by Jeff Carson
“Please, this way.” He steered them into an office. Four open textbooks were in an array on the large desk in the center of the room, papers strewn around it. “I’m sorry, I know the office is a mess by some standards.”
Luke nodded and appraised the room, looking like she was thinking any standards. “We just wanted to talk a bit. You said on the phone that the professor who teaches the forensic science course is gone?”
Professor Jones took off his glasses and his eyes shrank by fifty percent. “He’s gone for summer break. He’ll be back in just over a week, just like the rest of us. I’m here because, well, I didn’t have anything better to do.” His face was deadpan.
“And what is this professor’s name?”
They hung on Professor Jones’s next words.
“Professor Tindal.”
They exchanged glances. Hannigan turned to look out the window, clearly hunger and frustration winning the battle inside the big man.
Has he always taught the class?” she asked.
“No.” The professor’s answer was immediate. “Only for the last two years.”
Old framed drawings of Y-sliced, pinned-open animals with their innards exposed—a frog, a lizard, a mammal rodent of some kind—adorned the walls.
“We’re talking about the class that dissects human cadavers, correct?” she asked.
“Yes. The Forensic Instrumental and Cadaver labs. Of course, that’s only when the cadavers are available. We don’t have a high population area surrounding us like other universities, which means some semesters we go without too many specimens.”
Wolf studied a few framed pictures of faculty lined up in front of various places in the surrounding wilderness.
Wolf held his breath as he looked at a face staring back at him from the second picture. Vertigo overtook him for a second as the truth coalesced.
“And who taught the class two years ago?”
Chapter 35
They bounded down the steps of the county building, Patterson taking three steps to every one of Lorber’s long strides. Reaching the first floor, they sprinted through the afternoon light splashing the lobby floor.
“What’s happening?” Tammy stood up from the reception desk.
“We’re looking for Charlotte,” Patterson said.
Outside Rachette took a left, followed by Yates and Lorber. Gene hesitated, then took a right and looked over his shoulder.
“Should we split up?” he asked. “Someone’s gotta go this way, right?”
Patterson watched the other three men continue south toward the shops of Main Street. To the north there were fewer shops—boutiques, a hardware store, a title insurance company. Nothing that screamed a good hangout spot for Charlotte Munford.
“I’ll go this way,” Gene said, turning and jogging.
Patterson followed after him. “Wait, I’ll come with.”
“Meet back here in twenty minutes!” Lorber called over his shoulder.
“Okay!” She and Gene fell into stride.
Gene had his aluminum forensic case with him and it slapped against his leg with every stride.
Despite her short legs, she had to slow to keep next to him and he looked like he had to struggle to keep up.
They crossed the street and ran past the storefront windows of Forest Toad Furniture, then past the narrow hardware store that Patterson had always wondered stayed in business in this day and age.
Slowing down, she shook her head. “No, wait. If she’s at a shop she’s not going to be this way.” She pointed where the shops ended and houses began.
Gene took a knee to catch his breath, setting his case on the ground.
“And I guarantee she’s not inside the natural stone showroom shopping for kitchen tiles.”
The other side of the road was a sidewalk and pine trees beyond it. Beyond that, a row of houses peeking out through the forest.
“Hey!” Gene took off up first-street at impressive speed. “Hey!”
Patterson followed after him at a jog. Something had really lit a fire under him. “What?”
Gene pointed up the street, like he was running after a taxi in downtown New York City, but the only thing in front of him was a desolate city block lined with pines, a few cars, and old oaks.
Her heart was racing at his sudden enthusiasm. What was he doing? Chasing after somebody? “Do you see her?”
Jogging after him, she plucked her radio from her belt, pushed the button, and then realized Gene didn’t have one on him.
“What are you running after?” she called.
Gene stopped at the next block at the mouth of a dirt alley and put his hands on his knees. He stood and pointed into the alley. “There,” he said between labored breaths.
“There, what?”
She realized he was standing next to his own white Honda Civic. Hopelessly out of breath, he looked like he might puke.
Turning on the gas, she sprinted to him and stopped. The alley had a cat that was looking back at them with wide eyes.
“What were you running after?”
With teeth bared, he pointed at his aluminum case, which was sitting on the ground with the lid open. “In there.” He pointed back up the alley next.
“Gene, start making sense.”
She looked inside and adrenaline blasted through her entire body, a chemical wave that pulsed across her skin and knocked her vision off-kilter.
Inside was gray padded felt, like the inside of a watchcase her father used to have in his armoire in Aspen. Only there were no glimmering watches inside this case, instead there was a row of black, vague shaped objects held in place by quilting pins. Only the two furthest to the right were skin colored.
Like a butterfly collection, he was carrying around ears.
There was a pull on her belt and then something flew through the air, landed on the rocky earth with a metallic thud and skittered to a stop.
She clutched at her empty paddle holster, and then turned to Gene and—
The blow brushed her in the side of the neck, but she’d been spinning already so he missed.
