by Dan Padavona
* * *
The damn cop hadn’t budged in over an hour.
Paige Sutton peeked between the living room curtains. The night held too many secrets, too many places to hide. After the county sheriff informed her a state trooper vehicle would park outside her house, she’d felt some measure of relief. Finally, the police were taking the matter seriously. Now, they just needed to find her friend. Forty-eight hours had passed since anyone heard from Justine. A pall blanketed Paige. Something terrible had happened. It was all spinning out of control again, just like six years ago, when Skye vanished on a night eerily similar to this one.
The cruiser slumbered beneath an oak tree with long branches that brushed the curb like the claws of some ancient devil. She made out the officer’s silhouette and little else. He was probably asleep. She waved to the man and whipped the curtains shut after he didn’t respond. To hell with him. She’d considered bringing him coffee or something to eat.
Sitting on the couch, Paige couldn’t relax. Not with the window behind her. She swiped through her phone, hoping against hope that Justine would message Paige and let her know she was safe. Then she gave up and moved to the recliner, wanting an unrestricted view of the door.
Something brushed against the house. A scraping sound like claws dragging across a tombstone. She sat up and moved her eyes from one window to the next, then to the stairs. The memory of the break-in clung to Paige, made her jump at every sound, every shadow. One more glance out the window. No movement inside the cruiser. If the trooper had seen someone, he’d already be in pursuit of the suspect.
She chided herself. If she lost her mind over every noise, she’d never sleep tonight. Returning to the chair, she pulled a blanket over her bare legs and curled up with her feet tucked beneath her, the notebook computer in her lap and pumping warmth through her shivering body. She opened the Wolf Lake High School alumni website and snooped around in incognito mode, as she always did. Nobody needed to know she was here, reading the comments, searching for messages targeted at Paige and Justine.
It didn’t take long before Paige found another angry post from Webb-WLHS. Who did this woman think she was? Nobody named Webb had graduated with Paige’s class. The woman was an impostor, a troll looking to stir up trouble. Paige had done some digging after contacting a friend who worked for the county. Dawn Samson had a cousin named Cathy Webb. The woman moved outside Wolf Lake the summer someone took Skye. Was Cathy Webb the person who broke inside Paige’s house and left the friendship bracelet? How did she come upon the bracelet, if she wasn’t responsible for Skye’s disappearance? It didn’t add up. If anyone wanted to avenge Dawn, it was Alec Samson, the bitch’s brother. But he’d vanished too.
Now someone wanted to terrorize Paige and make her pay for her rivalry with Dawn. The same person had taken Justine. And Skye? Maybe it was time Paige paid Cathy Webb a visit and showed the woman she wouldn’t be intimidated.
Paige scrolled through the woman’s posts. The heat leapt off the screen. Cathy Webb blamed Paige and Skye for Dawn’s suicide, as if a little harmless ribbing could push a girl to kill herself. Post after post of unsubstantiated rumor and hearsay. Yes, Paige would pay Cathy Webb back for her personal attacks. The woman couldn’t hide behind a fake screen name forever.
Frustrated, Paige slammed the laptop shut. The hedges rattled outside her house. Her spine stiffened as she crept to the window. The yard drowned in deep shadow, as if a black tide rolled through the neighborhood. Overhead, a street lamp flickered and died. Perfect. Just what she needed. Whatever had crawled through her yard, it wasn’t there now.
Accepting sleep wouldn’t come to her, even with the trooper stationed outside, Paige padded barefoot to the kitchen and searched the refrigerator for a snack. She settled on a Greek yogurt and set it on the island. The deck door rattled. Her eyes flew to the glass as a shadow vanished from view.
Paige’s heart was a jackrabbit. All speed and terror as she edged away from the glass. A tree cast a grotesque shadow against the deck door, amplified by the moonlight.
Grabbing her phone, she dialed the state trooper’s barracks. The dispatcher sounded half-asleep and irritated she’d called. He assured her she was safe as long as the trooper remained outside.
“But there’s someone behind the house. The officer can’t see my backyard from the street.”
