The Harbinger Collection: Hard-boiled Mysteries Not for the Faint of Heart (A McCray Crime Collection)

by Carolyn McCray

  Kent smiled though. “Yes, I feel like Tanya pissed Buzz Kill off personally. That Tanya blocked his desire for riches, but then wasn’t satisfied once she was dead since the necklace wasn’t found.”

  “So he killed his archetype,” Nicole stated this time feeling more sure of herself.

  “But Buzz Kill is smart,” Jimmi added. “He knew we’d eventually find Tanya so he switched up his victim profile.”

  Kent nodded. “He’s come into his own now. He practiced for years until he had the courage to break out like this, truly fulfilling his potential and satiating his psychosis.”

  Nicole frowned. “But how does this help us?”

  “Oh, it doesn’t,” Kent said.

  What the hell?

  “Then why go through all of this?”

  “Don’t you feel like we know Buzz Kill just a little better?”

  Nicole in fact did feel like that. Before this conversation there had been a huge question mark about how a killer came out of the gate with a chainsaw. And then Tanya made it even weirder. But now, now the evolution of the killer made sense.

  “No, I think the answer to the current Buzz Kill persona is within the footage of Lacey’s cable stalker.”

  Great. Going over hours upon hours of footage was Nicole’s favorite.

  “Hey, my guy should be coming through with some neighbors footage,” Jimmi piped up.

  “When?” Kent asked.

  Jimmi didn’t seem quite so chipper as his head bent. “I’m not sure. Soon though. My buddy is working on it.”

  * * *

  Soon might as well be never to Kent. They needed that footage yesterday.

  Nicole’s phone went off on her hip. She answered the phone then frowned.

  “What’s wrong?” Kent asked her. Like tonight could get any worse.

  “Lacey checked herself out of the hospital,” Nicole asked.

  Kent cocked his head. That was the last news he expected. Another Lucky 37 murder. Now that would have made sense or Buzz Kill on a rampage, but Lacey going home? “Why? She should have stayed for the pain meds alone.”

  Nicole hooked her phone back on her hip. “Don’t know, but I better go find out.” She gave him a peck on the check. “Call if you find anything interesting.”

  Kent sighed. “You just don’t want to sit and look at footage.”

  Smiling, Nicole gave him another peck on the cheek. “Maybe, but you’ll be here when I get back?”

  “Maybe,” Kent responded. Served her right. Plus she should know better than to try and tie him down that far in advance. His fiancée didn’t even try to fight him on it.

  That was his girl.

  After she left, Kent turned back to the techs. “Okay, before we doom ourselves to reviewing the footage, let’s look at the pivot point for Buzz Kill. Tanya. He knew her. They must have interacted. So let’s turn over every rock in her life.

  Both Js sighed, but didn’t buck him either. They knew this was their lot in life. They might have caught two bad guys today, but Kent’s board would not be cleared until he had Buzz Kill and Lucky 37 under his belt.

  Joshua brought up the murder of Tanya. The unassuming heiress to one of the most priceless pieces of jewelry in the world. She was the key. Kent could feel it.

  Kent paced in front to the facts. “Bring up the phone calls.”

  Jimmi dutifully scrolled the numbers past him.

  “There,” Kent blurted pointing to a cluster of numbers. “What are those?”

  “Given the randomness of the area codes and the time of day we chalked them up to telemarketers.”

  Kent sat down. How they still needed him. “Let’s test that little theory out.”

  * * *

  Ruben could swear that his fingers were going to fall off. Yes, he had done that much paper work today. And now Bridget’s massacre?

  Normally he might have been frustrated that there was a serial killer right under his nose, however this one, this one he was glad for. Hopefully his earlier bungling of his first cable television appearance would now be buried deep beneath Bridget’s murderous streak.

  Paggie wouldn’t be able to see him on TV, but she also wouldn’t have to see him fall face down in the mud either.

  Speaking of Paggie... Ruben checked his phone. No calls from his fiancée all day. That was unusual. Even if she knew he was busy, Paggie would usually call just to let him know she was thinking of him. He found it strangely reassuring. And odd that she hadn’t done so today.

