A Panicked Premonition

by Victoria Laurie

  “Take the day off,” I told her. I felt like she needed to give herself permission to take care of herself. “Work will still be there when you’re ready to get back to it. Your staff will carry on without you for a day or two and everyone will understand, given the situation.”

  A tear leaked down Gwen’s cheek as I spoke. She wiped it away and said, “Maybe you’re right.”

  “I am,” I assured her. “Anyway, we should get back to work finding him.” I was uncomfortable in her presence. Maybe it was just the fact that we knew things that she didn’t, and suspected things that even we were too nervous to say out loud. It all felt icky to me.

  “Sorry,” she said, her face flushing. “I didn’t mean to keep you.”

  “No worries,” I said, and Candice and I turned toward the door.

  Gwen caught my arm just as we were about to leave and she said, “Please find him, Abby. Please. I love him. I love him so much.”

  I took a deep steadying breath. It was hard to look Gwen in the eye, and even harder to work past the giant lump in my throat. “We love Dave too, Gwen,” I said to her. “Candice and I won’t stop until we find him. I promise you.”

  Gwen looked at me earnestly for a moment before she launched herself at me in a big hug. She held on so tight it was hard to breathe. I hugged her back just as firmly, and thought it was so strange that she and I had never met before, even though we cared about the same person so very much.

  At last she let me go, and Candice stepped forward to hug her too, and then we were off to find out what the hell had happened to Dave McKenzie.

  Chapter Six

  Once we were back at the office, Candice wasted no time pulling prints from the hairbrush. She had several within an hour, and just a few minutes after that, we were each comparing them with the enlarged image of the bloody handprint on her laptop.

  It took only moments to discover several similarities. A little longer to determine that two of the prints from the handle on the hairbrush perfectly matched the index and middle fingers of the handprint found at the Roswells’ house.

  “Son of a bitch,” Candice whispered as she traced with her pencil the distinctive loop and whorl pattern between the prints. Turning to me, she said, “It’s him. He was there.”

  I shook my head. “It’s not what we think. It can’t be. I mean, Dave essentially built that panic room. His prints would be all over the place, right?”

  Candice’s lips pressed down in a frown. “Abs . . . the fingerprints I’m comparing here weren’t in the panic room. They were on the security gate, which he shouldn’t have needed to touch. Not to mention the fact that this handprint is covered in blood. That can only mean that Dave’s whole palm was bloody when he transferred his prints to the gate.”

  I shook my head again and started pacing back and forth behind her chair. “There’s got to be some logical explanation!”

  “The only one that comes to mind is the obvious, which is that he murdered the Roswells and their staff,” she said.

  That stopped me in my tracks. “Candice . . . he didn’t, okay? Not Dave McKenzie. No way. He couldn’t!”

  “How do you know, honey?”

  I balled my hands into fists. I was scared, and upset, and so furious with Dave. What the hell had he gotten himself into? “Because I know Dave. Hell, you know Dave! He couldn’t kill any—”

  And then I remembered. Dave had killed someone. He’d killed for me, even.

  I went back to pacing.

  Candice perhaps took pity on me because she also knew that Dave had killed someone to save me; she said, “I think it might be a good idea to come up with a scenario where Dave left this handprint but didn’t actually commit the crime.”

  I snapped my fingers and pointed at her. “Yes! Yes, okay, so . . . he cut himself when he was building the panic room and left his handprint behind.”

  Candice squinted skeptically at me. “Do you remember Dave cutting himself badly enough on a job to leave behind a full bloody impression of his hand?”

  I scowled. “No. But that doesn’t mean that he didn’t. Maybe he just cut himself and took care of it with a few stitches and didn’t tell any of us about it.”

  Candice drummed her fingers on the desk. “So, you’re saying that Dave McKenzie wouldn’t tell us about a severe cut to his hand that he got while on the job?”

  I balled my fists in frustration again. A month previously Dave had smashed his thumb with a hammer and it was all we heard about for the next three days. His nail had turned purple and we seemed to get a daily update on the saga of Dave’s poor swollen thumb. “Okay, so how about this? Dave checked in on the Roswells, found them dead, then fled the scene because it was so traumatic for him.”

  Candice tapped her chin. “Why didn’t he call nine-one-one?”

  “Like I said, he was too traumatized.”

  “Why didn’t he go home to his wife and tell her? Or call Dutch or Brice, or even one of us?”

  I held up three fingers and ticked them down. “Traumatized, traumatized, traumatized. Oh, and he lost his phone, remember? Maybe he couldn’t call any one of us!”

  “Seriously?” she asked me. “You’re going with, he lost his phone and didn’t ask anyone to borrow their phone because he couldn’t remember any of our numbers?”

  “Oh, please, Candice! That’s not so weird. I mean, all I ever do to call you is swipe across your name on my favorites list. Nobody remembers anybody’s phone number anymore.”

  “I do.”

  I lowered my lids. “Really? What’s my number?”

  “Five-one-two, five-five-five, seven-six-one-eight.”

  “Fine, so you remember my number. Maybe Dave didn’t.”

  “Even if he didn’t remember any of our numbers, he’d probably remember Gwen’s. And he was in his truck, Abs. He could’ve just driven home.”

