by Gillian Zane
“I’m not feeling that good, Lauren. I don’t think tonight is a good time for me.”
“Cas.” Troy’s voice knocked me out of the memory. He hung up the phone and looked at me with an odd expression. “Everything okay?”
"Oh yeah, fine, I was just—" I didn’t know how to explain it. Lost in thought?
“Did you have a vision?” he asked and I realized that look on his face was intrigue. He truly believed I could do this.
“Maybe,” I lied. “I have to process it, see if it relates to anything.”
“I hope it relates to a case,” he said eagerly.
“What did the parents have to say?” I changed the subject.
“They aren’t that receptive to talking to you, but I kind of guilted them into it. I arranged a time to come in, but not until later today, after one.”
“That’s fine. I can wait around. Why don’t you tell me what your impressions are about the case?”
“Let’s get a coffee and I’ll fill you in.”
The coffee shop next to the precinct was a 24-hour donut shop, which wasn’t stereotypical at all. It was new, meaning it hadn’t been there when I was alive. The shop’s shtick was trendy donuts, which seemed to be all the rage in every suburb in America- donuts with bacon, and donuts the size of pizzas. The coffee was good and hot, and they added plenty of mocha mix in it to give me that jolt of sweet that I needed to really taste it.
Troy and I took a booth in the corner. He sat across from me and opened the case file we would be working on together.
“I honestly can’t pin this case down. There was no forensic evidence in the car, but the father—" He shuffled through the file folder in front of him. “Chance, said they wore gloves and masks. It doesn’t seem real.” He shook his head.
“Is that usual for a carjacking?” I asked even though I was pretty sure it wasn’t.
“No, not usually. They are usually spur of the moment crimes, not much planning. This was planned. Almost like they watched a movie and got their idea from there.”
“Anything else that proves it was planned?”
“It happened in an area without traffic cameras, and when we found the vehicle there wasn’t even a stray hair found.”
“When did you find the vehicle?”
“A week later, parked in a sketchy neighborhood, and we’re lucky it wasn’t stolen again—but the locals thought it was a dealer’s car or a bait car and stayed away.”
“He had a flashy car?”
“Yes, some kind of Audi that’s hot right now.” He shuffled through his file again. “S8.”
“I don’t know much about cars,” I shrugged.
“Costs as much as my house.”
“So, they’re wealthy?”
“No, that’s the thing. Upper middle class, yes, but I wouldn’t call them wealthy. The guy spent a fortune on that car, they had a fancy house, but I’d bet my paycheck that they are living above their means. Nothing liquid.”
“If you were a kidnapper, would that be who you targeted?” I asked.
“No, not even close. People like that can’t round up a pay-off. They have to liquidate assets to get cash. A smart kidnapper would know that. And the way this seemed planned, it hints at a well-thought out kidnapping.”
“Tell me about the ransom.”
“One call, the husband got it, typical. They demanded one hundred K or the kid was going to die. Don’t call the police, yada yada. But the dad had already gotten us involved by then, thinking it was a carjacking and his kid was inadvertently in the backseat. Kidnappers claimed they would call again that night. We had time to set surveillance up, but no one called. Figured they were watching the house, saw the team sent in, and got spooked.”
A group of uniformed officers filed through the door and glanced at Troy, giving him a wave and a shake of the head.
“Aren’t you on the clock, Delaney? Does the Lieutenant know you’re on a date?” An officer I recognized, but couldn’t remember his name called.
“Working!” He slapped his hand on the file folder.
“Sure,” another said, his eyes on me.
“Go get your donuts, boys.” Troy turned back to me. “Maybe we should head back to the station. I want to go through some of the actual evidence we managed to gather.”
There were a few more catcalls from the officers as we got up to leave and return to the station. Nothing I hadn’t heard before. Idiotic men trying to show off their balls in the daily competition of whose are bigger. It was a tragic interplay between officers on a daily basis and I had been stuffed in the middle on numerous occasions, usually having to deal with either patronizing down-talking, or constant sexual commentary because they thought it might turn me on and leave me desperate for them. It had all but stopped after I proved there was nothing different about me, other than the fact that when I took off my uniform I indeed had a vagina. When they realized that they wouldn’t see said vagina, and I wouldn’t back down and be put in my place, all was good. But it had been an uphill battle in the beginning. I would blame it on my gender, but they did it to all new recruits, and they went for the easiest chink. Mine being my gender. Troy’s was his good looks and his inability to keep his dick in his pants around a cute girl.
Troy had never managed to get the other guys off his back. He chalked it up to jealousy, which was, in most cases, not the truth. The truth was they were going to rag you about something, no matter who or what you were. He never saw it as his own damn fault half the time. Brought on by his insufferable need to primp, or his constant bragging about girls he’d managed to bag, his words, not mine, and the fact that his goal in life was to get in the First Responders annual calendar.
I shook my head as one of the cops made a creative, if not quite lewd, hand gesture to Troy, which had Troy’s cheeks flaming. I didn’t think detectives could blush.
