Fireflies: A Katie Bell Mystery (book 1)

by BG Archer

  "Honey, it's fine. I haven’t been there for you today at all.”

  “Dad. You of all people know I can take care of myself. We’ll do it another night. Please. Get some rest.”

  He paused again, clearly thinking it over. It was the better idea, but if she wanted to see him he would come. Katie knew Arthur would move Heaven and earth for her if he needed to.

  "Are you sure?"

  "Yes. Seriously. Get out of there and go get some sleep though, okay? And no fast food on the way home. There’s some leftover spaghetti in the fridge from Tuesday. Eat it before it goes bad."

  "But I kinda was thinking about a whopper."

  Katie smiled. "I know. That's why I said it."

  "I love you, Princess."

  "I love you too, Dad.”

  "Goodnight."

  "Night."

  Katie hung up and looked around her dorm room. Considering the horror stories about how cramped these places were, the dorm room wasn't that awful. She wouldn’t call it spacious, but it was doable, especially considering her roommate.

  There was still her suitcase of clothes Katie could put in the dresser, but at the moment food seemed like a more important priority.

  She knew the town of Asheville and a few of the local eateries relatively well, but she was not familiar with the restaurants near SCU. Katie decided that in the continuing theme of the new, it was time to do some exploring.

  5

  6:32PM, Thursday Sept 20th

  The evening air had cooled considerably when Katie began walking. The trees were showing signs of turning gold, which made Katie happy. Her mother had given her a love for all things outdoors, partly because Catherine had so rarely gotten to spend time outside, since she was always working. The family vacations Katie remembered were when the three of them would go camping.

  Across the street from the campus clusters of people wandered toward a bar with blinking lights called Till You Drop.

  Katie crossed the street but didn't head in the bar’s direction. She had plenty of experience with fake IDs and bars, but that was the past.

  There was a side street between the bar's parking lot and the glowing lights of a pizza joint called Tony's Pizza. Like any respectable teenager, Katie loved pizza. As far as she was concerned it was the entire base of her food pyramid. That was the key reason she was hesitant to try Tony’s. She respected it too much, and only ate the best.

  Only for a moment though, Katie’s hunger outweighed her selective pizza taste.

  As Katie approached the door she could see the usual college crowd inside. A couple of families in booths, one or two couples, and a few groups of friends sitting around the longer tables of the pizza parlor. Katie reconsidered, stepping away from the door, and pulled out her iPhone. She looked at the white device and tapped her favorites list and thumbed the second name.

  He picked up on the second ring, and Katie found herself annoyed at his eagerness.

  “Hey," Luke said.

  "Listen, I know it's a drive but is there any chance you'd want to grab dinner with me?"

  "I'd love to, and it's not a long drive at all."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I'm currently walking around the campus aimlessly. I figured I might as well get to know my girlfriend’s school, even if it isn't mine."

  "Seriously?"

  "Yep."

  "Okay. Well, I’m directly across the street from the east side of the campus at Tony's Pizza, you creepy stalker."

  "You haven't called me creepy in a long time."

  Katie rubbed her forehead. “Everything comes full circle."

  "I'll be there in like ten minutes."

  "Okay. Well, it's cold out here so I'm going to go in and order."

  "Deal."

  Part of Katie (okay half of her) regretted calling him. Maybe everything being new today was not what was called for, even if that had been her original desire.

  There was an open booth near the front and Katie took it. She posted herself so she was sitting on the side facing the door.

  It took Luke six minutes to get there. Katie had already ordered drinks when he entered the door, the bell ringing that familiar pizza-joint jingle.

  The first thought that struck Katie when Luke walked in was how much she was attracted to him. There were a dozen little things, and a few big ones. He was taller than her, a good head taller. His face was thin with hollowed-out cheeks and an angular nose, but the fierce blue eyes and mop of blonde hair made it look elegant, not messy.

  Luke had shaved recently and his cheeks were red. Katie suspected that his shortened arrival time came from him jogging his way there. He was wearing a pair of brown cargo shorts and a short-sleeved navy blue T-shirt that was maybe a size too big for him, but she knew he didn't care. That was another thing she liked.

  Katie had always liked fashion. It was important to her though not obsessively so. Shopping was an outing that she and her mother had enjoyed many times when she was growing up; even in her early, “I think everything you guys do is idiotic” stage.

  He spotted her and beelined it for the booth. Luke hovered for a second as though he expected her to get up and greet him, but she did not. He took the seat across from her begrudgingly and smiled. “Hey.”

  "Hi."

  Luke looked at the soda in front of him and back at Katie, and smiled again. This time it was real, not forced. Also known as Luke’s standard operating procedure. The coat of armor that Katie, of all people, knew how to rip off with just a glance, but she also understood why he wore it. It was similar to her own.

  The problem of course was he could rip hers off just as easily. Katie would never admit that out loud though, especially to him.

  "Root beer." He didn't ask it as a question because it wasn't. He knew.

  "Of course.”

  They always had root beer with pizza. Anything else would have just been wrong, or as Luke had once put it, “sacrilegious.”

