Dire

by Jeff Carson

  Keith noted her proximity, and then caught a waitress’s arm on the way by.

  “Yes?” The waitress looked down at his hand, playfully pretending to care that he’d invaded her personal space. “Oh, it’s Mr. Lourde. What can I get my lord?”

  Keith smiled.

  Watching him work made the imaginary snake on Lauren’s shoulders slither and contract.

  “I’ll take the usual. Make it a triple, please.”

  “And what about that?” The waitress pointed at the honey-colored liquid nearly topping the glass in his hand.

  “This is what I’m drinking now. When you get back I’ll be drinking what you bring.”

  The waitress smiled and rolled her eyes, then looked at Lauren like she was a hooker. “And for you?”

  “Nothing, thanks.”

  Keith watched the waitress’s ass leave the vicinity.

  “Enjoying bachelor life, I take it?” Lauren asked.

  Keith sucked down a third of his Scotch—and she knew it was a Scotch, and she knew it was at least his fifth of the night by the way his eyes were darting all over her body—and then set it down with a smack of his lips.

  “I am.”

  “How’s the company doing?”

  “I’ve pretty much reversed the downward slide you put us in. We’re on the way back up.”

  Lauren nodded, pretending she was impressed. The “downward slide” he was referring to was the across-the-board changes she’d made to the ingredients of every Luanne’s Sweets and Treats product—switching artificial sweeteners and preservatives to all natural ingredients.

  A year before her father had passed, her mother had died of cancer. There was no way she was going to peddle products to children across the world with ingredients that caused the very disease that had killed her mother. The changes had meant that some products had become unviable, rotting on the shelves within a few days after delivery rather than lasting months or even years like before. Those products had to be cut, and with them a few hundred employees and a lot of the company’s bottom line.

  She would’ve done it the exact same way over again.

  “Hasn’t your brother told you about our fourth-quarter results this year?”

  She shook her head.

  “Oh, that’s right. You don’t”—he raised the pitch of his voice in a mockery of Lauren—“want anything to do with Luanne’s Sweets and Treats anymore.”

  She blinked, and then plastered a smile on her face. “No. I’m happy up in Rocky Points.”

  “Is that where the hell you went?” Keith looked around the room and sucked another third of the glass down. “I thought it was Vail.”

  “Nope.”

  “What do you want?” Keith sucked on an ice cube and looked her in the eye. There was a demon lurking there, she knew. She’d met it, and now she was going to have to risk meeting it again.

  “I need some money.”

  Keith looked at her like she was putting him on, and then shook his head and sipped his drink.

  The waitress came up and put the fresh Scotch down.

  “Yes! There she is! Perfect timing, my love.”

  “Twelve bucks.” The waitress held out a hand.

  Keith whipped a twenty out of his wallet and gave it to her. “Keep it. Make sure you use it to re-up that gym membership of yours. Your ass is perfect.”

  “So you told me last time.” The waitress disappeared into the crowd.

  Keith made love to the first sip of Scotch, and then with just a millisecond’s hesitation, like he’d misjudged it by an inch, he put down the glass.

  Lauren’s watch said 6:25, but it felt much later. She’d been running continuously for the past twenty-five minutes, first from the bank to her first guess around the corner, then straight here in a full sprint. Her legs ached. Her body felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.

  She did some quick math. It would take at least three hours to get to Rocky Points, probably four or more if it was snowing a little. And if it was snowing a lot like the radio was saying it was? How long would that take? Would they close I-70 at Eisenhower Tunnel or Vail Pass?

  “Listen,” she said, “I’m dead serious. You used to always talk about how you keep money in your office safe. I’m desperate for some cash.”

  He glared at her. “What the hell? What are you even doing here? Why are you in town?”

  “Visiting my brother.” The words just popped out of her mouth.

  “Oh, yeah. I wondered why he called in sick from work. Just assumed he was on another bender.” He did some thinking and tilted his head. “Oh, I get it now. Why don’t you just give him the money? Wait a minute, you’re out of money too?”

