Shadow Point Deputy

by Julie Anne Lindsey

  Rita grabbed the envelope hastily and crammed the keys and change inside. “Never,” she admitted. There. She’d said it. No sense in lying. Why should it matter?

  Before she could get Ryan’s wallet back into the envelope, it fell onto the floor, knocked aside by her bumbling hands. The contents scattered, including a folded scrap of white paper she hadn’t noticed before.

  Cole collected the things in one big mitt and dropped them into the envelope. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to pry. I shouldn’t have pushed.”

  Rita took the envelope and reached inside. “It’s fine. What does the paper say?”

  She refused to discuss her sex life in front of Ryan, even if he was unconscious.

  Maybe Cole had a point about siblings not sharing everything.

  She retrieved the neatly folded paper and read the line of uniform text. Her hands began to tremble as she passed the note to Cole.

  LEAVE THE PEN UNDER THE MAILBOX AT MEMORIAL PARK. DO IT TONIGHT. COME ALONE. OR YOU’RE NEXT.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Rage tightened Cole’s limbs.

  “Stay here.” He snatched the scrap of paper from Rita’s fingers and went in search of answers. Like how the hell had someone gotten a threatening note into a crash victim’s wallet?

  Outside Ryan’s room, a trio of women in pastel scrubs started. They stared as he held the door wide. He felt his grimace deepen as Lomar’s empty chair registered. With Cole inside and Lomar outside, no one should have been able to get anywhere near Rita or her brother. But Cole had fallen asleep and Lomar had apparently taken a walk!

  Stacy, the night nurse and note’s deliverer, jogged to Cole’s side. “What’s wrong? Is Ryan okay?” She craned her neck to see into the room behind him, but Cole held his ground.

  “Where’s Deputy Lomar?”

  Stacy looked pointedly at the empty chair. “I don’t know. He was there a minute ago. I think.”

  “You think?”

  Stacy swept her anxious gaze back to Cole. “Tell me what happened.”

  Cole freed the cell phone from his pocket and dialed Lomar. He returned his attention to Stacy as the call connected. “Who delivered the envelope you just brought to Rita?”

  The other nurses took a few timid steps in their direction, stopping on Cole’s side of their workstation beside an abandoned janitor’s bucket. “I believe those were his personal effects,” the nurse in blue answered.

  “Yes. Who brought them?” he repeated the question through gritted teeth.

  The nurses looked at one another.

  Cole felt his blood pressure rise. “Where was the envelope?”

  Stacy lifted a finger to indicate the opposite side of their curved workstation.

  Cole charged in that general direction with Stacy at his heels. “Who could have put it there?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Who has access to this area?” he growled, trying hard not to wake the entire floor with the rush of frustration tearing at his mind.

  “Garrett?” Lomar’s voice echoed through the phone line and along the quiet corridor to his right.

  “Where are you?”

  “Here.” A set of steady footfalls registered behind Cole and he turned. Lomar putted in his direction, arms bent forward at the elbows, a steaming cup in one hand, giant cookie in the other. He stopped short. “What happened?”

  Cole headed for his friend. “Where were you?”

  Lomar raised his brows. “Coffee.”

  “You’re not supposed to leave,” Cole growled. “You’re the protective detail.”

  Lomar scanned the area, presumably checking each nurse’s face for an explanation. “You were inside the room.”

  “I was asleep!”

  “I wasn’t gone for two minutes,” Lomar barked back. “I walked to the waiting room to pour a cup of coffee, a lady knitting socks gave me a cookie and you called. That’s what happened to me. What the hell happened to you?”

  What happened to him? Well, someone had taken the time to type up a threat and place it in Ryan’s things, either at the accident scene, somehow, or in the ambulance, the operating room... Cole’s mind was cluttered with the number of people who could have done this, not to mention the outsiders he hadn’t thought of yet, before the note was delivered to Rita. That was what had happened to Cole.