Footsteps crunched through the grass below the kitchen window. She yelled out and backed into the living room.
“He’s circling the house. Tell the officer the intruder is here, the psycho who broke into my home.”
“Remain calm, ma’am. I’m sure it’s just an animal pawing around the yard. I’ll radio the officer and have him take a look.”
Incompetent fool. Paige ended the call and swung her gaze from the door to the upper landing. Instinct told her to flee while she had the chance. Fear kept her rooted in place, her legs blocks of ice that refused to respond.
A knock on the door snapped her head up. It must be the officer checking on her.
She unfroze her body and hurried to the door. Peered through the peephole. Saw nobody on her stoop.
Was this some kind of trick?
She craned her head toward the cruiser and spied the officer in the front seat, his face bathed in darkness, the moonlight glimmering off the hood. The lazy ingrate hadn’t bothered to check her property.
Paige huffed and marched to the kitchen, intent on calling the dispatcher again to give him a piece of her mind. Instead, she snatched her sweatshirt off the table and pulled it over her head. She donned sandals and exited the house, her glare arrowing at the officer. Paige threw up her hands as if to say, “Well, are you going to do anything about the prowler?”
Hands stuffed in her pockets, she crossed the lawn and bee-lined toward the cruiser. Her scowl should have warned him he was about to get an ear full. Yet the window didn’t descend, and the officer stayed put in his seat, ignoring her.
“Hello? Did you not see the person knocking on my door? What the hell is wrong with you people?”
Oh, heads would roll tomorrow. She’d call the officer’s supervisor, the idiot sheriff, the mayor. A dog barked from a few houses away as she rounded the vehicle. The officer leaned against the headrest. Paige issued a mirthless laugh. The son-of-a-bitch was asleep on the job. No wonder he hadn’t responded to dispatch. She bet the jerk had turned his radio off so he could snooze. Meanwhile, the prowler might be inside her house.
Paige pounded her fist against the hood. A blast like a kettle drum. Hoping to jostle the trooper out of his dream, she paused when he didn’t stir. Strange.
She moved to the window and tapped her fingernails against the glass. The driver’s side window was halfway down to let in the summer air. As she tried to get the officer’s attention, his head lolled over and struck the glass. Blood, as black as midnight, curled down from his neck and soaked his uniform. Paige opened her mouth to scream when footfalls thundered behind her.
She whirled and raised her arms as the pick ax arced through the night. The pointed end buried into her skull, splashing fresh blood against the macadam. Paige’s hands grasped the air as though a ladder to heaven descended from the sky. Her knees buckled. Eyes rolled back in her head.
Paige Sutton crumpled against the blacktop as the shadowed killer vanished into the night.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Sunday, August 15th
12:25 a.m.
Aguilar was already on the scene when Thomas drove into Paige Sutton’s neighborhood. A throng of state troopers and Harmon police officers canvassed the block, shining their flashlights at every shadow and into every hidden corner. The police presence always grew with a killer at large. But when an officer died, the magnitude of the search increased tenfold. An air of hostility hung over the officers. They wanted to tear the neighborhood apart, piece by piece, and hand out frontier justice. Payback for taking one of their own.
Thomas hopped down from his truck and met Aguilar on the cur
b.
“What have you got?”
“A neighbor discovered Trooper Jamie McBride dead in his vehicle with his throat slashed outside Paige Sutton’s house.”
“Anybody see anything?”
“The woman across the street claims she heard a scream a little after eleven. She peeked out the window, expecting kids were screwing around, and noticed the state trooper cruiser. Assuming the situation was under control, she closed the curtains and went back to her television show. Rocky Cooper, who lives three doors down from Paige Sutton, got home from the late shift at eleven-thirty. Says he thought Trooper McBride had fallen asleep. Cooper stopped his car and spotted the blood. A cruiser was already on the way, because McBride hadn’t responded to calls from dispatch.”
Thomas glanced at Paige Sutton’s house. The door stood open, the house lit like a landing strip while officers searched the residence. The investigation team hadn’t moved McBride’s body. He sprawled in the driver’s seat while the crime scene techs worked. A crowd gathered along the curb and gawked. A pair of officers held them behind the barricade.
