Dead Even

by Mariah Stewart

  “Been there, done that,” she muttered.

  He was about to respond when the door opened and Archer Lowell walked in. He peeled off his red-and-black-plaid jacket and tossed it in the direction of the coat hooks that lined one wall. He missed his mark and had to stoop to pick it up. Red-faced, he hung it on the hook. Passing the pool tables, he called something to a dark-haired girl who was just about to take a shot, but she turned her back on him as if she hadn’t heard. Shaking off the rebuke, Lowell proceeded to the bar, where he took a seat next to two men who’d been there when Miranda and Will arrived.

  “What’d I tell you?” Will took a long pull from his beer, watching Miranda’s face.

  “Do you ever get tired of being right?”

  “Nah.”

  She glanced at the bar, then back at Will. “He just saw us.”

  “Want to take bets on how long it takes him to come over here?”

  “Less than ten minutes,” she said without hesitation. “He won’t be able to stand it.”

  “I’m not so sure. On the one hand, he could act impulsively and rush right over. On the other, he might want to prove to us how cool he is. Show us that it doesn’t matter to him that we’re here.”

  Will appeared to weigh the matter.

  “I’m going with more than ten. I’m going with twenty minutes, maybe even more.”

  “I think you’re going to lose this one, Fletcher.”

  “I don’t think so. Though I think if you were alone, he’d be right over. Oh, yeah, he’d be making a beeline for the table if you were sitting here all by your lonesome. That would sure show the other guys in here something. That he could sit down with this incredible babe and strike up a conversation and not have her toss him on his ear? That would definitely win him points around here.”

  “Babe?” Miranda repeated flatly.

  “Looking at you strictly from a guy’s point of view, Cahill, you are one incredible babe. You’re the total package.”

  She cautioned him with one raised eyebrow.

  “Okay, you get my drift. But Archer Lowell doesn’t know just how complete that package is. He doesn’t know how smart you are, or just how good a shot you are with that little Sig Sauer you carry around—you still strap that thing to your thigh?—or what a truly gifted investigator you are. Nor does he care about any of those things. He’s a guy, and he looks at you and just sees a babe, because he doesn’t know any better. He just doesn’t understand that you’re functional as well as decorative.”

  “Was there a compliment in there someplace? There might have been, but I’m not certain I’d recognize a compliment from you.”

  “Hey, I’m just telling you what a guy like Archer sees when he looks at you.”

  Movement from the direction of the bar caught Will’s eye. “Looks like you might have won this round.”

  “Ha! My lucky day.”

  “Yeah, well, sooner or later, the odds had to change.” Will stole a glance at his watch. “Less than five minutes.”

  “What do I win?” she asked, keeping her eyes on Will and deliberately avoiding looking at the figure approaching their table.

  “A prize to be determined at a later date.”

  “My choice?”

  “That’s to be determined later, too.”

  Archer Lowell’s shadow fell across the table.

  “What are you guys doing here?” Lowell held a bottle of beer in one hand, a cigarette in the other.

  “Having dinner. A few beers. Soaking up some local color,” Will replied.

  “Have you tried the fried chicken, Archer?” Miranda asked. “It’s a little too greasy for my taste, but—”

  “Come on. What are you doing here?”

  “I just told you, Archer.” Will’s voice dropped an octave. “We just had dinner, and now are enjoying a few beers.”

  “You are full of shit. You’re here because you thought I’d be here.” Lowell looked nervously from one to the other.

  “If that were so, that would mean we guessed right, wouldn’t it?” Miranda said brightly. “We FBI special agents are really good at figuring things out, aren’t we?”

  Archer rolled his eyes.

  “How smart do you have to be? I mean, it’s the only bar within walking distance of my house.”

  “Did you see how fast he put that together, Will?”

  “Yes, I did. And isn’t that exactly what I said to you? That this is the only bar within walking distance of Archer’s house, and—”

  “Stop it. You’re giving me a headache.” Archer ran his hand through his wheat-colored hair. “I want you to go away. I haven’t done anything that concerns you.”

  “Actually, Archer, it’s what you’re going to do that concerns us.” Miranda tapped her fingers against the side of her glass.

  “I’m not going to do anything.” Archer leaned forward and lowered his voice. “I swear to you, I am not going to do a thing. I have served my time for what I done, and I do not want to ever go back inside that place again. Not ever.”

  “Well, I guess we’ll just have to stick around a while and see.”

  “You can stick around for as long as you want, but there won’t be nothing for you to see, ’cause I ain’t doing nothing the law needs to know about.” His face a grim and frustrated mask, Archer turned heel and stomped back to his place at the bar.

  “What do you think?” Miranda’s foot poked Will’s ankle under the table. “You think he’s going to renege on his part of the deal?”

  “Sounds like it, doesn’t it? I mean, without admitting that there might have been something he was expected to do, he’s pretty adamant that he’s not going to do it.”

  “You believe him?”

  “Do you?”