He was so close.
He came at her with the side of his fist and she countered with a forearm block.
Pulling his hand back, something raked across her skin. Hot, searing pain.
He had a syringe in his closed fist, and it was already coming back at her.
She kicked him in the midsection with the ball of her foot, missing his crotch. But it was more a move to push off and get some space anyway. To get her bearings.
His element of surprise was gone. Now she was ready. She lined up a series of devastating blows in her mind, thrust angles into joints for maximum pain and destruction.
She stepped over the aluminum case to get into a better position.
A case of ears for God’s sake. It dawned on her she couldn’t remember a time the guy was without it. At work. In the station. At karate class.
The thought slowed her for a second. So did the realization that he was taking a different fight stance than he’d ever learned in class, and that his mouth was curled into a sickening smile.
Move.
She came at him fast, a high-pitched scream coming from her lungs as she feigned leading with a right punch, and then stomp kicked into the side of his forward knee.
Gene side stepped with lightning speed and lunged in, closing the distance between them to nothing.
She blocked his first punch. It was too slow.
But it was a feint of his own.
Shit.
Before the one syllable thought formed in her mind, she was hit with three shots to the face. Devastating—two fists then one elbow—shots to her face.
Staggering back, she fluttered her eyes, darkness creeping in around the edges of her vision.
There was a thump on her arm.
She twisted and brought her hand up to block and slapped his arm away.
The stinging sensation was buried deep within the pain of the blow, but
it was there.
“Gotcha,” he said with a tittering laugh.
She put her hand over her arm, pulled it off and saw nothing out of the ordinary, but there was definitely something rushing through her veins. Her entire arm went hot, then tingled. Warmth expanded across her chest.
Fentanyl.
How long would she remain upright?
She decided every second considering the question was time wasted. Baring her teeth, she put her guard up and came at him again.
This time she was all offense, hitting his groin with a hard knee, which buckled him forward, and then she landed a rising elbow, which sent him reeling backward into his car. Then she stomped the side of his knee, connecting true this time. Two punches to face—one on his cheek and the other smashing his nose.
“Ah!” he cried, dropping the syringe onto the ground.
As he bent down, a reaction to the pain in his knee undoubtedly singing a chorus in his entire body, she went for the throat. For Tommy, who was not going to grow up without a mother. The man was going to die. Right here. Right now.
Curling her hand into a rock hard fist, she took aim and punched with all the force she could muster.
And missed.
Completely missed. The world was spinning. She struggled to keep her feet underneath her, and then realized the reason why she couldn’t stand up straight was because she was already falling.
Her head connected with the ground with a thud.
Gene was over her now, pointing his finger and saying something that sounded like they were both underwater. Her breathing was slow. No. It had stopped completely.
And she felt fine.
Her vision pixelated, like she was watching a nineteen eighties video game instead of a man wrestling with her. If Gene Fitzgerald was hurting her right now, she was feeling none of it. That wasn’t quite accurate. She just didn’t care.
“Come on,” he said, slapping her in the face. “Let’s go.”
“Uhhh,” she said.
Another tittering laugh.
She was up in the air now, cradled in his arms. And then … she saw Munford in the trunk. And then she was lying on top of her, the heat of her flesh underneath her, and then there was darkness.
Chapter 36
Gene Fitzgerald,” Wolf said, answering Luke’s question.
“That’s right,” Professor Jones said, “Dr. Fitzgerald. You know him?”
Luke snatched the picture from Wolf’s hand. “What? Lorber’s new ME’s assistant?”
“Let me see that,” Hannigan said, taking his own turn with the picture. “Which guy?”
Wolf left the room dialing his phone.
It rang all the way until Patterson’s voicemail. Then he dialed Rachette’s number, which also went to voicemail.
“Shit.” He dialed MacLean.
“You think it’s him?” Luke asked jogging after him down the hall.
“Yeah, I do.”
She and Hannigan caught up to him.
His phone beeped in his ear. He was getting another call from Rachette. Pressing the button, he heard MacLean’s voice get cut off.
“Hello?”
“What’s up?” Pounding footsteps accompanied Rachette’s heavy breathing.
“It’s Gene.”
There was a pause and the footsteps came to a halt. “What did you say?”
“Gene Fitzgerald is the killer.”
“It’s Gene?” Rachette’s voice cracked.
“That’s what I said. Can you hear me?”
Rachette hung up.
***
Rachette pressed the call end button and turned to look the way they’d came. Gene and Patterson were nowhere in sight.
“What’s going on? Who was that?” Lorber put his hands on his knees and bared his teeth as he struggled for breath.
“That was Wolf. He says it was Gene. Shit.” He cursed himself for not dialing Patterson sooner. Something told him every second counted.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Lorber bent down to get to Rachette’s eye level. “He said it was Gene? My Gene? Fitzgerald?”
He dialed Patterson and listened to the electronic trill. Once, twice … six rings. Then voicemail. “Shit.”