  Ruben pressed the speed dial and waited for her to answer. “Hey sweetie.”

  “Oh Ruben, hello,” she said sounding a bit distracted.

  “I was just worried. You hadn’t called.”

  “So sorry, honey,” Paggie replied sounding more herself. “So much wedding stuff. And…”

  “And?” Ruben asked sitting up straighter.

  “And that poor girl’s mother tracked me down. Came up to my cart and asked me a bunch of questions about her daughter.”

  “What do you mean?” Ruben asked, feeling ready to rush out the door if he needed to.

  “Just that her daughter had been clean for a few months and her mother thought this time she really would quit.”

  “That is what they all think,” Ruben stated.

  Paggie sounded like she was choking up on the other end of the phone. “I just can’t help but wonder if I’d gotten there sooner. If only I had found her before… before…”

  “This was no one’s fault but the addict’s,” Ruben said getting more than a little irritated with the mother. “And her mom is feeling guilty as well and trying to transfer it on to you. Don’t let her.”

  “Easier said than done,” Paggie replied.

  “Babe, you gotta call me when stuff like this happens,” Ruben urged.

  “I called the desk sergeant and he said you were with Kent.”

  “Still, you should have left me a voicemail.”

  “I knew you’d hear it in my voice and I know you are working on two huge cases so I knew today was important.”

  “Never more important than you,” Ruben explained.

  “Oh, hon, I know that, but you do such important work. I hate bugging you with my little problems and even the wedding stuff.”

  Ruben hated hearing her sound like this. He knew what it felt like to be a second class citizen to the job. He never wanted Paggie to feel like that. He wanted for her to know how important she was to him.

  “You know what, hon? Go with the pink and white for the wedding colors.”

  “But, you said they were too feminine, that you wanted at least one masculine color in there.”

  Ruben could remember how important that had felt to him a few months ago. That he felt that he had a pretty good sense of style and he wanted that reflected in the wedding. He wanted it to be a blend of him and Paggie. Now though, it seemed silly.

  “The wedding is really for the bride, Paggie. You should get what you want,” Ruben stated.

  “Really? You won’t mind? You’ll still be happy?”

  “As long as you are, yes,” Ruben replied.

  Paggie’s voice got the old excitement back in it. “Oh my gosh, because I found some great place settings that will work perfectly for the pink and white theme.”

  “Go for it,” Ruben answered, happy to hear Paggie so upbeat again.

  “They are kind of pricey,” Paggie said with some hesitation in her voice.

  “You only get married once,” Ruben said although he had to admit he had a slight agenda here. His only goal was to make sure they had a far more spectacular wedding than Kent. Not so much Nicole, but this whole, “we are just going to wait until the right moment thing” had to be nipped in the bud.

  He felt a little sorry for his partner, but she had agreed to the odd arrangement, so he couldn’t spill too many tears over it. The only thing that anyone knew about their wedding was for everyone to have their dress attire ready and wait for the text.

  Yes, wai
t for the text. This is the crap Kent put Nicole through.

  Well, he was not going to be that kind of fiancée or husband. He was going to give Paggie a wedding to remember.

  CHAPTER 16

  “Nope, all of those calls were made from pre-paid cell phones,” Jimmi admitted. “We totally missed it.”

  Kent liked feeling appreciated but also wondered how any crimes were solved without him. Seriously. Check the damn numbers. But it wouldn’t do any good to berate the J’s. They knew they’d messed up and would never do so again, or at least not on any of Kent’s cases.

  This is why you went over everything with a fine tooth comb, to find those little nits of information you looked over.

  “Okay, so look at the times,” Kent said. “They knew her work schedule calling before and after her hours.”

  “And right after this one,” Joshua stated, “She called the auction house.”

  “So Tanya was getting pressed to hand over or sell the necklace,” Kent surmised. It was a leap of logic, but not a very far one.

  “Let’s triangulate the cell towers from the prepaid phones,” Jimmi suggested, clearly trying to make up for missing the importance of these calls. “We may not be able to know who made the calls, but at the least, we can know where.”

