Dig Deeper: A Hallie James Mystery (The Hallie James Mysteries Book 1)

by DK Herman

  I felt like an intruder while they gazed into each other’s eyes. Gram knew I had to leave in a little while to meet Ben Gordon. I’d told her what I was doing, leaving out the gorier details. She approved but made me promise to be careful.

  "After the pretty girls, Mr. Murphy?" George's surgeon teased as he walked into the cubicle.

  "Just one, my girl." George winked at Gram.

  "I think, we may have to move you out of intensive care tomorrow,” The doctor informed him, checking his shoulder wound. "A few days in a regular hospital room and we'll talk about you going home. But you’ll need a lot of care and some physical therapy to regain full use of that arm.

  "Wonderful." Gram's eyes glowed. "I want you to come home with me." She put her fingers over George's mouth when he started to protest. "Please darling, I want to be with you. This has reminded me, life is so very short. I won’t waste any more time without you.”

  "Anything to be with you, Susie,” George said.

  I smiled and checked my watch. "I have to leave for a while. Call my cell if you need me before I get back.” I told Gram. "See you later, George."

  Brew’s was less than half full when I got there. I chose a table in the back and ordered a Mocha Latte’. I pulled a small, digital voice recorder out if my purse and placed it on the table with a small notebook and pen. Feeling eyes on me, I scanned the room. A strikingly handsome, young guy with thick, dirty blond hair was sitting by one of the front windows. He looked to be in his mid-twenties, and he bore a resemblance to Cara Gordon. He noticed me staring, so I waved.

  "Ben?" I asked. He got up and came over.

  "I'm Hallie James." I offered my right hand, switching on the voice recorder with my left

  He shook my hand before sitting down across from me. Tall and sturdily built, he wore a tee shirt and jeans with an expensive brand of sneakers. He had a tight grip on a large coffee cup with his left fist.

  "So, why does a man, think my sister’s murderer is after him?" Ben came right to the point.

  "Someone tried to kill him three times. Once by ...well, the same method that your sister's killer used." I was trying to be gentle with the details of Cara's murder. I suspected he knew, but sometimes hearing something out loud made the mental picture worse.

  He looked unimpressed by that fact. "Still, the cops told me, Cara was one of three girls that this sick fuck killed." His cup collapsed a little as his grip tightened.

  I took a long drink of my mocha, trying to gather my thoughts. "Your sister was buried on my family’s property." Ben leaned closer as I spoke, his golden-brown eyes locked with mine. "A friend and I found the girl's bodies. The man who hired me is my Grandmother's boyfriend. The knife incident happened in our backyard, about a hundred yards from where your sister was buried."

  "Wow. OK, yeah, it might be the same guy." Ben nodded. He seemed a little dazed and I didn't blame him.

  "Besides the horrible things that he's done to your sister and the other girls, I can't have him operating so close to where I live." I didn't mean to sound selfish, but I normally wouldn’t chase a serial killer. "I live there with my Gram and Aunt. I need this guy behind bars or dead."

  "Dead sounds really good to me." Ben looked hard and serious. "Where does your family live?"

  "Why?" I asked gently.

  "I want to see the spot. You know, where she was buried."

  Once again, I used my coffee for a moment to think. Would seeing where Cara's murderer buried her hurt or help? He was holding up well, but it had to be costing him a lot of energy. I looked up. Now his eyes were pleading with mine.

  "It's only a few miles up the highway,” I said. "A few questions and I'll take you. Deal?"

  Ben nodded.

  "Why were you looking for Cara in Herville?"

  "Our mom had a tracking program on Cara's phone. Your supermarket is the last location, it reported." He explained. “The phone went dead after that.”

  I nodded. "It's also the bus station. Do you think that’s how she got here from Ohio?"

  "Yeah." He shrugged. "She didn't have her license yet, or a car. She went to her room about eight that night." He turned sideways in his chair, blinking back tears. "That was the last time I saw her. We couldn't find her in the morning, and some of her stuff was gone, too."

  "Did she know anyone here?"