  Stacy returned to his side and pointed to an empty shelf near the printer. “I found the envelope here when my shift started, but you and Rita were asleep. I brought it to her as soon as I knew she was up. It probably came from someone in your office. Someone from the crime scene or maybe the operating room. Why?”

  Cole turned on her, pinning her with a warning look. “There was a threat in the envelope with Ryan Horn’s things. I need to know who had access to this area.”

  Stacy fell back a step, finally at a loss for words.

  “Us,” one of the nurses answered. “We’re the only ones on duty from ten until six. Sometimes we see a doctor, but you wouldn’t catch a doctor making deliveries.”

  Then who?

  Cole’s mind raced. Trauma was a closed ward with a small window of visiting hours and a small number of people who had access. Someone wanted the thumb drive badly enough to take a huge risk delivering that note. Could it be one of the women looking at him now? His eyes roamed back to Lomar’s empty chair. Could it be his fellow deputy? Someone present at the accident scene? His fingers curled over the paper, and he forced his mind to work faster.

  “Hey,” Rita’s soft voice sliced through Cole’s anger. She leaned in the open doorway of her brother’s room, eyes heavy with tears. “How’s it going?”

  Cole turned away, unwilling to make her night worse with his lack of information and fully ready to lose his mind.

  The abandoned mop and bucket stared back at him. He scanned the area for other signs of a cleaning crew. The floors were dry. The ward was silent. Cole marched to the yellow bucket and peered inside. “Where’s the janitor?” He turned wild eyes on the nurses. There was no water in the tub. “Whose bucket is this?”

  The ladies looked at one another.

  Stacy pinched her lip between a thumb and forefinger, apparently in thought.

  “What is it?” Cole asked. “Did you see someone cleaning?”

  “I saw a man in a janitor’s uniform when I made my rounds, but I didn’t pay much attention.”

  “When was that?”

  “Not long ago. Only a few minutes before you came out here.”

  Adrenaline spike in Cole’s system, erasing the dull throb of yesterday’s burns and igniting his clarity. “What did he look like?” Cole asked.

  Stacy shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  Lomar deposited his snacks on the nurses’ station and turned to Cole. “He could still be in the building. You want me to make a sweep of the ward. Maybe the floor?”

  “No.” Cole turned in a small circle, head tipped back. From where he stood, there were at least three cameras in sight. Cole had a better idea. “Where can I review the footage from these cameras?” There was no way anyone got behind that desk without the cameras knowing.

  “Tech Support,” Stacy said. “Fourth floor. There’s a wing of offices and conference rooms. It’s in with Security.”

  “Got it.” Cole pressed the note against Lomar’s chest. “Bag that and don’t let anything happen to her. I’m going to find this guy.”

  Rita bobbed on her toes, white-knuckle fingers wrapped around the doorjamb. “Don’t leave,” she pleaded.

  Cole’s heart ached at the request. Her fearful expression twisted him inside. Fear for herself, for Ryan, for every patient in the building and probably for Cole. Just one more reason he was falling hard and fast for the selfless red-haired beauty. Rita cared for everyone.

  He crossed the space to Rita in long, purpose
ful strides and planted a kiss on her forehead, hoping the simple touch could convey the things he wasn’t yet able to say. “Go back inside and shut the door. Stay with Ryan. Lomar will be right here if you need anything. I’ll be back as soon as I can. I won’t leave the building without you.”

  She nodded uneasily, then vanished back into the room and tugged the curtain until only a sliver of her remained visible.

  Cole nodded his approval. He hated to leave her, but whoever had followed her this far had chosen to threaten instead of act this time. It seemed to him that that meant recovering the pen she’d found at the docks had taken priority over silencing the witness. She could only tell a jury what she’d seen that night, which wasn’t much, but the pen must’ve had information that someone couldn’t afford to have come to light. Whoever wanted it must’ve thought they’d never get it if they killed her. They didn’t know West had already taken that pen for processing.

  Cole waved Lomar aside. “Make sure West knows what’s going on. We could use some extra boots on the ground if we have them, especially an external patrol of the parking lots and building. If I can’t get my hands on this guy before he leaves, we might still be able to catch him making his getaway.”