  “Now that he’s out of prison, I don’t see any advantage for him to go through with a deal he may have made with the deadly duo.” Miranda drained her glass and set it on the table. “Like you said yesterday, Giordano will never see the light of day again, and Channing’s dead. I’m having a hard time seeing this kid as a killer. I heard that when the police showed him photographs of Giordano’s victims, he nearly passed out. Remember, these were people who had crossed Archer, people who were expected to testify against him. People he wanted dead.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “According to Sean Mercer, the police chief down in Broeder who showed Archer those photos, the kid went totally green. Said he’d never seen a dead body before. He all but gagged.”

  “You don’t think he was faking for effect?”

  “I have yet to meet the person who can change the color of his skin just like that”—she snapped her fingers—“and Sean said that kid went green in the blink of an eye.”

  “So you think maybe now that he knows we’re on to the game, and he knows he’s being watched, he’ll forget he ever met Channing and Giordano?” Will asked.

  “I think the odds are good. Just look at him, Will.” Miranda nodded toward the bar. “He’s a mess. You think he’s smart enough to plan, then carry out, three murders? You think he has the balls?”

  “Actually, no, I don’t. And that being the case, I suppose our work here is done.” Will drank the last of his beer.

  “First thing in the morning, I’m going to check in with the chief of police, let them know what’s gone on, what we suspect. Ask them to keep an eye on Archer for a while, let us know if he leaves town, that sort of thing. And we should probably check in with his probation officer while we’re at it.”

  “That’s a good idea. Hanging around Fleming waiting to see what, if anything, Lowell might do is probably a waste of time. I left a serial killer and two pedophiles on my desk, so it’s not as if there are no other cases either of us could be working on,” Will said, nodding. “You ready? Since we’ve made our impression on Lowell, we might as well head back to the inn. I want to read through the rest of the files that Jared left for me before we drop this in the lap of the Fleming police and head back to Virginia tomorr
ow. I want to make sure we haven’t missed something.”

  Miranda slipped her suede jacket on, then stood up, grabbed her purse, and followed Will to the door. She’d hoped to get back to the inn early enough to grab a good dessert and a cup of Barrie Lee Duffy’s delicious coffee. Pleased at the prospect, she was oblivious to the eyes that watched as she tucked herself into the front seat of Will’s Camry and the car left the lot to disappear into the darkness of Edgemont Road.

  Barrie Lee Duffy smiled a greeting at the handsome couple who wandered into the foyer.

  “Did you want a table?” she asked. “The kitchen’s pretty much closed, but I’m sure we can find something for you if you’re hungry.”

  “I’m heading up to my room,” Will addressed both Barrie Lee and Miranda at the same time. “I have some reading to do. Guess I’ll see you tomorrow. . . .” With a smile that was meant equally for both women, he climbed the steps.

  “I’ll take that table, Mrs. Duffy,” Miranda told her as she slipped out of her jacket.

  “Right this way.” The innkeeper took the jacket from Miranda’s hands and led her to a small table midway between a tall window and the fireplace.

  Miranda smiled and took the chair offered to her. “Perfect.”

  “Did you want dinner, Ms. Cahill?”

  “I want a cup of your wonderful coffee and a slice of that divine-looking chocolate something that I saw on the cake plate over there.” Miranda grinned and nodded in the direction of a tea cart that held all manner of tempting confections.

  “Excellent choice on the dessert. I’ll be right back with your coffee.”

  Leaning back in the chair, Miranda studied her surroundings. The room was wide and airy and warmed by the glow of the fire. Over the mantel hung a painting that appeared to be a historic battle scene. She rose from her seat to take a closer look.

  “That’s a scene from the Battle of Gettysburg.” Barrie Lee said as she placed Miranda’s coffee on the table. “The man there on the black horse, that’s Captain James Brady. Some ancestor of my late husband’s.”

  “Your husband . . . ?”

  “He died last year. Drunk driver ran him off the road.” Barrie Lee turned her back and pretended to straighten the cloth on a nearby table.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “This inn has been in his family for over a hundred years. He really wanted to keep it going. It really meant a lot to him.” She turned back to Miranda with a fixed smile.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you. So am I. Your dessert will be right over.”

  Miranda returned to her table and sat down, feeling more depressed than she had in a while. She’d just started to stir her coffee when she looked up to see Will enter the room, a file under his arm.

  “I had a few thoughts,” Will said, as he joined her without waiting for an invitation, “including one about our friend Archer.”

  “And what might that be?”

  “I think you may be right about him not planning on going along with whatever deal he’d made with the devil. Or in his case, devils.”

  “You couldn’t have read that entire file in fifteen minutes.”

  “No. But I’m looking at the whole picture. His profile aside, as already established, he has no car. He has no job, so unless he was planning on stealing a car, which is also unlikely, since he knows he’s being watched, he won’t have any means of transportation. Chances are, any potential victims named by Channing would not be local, right? Since Channing was from Ohio, originally. His tracks are going to be hard to pick up between the time he left home after he graduated from high school, and the time you saw him six years ago and questioned him.” He paused, then asked, “Do you think he remembered you, when your paths crossed last year?”

  “We didn’t come face-to-face last year. I met with Giordano a couple of times, but not Channing. I doubt he’d have remembered me, though. Rookie agent, fumbling through my first field interviews. I probably didn’t make much of an impression on him.”