  "Her best friend told me she was talking to a cute guy in Pennsylvania before she disappeared. She claims, Cara never said his name, but she showed her a picture once, that he emailed Cara of himself. Kelly said that it was a bad picture. You couldn't see his face very good, but he had dark hair and looked tall."

  "Is the picture still in her email?" Please let it still be there.

  "Mom and I couldn't get into her email. She musta changed the password."

  "Do the cops have the computer?" I crossed my fingers. I wanted to see that picture.

  "She always used her phone. Me and our mom have laptops, but Cara didn't like them. She thought her smart phone worked better,” Ben said. He looked tired. I wondered, when was the last time he got any sleep.

  I handed him a piece of paper and my pen. "Write down her email address and any passwords she used in the past."

  "Are you gonna hack in?"

  "I’m going to try. I might need to call and ask you more things about Cara, OK?" I could tell he was eager to go. He didn't really want to see were his little sister had been found, but he couldn't not see it either.

  "Sure, call me anytime you want."

  We left Brews, and he followed me down the street to where I’d parked Chitty. He was quiet the whole time, not saying a word, until I parked near our little wooden bridge.

  "Out there?" He asked, looking into the woods, along the creek.

  "Yeah." I nodded. "Are you sure, about this?”

  "Let's go." He opened Chitty's passenger side door.

  I led him to the spot, Hank and I found the dogs digging that night. There was an area of recently disturbed dirt. It was obviously the spot. Ben hunched down on his heels. I turned to give him some privacy when I heard him sniff back tears.

  The woods in this area got denser away from the spring. But in the daylight, I could see the path. I realized that it was the path that forked to the right. The other night, I had gone left when I ended up at Hank's.

  Ben finally stood and wiped his face with the back of his hand. "Find the son of a bitch." He told me through grit teeth. "Kill him if you can. But stop him from running loose, living his life, and hurting anybody else."

  "I'll do my best,” I promised.

  He nodded. "OK, let's go. You can ask anything else you want, anytime you want."

  I called Grams cell on the way back to Brews. The hospital had brought her a tray for lunch and a comfy reclining chair to sit in. She said, she would be perfectly happy with George for a few hours, yet.

  "What are you doing next?" Ben asked me when I stopped Chitty by his pickup truck.

  I'm going to see if the family of another victim will talk to me. "

  "Can I go along? I might see or hear something that's the same as Cara. You know, like... notice a clue." He eyes begged to let him help.

  "They live about a half hour away, south of here." I warned. It was hard to say no to Ben. I could tell he’d really loved his sister, and he seemed like a good guy.

  "I've got the time." He put his seatbelt back on.

  I took the Cameron's address out of my purse and handed it to Ben. "Hang on to this, it's where the girl lived with her family."

  "Ashley Cameron,” he read my crappy handwriting easily. "Pretty name. How old was she?"

  "Seventeen."

  "The rotten bastard,” Ben muttered. He put the slip of paper into his pocket.

  With Ben's help, I found the Cameron home in the hill section of Bloomsbury. It was a white sided, two story house with a small front yard. We found a parking spot across the street and got out.

  "Let me do the talking, OK?"

  "Yeah
, sure." Ben followed me up a sidewalk filled with flowers, still in bloom on both sides.

  I straightened my gray blouse and checked my black jeans for lint. I wished I had put on a skirt that morning as I rang the doorbell.

  A couple only a few years my senior, answered the door together. They both had blonde hair, the woman's the exact same shade as her murdered daughter.

  "Can I help you?" The man asked warily.

  "I'm Hallie James." I showed him my private investigator's credentials. "I've been hired by a surviving victim, to assist in the capture of the man who murdered your daughter. I'd like to ask you a few questions."

  The man and woman looked at each other and nodded.

  "Come in," The man said. "I'm Daniel Cameron. This is my wife, Pam."

  I shook the hands offered and followed Pam into the living room. The house was beautifully decorated, with a lot of light blue walls and white trim. It had a cozy feel and many souvenirs from trips, and family pictures. The Cameron family must spend a great deal of time together.

  "Please, sit down, Ms. James and..." Daniel Cameron paused, looking at Ben.

