I spoke with the detectives covering his dorm and he never returned. They asked around again and no one can remember seeing him yesterday.”
“What about classes?”
“One of his professors isn’t due in until noon but the other two he had classes with said he was a no-show.”
Grayson shook his head. “What the hell is going on here? If Frazier took Ethan, why return him? Why didn’t he kill him like the others?”
“Panic. Guilt. Maybe Shaye’s theory of Brett working with George Moss would explain it. Brett was okay with the others, but couldn’t do it to his roommate. Honestly, I have no idea.”
“That’s one of the most difficult things about this job. You know the perp has a reason, and to him, it’s perfectly logical. But sometimes it’s almost impossible for sane people to connect the dots.”
Jackson nodded. “I’ve tried to connect the victims every way possible and I’m coming up blank. The only things they have in common are they’re all college students and they’ve probably all been inside Moss’s store at some point.”
“Not exactly a smoking gun.”
“Maybe there’s not one for us to find. Maybe it’s as simple as the victims resemble people Brett hates or who he feels wronged him in some way. Or George. Or neither of them, because the killer could turn out to be someone else entirely.”
Grayson shook his head. “My money’s on Frazier, and I’m really hoping we catch him at wherever we’re going. Probably a shack somewhere.”
Jackson scanned their surroundings. “I’ll take a shack over a crypt.”
The last time Jackson had been in a crypt—and he hoped it really was the last time—he’d found an emotionally broken Shaye, whose memory of her past had flooded back in and who’d just witnessed the death of her captor and the suicide of her grandfather. Sometimes, he had nightmares of the stone prison that Shaye had spent so many years in, and he always awakened so angry that it took him hours for the feeling to subside.
“Well, someone’s been out here,” Grayson said, pointing to tire tracks in the softer ground.
“And recently,” Jackson agreed. “It looks like we need to veer off to the right in about fifty yards. The location is about twenty yards after the turn.”
Due to the poor condition of the road, Grayson was already driving slow, but he backed off the accelerator a bit more and they both started scanning the brush, looking for any sign of a structure or another road. Fifty yards came and went and Jackson was starting to chalk the entire thing up to bullshit when Grayson slammed the brakes and pointed.
“There!”
The turnoff from the main road had large branches in front of it, leaving it almost hidden from view, which is exactly what the killer wanted. The ground in front of the turnoff showed no signs of passage by a vehicle.
“He swept the ground,” Jackson said.
Grayson nodded. “I think we should go in on foot. The car offers an easy target. He could just position himself somewhere in the swamp and pick us off when we open the doors.”
Jackson grabbed two sets of binoculars from a duffel bag in the backseat and handed one to Grayson, and they climbed out of the car and slipped behind the makeshift blockade and into the swamp. Jackson, who’d had the most tracking experience, took the lead. The car path was overgrown but because the forest surrounding it was so dense, it was still easy to follow. Someone had been using it recently, but the trampled foliage wasn’t completely brown, so it hadn’t been in use for too long.
They crept down the path until they could see a clearing. Jackson pointed to the swamp and stepped off the path and into the brush. The path offered their opponent too much line of sight, and they would be harder to spot moving through the dense forest. At the edge of the clearing, Jackson stopped and lifted his binoculars, peering through a thick hedge.
“There,” Jackson said. “Twenty yards in and to the right.”
Grayson nodded. “I see it.”
“There’s a padlock on the door. It looks new.”
“Sounds like the right place. No car there, though.”
“No. But there’s water nearby. He could also be accessing it by boat.”
“Can we get any closer?”
“Yeah. If we skirt the edge of the forest around to the side, it will put us half the distance we are now.”
“Maybe we’ll luck out and there won’t be any windows.”
Jackson headed off to the right, leading them around the clearing and near the side of the shed. As the side came into their field of vision, Jackson was relieved to see there were no windows. They inched up to the edge of the forest and Jackson pointed to the ground on the side of the shed.
“Looks like someone dug a hole,” Jackson said.
“Maybe it was Ethan.”
Jackson sat the binoculars on the ground and pulled out his nine-millimeter. “Let’s go see if we can figure it out.”
They crept out of the woods and inched toward the shed, listening for any sound inside. When they reached the side, Jackson knelt down and looked through the hole. He rose back up and pointed to his legs, then the shed, hoping Grayson would get that he could see legs inside.
Grayson nodded and pressed his ear against the side of the structure. Jackson did the same, but nothing moved inside. Grayson pointed to the front of the shed and they moved around the side. Grayson took position several feet away from the shed at the corner and Jackson stood a couple of feet away right in front of the door. He looked over at Grayson and nodded.
Grayson lifted his pistol and fired a single shot into the lock, breaking it off the door. The instant he fired the shot, Jackson kicked open the door and burst in, gun in firing position. It took only a second for Jackson to recognize the figure attached to the legs. The body slumped in the corner belonged to Brett Frazier.
