Carla Cassidy

by Scene of the Crime Killer Cove

  “I need to check in with him and make sure he is still at work. I don’t have my cell phone with me. Can I use yours?”

  Again Trey hesitated, as if not wanting to do anything to help ease Bo’s obvious worry. Finally he pulled his cell phone from his pocket and handed it to Bo. “Make it fast,” he said grudgingly.

  Bo took several steps away from Trey and Claire. “You don’t think this is some kind of an accident, do you?” she asked Trey.

  “Until I talk to Bob I won’t know for sure, but my guess is that somebody was hoping to kill you or Bo or both with the fire.”

  Claire wrapped her arms around herself as icy chills walked up her spine. Thank God she hadn’t been able to sleep. Thank God she’d decided to wake Bo and leave the house for a little ghost hunting. If they had been inside the odds were good that they both would have been overwhelmed by smoke and would have died for sure.

  Bo walked back to where they stood and handed Trey his phone. “Thanks. Jimmy is fine and will stay in the apartment on the third floor at Jimmy’s Place.”

  The fire had become less intense and Claire figured it would only be a matter of minutes before the firemen finally had it completely out. At least the frame of the house still stood, but that was small consolation as she thought of the damage within.

  Bob appeared near the house and motioned to Trey and Bo. “I’ll just stay here,” Claire said. “There are plenty of people out and about. I’ll be fine. Go talk to the fire chief and see what he has to tell you.”

  Bo looked around as if assessing the situation, and then with a curt nod he and Trey headed in the direction of Bob. Claire stared at the house, which would be smoke-and fire-and water-damaged. There was no question in her mind that it was a total loss.

  At least they had her place to crash at. She would feel safe there as long as Bo was with her. Her chest tightened with emotion. Had this been a murder attempt or a tragic accident of some sort?

  Had it been directed at Bo, or her, or both of them? A hysterical giggle rose to her lips and she swallowed it. The problem with hooking up with the man who was half the town’s nemesis and gaining for herself some crazy nut stalking her was that when a hit came there was no way to predict exactly who it was directed at.

  She suddenly realized that most of the crowd had dispersed, returning to their homes and their beds to sleep for what was left of the night.

  A sharp sting struck the back of her shoulder. She swatted at it, accustomed to the gigantic mosquitos that ruled the evening and nighttime hours.

  Within seconds she started feeling strange. Cotton began to wrap her brain, making it difficult for her to think. She started in the direction of Bo and the other men, but her legs grew wobbly. All of her muscles relaxed and her eyelids grew too heavy to keep open.

  Someplace in the very back of her mind, she knew she was in trouble. She tried again to take a step toward the house, but instead fell into darkness and knew no more.

  Chapter Eleven

  “It was definitely arson,” a smoke-blackened face told Bo and Trey. Bob swiped at the sweat across his forehead with a soot-colored handkerchief. “The accelerant was gasoline. We found three gas cans on the back porch.”

  Bo felt as if he had fallen into somebody else’s nightmare. He knew there was nothing salvageable about the house or its contents.

  All traces of his childhood, anything left of his mother, was gone forever. He had insurance, but right now didn’t think he had the heart to rebuild. He felt utterly defeated.

  Somebody in this town had taken the life of his girlfriend, the town had spit in his face, and now the one thing he had left here was gone, burned by an unknown adversary.

  Bob clapped him on the back. “Sorry we didn’t get here sooner. If we’d gotten the call quicker we might have been able to save it.”

  Bo nodded. “I know you all did the best you can and I appreciate it.”

  “It’s too hot to go in tonight, but I’ll be here first thing in the morning to investigate thoroughly,” Bob said.

  “I’ll be here, too,” Trey said. He looked at Bo. “No matter what I believed happened two years ago I’m determined to find out who is behind this fire and the attacks on Claire. Personal feelings aside, I intend to do my job to the fullest of my ability.”

  “I appreciate that,” Bo replied. The mention of Claire pulled his thoughts away from the house. He looked to the sidewalk across the street and realized it was empty of people.