  “Maybe he was too freaked-out and he left his truck behind.”

  “Then where’s the truck?”

  “Maybe it got towed.”

  Candice’s brows knit together. “It got towed from the driveway of a dead couple? Without anyone alerting police?”

  “Why are you poking so many holes in my theories?” I yelled, so frustrated because I couldn’t come up with a plausible scenario to explain why Dave’s bloody handprint was found at a murder scene he’d left in haste and hadn’t been heard from since.

  Candice laced her fingers together and sat back in her chair to look up at me over her shoulder. “Because,” she said gently, “I’m as desperate as you are to come up with a reason why Dave is in the clear on this. An hour or two from now, APD is going to get their own analysis of the handprint back and realize that Dave McKenzie was there. And they’re also going to see that he drives a silver F-one-fifty of the same type that was in the video, seen driving down the street toward the Roswells’, and just like that, they’re going to peg Dave as the killer. And then they’re going to figure out that Dave hasn’t been seen or heard from in over twenty-four hours, and his wife just filed a missing persons report. And then they’re going to begin a citywide search, and they’re going to find him, charge him with murder, and stop looking for any other suspects, because that bloody handprint is as good as a smoking gun. In other words, in an hour or two, APD is literally going to catch him red-handed.”

  I moved away from my position behind Candice and over to one of her visitor chairs. Sinking down onto the cushion, I bent over and put my head in my hands, closing my eyes in dismay. This was so bad. This was so very, very bad. “We need to call the boys,” I said when no other theories came to mind.

  “Yeah,” she said with a sad sigh. “I know, but I don’t want to do it. I’m sure that after the video Vargas played for us, they already suspect it’s Dave’s print, but I’m not looking forward to confirming it, given that this is their business partner and friend we�
��re talking about.”

  “Maybe they’ll have a scenario that makes sense?” I suggested, lifting my head to look at her.

  “The only person that has that scenario is Dave. And right now, we don’t know where the hell he is.”

  I sat up tall again as a thought hit me. “One thing we haven’t even considered here is motive, or lack thereof.”

  She blinked. “Motive? You mean, Dave’s possible motive for murdering the Roswells and their staff?”

  “Yes. I mean, other than the obvious money thing, which doesn’t really make sense to me, because Dave’s been doing well lately. Business is booming, right?”

  “It is.”

  “And Dave gets an equal cut of the profits just like Brice and Dutch. While I don’t know figures, I do know that Dutch has been extra happy every Sunday night when he’s finished balancing the books. We’ve been making a good profit, and there’s more work coming. I think it’s even safe to suggest that Dave’s doing better financially than he’s ever done in his life.”

  “The Roswells were still worth far more than Dave could even hope to make over the course of a lifetime, Abs.”

  “But if they’re dead, what value would they be to him?”

  “Maybe they had a lot of money hidden in that panic room,” she theorized.

  “Really? How much money could they have on hand?”

  I tried to recall the size of the Roswells’ safe, where I could only guess they’d stashed some emergency funds. It’d been a decent-sized safe, about three feet tall by two feet wide by another two feet deep.

  Candice shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe at most a couple million, but probably a lot less than that.”

  “So, what? Dave just throws away everything he’s ever built—his life with his wife, his booming business—and all of his morals for a couple million dollars?”

  Candice closed her laptop and rubbed her temples. “It doesn’t sound at all like Dave, does it?”

  “No,” I said. “And you know what else is bothering me?”

  “Besides absolutely everything about this case so far?”

  “Yes, besides all of that. What else is bothering me is that the Roswells were killed with a semiautomatic, right?”

  Candice grimaced. “From what I saw at the crime scene, I’d guess that the killer used an AR-fifteen.”

  “Dave does own a gun,” I said. “He’s got a hunting rifle for when he heads back up north to go deer hunting with his brother. And I know that because every year in November he’s gone for the week before Thanksgiving to go do his bonding-in-the-woods thing. But I remember a talk we had once when he got back about how he’d camped next to some guys who were shooting up the woods with an AR-fifteen, and he was sickened by it. He specifically told me that nobody should be able to own one of those, because they’re too dangerous in the hands of drunken amateurs.”

  “Okay,” she said. “So what’s your point?”

  “My point is that if Dave McKenzie were going to suddenly lose all common sense, and every one of his morals, to murder the Roswells in cold blood for this supposed cash they may or may not have had in their panic room safe, then he sure as hell wouldn’t bring an assault rifle to do the job. He’d bring his regular rifle. Or a handgun. He wouldn’t make it messy.”

  Candice slowly nodded. Murdering anyone in cold blood was certainly out of character for the Dave that we all knew and loved, but even beyond that, the method used to commit the murders wasn’t a choice Dave would ever even think to make. He just wouldn’t, and I knew by the expression on Candice’s face that she could see that as well as I could.

  “And the other thing that’s bugging me is the landscaper in the backyard,” I added. Candice tilted her head curiously. I got up and started to pace again. “What possible reason would Dave have to kill a random man who had his earbuds in and probably never even knew that anything was going on, or had gone on, inside the house? It just doesn’t make sense why Dave would be inside killing Rosa and the Roswells, and then go outside to murder this landscaper by sneaking up on him from behind and shooting him in the back of the head.”