  "I'm sorry. This is Ben Gordon." I decided to go with honesty. "He's the brother of another victim. He volunteered to come with me today, hoping he might see or hear something that I might miss."

  "Your sister, she was murdered, too?" Pam asked, her face stricken.

  "Yes, ma'am. Her name was Cara. She would have turned sixteen on the ninth of next month." Ben looked down at the spotless, beige carpet.

  Pam moved forward and hugged the young man. He hugged her back.

  "I want to help Ms. James, catch the son of a ... I mean creep, that did this." Ben blushed.

  "First, everybody, please call me Hallie." I watched everyone nod. I took out my notepad and pen and switched on the voice recorder in my purse. "What can you tell me about why, your daughter drove to Herville Mall last Saturday."

  "She must have gone there, straight from work," Pam said. "She worked Saturdays, from nine in the morning until one. She waits...I mean, waited tables at the diner by the old train station. She told us she was going shopping for new school clothes, and she wouldn't be home for supper. But she never came home at..." Pam's voice trailed off, tears escaping from her eyes.

  "None of her friends, knew anything about it." Daniel added. "But, they found her car in the mall lot, near the main entrance."

  "What kind of car?" I asked.

  "A blue, 2005, Corolla." Dan stood again. "I'm sorry, did you want coffee or something."

  "No, thanks." I smiled tightly. These were nice people, damn it. They didn't deserve this heartache. Nobody did. "Did she use a computer a lot?"

  "Sometimes for school work," Pam said. "The police took it. We told them, she used her phone more often."

  "Do you know where her phone is?" I'd bet they didn't, but I had to ask.

  Daniel shook his head. "She always kept it with her, and it wasn't in her car. I wish it could have been found. She kept it in a bright pink case, covered with rhinestones. She loved her phone."

  "Do you know her email address?" When Pam nodded, I tore a piece of paper out of my notepad. "Will you write it down, please? And her cell number."

  "Did you want to see her room? The police did,” she asked as she wrote on the paper.

  "Yes, please." I stood up.

  Ben followed us upstairs and into a very feminine bedroom. Pale pink and lace dominated the room. Daniel and Pam stayed back by the door, allowing me to look around. Ben stood near them, his arms folded across his chest.

  "Everything's exactly like she left it," Pam said. "The police said, they didn't find anything of interest."

  I looked around anyhow. The closet held a great deal of nice quality clothing. A healthy shoe collection littered the closet floor. Board games and photo albums were stored on the closet shelf. Ashley had a lot of friends, according to the pictures in her albums.

  I moved on to the mirrored dresser. A wrist corsage of dried flowers lay on top. Prom, I thought. An index card with 'bluemooSestation', hand printed on it, was stuck into a corner of the mirror.

  "Did she have a boyfriend?" I opened the top drawer.

  "She did. They broke up last month." Dan answered. "Lane Timmons, the police talked to him. They found out that he broke up with her, over another girl."

  I found nothing of interest in the dresser, so I moved on to the nightstand. There I found a box of tissues, a romance novel, butter rum candies, a box of colored pencils, and a sketch pad.

  "She liked to draw." Daniel spoke, looking stressed. The drawings were important to him, so I handled the sketch pad carefully.

  I flipped through the pages. To my eyes, she had talent. There were pictures she had drawn of her stuffed animals, birds, trees and flowers. The last page was a cupid, a heart in his hands. The heart had the initials H and A in it. I held the picture up for her parents to see.

  "I think she was drawing that for her friend, Andrea," Pam said, anticipating my question. "She's been dating a boy named Harper for about a year."

  I nodded and put everything back into the drawer. Ten minutes later, I told the Cameron's, I had seen enough for now. I gave them my card, asking them to call me if they thought of anything that could be helpful. I said that I would be in touch and we left.

  I hadn't heard from Gram, yet. So, on the way back, I swung Chitty into the Herville Mall parking lot.

  "What are we doing here?" Ben asked. He'd been quiet on the drive back. I could tell he felt bad for the Cameron's, on top of his own pain.