Jackson lowered his gun and rushed over to check the student’s pulse. “He’s got a pulse.”
Grayson scanned him up and down. “No sign of injury. No blood.”
Jackson looked at both sides of Brett’s neck and pointed to the needle puncture. “Drugged.”
Grayson nodded and pulled out his cell phone. “I’ll get a forensics team out here, but I’m betting this is where Ethan Campbell was held. We need to get him to the hospital.”
As soon as Grayson finished speaking, Brett started to stir. He blinked several times, then looked up at Jackson and bolted upright, a frightened expression on his face.
Jackson pulled out his badge. “I’m Detective Lamotte with the New Orleans Police Department. Are you all right to stand?”
Brett’s expression shifted from frightened to relieved. “Oh my God. When I saw the guns, I thought you were him.”
“Who is him?” Grayson asked.
“The guy that stabbed me in the neck with something.” He reached up and rubbed the side of his neck where the puncture wound was.
“You can identify him?” Jackson asked, getting excited.
> Brett shook his head. “He ambushed me.”
“What were you doing here in the first place?” Jackson asked.
“Looking for Ethan,” Brett answered.
Grayson frowned. “You found Ethan. You dropped him off at the hospital, then fled. Now we find you here, in the location Ethan was probably held captive. So we’ll ask you again, why are you here and how did you know about this place?”
Brett looked back and forth between the two of them and then his eyes widened. “Am I a suspect?”
“What do you think?” Jackson asked.
“No!” Brett struggled to rise from the ground. He was a bit shaky, but finally stood, looking at them. “I didn’t do anything. I swear. I looked on Ethan’s computer and found the code in that journal of his that he thinks no one knows about. I figured out what it was and got the GPS coordinates off that website.”
“Why didn’t you call the police?” Grayson asked. “Two uniforms interviewed you, so you knew we were looking for Ethan. A private detective spoke with you as well.”
“I thought if I found Ethan, it would look good on my résumé.”
“Your résumé?” Jackson asked.
“I’ve been thinking I want to be an FBI agent or maybe CIA. Some cool James Bond shit. So I thought if I could find Ethan and catch the kidnapper then that would give me some leverage over other candidates.”
Jackson stared at the student as if he’d lost his mind. “You thought you were qualified to chase down a killer? This guy has murdered three people and attempted to murder two more.”
Brett paled a bit. “Murdered. For real?”
“Yes.” Grayson looked over at Jackson, and Jackson knew his partner was wondering the same thing he was—was Brett telling the truth, or was this simply more of his elaborate acting?
“The coordinates in Ethan’s journal were from the text he received about Amber Olivier,” Jackson said. “Why would you think Ethan would be in the same place?”
“I don’t know,” Brett said. “Ethan thought the text was about Amber and she wasn’t found until days after she disappeared. I figure the kidnapper had to keep them somewhere, right? Amber couldn’t have been in that coffin the whole time or the funeral home would have noticed. And what are the odds that he stashed them in two different places?”
Jackson clenched his jaw. Brett’s logic was correct, of course, but he still couldn’t wrap his head around the student’s actions.
“Did you find Ethan in this shed?” Grayson asked.
“No. I missed the turnoff the first time. It was hidden pretty good. I drove past it on the road and heard gunshots. I went through the woods in the direction of the gunfire but never saw anyone. Then on the way back to my truck, I saw Ethan on the bank of the bayou. He was messed up bad. So I carried him back to my truck and hauled ass to the hospital.”
“You’d found Ethan,” Grayson said, “so why did you go back to the shed?”
“I didn’t know who the kidnapper was,” Brett said.
“You were planning on apprehending a murderer by yourself?” Jackson asked, still finding the entire story hard to believe.
“I wasn’t going to arrest him or anything. At least, I don’t think I was going to do that. I guess I just wanted to see who it was, then I figured I’d tell you guys.” He frowned. “Now that I think about it, I don’t guess I had a plan. It probably sounds kinda stupid.”
You have no idea how stupid, Jackson thought. “And you never saw anyone either time? Or a vehicle?”
Brett shook his head. “There was an old silver sedan parked at the empty lot where you turn off the highway when I came back the second time. I was thinking it was an odd place to park because there’s nothing around, but then maybe it was someone hunting off season.”
“Make and model?” Jackson asked. “License plate?”
“Toyota Camry. My grandma had one like it for fifteen years. I didn’t even look at the license plate.” Brett shook his head. “I guess I’m not as good at this as I thought I was.”
Jackson held in a sigh. You could throw a rock in New Orleans and hit an old silver Camry. Not to mention that since Brett was still a suspect, nothing he said could be taken as fact.
“Let’s get you to the hospital,” Grayson said. “Then we can revisit this entire thing.”
