Jayden Roe Mystery 02-The Final Lie

by Lily Campbell

  In the meantime, Jay would stick to this plan. He didn’t like risking lives by working with incomplete information, but he knew he couldn’t stand still. His outward behavior and habits could not change from what they had been before. He thought over Dave’s reactions again. He hadn’t only been monitoring them in the hopes of learning something about the man’s goals. He was certain that his current direction was not going to result in any more warnings like the death of Miranda and the unidentified finger sitting in the freezer downstairs.

  Dave wanted him to find out about the finger. It was one of his intentional leads, just like the bracelet and the dying of Miranda’s hair.

  He felt his trepidation grow slightly as he glanced at the door. He had wanted Dave to look into the sheriff. He wanted him to fall into the trap of finding the non-existent spies in the ranks. It was the first step in having him dismantle his own net. Yet he couldn’t stop his fear that Dave would not only see the ploy, but that his digging into Lloyd would inadvertently lead him to Gary Peters. He had already passed along a warning to Gary to be more careful than normal.

  Jay knew that more people might still die at Dave’s hand before he was ready to take him down. There was nothing he could do about that. If he took him down now, not only would Stella starve to death wherever he was keeping her, but Dave himself would escape the law. So the man had lied about coming from Shreveport. It was hardly a criminal offense, and there was no way anyone would reopen closed serial murders just because they were thought suspicious by Jay.

  This had to be a long game. He would be as careful as he could, but he would not lose sight of his goal. This game had already left blood on his hands.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Jay trotted down the stairs. He needed to safely convince Dave to stay out of this, to let him go alone, otherwise his plan would not work. He wanted the fingernails scraped before it reached the hands of this forensic tech because he had no doubt that the answers he would get back would be censored by Dave.

  He got downstairs and heard Dave’s steps at the top and moved into the kitchen.

  “I was wondering when you were ever going to come up for air.”

  Jay turned at Dave’s voice and gave him a small smile. “We’ve had nothing concrete for so long I was beginning to think the kidnapper had forgotten about me.”

  Dave chuckled and shook his head. “I’m not an expert, but I’d say after all the trouble they’ve been through to get you here in the first place, that is unlikely to ever be possible.”

  Jay nodded and prepared to launch into his prepared speech.

  “I’m going out for a bit. Shall I bring back Chinese for supper?”

  Jay swallowed his own words and tilted his head to the side. “Sounds good. Where you off to?”

  “I got a lead on the sheriff and his men. Turns out their respective wives all go to the same cafe every Thursday. I’m going to check the place out now, see if I can get a good sense of where I might be able to listen in from. As we learned in Salisbury, never underestimate the power of a good gossip.”

  Jay held in a rueful smile.

  “Well, good luck, then.”

  Dave winked. “I will. Back in an hour or so.”

  Jay watched him leave and struggled to swallow his sandwich. Dave had been watching him for a lot longer than Jay was aware of, but hadn’t put together what it might mean. It seemed that Dave didn’t see him as an enemy necessarily. It seemed more likely, now, that Dave didn’t want to defeat him as an enemy, but as a leader. Jay was at the top of his field. If Dave surpassed him, there’d never be any danger of him being caught.

  Jay dumped his lunch in the bin and pulled out the little cooler box for transporting the finger. Joe’s man should already be waiting. It didn’t matter that Jay would be tailed. All Dave’s spies would report was something that he had already told Dave he was planning on doing.

  ***

  Dave arrived at the house just in time for the meeting. Today, other than Lloyd Bailen and Sheriff Du Preez, the mayor’s son, Jack Newman, was also there. He was the one responsible for keeping the media down.

  Dave had arrived on foot and finished donning his mask. Dressed head-to-toe in black, he looked for the other shadow that would be gracing today’s meeting. Amara stepped out a little ahead of him, and he motioned for her to begin their plan.

  “You sure we should be sitting in on this?” Jack was asking as Dave entered the room.

  The sheriff glanced around but didn’t spot Dave in the shadows. “Watch your mouth. If they hear that, I don’t like to think where we’d be at.”

  Jack scowled. “But if we alert the media about Miranda Williams, surely it will be far too public for them to do anything bad to us?”

  “Idiot. Do you think the media will just materialize here? They’ll send snoops out first to make sure that the tip is legit. These people will have plenty of time to make good on their threats.”

  Dave frowned. If the sheriff was really ordering his men to send out information, why was he being so hard line against Jack?

  Lloyd looked more sallow than he had when Dave had first knocked on his door, holding the locket of the only person he cared about—his mother. The woman had been long dead, but Lloyd either didn’t realize or knew it was no good anyway.

  “Both of you shut it. Look, he promised this would be over soon. When it is, we could tell whoever we want about the bodies.”

  “A wise decision.”

  They all jumped, and Dave had to hold back a wave of laughter. He had made a point of bumping into these men separately and randomly around town since his arrival here with Jay, and all of them had dismissed him as everyone always did.

  Except Jay.

  Dave sauntered a few steps forward so that they’d stop squinting into the shadows around him. On the other side of the room, Amara mirrored his moves.