  “On it.” Lomar dialed Dispatch without missing a beat.

  Cole took the stairs to the fourth floor at a run, wincing when the impacts tore at his day-old wounds. He knocked on the security office door with purpose. “Cade County Sheriff’s Department. Open up.” He held his badge to the glass when a face appeared at the little window.

  “Can I help you?” A cheery young woman opened the door and waved him inside.

  “I’m Deputy Cole Garrett. I need to see the footage from the second floor trauma ward. Elevator and stairway entries, as well as the nurses’ station, over the last thirty minutes.”

  The girl blinked. “Something wrong?”

  Cole could think of at least twenty ways everything was absolutely wrong. “Yes, and we’re in a hurry so...”

  “Oh.” She scrambled onto a rolling chair and swiped her computer to life. “I’m Katie, by the way.” Her corkscrew ponytail bobbed and swung as she worked, looking screen to screen on the multi-monitor setup. “Here.”

  Grainy images of the trauma ward appeared on four screens. On the left, Lomar stood guard outside Ryan’s door, keeping careful watch, his eyes on a steady circuit through the space around him. Besides that, the nurses gathered behind their desk. The final two shots showed a still hallway with closed doors for the elevator and stairwell.

  “Can you split the screen?” Cole asked. “Cover those four shots at once? Maybe fast forward until we see a janitor.” He couldn’t afford to miss anything. Rita’s life could depend on it.

  “Sure.” A few more keystrokes and Cole’s requests were granted.

  He locked and popped his jaw while he waited, looming over the young woman as he searched.

  Lomar’s head dropped forward, and he jumped to his feet. He rubbed his eyes, yawned and lifted the disposable cup from its place on the floor by his feet.

  Cole fought a twinge of guilt at his anger toward Lomar. He’d been on duty as much as Cole since Minsk had turned up in the river. With a small department like theirs, everyone was overworked when tragedies occurred. This many in a row had to be a record.

  Lomar arched his back in the top corner of the screen. He said something, and a nurse pointed down the hall. Lomar checked his watch before hustling away, carrying his cup at comic speed as the time-elapsed feed rolled frantically ahead.

  “Him?” Katie lifted a finger to the bottom right corner of her screen. Dressed in head-to-toe white and slightly hunched, an older white male motored through the halls. His big black boots shuffled along cartoonishly.

  “Yes. Follow him.”

  The man pushed his bucket as far as the nurses’ station, then left it to slide behind the desk briefly. A moment later, he moved briskly away from the camera’s reach, disappearing, then reappearing on another camera’s feed. He stooped to swipe a dropped cloth as Stacy exited a nearby room. Keeping his back to her, he used the rag to wipe the glass of a framed photo on the wall. Stacy barely looked up before entering the next patient’s room.

  “Do you recognize him?” Cole asked. “Can you zoom in on his face or ID badge? Get a better shot?”

  Katie snorted. “This isn’t the movies. What you see is what we’ve got.” She straightened her ponytail, murmuring about hospital funding and tech costs.

  The janitor vanished.

  “Where’d he go?” Cole barked. He pressed his palms to the workstation beside Katie, leaning closer, willing the image to reappear.

  “Hang on.” She went back to her keyboard, the picture of calm while Cole’s heart threatened to break all his ribs. Her fingers moved at inhuman speed across the keys, sure and confident, the way Cole had felt until Rita Horn’s life had collided with his. Now he saw danger everywhere. Not for him, but for her. “There.”

  The janitor ducked into a windowless door marked Staff.

  “What is that?”

  Katie leaned back in her chair, apparently satisfied with her work. “Supply closet.”

  When the door reopened, the man who emerged looked nothing like the old bearded janitor who’d entered. This man was tall and clean shaven, wearing a knockoff Cade County deputy’s jacket and the same black boots the first image had worn.

  Katie swung her face in Cole’s direction. “Whoa.”

  The impostor strode to the nearest stairwell entry and vanished inside.