  Claire! His brain flashed with the beginning of panic. Where was she? He gazed over to where the firemen were loading up their equipment, hoping to see her talking to one of them. But she wasn’t there, and the seed of his panic exploded into a full-blown alarm.

  “I don’t see Claire,” he said aloud. He looked at Trey, as if the lawman could magically make her appear. “Claire is missing.”

  “She’s got to be around here someplace,” Trey replied. He called her name and Bo did the same, his heart beating a frantic rhythm that he heard in the sudden pounding of his head.

  He ran across the street, still shouting her name, but there was no answering reply. He raced toward the fire trucks and asked each and every man he met if they’d seen Claire, but nobody had noticed her.

  He ran back to where Trey stood in his front yard. Trey finished a call on his cell phone. “I’ve just called in every member of my team to check out the men who were on the list she gave me and to start a search for her. I’m going to check around back and make sure she didn’t just wander around to see the damage and maybe got hurt.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Bo said, praying that there was an easy answer for Claire’s absence and not the one that horrified him most.

  He’d been distracted. He’d left her alone and now he feared that her stalker had taken advantage of the situation and had somehow gotten to her. If that was the case it was all his fault, and the thought of anything bad happening to her nearly brought him to his knees.

  They reached the backyard, each of them calling her name. Desperation made Bo feel like everything was happening in slow motion. His backyard was not so big that he couldn’t see in the glow of his flashlight that she wasn’t there.

  Somehow, someway, her stalker had taken her and nobody had any idea who that person might be. Bo’s heart ripped in a hundred pieces as he could only imagine her fate at the hands of a monster.

  “This is a first,” Trey said from the back porch. “I’ve never seen an arson fire where the arsonist was so neat.” He shone his flashlight on three gas cans, a small one, a medium and a larger, all neatly aligned side by side.

  “Usually, a fire-starter empties the accelerant on the target, then tosses the empty can aside,” Trey said.

  Bo stared at the cans, his mind racing. Silverware neatly aligned next to a plate...a chair placed in precise position under an umbrella table...and now three gas cans neatly arranged in a row.

  “I know who it is,” he said to Trey. “Claire’s stalker is Roger Cantor. It’s Roger Cantor,” he repeated with urgency.

  Trey frowned. “Coach Cantor?”

  Wild panic filled Bo. “He set this fire and now he has Claire.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just do. Where does Roger live?” Every muscle in Bo’s body tensed. Trey couldn’t get the information to him fast enough. Every moment counted, every second might mean the difference between life and death.

  “Over on Cypress Street. I don’t know the exact address, but it’s midblock between Pirate’s Lane and Oak Street. He has a basketball goal in his driveway. Come on, I’ll drive you there,” Trey said.

  The two men raced for his patrol car and once inside Bo fought an overwhelming sense of disaster. Had the fire been set as some sort of diversion? If so he had played right into Roger’s hand. He’d taken his eyes off the prize and allowed Claire to be stolen away.

  Trey couldn’t drive fast enough to suit Bo, who kept his focus out the window checking for signs of somebody hiding
or Roger carrying Claire away.

  If Roger harmed a hair on her head, Bo would kill him. Trey would finally get his desire to see Bo locked up in prison. Bo didn’t care. He had nothing to lose but Claire, and the thought of her gone forever was too much for him to bear.

  Trey pulled into the driveway of Roger Cantor’s house, a neat ranch that was dark. What if Roger was sound asleep inside and had nothing to do with Claire’s disappearance? What if Bo had jumped to the wrong conclusion and they were just wasting precious time by coming here?

  A million doubts coupled with a rage of adrenaline filled him as he and Trey approached the front door. Trey knocked as though he meant business, the rapping on the wooden door loud enough to wake the neighbors.

  “Roger, open the door,” he shouted.

  Bo noticed Trey had his hand on the butt of his gun, obviously ready for anything they might face. What they faced was no reply. No lights went on and nobody came to the door.