  She studied Keith’s face. Out of money too? What did that mean? Was her brother out of money?

  She recovered and grabbed his glass. Taking a sip, she shrugged. “It’s after bank hours.”

  “And you need it now?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Jesus. He needs to run with better people. If I didn’t have a contractual obligation with the board to keep him on as my underling I would’ve fired him the day I stepped into your office.”

  Weaseled your way into my office, she thought.

  “How much do you need?” he asked into his glass.

  “Ten thousand.”

  He shook his head, studying the ice. “I’ve missed you, you know.”

  She tried to keep her breathing normal. “Really.”

  “Yeah, really.” He looked at her with a hurt expression.

  She pulled her eyebrows together. A sudden thought came to her. “Do you even remember the last time we saw each other?”

  He tilted his head and looked up at the ceiling. “Of course. Your going-away party at the office.”

  She studied his face. Had he been too drunk to remember what he’d done?

  “I was shitfaced … but I meant what I said that night.”

  She studied his eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “About loving you.” He looked at her, his eyes twinkling with sincerity. “I meant it. I know it was stupid to say, and sudden, and … shit, my wife had been at the party earlier in the night. I was married, for God’s sake. With two kids. I shouldn’t have pulled you aside like that. But I just had to tell you. I mean, you were leaving, right? Off to nursing school in Boulder, out of my life. Out of everyone’s lives forever.”

  She froze, studying his eyes. He was serious. “You don’t remember later that night?”

  He furrowed his brow, as if searching his memories, and then gave an embarrassed grin. “No. I … woke up in my office the next morning with my pants around my ankles and a splitting headache. I do remember that, but not much else about the night before. Why?”

  Her watch said 6:31.

  When are you coming back, Mommy?

  She swiveled toward him and put a hand on his thigh. “Please, Keith. I’m asking you as a friend. I need this money. I can pay you back within a couple days. But this is really important.”

  Keith straightened his posture and looked down at her hand.

  “You do still keep that kind of cash in your office safe, don’t you?”

  He nodded. “I’m in your old office now. It’s a bigger safe.”

  She waited for him to think it through.

  “All right. I’ll give you the cash.” He rolled his eyes and gave her a genuine smile.

  “Oh, thank you so much.” She looked at her watch again. “We need to go now.”

  “All right, all right.” Keith set down the glass, then thought better of it and drank down the rest of the liquid.

  When he stood, Lauren pretended not to see the erection tenting his pants.

  “I need to get my coat from the hostess.” He adjusted his crotch and headed back into the throng of people.

  For an instant she held back, frozen, watching him go. Then she followed, past the three women, who looked at him with disappointment and at her with scathing hatred, and up to the bubbly
hostess at the entrance.

  Keith handed her a ticket from his pocket and Lauren passed over hers.

  They stood in awkward silence, all the while Keith staring at her body like it was something he desperately wanted to eat.

  “Here you are, sir. Ma’am.”

  Keith grabbed his jacket and nodded, then walked to the revolving door.

  “Aren’t you going to put on your coat?” Lauren asked, donning on her jacket. “It’s freezing out there.”

  He stopped and smiled at her, and she saw the demon dance behind his eyes. “Oh yeah. I completely forgot.”

  She let him lead the way out the door, out into an evil world that was conspiring against her every move.

  Chapter 15

  “Patterson’s on her way,” Rachette said as he walked down the aisle through the stadium seats of the situation room.

  Wolf stood at the front of the college lecture hall-like space, sipping his cup of burnt coffee as he stared out the western windows. The lights on Main Street lit cones of angry, sideways-falling snow.

  Rachette sat down in a seat next to Hernandez and blew on his coffee. “Have you seen that news story yet?”

  “No. What story?” Hernandez asked.

  “There was some—”

  Wolf spun around. “Where was she?”

  Rachette froze with his coffee to his lips. “Patterson?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know. I just saw her. Maybe takin’ a leak or something?”