  Cole snapped upright and dragged frustrated fingers through his hair. The killer himself had posed as a janitor to deliver that threat to Rita. Now he was back in faux deputy mode. Cole couldn’t imagine the amount of damage a man like that could do in the guise of a Cade County deputy.

  “I’m confused,” Katie said. “Was that man a deputy pretending to be a janitor or a janitor pretending to be a deputy?”

  “Neither.” That man was a murderer. “What you’ve seen is part of an ongoing murder investigation.” Multiple murders, attempted and successful, plus another slated to happen soon, if Cole didn’t put a stop to it. “Our discussion and what you’ve seen here is confidential. I’m going to need a copy of this footage.”

  “Got it.” Katie went back to work on her keyboard.

  Cole ground his teeth. The jacket had shocked him with its accuracy. It was a solid facsimile, but still a knockoff. Yet someone had made a clear effort to get it right. If Cole hadn’t been so intimately familiar with it, he might not have seen the small differences, either. Rita had been right to be confused by it, but knowing she’d been wrong about a fellow deputy’s involvement was still an enormous relief.

  Guilt rocked through him for thinking, even for a moment, that Lomar might have played a part in whatever was happening. It wasn’t like Cole to doubt his team, regardless of what anyone said. This case was turning him inside out. Mentally. Physically. And emotionally.

  “Done.” Katie lifted a tiny plastic ninja in his direction. “I copied the footage onto my thumb drive. I included some stills of the man as the janitor and as the deputy. I’m sure your tech team could’ve done that themselves, but I never get to do cool stuff like this.” She waved a hand in a big circle over her head. “Hospital,” she added by way of explanation.

  “Where did he go after the stairs?”

  “I don’t know. I could scan the cameras from every floor, but that would take some time. I don’t know how much of a hurry you’re in. Best guess, though? If he knows his way around, he probably ducked through the laundry area and into the delivery dock. Cameras are limited in those areas. People go out there to smoke because it’s forbidden on hospital grounds.”

  “Do your cameras cover the parking lot and other exits?”

  “Yes.” Katie went back to her keyboard.

  Cole grabbe
d the phone on the wall and dialed the trauma unit. The killer was on the move, but if Cole and Lomar went right now, they could cover a large portion of the perimeter in a matter of minutes, and the help he’d asked Lomar to request would be on-site before they’d finished.

  The sonofagun wasn’t getting away this time.

  * * *

  RITA STOOD AT Ryan’s bedside, eyes fixed on the hallway beyond the glass. No one would get near them without her seeing them come. She’d wedged a chair beneath the doorknob and moved to her brother’s side, prepared to defend him if anyone came through that door uninvited. She couldn’t run if things went south, but she could fight. A number of things in the room were light enough for her to lift but heavy enough to knock an intruder out, if needed.

  The coward in her said she should pull the curtain completely and hide until Cole returned. The big sister in her said that Ryan couldn’t hide, so neither could she.

  “You’re going to be okay, Ry,” she whispered to her brother’s tranquil face. “I got you into this, and I’m going to get you out.”

  She pulled in long, steadying breaths to put the fear at bay, but the thick antiseptic scent of his room seemed heavier and more stifling with each inhalation. She couldn’t afford to let emotion take over right now. She had to stay clear of thought, ready to act.

  “Please wake up,” she pleaded with her brother.

  She stroked a line of soft hair off his forehead. If he was awake and well, they wouldn’t be sitting ducks. Ryan was fast, strong and smart. He always had the best plans for getting out of trouble. She wiped a fresh tear from her cheek, remembering the antics they’d gotten into together on nights when she babysat him long ago. The way she recalled it, Ryan had also caused most of the trouble they had to get out of.

  But not this. This was all on her.

  She patted his arm, wrapped soundly in a long cast, then allowed herself to worry about his cast-covered leg. The one Stacy had described as shattered. Even if Ryan was awake, how could they hide or run from a gun-wielding, threat-rendering nut with him in such terrible shape?