by Dale Mayer
“That’s what I’m hoping for,” she said. “I’ve tried to call him a couple times but, so far, no answer. I know he had a busy day scheduled, and that’s one of the reasons we went in so early this morning,” she said, “and I guess I still feel like maybe I should do a DNA test too.”
“I’m pretty sure the lawyer already did one,” he said.
“Really? Without a sample from me?”
“All it takes is a strand of hair or your saliva on a glass.”
“Is that how my father knew?”
“Well, it would make sense. Particularly if Jerry would leave you everything, though I don’t know how quickly they may have processed it.”
“Well, a private lab can do it pretty fast,” she said, “but I don’t think he would have the results back yet. Jerry didn’t think I was his until just a few days ago.”
“Well, maybe Jerry didn’t tell the lawyer until a few days ago. Jerry could have known longer than that. Maybe not. Regardless a report could be in potentially anytime now, depending.”
“I can take a look for the results here at the store,” she said. “I don’t know what I’d do if I found out he wasn’t my father.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “You’ve been left the place regardless. You are your mother’s daughter, after all.”
“But what if another woman’s out there, who was expecting or hoping for this? Like Bernadette?”
“Don’t borrow trouble,” he said. “Your father left it to you because he needed somebody to leave it to.”
“Ouch,” she said, “that’s kind of a slap in the face, if you look at it that way.”
He groaned. “And that’s not the way I meant it. You know that.”
“I hear you. Anyway I have a customer,” she said. “I’ll talk to you later.” And she hung up.
He smiled at that.
“So I presume Gabby’s DNA was run against the forensics we had from her mother’s murder, right?”
“I would presume so too. Nathan didn’t get into that.”
“So did the bookseller actually get a DNA test done to determine paternity?” Jake asked.
“I’ll contact the lawyer about that.”
As it happened, the lawyer answered Damon’s call on the first ring. “Hey, what’s up?” Nathan asked.
“Did Jerry do a DNA test on him and Gabby?”
“Yes, he did. He sent it off earlier this week for a rush processing, but he was pretty convinced regardless—what with the physical likeness and other traits Gabby and Andrea shared—and once Jerry confirmed with me that Bernadette and her husband had looked after Gabby, and I confirmed that loosely binding agreement between them, we didn’t need the DNA results to verify at that point.”
“So, there is still DNA coming? Gabby’s a little worried that it’ll all go away in a puff of smoke.”
The attorney chuckled. “Nope, everything’s hers. Not a lot of people would say she inherited much, you know? It’s a pretty dusty old store.”
“Maybe, but, for her, it’s a gold mine. Plus it’s something she really cares about.”
“Well, she inherited that love of books from her mother obviously,” he said. “Andrea was a bookworm, like you wouldn’t believe.”
“Did any particular genre hold her interest?” Damon asked on a whim.
“Everything metaphysical,” he said.
Like those tarot cards? “Ah, lucky for her,” Damon said.
“Why is that?”
“Because it seems like some very bizarre metaphysical event may have killed her.”
“You don’t believe that, do you?” he asked in surprise.
“No, of course not. I’m a cop. We end up looking completely at the evidence.” When he was done with the conversation, he hung up to find Jake grinning at him, like a madman.
“You changed your tune on all that pretty fast, didn’t you?” he asked.
“I don’t know about that,” he said, “but I didn’t want to get into an argument about the merits of psychics with a lawyer.”
“Well, Stefan is pretty damn convincing.”
Damon thought about everything that Stefan had done and nodded. “He is, at that. I also saw some weird events happening that I just don’t get,” he said. “Once you see something like that, it makes it very hard to forget.”
“Yep, it sure does. And you’re lucky that lawyer is still practicing.”
“Jerry and Nathan were friends apparently,” he said. “I don’t know how old the lawyer is, but probably in a similar age group. He has mentioned enough details about the wife, Andrea, to suggest that he knew her.”
“Even if Nathan were no longer with us, it probably wouldn’t make a difference on our case. Aspen is a much smaller town, with a much more close-knit community, than say Denver or whatever. You probably would have figured out the mother-daughter connection eventually by talking to other old-timers.”
“Understood. But now let’s focus on the murders. I’ll contact the other two roommates, put them on alert.” Damon quickly texted the two other survivors, asking that they stay in with protection tonight and Sunday night, then to reply so he’d know they got the message. Both women replied right away, suitably warned. He phoned a couple patrol cops on duty this weekend and asked that they make frequent swings by the addresses where Gabby, Wendy, and Betty could be found tonight and tomorrow night. Damon would phone Gabby, speak to her in person.
As it was, in the back of his mind, Damon kept waiting for that phone call. But he knew instinctively it would be at nighttime, since that’s when these murders always happened. But he didn’t know what to do about it. He didn’t know who else to protect because the first two knew each other, but the other three didn’t really know the first two, despite all being roommates.