  Trey knocked again and Bo moved to the garage door, where small windows allowed him to see the dark shape of a car parked inside. “His car is here,” he called back to Trey.

  “He’s not answering the door,” Trey replied.

  “Break it down,” Bo exclaimed. His imagination filled with visions of Claire tied up and gagged in the basement or in a bedroom while Roger waited patiently for Trey and Bo to eventually go away.

  “I don’t have that authority,” Trey replied. “I can’t break into someplace based on your gut instinct alone. Let’s check around back.”

  The two men raced around the side of the house, where there was a patio and a sliding glass door, but no indication that anyone stirred inside.

  Bo’s heart beat so hard it felt as if it could explode out of his chest at any moment. He knew Roger was their man. His proof was in those neatly aligned gas cans.

  He looked around and saw a large outdoor vase with flowers. He had to get inside and he understood Trey’s being bound by the law, but he wasn’t bound by anything except his driving need to find Claire.

  He picked up the vase and threw it with all his might at the sliding glass door. The glass shattered and Trey cussed. Bo went in through the busted door, carefully avoiding the last of the shards of glass that clung to the frame.

  Trey followed after him, muttering curses as he pulled his gun. They entered the neatest kitchen Bo had ever seen, a sign of the obsessive-compulsive disorder Claire had told him Roger suffered and that he’d seen signs of himself.

  Trey motioned for Bo to stay behind him as they left the kitchen and entered the living room. They turned on no lights, using only their flashlights to illuminate their way.

  Find Claire. Find Claire. It was a two-word mantra that echoed over and over again in Bo’s head as they cleared each room in the house.

  It was only when they entered the master bedroom that Bo’s calculated guess that the stalker was Roger was definitely realized. Taped to the wall above the neatly made queen-size bed were dozens of photos of Claire.

  Claire on her bicycle, Claire sitting on her front porch, there was even a photo of her taken through her bedroom window. Thankfully she’d been wearing a robe. They were slices of her life captured forever to feed a sick mind.

  What frightened Bo most was that there were three photos of Claire and him together, eating ice cream, leaving Mama Baptiste’s shop and getting into her car. In each of those pictures Claire’s face had been x-ed out with a bright red marker.

  “Here’s your proof,” Bo said to Trey. Bo whirled around and tightened his hand on his flashlight. “It’s obvious they aren’t here. Does Cantor own any other property in town?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll have to check it out. I’ll let all my officers know that we’re looking for Cantor,” Trey said.

  There was no basement in the house, but there was an entire town to search. Bo’s head screamed in pain and fear. “I’m heading out on my own,” he said to Trey when they reached the front door.

  Trey took his cell phone out of his pocket. “This is my personal phone. I’ve got another cell phone that is for official business. Take it so that if you find her you can call me, or if we find her we can get in touch with you.”

  “Thanks.” Bo put the phone in his jean pocket and then with a grim nod to Trey, he took off into the night.

  He ran in no particular direction, knowing only the driving need to seek and find, praying that it wasn’t already too late. Roger could have her held captive in any old shed, in one of the abandoned shanties on the other side of town. Hell, he could have her stashed away in her own home.

  With this thought in mind, he raced in the direction of Claire’s place, slowing his pace only when he could scarcely breathe and was stabbed by a stitch in his side.

  Claire...Claire... His heart cried out for her. A vision of her face filled his brain. Her beautiful eyes, that crazy mop of golden curls, the smile that made him feel wanted and loved, it all haunted him now.

  He should have kept her tight by his side while the fire blazed at his house. He’d provided a perfect opportunity for Cantor to strike by being distracted, by allowing Claire to wander away from him.

  My fault, he thought in agony. Just like Shelly’s murder had been his fault. He should have gone to meet her that night despite being sick. If he’d just gotten out of bed and gone to the bench at the lagoon’s edge, she wouldn’t have been murdered.