“Answer me!”
“Yeah, he said Gene Fitzgerald!”
Yates was across the street and rushed over at full sprint. “What’s going on?”
“How is that possible? He was … a professor … oh God.” Lorber put a hand over his mouth.
“He duped you, and now he has Charlotte, and Patterson’s not answering her phone.”
Lorber took off at a sprint back toward the county building, hand planting on the hood and leaping over a car that was pulling off a side street onto Main.
“Wait!”
Lorber heard nothing, just kept running at the speed of an Olympic long-distance runner, looking like a man on stilts.
“What the hell is going on?” Yates’s face was red, his eyes bulging.
Damn it. There was hope, he thought, marveling at Lorber’s pace. He could catch Patterson and Gene, and they could take him down. Bring him in.
But why was Patterson not answering? The guy had drugs. Fentanyl. Had he drugged Patterson?
“Hey!”
Rachette blinked. “It’s Gene Fitzgerald. He’s the killer.”
Yates’s mouth dropped. “Are you kidding? How in the …”
“Let’s go.” Rachette took off at a full run.
The world was his breath, the pounding of his feet reverberating into his head, bouncing images of frightened people moving aside, burning lungs, aching legs.
I’m coming Charlotte.
I’m coming Patterson.
He repeated the chant in his brain. There was no way he was letting down Charlotte again. No way the two most important women in his life were going to suffer. And he meant it. For once, he knew he was going to come through for them. And then he was going to pump so much lead into Gene’s body his corpse was going to be a health hazard for a thousand years.
Lorber was blocks ahead now, past the county building and looking side to side up and down 1st street. His arms were up in the air as he twirled in a circle.
That was where his car had been parked. Rachette knew the white Honda well.
A few seconds later, Rachette was at the spot Lorber had been, who was now a block ahead of him, checking up and down Center Avenue.
Rachette squinted and got the right angle around the trees, and saw Gene’s Honda was gone.
“Hey!” he used the full power of his lungs.
The few people that were out in public, still braving existence in Rocky Points, were all stopped and staring at the commotion now. Tammy was outside the building with her hands on her hips.
“Lorber!” he tried again. The man would be struggling to hear over the sound of his own breath. “Come back!”
He waved. Lorber finally saw, relented, and jogged back toward him.
“What? You find them?” Lorber asked.
“No. But I can.”
Lorber’s lungs sounded like a kazoo as he rested his hands on his knees. His eyes were rented in pain, his lips peeled back. “How?”
“Are you good with computers?”
Lorber stood up, putting his hands on his sides, his elbows flaring out like metal road gates they had up the county roads at high altitude. The tall man looked into his eyes, and recognized there was hope that hinged on his answer. “I’m the best.”
Chapter 37
It’s not working.” Lorber shook his head and clicked the mouse again.
“I know it’s not working,” Rachette said. “I could have told you that. That’s why you’re here fixing the damn thing so it works and we can find them.”
Damn it. Of course his computer was hopelessly broken. The thing probably had a virus. He was such a computer klutz. Once he’d sent a cock-and-balls joke to everyone in the entire department.
“Did you check the internet connection?” Yates asked.
“You want me to get the IT department up here?” MacLean was pacing on the other side of the computer.
“No,” Lorber said. “I got it. Jesus, Rachette, when’s the last time you installed an update on this thing?”
Rachette leaned over his shoulder. “Updates?”
“Just … never mind. They’re installing.”
“Is that gonna fix it or not?” MacLean asked. “I can get the IT guys up here.”
“I’ll work circles around your IT guy. No. Do not call the IT … here. Shit, more updates.”
Lorber leaned back, his gaze never leaving the computer screen. His chest pumped up and down just as fast as the rest of them. They were all in a dark place for their own reasons.
Lorber had hired the man, for God’s sake.
But Rachette had left Charlotte at the altar. And now … he wondered if she was tied up in a dirt cellar. He wondered if she was dead.
He twisted and pushed his way past Yates. “Shit!”
The outburst failed to make him feel any better. A few paces back and forth, and he pushed his way back to his desk.
It was like a CIA torture device watching the progress bar flicker and grow from left to right. Right now it was only a third of the way across and looked to be stuck.
How long had it been since Gene and Patterson had split off from them out front? He checked his watch and calculated about twenty minutes.
“There.” Yates pointed at the screen.
The progress bar leapt to the right, stopping just short of all the way.
They sucked in a breath.
“Come on, baby.” Lorber rubbed the side of the computer monitor.
“Is it going to work with the updates? Will it have the information?” MacLean looked at him. “Did you have it on today?”
Rachette nodded.
Lorber was watching his reaction, then put his elbows on the desk and leaned toward the monitor. “We’ll see.”
“We’ll see?”
“I said, we’ll see!”
They sat in silence, watching the computer think for a few more seconds, and then the update loaded. A series of windows appeared, progress bars sliding left to right, then disappeared.