  Kent watched as the screen dissolved into a map and little red dots started popping up. The general location of where the prepaid cell phone calls originated.

  “Does that look familiar?” Joshua asked.

  “That’s Lacey’s neighborhood,” Jimmi stated, overlaying Lacey’s house which was off to the south of the call area.

  “So Buzz Kill was already stalking Lacey?” Joshua asked.

  Or…

  “Where’s that neighbor’s footage?” Kent demanded.

  “We still don’t have a warrant, but –

  “No buts. Get me the footage right now.” He had a theory to prove. Right this second.

  Kent’s head nearly exploded, but he kept his temper in check. It wasn’t Jimmi’s fault some judge was being a douche. The judge probably hated Kent. Actually most of the judges probably had reason to.

  Jimmi looked to argue, then the tech must have seen the determination in Kent’s eyes. If Kent was right, they were all going to feel the fool. He couldn’t even walk his theory forward. Not until he had more proof.

  “Get that footage,” Kent pronounced each and every syllable precisely.

  “I just can’t --”

  “Footage, now,” Kent demanded.

  Jimmi’s face blushed pink then red. “I am opening myself and the department up to not only a lawsuit, but criminal charges against me personally.”

  Kent fixed Jimmi with his stare. “Once we catch Buzz Kill everything will be forgiven.”

  “That’s kind of what you said about the Catholic school and they ended up trying to sue me.”

  “Tried being the operative word, Jimmi. Do you trust me or not?”

  Jimmi held up for about two and a half seconds then crumbled. His fingers flew across the keyboard. “It’s not going to be instantaneous though. Even if I hack into, never mind, even though I am in their databank, I still have to stream the video over.”

  “Yes, yes,” Kent said. “You are a cyber-genius and whatever I ask is a Herculean task. I get it.”

  Jimmi frowned but kept typing.

  The phone in Kent’s pocket dinged. Probably Nicole wondering if he was still at the lab before she drove all the way back across town from Lacey’s. He almost didn’t even bother to get the phone out. It was Glick’s after all. Who else would be texting the phone? The old captain wasn’t exactly text friendly.

  In the end though, Kent knew it was going to be a really late night and he wanted some super strong black coffee. Not that Starbuck’s crap, but old fashioned Joe. Nicole knew the drive-thru he liked. They didn’t ask you to order in Italian or anything stupid like that. An extra-large was simply an extra-large.

  He pulled the phone from his pocket and only glanced at it, then stopped abruptly. It wasn’t from Nicole. It was from an unknown number.

  The only word was “satellite.”

  It could only be from one person. Lucky 37.

  His eyes flickered from the text to the screen.

  “God damn it,” Kent cursed, flying out of his seat. “We’ve been played all along.”

  The two J’s looked back and forth to each other, clearly trying to catch up with him.

  “How do we spell satellite?” Kent asked, pointing to the van. “There are two ‘Ls’ and only one ‘T.’”

  “Oh yeah, right,” Joshua said. “But what does that matter?”

  “I think the cable company probably knows how to spell its own industry,” Kent said. Neither seemed to realize the implications of the misspelling. “That isn’t an official van. Someone mocked it up to look like one.”

  “But why?” Jimmi asked.

  “To dangle Marion in front of us. I think Buzz Kill was hoping we would stay on Marion a bit longer.”

  “Then… then…” Joshua stammered as the full reality of the situation hit him. “So Buzz Kill has been setting up Marion even before the first chainsaw murders?”

  Kent nodded. “I think this explains the significant lag between Tanya’s murder and the chainsaw murders. Buzz Kill was waiting to find a patsy.”

  “Dear god,” Jimmi whispered. “That is diabolical.”

  “That is Buzz Kill,” Kent replied, his mind a whir of activity.

  Why would Buzz Kill go to such lengths? But then it hit him, the necklace. That first crime had been sloppy. Okay, so he almost got away with it, but that first kill had been telling. It had been personal. Buzz Kill had known that a connection could be found and so had worked very hard to not only distance themselves but to point the finger squarely at someone else.