  “Well, there’s really no way of knowing one way or another now, is there?” Will suspected that any man who’d come in contact with her over the years would have had some recollection of the meeting. She was one of those women who made a lasting impression.

  Miranda smiled past him, and he looked over his shoulder in time to see Mrs. Duffy approaching with a china plate, upon which rested a chocolate concoction.

  “Flourless chocolate cake with raspberries and just the tiniest bit of cinnamon whipped cream,” Barrie Lee announced.

  “Oh, my God, it looks perfect.” Miranda beamed, admiring her choice.

  Will made the mistake of picking up a spoon and tilting it in the direction of her plate.

  “Don’t even think about it,” she whispered darkly.

  “Just testing.” He backed off.

  “Shall I bring you one?”

  “If you don’t mind. I seem to be sitting in the no-share zone.”

  “Coffee?”

  “Sure. Thanks.”

  Miranda took a spoonful of chocolate, closed her eyes, and licked the spoon.

  “This is fabulous,” she said dreamily.

  “It’s chocolate cake, Miranda. Get a grip.”

  “You call it chocolate cake. I call it a gift from the gods.”

  “Christ,” he muttered under his breath.

  Mrs. Duffy reappeared with the second plate, which she set in front of Will. “Your coffee will be right over. We’re making a new pot. Enjoy.”

  “Hmmmm. It is pretty good,” he agreed after sampling.

  “Pretty good. Ha.” She sighed happily. “So go on. You were saying . . .”

  “I think I’d rather wait until I know for certain you’re paying attention and not lost in some gustatory orgasmic experience.”

  “You’re just jealous,” she whispered, “because it’s not as good for you as it is for me.”

  He laughed out loud.

  “Back to what you were saying. Don’t mind me.”

  “Miranda . . .”

  “Your coffee, sir.” A pretty young waitress poured for him and left the pot on the table.

  “Go on, Will.”

  “We were talking about whether or not you’d made an impression on Channing.”

  “We’re past that.”

  “Okay, then, we were talking about the fact that there is a long period of time when we don’t know where Channing was or what he was doing.”

  “Well, I think maybe we’ve already established what he was doing.”

  “You mean the reports that came back from CODIS.”

  “Well, sure. We now know that all that time, he was merely honing his skills. He didn’t wake up one morning and just decide to be a serial killer. That was working on him for a long time. By the time he met up with Giordano and Lowell, he’d become quite accomplished.”

  “You think they knew what he was? Giordano and Lowell?”

  Miranda paused, considering the question. “Tough call. Giordano was a killer himself, maybe he recognized it in Channing. Lowell, on the other hand, is pretty much oblivious to most things, don’t you think?”

  “I’d say that’s a fair assessment, judging by what I’ve read.”

  “Well, I’ll bet if we look real hard, we’ll find there are more unsolved murders that could be traced back to Channing, some that maybe aren’t even showing up in the database.”

  “Because he didn’t leave DNA behind.”

  “Right.” She nodded. “Since he was still in the southern Ohio area when our paths crossed, maybe he’d stayed in that area for a while. Maybe there’s more buried there—no pun intended—than has already shown up. If we could trace his footsteps by following where he’d been, maybe we can find some others who’d crossed his path back then.”

  “People who might have pissed off Channing enough for him to have remembered. Enough to have made a lasting impression. Enough to have put them on his hit list.”

  “Right.” She
nodded.

  “I’ll see if I can come up with a time line when I get back to Virginia. Maybe something will stand out when we put it all together.”

  “Think we’ll find a pattern?” Miranda asked.

  “I don’t know. I don’t really know enough about Channing to venture a guess. I’ll have a better feel when I start looking over the data.”

  “We could still come up empty, though, as far as finding three potential victims is concerned.”

  “True. But suppose we do come up with a few names that could be on the hit list. What if we find these people? What do we do with them, once we have their names?”

  “Don’t you think we should warn them?” Miranda asked.

  “Warn them about what? That there may or may not be someone coming around someday who might want to kill them? I don’t know how responsible that is.”

  “You have a better idea?”

  “Maybe it’s moot. Didn’t we just agree that Archer isn’t likely to go after anyone?” Will reminded her.

  “We agreed that he isn’t likely to go after them now, when he has no job and no means of transportation.”

  “I checked with the DMV. Lowell doesn’t even have a valid driver’s license.”

  “Yes, but do we want to take the chance that his circumstances will never change, that he’ll never have a change of heart?” Miranda sipped at her coffee. “As I see it, if we can identify a few likely targets and at least give them a heads-up, I think we are obligated to do that.”

  “You mean, show up at some poor sucker’s door and say, ‘Hi, I’m just here to let you know that your name may or may not be on a hit list because at some point in the past, you may have pissed off a guy named Curtis Alan Channing. . . .”

  “I think we could clean that up a bit, at least find out if there was some argument or bad feelings between that person and Channing. Will, keep in mind that anyone we could definitely finger as a potential victim, at this late date and with no clues from Channing, well, if it’s that obvious to us, he or she just might be the right one.”

  “I guess it’s worth the time to take a look, see if there is anyone out there who might be a target.”