  The waitress, who had the stress lines of someone who was no longer an undergrad, approached. They ordered one large pizza. Half cheese, and half pepperoni. Luke was vegetarian. Katie preferred to think of herself as a meatatarian.

  After the food was ordered, she looked at him again. "So how has your week been?”

  "It's been … tolerable I suppose. I finished the painting."

  "That's awesome.”

  “Yeah, I'm pretty happy about how it turned out. So how was your first day?"

  Katie took a sip of her soda. "Good. Just settling in I guess. Dad has a new case, which kept him from visiting, but I like my roommate. She seems nice."

  "What's her name?"

  "Tiffany. A bit of a Southern belle actually. Met her mother too, who was just as sweet. Like Southern iced tea.”

  “Too sweet? Or do you mean nice as an actual compliment or a negative connotation?"

  "No, like actually nice. Like it should be too sweet, but it works for them. Not high school backstabbing-bitches nice."

  Luke laughed. He reached across the table and touched her hand. "I've missed you."

  Katie looked down at his hand and then pulled away. "Yeah. That's what does seem to happen between the two of us."

  He crossed his arms across his chest. "What does that mean exactly?"

  "One of us misses the other until we are actually together for awhile. Then, one of us doesn't seem to care that the other is there at all."

  Luke's face fell, but he covered it with a serene blank mask. He waited silently for a minute, expecting her to say more, but Katie remained silent.

  They sat in the booth like a prisoner and an integrator, each wearily watching the other until the food came. The pie was steaming hot and smelled of delicious cheese and sauce and meat and carbs.

  Katie's mouth watered and the first words out of her mouth were a slightly cracked and strained "thank you," to the server before she dug in and served herself two slices. She spun the serving knife around to Luke and he took it from her, his fi
nger gently brushing against the inside of her wrist and moving down it.

  It was only for an instant, but it was far more effective than any spoken "Sorry," or any other words he could have thought of. And just like that her armor was gone, and Katie was pissed at herself for letting him in again. That was the problem with Luke, the reason they kept pushing away and coming back together like magnets for the better part of three years. Luke was a visual and physical person. He said he was sorry with gestures. Katie took care of the words department, and worst of all for her, Luke liked that about her. He liked listening to her. Of course once upon a time she had loved that he listened.

  Katie remembered a night when they were both in his first car, a shitty fifteen-year-old rust red Saturn sedan. The original plan had been to do a bit of necking in the woods before he returned her home (before curfew of course, to appease her very capable and very armed father) but instead they started talking. Or rather, Katie did the majority of it, but the remarkable thing was how he had listened. Truly listened to what she was saying, and more importantly, had seemed to care. They had been together a season at that point and she was only fifteen. In that moment as she finished the conversation and he gently reminded her that he needed to get her home, she suddenly realized that this was the man she wanted, in that hormone-fueled moment, actually, her thought had been always wanted.

  Now, almost three full years later as she handed him the pizza cutter, her thought was … maybe. Yes, she still wanted Luke. Especially after it had been a week since they had been intimate. It was worse because her period was going to start any moment, and Katie was always hornier right before that time of the month.

  She really just wanted to run away with Luke for a weekend or a week and work it out. Maybe some tropical island somewhere and see what it meant to be true adults in the eyes of the law and to each other. Talk, argue, fight, laugh, have copious amounts of sex, watch movies, cook together. They were things Katie was familiar with, and like any safety blanket, she wanted them with Luke.

  She couldn't though. She couldn’t have that and truly grow into who she wanted to become. She wasn’t even sure who she wanted to be and having a comforting anchor hitched to her ankle wasn’t going to help her find out any faster.

  Katie took another bite of the food and all thoughts of Luke sped past her. It was not the best pizza she had ever had, but it was certainly in the top five. Katie closed her eyes in ecstasy to enjoy the bite.

  "This is really good," Luke said between mouthfuls.

  They had gotten a large in hopes that there would be leftovers. Within a half hour there was no pizza left on the table.

  The mood had changed; they had eased into each other again. This was how it always worked.

  Katie paid, and they walked out together. Katie shivered. The temperature had dropped and her body was too busy digesting the food to recognize it also needed to keep her warm.

  "Thanks for having dinner with me," Katie said.

  "Of course. It's good to see you," Luke said, his voice low.

  They crossed the street back to the campus and walked, passing a group of girls Katie's age who were chatting loudly about how awesome the dorms were.

  "They form packs very quickly,” Luke said after they were out of earshot, and Katie laughed.

  "Well, it is the unknown which causes everyone to try to find some familiar comfort."

  "And what about you? Are you looking for a familiar comfort?" His voice was barely above a murmur, but she could hear him clearly. Luke knew she could. Katie had excellent hearing.

  "We'll see," Katie replied and continued walking.

  They stepped off the sidewalk along a dirt path that led through a lawn deeper into the campus and slipped into darkness as they walked. There was a clear night sky and even with the trees draping over the path they could easily find their footing.