  "I'm hoping to see security camera footage. Ashley had to leave the mall with somebody. Her car was found here."

  "Oh yeah!" Ben exclaimed. "We could see, who this shithead is."

  "Don't get too excited." I put Chitty in park and turned off the ignition. "The security guards don't have to cooperate with me, and the cops probably already made off with the footage."

  "How do you know there’s footage?"

  "There are cameras everywhere these days. In public, everybody’s caught on film many times a day, they just don't know it,” I said. "Let's go. Same rules, I talk."

  I went straight to the security office and knocked on the door. A tall, bony man about my age answered, looking harried and with an attitude.

  "I gave the cops that disc. Anything else, I can do for you?” The guard was already closing the door.

  "Yeah, there is." I put my foot in the door. “Which cop did you give it to?"

  "I think his name was Kasey. You know, the smug asshole with gray hair." He opened the door wider and glared at me. "Why?"

  "I've met him and your right, he's an asshole." I saw an opportunity and smiled ingratiatingly. "He's always giving me a hard time, like he's better than me."

  Ben gave me a confused look, but he kept quiet.

  "I know. I just try to do my job, and everybody has to give me shit." The guard seemed to enjoy having someone to bitch along with him.

  I read his name tag. “You’re preaching to the choir, Don. “I leaned on the door frame and smiled into his face. "Same here. They just can't give me a break." Stealthily, I pulled on the front of my blouse, exposing a little cleavage.

  His blubbery lips smiled back while his watery, pale-blue eyes were glued to my chest.

  “I’m Hallie. I work for a private detective.” I wanted to make him sound more important than me. “My boss needs that footage.” I sighed and looked down sadly. “He might fire me if I go back to the office without it.” I sighed again. "I guess I’ll have to go kiss Detective Kasey’s ass. I'll bet he's just gonna look down his nose and tell me to get lost. But what else can I do?"

  "I have another copy, sweetheart.” He tore his gaze from my boobs and gave me a creepy wink.

  "You would let me see it!" Hands clasped to my chest, I gave him my best, "my hero," look.

  "I made another copy of the disc before the cops took it." He gave me a sly grin. "If the girl turns up dead or something, I’m
gonna sell it to a news station."

  I’d forgotten, the murders weren't common knowledge yet. I gave Ben a quelling look, hoping he wouldn't say a word. He walked away, about a dozen feet toward an electronic store. He appeared to be studying a poster advertising cell phone plans.

  I batted my eyes and smiled at Don again. "You're so clever. I never have thought of that.”

  Don reached into a back pack on the office floor and handed me a disc. "When you bring this back, I'll take you out to a nice dinner." He winked again, licking his lips suggestively.

  "Sounds great!" I stuffed the disc into my purse and fought the urge to vomit. "See you then."

  I could feel Don’s eyes on my ass while I walked away. Until we got to the mall exit, Ben stayed a few steps ahead of me.

  "That was a nice con, back there. You’re a hell of an actress.” Ben smiled at me for the first time and I was stunned. Ben was a hottie but years too young for me. That smile though, with the deepest dimples I’d ever seen and perfect white teeth in a tan perfect face, was breathtaking.

  "Only for a good cause." I shuddered, remembering Don licking his lips. "Right now, I want to run home and shower again!"

  "You got what you needed. You did good." He opened my driver’s side door with a gentlemanly air. "Here you go, lady. Where to next?"

  We got back into Chitty and my cell rang. It was Gram, ready to go home. I looked at my dashboard clock. It was almost three o'clock. I told her, I would be there in five minutes. She said, she would be waiting outside the hospitals main entrance.

  "I have to stop at the hospital and pick up my grandmother,” I told Ben. "It’s on the way, back to town.

  Gram was waiting on a bench, in front of the hospital. Ben got out and helped her into the seat that he just vacated. I introduced them before he climbed in the side door, sitting on the table-bed.

  "Do you want to watch the disc with me?" I asked Ben.

  "Sure, if you want me to. I’d rather do something besides wait around by myself, for the cops to release my sisters b… body,” Ben said, stumbling over the last word.