So, would that pattern hold, or would the killer just attack whoever for the sake of fulfilling whatever killings that he needed to do?
Damon frowned at that, worried sick that he’d completely missed something, and somebody would die this weekend because he couldn’t stop it. The real problem was that he couldn’t stop it because he didn’t know for sure that it would happen. He also didn’t have an intended target, someone who the killer had already threatened or whatever, so no one to intentionally protect, and all he could do was warn the other women and have cops make more patrols around the homes of Wendy, Gabby, and Betty.
With that thought in mind, he called Gabby back. When she answered again, her voice was still warm and bubbly. “I figured the shine would have worn off by now,” he said jokingly.
“Nope,” she said. “And I’ve had several customers in, all delighted that the bookstore will stay open.”
“Good,” he said. “I just wanted to warn you again, that tomorrow is seven days.”
Instantly there was silence at the other end. “I was thinking of that,” she said, “and, if there was ever anything guaranteed to shut down my good mood, that was it.”
“Which is not why I’m warning you,” he reminded her.
“No, I know,” she said. “It’s just one of those very sobering realities. Two people, two friends of mine, have lost their lives.”
“So let’s hope there isn’t a murder this weekend,” he said, “and I definitely don’t want it to be you, so please take care.”
“Well, I’m at the bookstore now, and then I’ll spend time with you later,” she said, “so you’re in the middle of any happenings tonight.”
“Good point,” he said, “but, just in case I get called away or something, you need to stay safe.”
“I have a lot of reasons to stay safe,” she said. “I had a lot before today, and now I have even more. Do you think I’d be better off staying here then?” she asked as an afterthought.
“No,” he said instinctively. “I don’t.”
“Okay,” she said, “I’m not even sure that’s an option yet anyway.”
“You’ll work all that out with the lawyer soon enough.”
&nbs
p; “Yeah, I hear you. I’ve got a customer coming in. Talk to you later.”
They hung up, and footsteps approached him.
“Damon, you want to come in here for a moment?”
He looked up to see the captain motioning at him. Damon frowned but stood up agreeably. As he walked into the office, Captain Meyer said, “I’m not sure what’s going on or how we ended up with all these cold cases being opened up again, focusing on the same scenarios right now. You want to explain that to me?”
Damon quickly went over the logic, going with what had happened thirty years ago, even sixty years back too, and then the parallels to the current situation.
The captain nodded slowly. “I get that, but what’s all the buzz about tonight?”
“It’s the seven-day mark. Well, technically tomorrow, Sunday, is the seven-day mark. But the killer works at night. And the seven-day break happened with the four murders from thirty years ago. So I’m just being extra cautious.”
“Do you think that pattern’s being copied?”
“We don’t have any way to know,” he said, “but I don’t want to find another young woman dead tomorrow morning who we could have saved, if we’d been a little faster on the ball.”
“That’s never a nice feeling,” the captain said tiredly.
“You’re not sleeping much right now, are you?” Damon said, looking directly at him.
The captain looked at him in surprise, shook his head, and said, “No. Too many grim memories at the moment. Catch this guy, and I’ll sleep nicely.”
“Right.”
“Were there any male killings or any other killings around that time that you thought could be connected in any way?”
“No,” Damon said, “these were clearly connected with the murder MO of the two recent women, and that’s what we focused on.”
“Right.” He pondered that for a moment. “You aren’t thinking he’s still killing somebody else at the same time but in a different way, are you?”
“I’m not turning anything away,” Damon said. “I’m just not seeing any answers yet.”
“How do you think we felt last time?” the captain snapped. “You need to solve this before it gets even uglier.”
“Working on it,” he said mildly.
At that, the captain nodded again. “Sorry. I’m just really touchy over this whole thing.”
“I get it,” he said. “I really do. It’s obvious that this set of cases has disrupted the town for long enough.”
He nodded. “Anyway, take off, do your thing, but make sure nobody else dies this weekend if you can help it.”
“I’ll do my best but no guarantees.” And, on that note, he left. He frowned, and it occurred to him that, if the lawyer had known a bunch of the people back then, who were still alive and in town today, that might shed some light on all this.
He went back to the cold cases from thirty years ago and wrote down a list of all the people who had been interviewed. A lot of names. The captain back then had been as thorough as possible. Then Damon took that list, put checkmarks beside the ones who he personally knew, then started looking up the twelve that he didn’t know.
As he worked, Jake walked over and asked, “What are you working on?”
He explained his theory.
“Let me see the names,” Jake said, and he quickly took four more off the list. “Those four are dead,” he said.
“That’ll save some time. What about the rest of these? Recognize any of them?”