“Other than the O’Neal case, is there anything else you would like me to work on?” I asked once we got back to the station. There was a niggling feeling in the pit of my stomach that told me the O’Neal case would be wrapped up quickly. Something wasn’t coming together with the evidence.
“There is, it’s actually the top priority, but there isn’t a definitive witness that I could call in.” He led me back to his desk and pulled another file folder from the pile. It was the only blue folder in a stack of beige. A twinge in my stomach had my mouth filling with saliva as if I was going to be sick. I didn’t need to be a psychic to know why this file folder was a different color. Flipping the cardboard over, I looked down and stared at a picture of me.
“One of our own. An officer, I mean. It’s been almost two years since she went missing.”
“Missing,” I whispered. I had almost forgotten what I had looked like. The long brown hair that I refused to dye, even though Lauren constantly harassed me about its plainness. And the bright green eyes that had never changed. The angular face and small frame, because I never took the time to appreciate food.
“She, like the O’Neal boy, is most likely dead. We found enough blood at the scene to guarantee she wouldn’t have survived the blood loss.”
“They never found a body?”
“We thought we had, a Jane Doe was found down river about six months ago matching her description. Severe trauma to the skull, several stab wounds. But we just got the DNA results and they aren’t a match.”
“I don’t know, it sounds—”
“It’s very important to everyone here, so I want to keep it on a need to know basis that you’re involved, if you do get involved. Which I think you can really help with this one, but the guys, they’re really sensitive to her case. Even more so since we’ve made no progress on it, even though there have been some recent developments.”
“What developments?” I asked, trying to choke down the coffee that was boiling a hole in my stomach lining.
“One of the suspects in the case turned up dead. We thought he had skipped town, possibly after he murdered her.
But it looks like he was dead only days after Cassandra. Most likely by the same killer.”
He flipped over a card and Pete’s smiling face grinned back at me, his arm casually thrown around my shoulders. I remembered that night. It didn’t help the feeling of nausea that was permeating my entire system.
“We’ve been fucking for three months now, Cassandra. You gotta know this isn’t enough for me.”
“I’m sorry, Pete, but it has to be, I told you I didn’t want a relationship.”
“Well, you should have told me that before you had my dick out and were riding it at the beach house.” He was yelling now. I had never seen Pete angry until we started sleeping together. And he never talked to me this crudely. I didn’t like to see him angry.
“We were drunk.”
“I was drunk. You’re never drunk, Cassandra. That isn’t an excuse.”
He was right.
I blinked and focused back on Troy. I had missed parts of the conversation, probably about Pete. I had to stop letting these memories take over.
“Even weirder, a PI that was doing pro bono work on the case was the one who managed to link a John Doe DB, to the case. He identified the body as Pete, and then ended up dead himself not long after.”
“Wait, a PI found the main suspect in the case dead...and then turned up dead himself?” I repeated so I could get my footing back in the present day.
“Yes. He was shot dead in the middle of the town where Pete’s body was found. Or so the local police force says.” Troy shuffled through the files and pushed a photo of Drake across the desk. It was a professional shot, something you would submit for an ID. He looked intimidating and competent. I made a fist and shoved my hand under the desk to resist the urge to touch the photo.
“Why do you say it like that, so the police say?”
“His body disappeared, went missing from the crime scene while the cops were wrestling with the PIs girlfriend. I guess she was a bit distraught about the entire situation and had them acting like a bunch of novices. They were dealing with her, and when they managed to get back to the body, it was gone.”
“That’s strange.”
“It is,” Troy agreed.
“Who’s the girlfriend, maybe I can talk to her?” I asked because it was expected, not that I thought they would be able to provide her, since it was me, under a different name.
“Unknown. They had rented a house under Drake’s name, and the police let her go after the surprise of the missing body. Morons didn’t even get her name.”
“Do you think his death is related to theirs?” I tapped the photo of me and Pete.
“It seems like too much of a coincidence, but Pete was stabbed, and we think Cassandra was also, since we found punctures in the clothes that were identified as hers. There were at least ten punctures in the clothes. ”
“You found her clothes, but not her?”
“Yes, they turned up in a dumpster downtown. Along with her purse.”
I shivered as Troy went on.
“The PI, Drake Greco, was shot. Twice in the back. Pete had been stabbed, and if Cassandra was also stabbed, this means the killer likely knew both of them. That’s a passion killing. Greco’s was a killing of cowardice. Removed. Killers usually don’t change up their MO like that.”
“Stabbed.” I pulled the photo of me and Pete closer. He had a great smile. It would light up his face and was always contagious. It had been my favorite thing about him.
“Pete was stabbed over eighty times,” Troy shared, his voice hushed so I could soak in the details.
Eighty times.
The nausea won. I barely made it to the restroom in time.
3
Eighty Times Dead
I stared in the mirror as I splashed water on my face to wash away the vomit. It hadn’t been a particularly pleasant experience. Coffee tasted horrible coming back up. Not a lot either, I mostly dry heaved, vomiting up my emotional well-being instead of actual stomach contents.
