21
The Charger skidded to a stop outside the bakery and Jack jumped out. He scanned the parking lot. Alice was standing beside Bobbie’s Hummer, leaning against the door and rubbing her temples, while Bobbie, Boomer, Shawna, and Erica had congregated outside the door of the bakery.
Alice rushed up to him and threw her arms around him.
“I’m glad you’re alright,” Jack said, pulling her closer.
“I’m fine. Where’s Lady?”
“She’s at home. Mrs. Stevens is watching her.” Jack took Alice by the elbow and led her away from the car. “Why did you open the box?”
“I thought it was a gift from you,” she said, flustered and overwhelmed, a lump in her throat making her choke out the words.
Jack took a deep breath, looked suspiciously at the Hummer, and led her an additional twenty feet away.
“What are you doing?” Alice asked.
“He could have left something else, too. Maybe something under the car. I need to contact the bomb squad.”
“Jack?” Alice’s hand on his elbow made him stop pacing. “I’m fine. You need to dial it back a bit.” She glanced around, making sure no one had reacted to the “bomb” buzzword.
Jack ran both hands through his hair and glared up at the blue sky. She was right. Freaking out wouldn’t help anything. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and exhaled. “Okay. Tell me what happened.”
“We were at the cake tasting and I realized that I left my phone in the Hummer.”
“So, you and Bobbie and Boomer came out to get it?”
“Just me.”
“What do you mean, just you?” Jack’s voice rose.
“I was just going outside for a minute—”
“There is no ‘just going outside’!” Jack fumed. “A killer has you in his crosshairs. Don’t you get that? He’s killed at least two women already, probably more, and now he wants to kill you.” Jack marched over to Bobbie. “You let her walk out to the car alone?”
“I screwed up. I own it,” Bobbie G. admitted.
Boomer nodded. “Bobbie should have gone with her.”
Shawna smacked him in the back of the head. “No, one of us should have gone out and gotten Alice’s phone for her while she waited safely inside the bakery.”
Jack turned to Alice.
“I didn’t tell them I was going to get my phone, Jack,” Alice admitted looking down at her feet.
“You know better than this, Alice, and we had a deal.”
“I’m sorry. I have been so preoccupied with the wedding stuff.” Her eyes welled with tears. “It’s as if I checked out of our life weeks ago and into some weird bride-o-sphere where nothing else matters but dresses, flowers, and cake, with someone taking six million pictures of my every move.”
“You have got to get your head in the game. You’re a target! And when I arrived just now, why were you standing next to the Hummer by yourself and not with everyone else?” Not waiting for an answer, he glared at his friends. “Do you guys realize just how close this guy got to her? What would have happened if Alice came face-to-face with this nut while he was putting the box in the Hummer? Do you realize that if that had been an explosive device, she’d be dead right now?”
Two police cruisers with lights blazing pulled into the parking lot behind Jack. Morrison opened his door with a scowl, but Officer Kendra Darcey jumped out of the other cruiser and laughed. “Man, you can drive,” she said to Jack. The twenty-five-year-old wore her blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, not trying to hide the four-inch scar which ran from the corner of her chin to her eyebrow, and her blue eyes seemed to glow from some constant energy source within. “You lost us on the first turn and then you went down Jefferson like a bat outta—”
Morrison turned to her with a raised eyebrow and she cut herself off.
“I brought you onto this case as a courtesy, Jack,” Morrison said. “Your speed—”
“Was reckless, and I apologize. I was wrong, and it won’t happen again.”
Morrison looked ready to say something more, but instead looked at Alice. “Are you okay?”
She nodded. “Just a little freaked out.”
“Who wouldn’t be? Is this the car?” Morrison pointed at the Hummer.
“It is,” Jack said. “You know Bobbie Gibson, right? It’s his.”
Morrison shook Bobbie’s hand. “I’m afraid we’ll need to process your car as a crime scene.”
“Do whatever you gotta do,” Bobbie replied.
As Kendra returned to her cruiser to get the equipment, Jack and Morrison walked with Alice over to the Hummer. The passenger door was still open. The long flower box was on the seat, and the lid and a card lay on the floor mat.
“There are two cards,” Alice said. “I dropped one, and the other is still in the box.”
Jack looked inside the box. The card lay on top of a dried rose. FOREVER MINE was written in red on the front. He took out a pencil and used it to flip the card over.
A poem was written on the back, in charcoal pencil.
Always watching
Never seen
I was there
The day of their dreams
They remember the moment
But never me
Closer than breath
I was waiting
But they all forgot
So I came calling
“I didn’t think a dead rose could get creepier,” Alice said as she read the card. “But the bad poem pushed it over the edge.”
“This killer is insane.” Jack dropped the card back down. “What’s the ETA on the crime scene?” he asked Morrison.
“On the way. So are Thomas and Castillo.”
“You need to assign police protection to Alice.”
“What?” Alice shook her head. “No. I have all the protection I need.” She nodded to the others, who were walking over.
“I agree with Alice,” Boomer said. He quickly ducked and held up a warning hand at Shawna. “Stop hitting me.”