“Take pictures of everyone in the crowd,” Thomas said to Aguilar. “Be discreet. Don’t let them know you’re shooting photographs.”
Sometimes killers returned to the scene. A few offered help and interjected themselves into the investigation. If their killer was in the crowd, Thomas wanted the maniac on camera. Aguilar weaved between the massing officers and lifted her camera.
Thomas turned his attention to Trooper McBride. No officer adjusted to the initial shock of seeing a dead person. Especially someone who fell victim to a violent murder. That McBride was a fellow officer wrenched Thomas’s insides. Frailty. Every officer was one gunshot, one stab wound away from a funeral.
“Sheriff Shepherd?” Thomas turned and faced a mahogany-skinned trooper with specks of gray in his mustache. He towered six inches over Thomas, his body wiry, eyes hard. “Jordan Baker, New York State Police, Troop E. I knew your predecessor, Sheriff Gray.” Baker’s gaze traveled to the cruiser where the techs worked. He shifted his jaw. “Whoever did this is a monster. McBride had a wife and an eight-year-old daughter. Who’s gonna explain to her that her daddy is never coming home.”
“I’m sorry for your loss, Trooper Baker. Did you know the officer well?”
“For over ten years. Our families got together last winter for a ski trip. Always talked about hanging out more. Thought we had all the time in the world.”
Thomas nodded.
“Any idea what happened here?”
“As far as we can tell, the killer sneaked up on McBride and slashed his throat while he was inside the cruiser. The window was open. He probably wanted fresh air to keep him alert.”
Thomas eyed the blood splashed across the blacktop.
“That can’t be McBride’s.”
“The blood appears to belong to another victim. Could be the killer’s. But given that the home owner is missing…”
Baker cast a wary glance at Paige Sutton’s house.
Had Paige witnessed the attack, run outside to aid the officer, and fallen victim to the killer? Or had she ventured outside to check on the officer, only to find his throat sliced while the killer watched her from the darkness?
The radio on Trooper Baker’s shoulder crackled. He turned to Thomas.
“I’ll be back in a second, Sheriff. Then we’ll catch this scumbag. We can’t let him escape our net.”
The street was a mass of flashing emergency lights. Two ambulances parked along the curb amid the army of law enforcement vehicles. Camera in hand, Thomas angled his lens between two technicians and snapped a photograph. McBride’s eyes were open, mouth agape. His hands had fallen to his lap. But blood covered one hand, coagulating between his fingers, suggesting he’d clutched at the gaping wound and attempted to stem the tide streaming out of his neck. Thomas couldn’t help but wonder if Trooper McBride had been thinking about his wife and daughter, planning a late-summer trip, before his killer approached from behind. The psychopath must have taken McBride by surprise, as Thomas didn’t see signs of a struggle. The kill was quick and efficient.
A female trooper with ebony eyes tipped her cap at Thomas from the curb. He nodded back at her, recognizing the woman from the Jeremy Hyde investigation. The state police had collaborated with the sheriff’s department and Harmon PD during a citywide search for the murderer. So much loss had befallen Wolf Lake since spring.
His head swam. Thomas fought to keep his footing as the Los Angeles shooting flashed before his eyes. He recalled the swirling emergency lights, the paramedic leaning over his twitching body as flies buzzed around his head, the winged parasites waiting for his heart to stop. But that wasn’t the source of his panic. The screams around him drove him toward the edge of insanity. Unable to move, he didn’t see who was injured and dying, could only fear the worst. How many officers had the bullets struck?
Without realizing what he was doing, Thomas placed a hand against the small of his back and winced, eyes squeezed shut. He drew stares from the other officers.
“You all right, Sheriff?” Aguilar’s voice brought him back to the present. “Did you hurt yourself?”
“It’s nothing.” She raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Did you get pictures of the crowd?”
“Everybody.”
“We’ll comb the neighborhood. Someone must have seen a stranger hanging around Paige Sutton’s house. In the meantime, find out where Cathy Webb was tonight.”
CHAPTER FORTY
Sunday, August 15th
9:55 a.m.