  If he’d just kept hold of Claire’s hand, she wouldn’t be gone now and in the hands of a man whose obsessive love had transformed into a killing hatred.

  When he finally reached Claire’s house he was shocked to see Eric Baptiste sitting on the front porch. “Nobody is here,” he said to Bo.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I ran into Deputy Griffin. He told me Claire was missing and potentially kidnapped. Claire gave my mother a spare key to this place years ago. I got it and went inside and checked it out. There’s no indication that anyone has been here and I’m sitting here all night to make sure nobody else tries to get inside.”

  It was the longest speech Bo had ever heard Eric make. “Have you checked out any of the abandoned shanties?”

  “Not specifically, but I’ve been here awhile and haven’t seen anything unusual. No lights or sounds coming from any of the old places.”

  Dead end. A new desperation crashed down on Bo. Where to go? Where would Roger go? Was it already too late? Had he already killed Claire? Desperation turned to horror as a new thought filled his head.

  He turned and ran, not bothering to say goodbye to Eric. He couldn’t speak with the emotion that clogged his throat. Was it possible? Was Roger sick enough to do such a thing?

  The sound of his feet hitting against the road surface was the only noise he heard. He was so deep inside his head he heard nothing else, smelled nothing as he focused on getting to the place where Shelly’s body had been found floating in the swamp.

  Roger had to not only hate Claire, but Bo, as well. Would he have his revenge on both of them by making Bo face losing somebody he cared about and tossing her body in the same place where Shelly had been found?

  *

  PINE CLEANSER.

  Claire tried to remember if she’d cleaned the shanty with pine cleanser that day. She usually bought the cleanser with money Mama Baptiste gave her. It was cheap and even though the plywood walls had gaps in them, despite the fact that her mattress was thin as paper and sometimes there was electricity and sometimes there wasn’t, she liked to keep things clean when she could.

  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen her father. It had been at least two weeks since he’d shown his face at the shanty.

  Mama Baptiste had tried to tell her that her daddy wasn’t a bad man, he was a sick man. Alcohol had not only poisoned his body but had addled his brain, making him forget that he had a daughter, forget that somebody might need him.

  Her bed felt particularly hard tonight...like concrete. She tried to shift her position and re
alized she couldn’t move her legs. Brain-fogged, she thought she was trapped by the favorite blue blanket she always slept beneath.

  She tried to reach a hand down to untangle herself, but her hands were bound together. That’s when full consciousness slammed into her.

  The fire at Bo’s...the sharp sting in her back...and then nothing. She’d been drugged and now she was someplace she shouldn’t be, a place that smelled of pine cleanser and a faint, lingering odor of sweaty socks, a place that screamed of danger.

  She was afraid to open her eyes, scared of what she’d see, of who might be in the alien space with her, even though she sensed that she was alone.

  She finally worked up the courage to open her eyes. She couldn’t begin to formulate a plan of escape unless she knew exactly where she was.

  With her brain still slightly fuzzy, she took in the concrete floor beneath her and the concrete walls that surrounded her on three sides. It was only when she saw the round drains in the floor and the row of showerheads that she realized she was in the boys’ shower room at the school.

  Her ankles were tied together with a strong rope, as were her wrists. Just as she’d sensed, she was alone in the brightly lit room.

  She managed to roll to a sitting position and then scooted across the floor until her back was against the farthest wall from the opening, an opening where sooner or later she knew she would meet her “admirer.”

  The severity of her situation sank fully in and tears sprang to her eyes. She was in trouble...life-threatening danger, and she worked her ankles and wrists, twisting and turning in an effort to get free of the ties that bound her.

  However, there was no give to the rope and the knots held tight as a rising panic filled her. She had no idea how long she’d been unconscious and even if everyone in town was searching for her there was no reason for anyone to believe she was being held in a shower in a school that was closed for the summer.

  She could scream, but she knew it would be no help. The school building was surrounded by parking lots and playgrounds and she was in a concrete room. Nobody would hear her scream except the person who had brought her here.