  “Sheriff,” he said softly. Amanda held in her hand the locket that had belonged to Lloyd’s mother, the allergy warning bracelet that was the sheriff’s sister’s, and a lock of fine red hair that belonged to Newman’s wife. “I have become aware of an information leak in your department.”

  The man tensed. “It wasn’t me.”

  His true laugh was cold and promised pain. “Yet you, or rather Anna, will still pay the price if you cannot get it under control.”

  The man paled and nodded vigorously. “I will, I will.”

  “Good. There’s a threat and request that will be put to one of the forensic techs soon. Tell her to comply, but to forward all finds to me first, then follow my instructions if I want anything changed before she passes it on.”

  Again, the man nodded so fervently Dave was sure the action must be hurting his neck. He shifted to the other two.

  “Lloyd. The leak seems to be making use of your people too. Plug it.”

  Lloyd nodded in a defeated kind of way. Faced with the realization that he had no power and no options, he had to follow obediently.

  “And you,” Dave turned to Newman and allowed his tone to fill with even more darkness. “You want out? That is fine by me, though I doubt your lovely, fragile Katelyn would agree.”

  The young man's face flashed from horror to defiance in a moment. “I swear if you hurt her, I will—”

  “You will what? Magically uncover my identity? Or somehow force me to give her back? You all know how this works. Do as I say until I am done with Carthage. If you do, I will leave you the locations of your loved ones. If you don’t, they will all die. Slowly. Painfully. Abandoned.”

  Newman sagged. “I get it. I get it. They were just words. I won’t do anything.”

  “Of course not. Now, I need you to find me a house, similar to this one. I have here a list of supplies that you will put there. My associate,” he gestured at Amara, “will check that everything is ready. You have two weeks.”

  The man seemed unable to take his eyes from the lock of hair, but he nodded all the same.

  Amara stroked a finge
r over the lock. “Pity. I thought I was going to be able to have some fun.”

  They all stared toward her at her words. Dave took the planned exit and vanished back the way he had come. Amara was to wait until they looked for him again and leave unnoticed too.

  He waited only a few minutes before she joined him in the growing dark.

  “You think they’ll behave?”

  Dave nodded. “They will. Get back to prepping Bridgette. You have two weeks.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Jay stepped out of his jeep and tried not to look in the direction of the car that had been following him since. He would have minutes only between the point where they drove past and when a new tail from inside the police station would be informed of his arrival.

  He knew that this tracking hadn’t been done carefully. Dave had obviously left this to another because he would never be so careless. Still, Jay was willing to take advantage of every mistake and loophole the man provided.

  He had already spotted Joe’s man. The tiny snake beside the license plate marked him for what he was. He had parked right beside the car, and one of the dark windows slid down.

  “Played any good games lately?”

  “Yeah. Is the other request I made ready?”

  In response, a big man stepped from the backseat of the car. He would rival Elliot in size, but his face was scarred, as were his arms where huge muscles bulged. “You Jayden Roe?”

  Jay didn’t even notice when a hand carefully retrieved the cooler from the passenger seat. “Sure am. Are you Gregory?”

  “I can do a nail scrape and take a print,” said the soft voice through the window.

  “Good.”

  “Done. Access the chapel aboard Lone Star for the results.” The box appeared in the window, and the big man placed the cooler back as if nothing happened.

  “How long?”

  “A day.”

  “Ok. Let’s go.”

  They reached the side door to the station at the same time a new tail appeared. An officer out for a smoke.

  Jay fought the urge to give the man a cheery wave and cocky smile. His normal behavior was to flaunt his victories, but that was merely because he had never before had an opponent who was smart enough to catch on.

  While he doubted that Dave directly spoke to any of these people, he had little doubt that their orders were to report his movements and any changes in behavior or pattern. As he had been dutifully ignoring them since their arrival, he needed to keep that up for just a little longer.

  Gregory produced a breaker card of Joe’s and swiped it, immediately over-riding the rather poor security system the police building had. He watched the officer's eyes widen in alarm. He pushed off the wall just as they entered the building.

  Jay moved with confidence as he had memorized the building layout.

  “Dr. Daniels?” he called as they entered the lab area. “I need you to accompany us to the morgue.”

  A middle-aged woman with steely blue eyes glanced up from the microscope. “And just who the hell are you?”

  Jay smiled in an impatient way and moved off toward the door that he knew led to the morgue. “It wasn’t a request, Dr. Daniels. Come willingly or my friend here will carry you.”

  Jane Daniels shifted her gaze from Jay to the big man to Gregory. Some of the defiant annoyance in her eyes shifted to fear then astonishment as she watched Jay open a door only a handful of people had the security clearance for.

  Jay gestured to the door. “Shall we?”

  She hesitated but moved with alacrity the second Gregory’s man took a step towards her.

  “You need to tell me who you are,” Her tone was still hard as they entered a room lined with freezers.

  Jay nearly laughed out loud at the ‘under maintenance’ sign across one wall.

  Seriously? That was the bright idea to stop people finding the bodies?