  “Maybe he didn’t want to leave any witnesses behind,” Candice said, playing devil’s advocate.

  I shook my head. “So he shoots the gardener but leaves his bloody handprint on the gate for everyone to see when he knows his fingerprints are in the system? No way, Candice. Dave might be a little naive about a lot of things, but he’s not stupid. Even he’d know that his fingerprints could be traced back to him.”

  “Maybe the gardener saw something and Dave panicked.”

  I shook my head again. “If he saw something, he wouldn’t go on pruning the damn hedges. Plus, there’s just something so cold-blooded about the way that guy was killed. I know that the crime scene in the house was unspeakably awful, but it takes an extra dose of evil to walk up to someone from behind and shoot them in the back of the head.

  “My point is that even if Dave had had a psychotic break, he’d still retain an essence of himself and his experiences. Shooting that man in the back of the head is probably the most compelling reason I’m one hundred percent convinced Dave did not do this.”

  “Okay, so you’re right. None of it fits with a Dave-going-cuckoo-for-Cocoa-Puffs theory.”

  “None of it fits Dave,” I corrected. “He’s not the killer. He just isn’t.”

  “Fine,” she said, putting her elbows on the desk and steepling her fingers under her chin. “Then tell me how his hand became covered in the victim’s blood and landed on the gate entrance.”

  “That . . . I can’t explain. But we have to also consider that his handprint on that gate tells us only that, at some point after the murders, Dave was physically there. It doesn’t tell us that he actually committed the crime.”

  “Still,” she said, “his not going home last night or calling any of us makes him look guilty as hell.”

  “Or does it?” I asked.

  “Are you referring to the traumatized theory again?”

  “In a way. What if we’re looking at this all wrong? What if Dave was there at the time of the murders, but maybe he was hidden in the house and he witnessed who did it and now he’s on the run because he’s seen too much?”

  Candice seemed to consider that before speaking. “That’s the best scenario you’ve come up with yet.”

  “We have to find Dave before the cops do,” I said.

  “We do,” she agreed, and then her gaze slid to her phone. “This is going to get sticky for our men.”

  “It’s already sticky. Dave’s the business partner to two FBI agents who have a connection to the murdered couple.”

  Candice eyed me sharply. “Did you mention in your witness statement that we arrived at the Roswells’ searching for clues about our missing friend who was supposed to do some work at their house yesterday?”

  “I didn’t.” At the time I was interviewed, I was still in a bit of shock about what I’d seen inside the home, and I’d consciously thought to skip over what I’d considered the unimportant details—our search for Dave—to the important details: the dead people inside the home. “All I said was that we’d come to the house as a favor to our husbands, who own a construction company, to check up on some work that was done for the Roswells.”

  Candice blew out a breath. “I said something similar. But now I’m wondering if that was such a good idea. It could appear like we were withholding information.”

  “I’m positive it’ll appear like that,” I said. “And when it does, Dutch and Brice could land in serious hot water both with APD and the FBI.”

  “Not to mention the potential lawsuit,” Candice said.

  I felt light-headed. “Lawsuit?”

  Candice seemed to sink lower in her chair. “Dave is part owner of Safe Chambers. If he’s caught up in this mess and found guilty, the company co
uld be sued into the ground by the Roswells’ estate holders.”

  I gulped. “That sounds very, very bad.”

  “That’s ’cuz it is,” Candice said frankly. She then reached for the phone and made the call while I sat miserably in the chair across from her.

  Chapter Seven

  Candice called Brice and put the phone on speaker. “Hey, my love,” he said warmly when he answered. In spite of everything, that made me grin. Brice was such a tough cookie, but he had the sweetest of sweet spots for his wife.

  “Hi,” Candice said, reddening in the cheeks a little when I grinned at her. “I’ve got you on speaker and I’m here with Abby.”

  “Ah,” he said, and I could imagine a slight blush hitting his cheeks too. “What’ve you two got for us?”

  “The bloody handprint on the Roswells’ gate is Dave’s.”

  There was a pause, then, “Fuck.”

  My brow rose. Brice wasn’t big on the swearing. That was my job, and one I took seriously. “You’re sure?” he said next.

  “Yes, unfortunately,” Candice told him.

  There was some mumbling then, and I thought I heard Dutch’s voice in the background mimic Brice’s exact sentiment. Then Brice said to us, “That’s bad.”

  “It is,” she said. “For a whole lot of reasons.”

  “We’ll have to call APD,” he said next.

  “I agree,” Candice said; then she paused before she added, “And maybe you should also call your company attorney.”

  Brice grunted on the other end of the line as if he’d been elbowed in the side. “Jesus. This is gonna snowball for us fast,” he said. “We’ll have to talk to Gaston too. He may pull us off duty until this gets resolved.”

  Bill Gaston was the regional director for the Austin Bureau. He was Brice’s boss, and someone I genuinely liked but was also a tiny bit terrified of.

  “Would Gaston really do that?” I asked.

  “I probably would if I were him,” Brice said.