  So the killer must be obvious. It was an obscure connection, or all of this elaborate jury-rigging wouldn’t be necessary. Someone was hiding in plain sight. He had an inkling but dare not voice it until he had more information.

  “Let me see that list of heirs,” Kent stated.

  Joshua brought it back up.

  “None cross referenced to anyone besides Bridget on the crime scene log.”

  Jimmi shook his head.

  Kent scanned the list of heirs again. He was missing something. Something as obvious as the misspelled satellite on the van. Something so innocuous innocent looking, his mind had passed over it.

  The list hadn’t changed though since the last time he had looked at it. There of course was Lacey and her mother.

  But wait, if Buzz Kill had done the elaborate van switch, why would they want to call attention to the necklace again? Kent’s mind pinged back and forth trying desperately to assimilate all of this new knowledge and coalesce it into a sound theory.

  No, it couldn’t be.

  “Here we go,” Jimmi said. “I’ve got the first few frames of the security footage.”

  It came as no great surprise when they finally got a glimpse of the van stalker, that it in fact was a woman. And not just any woman.

  “Lacey,” Joshua exhaled. “How could it be Lacey stalking herself?”

  Oh, it went much deeper than that. Lacey had to have had an accomplice. Her mother. Apparently love of chainsaws ran in the family.

  He pulled out Glick’s phone to call Nicole. “I’ll get Nic on the warrants while you guys dig up…”

  Kent stopped. He couldn’t finish the sentence.

  “Dig up?” Joshua asked.

  Kent dialed quickly. “Nicole went over to Lacey’s house.”

  Of course the call to his fiancée went straight to voicemail.

  “Tell Ruben, tell everyone I’m on my way over there.”

  He didn’t wait for either of the J’s to respond, Kent just ran.

  * * *

  Nicole’s head hurt and she just wanted to sleep.

  Unfortunately the sound of someone trying to start a chainsaw wouldn’t let her.
/>
  Chainsaw.

  Crap.

  Right.

  She knew enough not to move. Not to give the Placket women any hint she was conscious.

  God how she hated walking into a trap. Especially when she didn’t realize she was walking into one. She’d simply gone over to see how Lacey was doing. Well, Lacey had been planning her next murder, that’s how well Lacey was doing.

  Nicole cracked open an eye. The younger of the women, her arm in a sling, was having a hard time starting the chainsaw.

  “I told you to clean and oil the saw each and every time we use it,” Lacey’s mother scolded.

  “I think it is the fact you nearly cut off my arm that’s the problem, mother,” Lacey retorted.

  Glad to hear the two murderesses didn’t always get along swimmingly well. Nicole wondered if she could use it to her advantage. Although she couldn’t see how just about now since her arms and legs were tied to a chair.

  Kent would miss her at some point, right? He had to figure this out. She couldn’t be the only one stupid enough to not see this coming, right?

  “Don’t worry, dear,” Adelene said. “We’ll get to you in a moment.”

  Nicole could have sworn she hadn’t moved and the woman was behind her so how did she see her eyes open.

  “Oh please, like I didn’t have Lacey try to fake sleep through her entire teenage years.”

  Nicole tried to stay calm as Lacey braced the chainsaw between her knees and tried to pull the start the equipment. Luckily she failed again.

  “Darling, let me do it,” Adelene implored.

  “No,” Lacey said, turning away from her mother. “I’m injured but not a cripple. I can do this.”

  The sound of the engine grinding set Nicole’s teeth on edge. She knew what came next with these two. To distract herself, she tried to piece the puzzle together.

  “We really thought we’d thrown the scent off of ourselves,” Adelene said as Lacey continued to struggle with the chainsaw.

  “You had,” Nicole said, no longer having to feign unconsciousness. “I was just coming over to check on Lacey.”

  “Oh my,” Adelene said sounding genuinely surprised. “I guess we jumped the gun. We could have continued on, but maybe it is better this way.”

  “It is,” Lacey said. “Funny how quickly killing with a chainsaw gets tiresome.”