Bobbie G. stepped forward. “I’m sorry I let you down, Jack. I messed up. It won’t happen again.”
“It’s not that, Bobbie. This guy is evil crazy. The two women in the morgue were just the tip of the iceberg. This is about as bad as it gets. I still want the three of you to watch over Alice, but even that isn’t enough. For any of you. You need more eyes—and another gun.”
Boomer stepped away from Shawna a couple of feet. “Are we talking ‘eating people’ type crazy?”
Bobbie smacked him in the head. “You watch too many movies.”
“Both of you stop hitting me!” Boomer tried to push Bobbie, but he didn’t budge.
“I’m not going into hiding,” Alice said firmly, despite looking absolutely deflated.
“I’m not suggesting that,” Jack said. “But look, the guy was brazen enough to leave a box in Bobbie’s car in broad daylight.”
Alice’s head darted around like a bird’s as she scanned the area.
Jack smiled. “The police will go to every business around here and see if they have cameras.”
“You knew what I was thinking?” Alice said.
He nodded. “And I know that you won’t cancel the wedding. But I’m requesting a police detail.”
“You have it,” Morrison said. “Consider it authorized. I’m going back to the station to coordinate the team from there.”
When Morrison was out of earshot, Boomer chuckled. “No way. I never thought I’d be working with the cops.”
“I don’t know why you’re smiling so much,” Shawna said. “This crazy guy wants to kill Alice. And in order to get to her, he’s gotta go through you first.”
22
Jack waited by Bobbie’s Hummer as Castillo and Agent Thomas approached.
“We finished canvassing the surrounding businesses. Not one camera,” Castillo announced with frustration.
“And zero witnesses,” Thomas added.
“And no fingerprints found o
n the car other than the owner’s and known occupants’,” Jack said. A crime scene team had come in and gone over everything, with Jack watching closely. “Whoever left the package in the car was wearing gloves, and the gloves removed the existing fingerprints on the door handle.”
“So we have a generic card, in a generic box, with a dead rose and a poem. No witnesses and no forensic evidence,” said Castillo glumly.
“We know someone is watching Alice. Or at least they know her schedule,” Jack said. “They knew she was here and that she was riding in Boomer’s car.”
Thomas took a deep breath and stared at the bakery. “The guy has some serious guts. Either that or he just doesn’t care about being seen. Look at those windows.”
Jack turned to the bakery. The entire front was glass from knee height to the ceiling.
“How could no one have seen anything?” Castillo scowled.
“They were busy working,” Jack said. “And the kitchen is in the back.”
“But the killer didn’t know that. They’d have to think there was a chance of getting seen.”
“I agree.” Thomas crossed his arms. “They’re not afraid to take chances.”
“How many women in the sketches have been identified?” Jack asked.
Thomas took out his tablet and pulled up a photo of the sketches on the wall. “There were fourteen sketches at the scene; we’ve now identified eleven of them. Excluding your fiancée, the identified women are all missing persons.” He pressed a button, and red squares appeared around all the sketches that had been identified. “These women are known to be missing. But this is interesting.” He pressed another button, and blue squares appeared around the three unidentified sketches. “These three women are not in the missing person files.”
The three blue squares were all off to one side, and all in a row. Grouped together, as if in a different category.
Castillo said what Jack already knew and had been dreading. “They’re targets.”
“We have to identify these three women quickly,” Jack said, his gut twisting. “We need to get more eyes on it. You need to go to the media.”
“And start a panic? That’s the last thing we need right now,” Thomas said.
“The way social media blows up every news story,” Castillo chimed in, “we’d have so many people claiming to be from news organizations they’d swamp the investigation.”
“What’s the alternative? Leave the women uninformed and unprotected? That’s just wrong,” Jack said.
“The media is not our friend right now, Stratton,” Thomas said. “And I’m certain the sheriff will agree with me.”
Castillo moved between the two men, trying to play peacemaker. “There are other ways we can identify the women. I know you said the feds’ facial recognition software isn’t quite there yet, but it’s got to at least be worth a shot.”
Jack shook his head. “Enhancements have been made to the FBI’s Next Generation Identification Program to include facial recognition, but there’s a case backlog on that. I already checked. Besides, it’s not going to do well with sketches. The odds of making a match from a sketch are very low—probably less than ten percent. And it adds significantly to the time of the search. Weeks, if not months, or so I was told.”
“You contacted the FBI?” Thomas bit his lip. “I was warned about you, Stratton. They said you fly off the handle. That you strike out on your own. Are you going to prove them right?”
“You’re FBI, so I’m sure you checked me out thoroughly,” Jack responded. “Which means you’re aware of the case concerning my foster sister, Michelle Carter. When our foster mother filed a missing person report, Michelle had already been missing for two weeks, and do you know what the officer told her regarding this straight-A, hardworking college kid? ‘Give her a week or two and she’ll come home. Probably looking for money. They always do.’ I’m not flying off any handle. I know what it’s like to have someone you love out there, missing. The wait is indescribable.” The void in Jack’s chest returned in a flash. “And I know the pain of my sister getting murdered. Do I blame the police for not saving her? No, I don’t. Do I feel that they didn’t take it seriously enough at the beginning? Yes. And rightfully so.”