  “I’m the good guy,” Jay responded. “I need the help of someone with your skills, and more importantly, your moral reputation.”

  She looked clearly unimpressed. “What do you want?”

  “I would like an analysis on the finger in this cooler,” Jay requested, not altering his polite tone in the slightest.

  Dr. Daniels looked incredulous, but said nothing, so Jay continued.

  “Your department, led by your corrupt or blackmailed sheriff, had been hiding the existence of a serial killer for a year. The bodies,” his eyes flashed to the drawers that were blocked off, “are recorded upon retrieval and then stored there. All the information is logged into what I imagine he believes to be a secure drive. Of course, it is nothing of the sort to those who have the skills.”

  “Like you?”

  Jay smiled. “Yes. The point, however, is not my hacking, but rather your place in all this.”

  Dr. Daniels bristled. “If you think for even half a second that I’d ever having anything to do with something like that—”

  “I don’t. If I did, there’d have been no point in speaking to you.”

  “So, let’s just say for a minute that I believe all this rubbish. What makes you think I’d risk getting entangled in it?”

  Jay tilted his head to the side, regarding her closely. “Because, fifteen years ago, your daughter visited Seattle. She never returned. Her body was found almost a year later. The report, from what they could tell, showed that she had been tortured, her body broken in specific ways. Cause of death was assumed to be drowning though this wasn’t confirmed.”

  Dr. Daniels had turned pale. Jay stopped talking as she fell back against another table. He took a small step forward and her eyes darted to his.

  “I believe my friend has been taken by the same monster who took your daughter. I want you to help us stop him. For good.”

  She shook her head. “No. The killer was caught.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “Your tails are getting anxious,” Gregory murmured.

  “Keep them busy.”

  Dr. Daniels watched Gregory leave and slowly pushed herself up. “I’m done talking nonsense with you. If that really is—”

  “It is easily proved. Open a drawer.”

  She eyed him for a moment but seemed to decide he wasn’t a total madman. Slowly, she pushed the barrier aside and pulled open a drawer. Jay took in no more than the blond hair before looking away.

  “The damage to her body will match your daughter's.”

  Dr. Daniels ignored him, moving from drawer to drawer, opening and shutting them.

  “I want to see the files. Now.”

  Jay shook his head. “I don’t want to risk your life. This finger was meant to be found by me, and I am meant to know who it belonged to. if you only do that, then they will not harm you.”

  Jane Daniels marched up to him and although she only reached his shoulder, she seemed to be looking down on him. “One, I want your name. Two, I want to verify your claims, and three, if true, I will help you to the best of my ability to catch the real killer.”

  Jay smiled softly. “Very well. Then for now, forget you saw those bodies. Take the cooler. Do what I have asked with the remains. Here is my email. If you add an asterisk after my name, it will trigger another email with an address. Go there, and you’ll meet a man named Gary Peters. He’s a private investigator. He’ll get you the information you want.”

  She took the paper and glanced down, “Jayden Roe.”

  She said the name as if it sounded familiar. Jay felt a fissure of worry crack through. If she had heard of him, it was likely because of the news sensation he had caused four years ago. Knowing he had been convicted for murdering an old woman would likely not help her to trust him any.

  “Look into the files before you make any decisions,” he said then turned to leave. “I will do my best to protect you, but I can make no guarantees.”

  Dr. Daniels smirked. “Don’t worry, Mr. Roe. I wouldn’t believe them anyway.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

 
Dave leaned back from his computer and felt far more relaxed than he had earlier. He had returned from threatening his stooges to an empty house. A quick check had shown him that neither Jay nor the finger were in the house.

  A quick call around his eyes and ears had given him enough to make him want to go to Stella and remove something altogether more vital. Jay had taken the finger to the police station and met with some unknown who had followed him in.

  He had found enough there to be sure of two things. One, Jayden Roe had surpassed his abilities, managing to get enough on Jane Daniels to ensure she would prioritize the finger without alerting anyone else. Two, there was something off about the system. Dave hadn’t been lying when he had told Jay that he had spent much of his teenage years hacking and honing the skill. This laptop was set up in a very sophisticated way. More so than he believed Jay had the capability to produce. Not even he had been able to breach all the walls. He did, however, find an encrypted feed that seemed to link to an external source somewhere in Carthage.

  He had sent it to his own computer and was now pleased that his own programming would soon dismantle the encryptions. He would soon learn one of Jay’s secrets.

  The sensor he had monitoring the drive went off. He stifled the renewed flash of anger. He wanted to rush down the stairs and demand to know why Jay insisted on going behind his back all the time. Instead, he moved back into the other room and double-checked that he had left everything exactly as it had been before moving to the head of the stairs. He put on an expression of relief, ready to collapse it into irritation.

  “Jay?” he called as Jay entered the kitchen. “Jesus. What the hell, Jay? If you didn’t want a partner this badly, you shouldn’t have offered me a job.”

  Jay’s gray eyes had widened slightly as they took him in. “I got what I needed, so I took the finger into that forensic tech I mentioned.”