The small time sheriff hadn’t mentioned how horrific Pete’s murder had been. To stab someone eighty times - his killer must have really hated him. Had that happened to me?
Selfish Cassie at it again, making it about her. As per usual.
I had thought I loved him, even if it wasn’t that romantic kind of love he expected out of me. I had loved him as a friend. I had wanted it to become more, had tried to fake it for as long as possible - until he backed me into a corner I didn’t want to be in.
And he was dead. I hadn’t given it much thought until now.
He was dead. That meant he could be somewhere in Afterlife working, just like me. I hadn’t tried to find him. I hadn’t obsessed about his whereabouts, nor tried to resurrect him like I had Drake. I tried to remake the world because I couldn’t stand to lose Drake…
My stomach rolled again, in guilt, in fear, in self-loathing. I gripped the sink so hard the porcelain creaked in protest.
“Hey, you need some help?” A female police officer strode into the latrine and glanced my way, doing a double take when she saw what a mess I was.
“No, sorry, bad reaction to the donuts next door.” I shook my head to pull myself together.
“Oh yeah, that place is the pits. Shitty donuts with nothing but a high caloric content. I stay far as hell away.” She smiled and dismissed me as she found a stall to do her thing.
I made sure she was firmly settled in her stall before and I turned back and fixed the mess I had made of my face with only a thought.
“I shouldn’t have put this much on you,” Troy apologized when I took a seat at his desk.
“Sometimes I have a physical reaction when I sense something.”
“You sense something?” He got excited at my statement and I could have slapped myself for the clumsy lie.
“It’s complicated,” I whispered. I couldn’t do this. If Persephone found out, I would be screwed.
“It’s the case that haunts this entire precinct; if you could help, in any way…”
The fear pooled in my stomach again. This had to be a hard limit for Persephone. I couldn’t do this, not so openly. Not on a case that she was watching. But then, they had put me here. Whoever they were. Was it Persephone? Had she done this to set me up? I wouldn’t put it past her.
Whoever assigned me to this case knew this was my old precinct. My cover was to play a psychic and help Troy solve cold cases and in the process of working with him, expose him. They had to know this was going to happen.
They had to know that one of those cold cases would be my own. It was almost as if this was designed so I could get ahold of my own case. So I could finally have the resources to solve my own murder.
“I’ll try.” I said the words louder than I intended. My voice cracked from the fire that burned my throat.
“Fantastic.” Troy stood and patted me on the back.
“Delaney,” an officer shouted from across the room. “You have visitors.”
“That’s gotta be the O’Neals.” He squinted his eyes at me. “You okay, Cas?”
“Performance jitters,” I covered with another clumsy lie. I wiped my palms on my skirt and grimaced at the wet streaks they left. Disgusting.
“Look, I’m going to put them in Interrogation Room One, then I’m going to hit the head—er, bathroom, and I’ll meet you there in a bit. Maybe walk around a bit to settle down.”
“Yeah, okay.” I stood and we walked in opposite directions. Not knowing where to go, I wandered around the bullpen, trying to find something to stabilize me. I couldn’t make this about myself. I couldn’t let my usual selfishness take root. There was something going on. I knew it and it didn’t feel like it was for my better interest.
I was being set-up. That had to be the case. I wandered back to Troy’s desk and opened the file of the little boy. His cute, chubby cheeks smiled up at me.
I had to focus on the kid. This couldn’t be about me.
If I was being set-up, at least I would have a ch
ance to make a difference in a few lives. Maybe I could find this kid, solve a few cases, and out a dirty cop. I touched the picture of Liam O’Neal and the musty taste of sadness filled my mouth. I had a sinking feeling that when I did find this kid, he wouldn’t be alive.
“The husband was reluctant to come in, but the wife forced his hand.” Troy was waiting for me outside of the interrogation room when I approached.
“What’s she like right now?”
“She’s emotional. She thought when I called that we had found him. What do you plan on asking them? I don’t want to add to their anguish,” Troy said with sincerity. Hot doubt about Troy surfaced, burning a path upward through my body. I was used to dealing with assholes when I took a case, unrepentant fools who had dark motives and dark past deeds. Troy truly wanted to solve this case. He wanted to end this couple’s anguish. He had been a good guy when I knew him, and now he stood in front of me playing hero. This case didn’t sit right with me. I didn’t want to see Troy go down. I didn’t want to question parents about their missing child. Fuck.
“I don’t have to ask them much, their words are not what I need,” I said instead of what I really wanted to say. Which was that I wanted to go home. Troy nodded like this made perfect sense to him.
“Good, let’s keep it short and sweet, and if you need to take a break, just say you need to discuss something with me.” I nodded to show him I understood. “Well then, here goes.” He opened the door to the interrogation room and I entered first, greeting the parents and introducing myself.
The scene was right out of a movie. A scarred and unstable table, a camera in the corner, four very uncomfortable chairs. Troy pulled my chair out for me, the metal screeching over the linoleum. By the time I had taken a seat and pulled my chair up to the table in an awkward jittering movement, I knew exactly what had happened to Liam O’Neal.