“I came across your foster sister’s case when reviewing your file, Stratton. And I’m sorry for your loss. But you can’t let it cloud your judgment on this case.” Thomas looked at Jack with an expression that seemed to say, I have an answer—the only right answer.
Jack stuffed down his growing frustration and chose his words very carefully. “Not trying to find these women as quickly as possible, by any means possible, is flat-out wrong. But if you don’t care about that”—Jack held up a hand, cutting off Thomas’s protests—“then look at it this way. You think the media is a problem now? What will the media do to you if you don’t do everything in your power to warn these women . . . and then something happens to one of them?”
Castillo nodded slowly, letting the words roll around in his mouth before responding. “Agent Thomas . . . I have to say, I agree with Stratton.”
“Well, it’s a good thing neither of you is running this investigation,” Thomas snapped.
Castillo looked taken aback. But he quickly recovered. “I’m taking this to Morrison.”
“Great,” said Thomas, calling Castillo’s bluff. “Let’s go speak with him together and see what his decision is.” He started walking to his car.
“Thanks for trying,” Jack said. Castillo gave him a curt nod before following Thomas.
As Jack watched them walk away, the anxiety that he had pushed down exploded to the surface. His hand twisted into a tight fist, knuckles turning white. The political part of police work was raising its ugly head, and he wanted to kill it.
Funding. Budgets. Elections. He knew those things would sit on one side of the scale, and that Morrison would balance them against the things that really mattered. Justice. Protection. Service.
If Morrison said no, Jack knew what the right thing to do would be. But what price would he pay for doing it?
23
I should try to let my anger at Jack go. It’s not his fault, really. He’s just doing what he was made to do. He’s a protector. A guardian. Would I yell at the sea if a wave knocked down my sandcastle?
I would. I’d curse and I’d throw stones at it, but the sea would keep on being the sea.
Jack will keep being Jack, but he can’t stop me. Because I, too, am only doing what I was born to do.
I’m an artist.
And the two I picked out were perfect. Now I need two more.
Stupid Jack Stratton.
The dust tickles my nose. I hold my finger up and fight it back. I can’t sneeze. Mrs. Hershberger would hear me. She really should clean her closet. The smell of mold is just horrid in here.
There she is. It’s so strange watching someone through these slats. They’re angled slightly down, so I don’t think she can see me. Besides, her glasses are thick. She’s old. I should be fine.
Her tea is still on the coffee table, untouched. Tendrils of steam long gone.
Pity.
I still don’t know the right mix. I thought I had it right, but Mrs. Fulcher died. I diluted it a little today.
In the darkness, my fingers close around the handle of my backup plan, the Taser. I wanted one that shoots out those needles, like Alice’s. Hers is pink. The two leads with barbs are attached to a beautiful thin silver wire. Confetti even pops out when you fire it, like a party. I smile but it fades.
Mine doesn’t shoot. No confetti either. But it has the prettiest blue glow. A cross between cobalt and azure. And it crackles. Still, I hope I don’t have to use it. I don’t like it when they fight, or cry. The crying is the worst part.
It hurts my ears, but not my heart.
I couldn’t care less if they beg. I don’t have a choice. Art demands sacrifice.
I’ll have to pick up a taser like Alice’s.
Mrs. Hershberger come
s back into the living room. She’s humming now. Tidying up the place. Pillows over here? Pile them up at the end of the couch? No, move them so they appear to be tossed all around, but make sure to arrange them so all of the cute little sayings embroidered on them are clearly visible.
Blah.
Drink your tea. I need to get to work.
There’s still so much to do to get ready for Alice’s wedding. Though I really should stop calling it that. After all, it won’t be the wedding she’s expecting, and it will be at my church, so I really should call it my wedding.
The Wedding.
The title for my work of art finally hits me, and my knees go a little weak. I put out my hand to steady myself, and bump into something in the darkness.
Mrs. Hershberger stops her manic tidying.
“The Wedding.” It’s perfect!
Mrs. Hershberger is peering at the closet now.
Does she see me? Does she sense me?
It’s not just any wedding. It’s The Wedding, the one that all others will be compared to. Fifty brides from fifty years, plus the one about to say “I do.”
My masterpiece.
Mrs. Hershberger is close to the closet now. She’s leaning forward. Reaching for the door handle. I can hear her breathing.
I hold my breath. My fingers tighten on the Taser.
The phone in the living room rings.
She jumps with a start, and so do I.
Hand to her chest, eyes wide, cheeks flushed. A beautiful shade of red. I’ll have to remember it in my sketches.
She hurries to the phone and I start breathing again.
“Amy, you startled me to no end,” she answers, glancing down at her tea.
Drink the stupid tea. I almost whisper my thought aloud.
She’s listening. Wetting her lips. She leans down and picks it up.
“What? Oh, you have to be kidding. I’m so sorry for you.” She’s standing stiffly now. Listening. The cup slowly rises. She takes a sip. Licks her lips and gulps down another.
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