  “Not taking a leak,” Patterson said as she entered the back of the room, talking as if to a two-year-old. “Getting my laptop.”

  Rachette sipped his coffee.

  Behind her, Sheriff MacLean strode in with Barker on his heels. MacLean looked at Wolf with what looked like trepidation, Barker with a shit-eating smirk.

  Wolf remained at the window while they sat, MacLean separating himself by taking a second-row seat.

  Patterson made her way to the desk at the front of the room and hooked cables into her computer.

  “How about Lorber?” Wolf asked.

  Patterson looked up. “He and his team are still up there. We’ve been talking, and he’s sent me all he has so far.”

  “All right,” Wolf said. “So let’s have it.”

  Patterson clicked her keyboard and a picture flashed on the projector screen at the front of the room. It was the dead nanny, sheltered beneath a canvas tent and brightly lit by overhead floodlights.

  “We have Barbara Lingmerth from Perth, Australia. Lorber sent me a scan of her prints, and we’ve confirmed her identity with the Department of Immigration. She lives alone, no next of kin here. Her son and three grandchildren live back in Perth.”

  Patterson clicked the keyboard and another picture flashed up, this time a close-up of the mutilated body from the breasts up.

  “Damn.” Rachette squirmed in his chair.

  “According to Lorber, the tracks in the back of the house, the blood spatter the dogs found, and the injuries and blood spatter on her lower body indicate that she was marched out into the woods by a man wearing boots—she in only her socks—where her throat was slit from ear to ear, severing every artery and vein you can think of in her neck.”

  A picture of the knife flashed up.

  “Here are some photos of the knife, which is now in our lab. Lorber’s assistant was unable to get any full prints off it. Only a couple of partials that are not matching anything in the databases. As you can see, it’s a kitchen paring knife. Two-and-a-half-inch blade. It’s impossible to make a cut that deep with one pass. The trachea has three separate cut marks.”

  Hernandez made a disgusted sound and shook his head.

  “What about the open shirt?” MacLean asked. “Sexual assault?”

  “Lorber thinks the crows did that,” Patterson said. “There was no bra found. She must not have been wearing one.”

  “We’re going with a male did this, correct?” Wolf asked.

  “Considering the size of the footprints taking her out there and the severity of the injuries, definitely.” Patterson clicked again. This time it was a close-up of the knife handle. “This is a knife from a Katsaki Chef series. I looked it up on the internet. But here’s the set of knives found on Lauren Coulter’s kitchen counter.”

  She clicked her button and a knife set came up on the screen.

  “The handles aren’t the same,” MacLean said. “It didn’t come from that set.”

  “These are Cutco knives.” Patterson looked at Wolf. “Someone brought their own blade to the scene.”

  “But a kitchen knife?” Wolf frowned. “You’re sure?”

  “I talked to Yates. He says there are no other Katsaki brand knives in that kitchen. Online, I found the murder weapon/paring knife as part of a complete set, but you can’t buy it separately. The odds that she only had that particular knife, and none of the others of the same brand, are pretty slim.”

  “What about other prints?” Wolf asked. “On the front door, the sliding door downstairs, the knobs, kitchen counter, on chairs?”

  Patterson looked at MacLean.

  “I’ll figure out where we’re at with that,” MacLean said. “We expedited the knife, but I’ll get the rest of it on the front burner.”

  “Then there were the footprints out front.” Patterson eyed Wolf, referring to how they’d already been erased by the time Wolf had returned to the front of the house after discovering Barbara Lingmerth’s body. “Are you sure about those?”

  Wolf nodded. “I saw two sets of adult prints and one child’s. I remember thinking that they’d left, and I assumed it was Lauren and somebody else with the daughter.”

  “Large prints? Small prints? Male? Female?” MacLean asked.

  Wolf gave it some thought. “Male.”

  “You’re sure about that?” MacLean asked, his tone accusatory.

  Wolf narrowed his eyes. “I can’t say for sure. Let’s hear what you have on Lauren Coulter.”