The antique grandfather clock clicked from the hall. Inside the study, the counting seconds were the only sounds. Try as he might to ignore the clock, Thomas found his heartbeat following the swinging pendulum, regulating itself to his surroundings.
Heat poured through the vents despite the summer temperatures. His father, Mason Shepherd, slouched in his chair across from Thomas with a blanket over his legs, limbs quivering. The man’s face had turned a sickly gray over the last month. Thomas didn’t need a doctor’s opinion to know time was short.
“How is the woman working out?” Mason asked.
He followed his question with a phlegm-choked cough into a handkerchief. Mason grimaced, folded the cloth, and stuffed it into his pocket.
“Naomi is doing well. She’ll lead Shepherd Systems to its best quarter in company history.”
Mason issued an uncommitted groan. He’d been against the hire, wanting Thomas to lead the company.
A glass clinked from the kitchen. Thomas wished his mother would join them and provide a buffer. He’d already asked his father the standard questions—how do you feel? Is there anything I can do to help?—but understood Mason Shepherd preferred not to discuss the progressing cancer, the black hand sealing his fate. Yet the lung cancer was the elephant in the room. The topic seemed unavoidable.
“I want you to know Shepherd Systems will always be in good hands,” Thomas said, straightening his pants.
“It’s a shame I won’t be around to see it.” Mason’s eyes traveled around the room, taking in all he’d created via his wealth and power. He reached for his tea. The cup jiggled in his hand, liquid spilling down his lips as he sipped the hot drink. “I didn’t do right by you, son.”
Thomas lifted his head.
“Father?”
“I should have allowed you to follow your own path. Instead, I wasted years directing you.” He set the tea aside and placed his gnarled hands over his knees. “Don’t hate me for how I treated you.”
“I could never hate you. I love you.”
Mason pressed his lips together. His eyes glistened, and for a second, the natural color returned to his cheeks.
“Your mother and I wanted to protect you. It was a tactical mistake, one I should have recognized from the start. A parent’s job is to keep his child safe. But it’s also his job to step aside and let that child fly when he’s ready. You’ve been ready for years. I was too stubbo
rn to admit the truth.”
Thomas slid his chair toward his father’s and touched the man’s hand. Mason, who’d turned sixty last month, appeared in his nineties. The disease had robbed the once powerful man of his vitality.
“You don’t have to be scared for me.”
“Don’t I? You’ve already been shot, Thomas. And a murderer broke into your house and nearly took your life. Death follows you, and it scares the hell out of me.”
Thomas glanced down. Liver spots covered his father’s hand. The man withered away with each swing of the clock’s pendulum.
“I’ve made it this far.”
“Because you’re a Shepherd.” Meeting Thomas’s eyes, Mason firmed his chin. “Long after I’m gone, the people will recognize you as the greatest sheriff this county has ever seen.”
Thomas’s throat constricted. Over the thirty-two years of his life, his father had been loath to compliment him.
“I’ll make you proud, Father.”
Mason Shepherd smiled.
“You already have.”
* * *
Raven set her keys on the desk and slid into a chair inside Wolf Lake Consulting. She was the only person inside the building, and her senses were on high alert as she perceived danger around every corner. Would she ever adjust to being alone?
She couldn’t predict if her plan would work. A half-hour ago, after she’d talked with Thomas and confirmed he wasn’t dating Naomi Mourning, she phoned Darren with her plan. Realizing Chelsey would ignore her calls, she had Darren call instead. Darren told Chelsey that Raven was alone at work and knee deep in cases. Raven hoped Chelsey had taken the bait. She hated lying to her friend. But this was the only way to get Chelsey alone.
The clock ticked past ten with no sign of Chelsey, as Raven fiddled with the computer and studied the topographic map of Wolf Lake State Park. The interconnecting trails convinced her the campground thief and LeVar’s intruder were one and the same. If fortune smiled upon Raven, she’d solve the Paul Phipps case and catch her brother’s attacker. Sipping her coffee, she jumped in her seat when the front door opened and closed. Keys jingled, followed by footsteps.