Jackson could practically feel his partner’s frustration and he completely understood. The hospital would be able to verify if Brett had any drugs in his system, but the puncture wound was located in a place where Brett could have administered the drug to himself. Maybe when Jackson and Grayson arrived, Brett staged the scene to look like he was attacked. Administer a tiny dose of the drug so that it was in his system, then claim it had happened earlier.
There was also Shaye’s theory to consider. If Brett was working with someone else, maybe his partner was the one who’d drugged him and locked him up in the shed. But if Brett told the truth, then he’d be implicating himself in three murders and two attempted murders. The student had appeared genuinely surprised when Jackson had mentioned the three deaths, but then he’d managed to look like an idiot the entire time he was attending college, so his acting skills were top-notch.
Maybe once they got him cleared at the hospital and sitting in an interrogation room, Brett would realize just how serious things were. If that didn’t do it, then showing him some pictures of the other victims might be in order. Even if all that failed, they still had DNA, and Jackson was betting on a match to the other victims.
One way or another, Jackson was going to expose the killer.
Shaye’s cell phone rang as she pulled into the hospital parking lot. It was Jackson. She’d spent a couple of hours on pins and needles, waiting to hear if they’d caught the killer or at least found a clue as to his identity. Jackson had texted her when they were on their way back to New Orleans and told her they had Brett Frazier and he’d call her as soon as he could. He’d managed that call while Brett was at the hospital and Shaye had been surprised and confused by the story he told.
The hospital had confirmed a low dose of propofol in Brett’s system, but there was no way to know if it was a large dose that had dissipated over time, which would align with Brett’s claims, or Jackson’s theory that he could have administered a low dose to himself when he heard the car coming. The fact that Brett had been locked inside the shed might indicate another person, but he might have been able to squeeze through the hole. If he’d heard Grayson’s car, he could have injected himself with a tiny bit of the drug, thrown the needle into the swamp, and crawled into the locked shed before Grayson and Jackson got there.
It was risky, but not impossible.
A simpler explanation was that Brett had a partner and he’d decided Brett had outlived his usefulness or knew about Brett’s taking Ethan to the hospital and had decided to make him pay for the betrayal. Based on Shaye’s account of Brett’s run-in with George Moss, Jackson had asked Brett about the argument between the two, but Jackson said Brett appeared confused by the question and said the old coot had accused him of stealing before even though he hadn’t and told him to stay out of his store. Brett had told him to call the police over it.
Unfortunately, everything looked suspicious, but they had no proof that Brett wasn’t telling the truth. Attempting to get brownie points for future law enforcement employment wasn’t the smartest thing to do, especially with no training and regarding a murder investigation, but it also wasn’t the dumbest thing Shaye had seen someone do. So what was the truth? And how could they prove it?
She entered the hospital and headed to Tara’s room. The nurse didn’t even look up at her as she walked by and Shaye relaxed a bit. So far, no one had paid attention to the redhead in rumpled, worn clothes. When she walked into Tara’s room, the girl stared at her and frowned, then her eyes widened.
“Oh my God,” Tara said. “It’s you. I didn’t recognize you.”
“That’s the idea.”
“Well, it’s a good one.�
� Tara was silent for a couple seconds, then asked, “Is there any update on Ethan?”
Shaye nodded. “Jackson spoke with the hospital this morning. Ethan did well overnight and the doctor is more optimistic. He said the more time that passes with no additional issues, the more likely Ethan is to recover. Of course, he still can’t make any predictions about the arm, but the rest of the news was positive.”
Tara sniffed and Shaye could see tears in her eyes. “I can’t believe all of this is happening. They gave me something to sleep last night and I crashed, but when I woke up this morning, I was so confused for a minute. It felt like I’d dreamed it all and then I realized I hadn’t, even though it’s outrageous.”
Shaye nodded. “I’ve done the same thing many times.”
“How do you get past it?”
“Time. No one wants to hear that, because time is something they can’t control. But your mind can’t let go until we find the killer. Not completely.”
“Did the police find Brett yet?”
“Yes. But I’m afraid it’s made things more confusing, not less.” Shaye told Tara about her discovery of the code and everything surrounding the police’s detainment and questioning of Brett.
“He’s got to be lying, right?” The tone of Tara’s voice and her expression broadcast her fear. “He’s got to be the one. No one else makes sense.”
“I honestly don’t know. Things seem to point to Brett being involved but there’s nothing concrete. Jackson is hoping that putting Brett into a room at police headquarters will make him rethink his story.”
“Will they have to let him go?”
“If they don’t charge him, they will have to eventually, but they’ve got some time.”
Tara bit her lower lip. “I hope it’s enough time.”
“Me too. So, are you ready to get out of here?”
“I think so.”
“You don’t sound certain. If you’re not feeling well, I can talk to the doctor and see about your staying another day.”
“It’s not that. I don’t really like it here, but then I suppose most people don’t. I’m sorta scared to go back to my dorm.”