  At the other edge of the lawn there was a street lamp, though this one flickered once, twice, and blinked off for an instant before coming back on. Katie stopped just short of the circle the light cast, still cloaked in darkness alongside Luke. Down by the street people still walked, but nobody was nearby.

  Katie turned to Luke and kissed him, her lips finding their familiar favorites. Somehow after a thousand kisses and years of practice, she was still surprised at how remarkably soft Luke's lips were.

  He returned the kiss, and they held each other close for a long moment enjoying the embrace before Luke pulled back, looking at her with those icy blue eyes of his.

  “Should I see your dorm room?”

  She looked at him for a long moment. “No. Well yes. But not tonight.”

  Luke looked away from her. “Okay.”

  Katie kissed him again, this time on the cheek. “Good night, Luke.”

  He just looked at her for a long moment, but didn’t move in to kiss her. “Night, Katie Bell.”

  She separated from him and turned away, heading towards her dorm. Katie glanced back after she’d walked about half a block. Luke was still standing there, watching her.

  Katie made it back to her dorm hall but didn't stop. She kept going up the path past all the dorm halls and up a set of stairs to the street running above the college. She kept walking for a few blocks, past where there were regular streetlights. Many girls would have felt nervous walking alone in the dark, but Katie was not many girls. She finally found a spot she liked, a quiet neighborhood side street where the sidewalk looked comfortable, and she sat down on it. Katie rummaged through her bag and pulled out her hidden vice, the one she had hoped not to dive into the first night. Her hand was shaking as she unwrapped the yellow pack of American Spirits and stuck a cigarette in her mouth. Her four-clover zippo flicked a small finger of flame to the end. The cigarette tip turned white for a moment, then the familiar warm orange-yellow ember. The lighter made a satisfying “click” as she snapped it shut.

  Katie took a long drag on her cigarette and watched the smoke billow out her nostrils, smoking in silence. The cigarette lasted a long while. Katie did not smoke often and liked to savor it, but when it was gone it was like the final piece of a puzzle falling into place.

  Katie started to cry, a low quiet sob. While she hated that she did, it was like a shower washing away a layer of grit that had been leeched to her for far too long.

  She did not see the man watching her from across the street, a man far too old to be a college student, with steely brown eyes and a thin North Face jacket. Katie had learned a few things from her father, but she was distracted, and had not seen him following her once she had left Tony’s Pizza. He watched as she cried for a moment, and then continued on his way.

  6

  9:45 AM, Friday Sept 21st

  Arthur yawned and looked over the coroner’s report on his desk again.

  Everything he had predicted the day before had been proven correct. The report indicated that Tori Watson had ingested Rohypnol. There were no puncture wounds on her body, so it has been swallowed rather than injected. The only DNA at the crime scene was Tori Watson’s. She had not been sexually assaulted before her death. Her phone was not at the scene of the crime. They had tried to run a trace, but whoever had it had turned it off and removed its Sim card.

  The knife used to kill her was interesting. The blade was serrated, but the cuts were unusual enough to match to three possible knives. A Tarani curved pocket knife, a Cold Steel Tiger knife, and a Spyderco pocket knife.

  Arthur double-checked what he had just read. Martin Snow’s preferred brand of knife had been Spyderco. Arthur considered researching the other two knives but decided against it.

  Ten minutes later Google informed him that there were five shops within a hundred-mile radius that sold Spydercos. Calls to the five shops revealed that only two of them had sold that particular model in the last two years.

  One shop fourteen months ago, and the other six months prior to that. Arthur asked both clerks to email over a receipt detailing who had bought the weapons. One shop agree
d. At the other, a clerk who sounded like he had a pack-a-day habit, demanded a warrant.

  Arthur hung up the phone and rubbed his temple. He had not slept well the previous night, but that was no shocker. He hadn’t really in years. Sometimes it just got to him more than other times.

  The chances that the killer had bought the weapon in a store were exceedingly low. The copycat could easily have ordered the knife online, which would be the logical thing to do. Still, it was worth the half hour he had spent on it. Maybe he would get lucky.

  Agent Tapscott knocked on the door to Arthur’s office, which was only partway shut. Arthur waved him in.

  “Everything okay?”

  Arthur looked at the younger man and loosened his tie. "Where are we on the nightclubs?"

  "I think you're going to want to see this.”

  Tapscott set a thumb drive down on Arthur’s desk. Arthur plugged it into his HP. The drive blinked as it loaded and showed a series of digital footage files.

  "This is from Wet, a club three miles west of the garage. These files cover all the cameras for the three hours between ten PM when they opened and two AM.”

  Arthur filled his display with the videos. He sped the video speed up to one-and-half-times, but it still took them a half an hour to spot Tori Watson, who was dancing with … just about everyone really.

  “Well, it looks like Tori was a very popular girl that night,” Arthur said.

  “It just matters who she left with,” Tapscott said.

  Tori stayed till closing. She had a total of seven drinks, all of which were bought for her. Three of those could easily have had something slipped in them, because Tori had moved into a blind spot before she drank them. Unfortunately, the seven drinks were bought by a total of five different men, as well as a Jell-O shot that she downed with one of the female cocktail servers.