  Patterson slid forward off her chair, then twisted, leaned, and finally teetered to a standing position. With one hand, she picked up her laser pointer and cradled her belly with the other. “I learned that Lauren Coulter’s father was killed six years ago by her ex-husband. This guy.”

  She clicked the pointer and a prison headshot of a man flashed on screen.

  “Ryan Rome. Serving a life sentence in Sterling, Colorado for the murder of Phillip Coulter, Lauren’s father. According to the police report, our prisoner, Mr. Ryan Rome, hit Mr. Coulter with a baseball bat over thirty times. The murder happened at the family estate in Greenwood Village, Denver. Lauren happened to be in the neighborhood and stopped by, apparently entering the estate a short while after the murder occurred. In her statement, she said she caught Ryan Rome rifling the place, with her father’s dead body on the floor. Then he took the bat to Lauren, hitting her once on the temple, knocking her into a two-day coma.”

  Rachette whistled.

  From the screen, Ryan Rome smiled pleasantly in his orange jumpsuit, like he was resigned to prison life and rather enjoying it. He was handsome, and without the prison outfit Wolf could picture the man as a successful politician. Or maybe it was the attire that gave him that impression.

  “Lauren was six months pregnant at the time,” Patterson said. “The baby was fine and grew up to be her five-year-old daughter, whom we know today as Ella Coulter. And, yes, I confirmed that Ryan Rome is the father.”

  She pressed the pointer button and then there was a photo of Lauren father’s dead body lying on a Persian rug covered in blood, his head turned into road kill. Blood spatter painted the walls, the mahogany desk, the bookshelves, and the surrounding furniture.

  “Okay, we get the point. Sheesh Patterson.” Rachette looked out the window behind Wolf.

  “Just showing everyone what kind of guy I’m talking about.”

  Patterson clicked the button and a close-up picture of a piece of jewelry came up on screen. It was a hexagonal cut stone t
hat looked like blue glass, surrounded by a doughnut of diamonds.

  “This is the Coulter family heirloom known as the Glacier, a pendant rumored to be worth more than two million dollars. It’s a blue diamond surrounded by more than a few karats of smaller blue diamonds. All set in twenty-two-karat gold. When they found Ryan Rome, this was in his possession.

  “The police report has Ryan Rome stating during his arrest, quote: ‘That bastard crossed the wrong guy, and I was just taking what was rightfully mine.’” Patterson looked at Wolf. “Exactly the terminology that was used in the email Lauren Coulter received this morning at 7:37 a.m.” Patterson pushed her button.

  “Which brings us to our email in question.”

  The email flashed on screen.

  Hi Lulu. I hope you and Ella are doing great. I think I might come see you, whether you want me to or not. Whether you think it’s even possible or not. I need what’s rightfully mine.

  “Aha. Whether you think it’s even possible or not,” Rachette said. “He’s talking about how he’s in jail and it’s impossible to see her but he’s gonna anyway.”

  “Rightfully mine—same terminology that he used when he was arrested for the dad’s murder,” Hernandez said. “Sure sounds like Ryan Rome.”

  “Despite the claim in this email, Ryan Rome is in Block C, cell 41, in the Sterling Correctional Facility right now,” Patterson said. “And, yes. I checked.”

  Rachette shrugged. “So he’s pulling the strings from inside. He has a contraband cell phone and he’s using it to run a crew out here.”

  “The safe door in Lauren Coulter’s study was wide open today,” Hernandez said. “Emptied of everything but the deed to the house. It’s not a bad theory.”

  “See?” Rachette said. “There’s a crew on the outside coming after this piece of jewelry inside her safe. Worth two mil? It’s a good motive.”

  MacLean cleared his throat. “All right, reel it in. Let’s get all the facts here before we start spouting off theories. What’s this about Lauren being involved with her father’s murder? Is there validity in that?”

  Wolf bristled at the insinuation that Lauren could be involved in killing somebody, but held his tongue. Because it was becoming clear that he knew almost nothing about this woman.