He took another look and said, “This guy is still alive and in town, but I don’t think he does a whole lot. This one here is in an old folks’ home, I believe.” He stopped and said, “And these other three, I don’t know.”
“So, let’s find those three,” he said, “and then I suggest we cross-reference everybody to the new murders.”
“You want to find out where they were at the time of the latest killings?”
“Yes, and if they have any connection to these women at all.”
“I’ll get started at the top of the list.”
And, with that, the men buried themselves in that process for the next several hours.
When Jake walked back over again, he said, “Two of them knew the women from skiing and a fitness club,” he said. “They still go but not very often. They had seen the women but, other than that, didn’t have much of a relationship with them.”
“Okay,” Damon said. “I found one of these other guys is dead. Nobody seems to know anything about this one, and this other one is also missing, but he probably moved out of state,” he said. “I don’t have any of that information available.”
“And, of course, you also have to put down all the cops working back then,” Jake reminded him. “Both the good and the bad.”
Damon looked up in surprise and then nodded and quickly wrote down everybody who had been involved in the court cases back then. “That would be a little disturbing,” he said.
“Unfortunately it’s happened before.”
“I know,” Damon said, rubbing his face. “I just hate to even think about it being a cop who kills.”
“Hate away,” Jake said. “Let’s just make sure that we put a stop to this, whoever it is.”
“Doesn’t the captain have a family lineage of cops?”
Jake nodded. “A lot of captains in his family. Maybe his grandfather, his father, now him? Or maybe a great-uncle, an uncle, and him? I don’t know the exact connection. We’ll have to double-check that.”
Damon nodded at that and kept working on the list.
“We have a lot of people on this list who still live here,” Jake noted.
“A lot have moved away though too. If so, they’re most likely not part of our immediate concern right now,” Damon said. “Let’s narrow it down by checking only on those still around Aspen.”
“Do you want to go in person?”
“I think we better. We’ve got the live local witnesses narrowed down to ten names. How about we split them up and each take half?”
“I’m down with that.”
Damon stood, grabbed his half of the list, and headed outside. The first one was just a few blocks away.
When the door opened, he found an older woman staring at him in confusion. And he realized, in that moment, that they hadn’t prioritized these suspects. Given the ages of most of them, they would be too old to have the physical capacity demonstrated in the current murders. He frowned and introduced himself. “We’re investigating the murders from thirty years ago.”
The clouds cleared in her eyes, and she nodded. “That was a terrible time.”
“You were one of the witnesses back then, is that right?”
“Well, not a witness to the murders, no.”
He quickly amended that. “Sorry. I meant that you gave a statement back then.”
She nodded. “Well, yes, we all did. Anybody who was involved with those women did.”
“I wanted to ask if you happen to know …” And he named the two recent victims. He watched closely, but there was just a blank look in her eyes.
“No,” she said. “I don’t know those names at all. Were they killed at the same time?”
“No,” he said, “they were killed just recently.”
She gasped. “Oh my, those are the two young women who just died, aren’t they?”
“Yes,” he said. “We are investigating their deaths as well.”
“Well, I’ve never heard of them that I know of,” she said with a shrug. “So I guess I can’t help you.”
He nodded. “Do you live here alone?”
“My son lives here,” she said, “and my grandson.”
“Where are they now?”
“Hawaii,” she said. “They didn’t want to be here for the winter.”
He smiled and nodded and got their information, so he could double-check their alibi, then crossed her name off, as he went to the next witness’s house. He was on the fourth name on his list when he realized how late
it was. He hoped he could get through his list and finish up soon, so he could have dinner with Gabby.
*
“What were you thinking about when I walked into the bookstore just now?” Damon asked, as he and Gabby began the drive home.
“I don’t feel any different,” Gabby said, “but I know a lot of people would look at me as weird if they knew about all this crazy stuff going on.”
“Honestly, if I hadn’t seen it for myself,” he said, “I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have accepted it. But, given that I did see it, I’m not sure what else I can do besides give you the benefit of the doubt and believe it.”
“And you saw her?”
“I saw somebody in that window, and you were in bed, so it wasn’t you. Nobody came out, and nobody was there, so it’s logical to assume it was her, Andrea, I presume,” he said. “The question is, do you really think she’s the one who pushed you down the mountain?”
Instinctively Gabby’s mind objected. She shook her head. “No. It feels different,” she said. “The energy with her isn’t like that.”
“Versus?”
“The energy with that first person,” she said, “and that voice in my head was male.”
“What about her voice? Did she ever speak to you?”
“Hmm,” Gabby said. “My mind immediately said, yes, but I don’t remember the ghost of the garage apartment speaking to me.” She held up her pointer finger. “Those tarot card readings!” she exclaimed.
“What about them?” Damon asked cautiously.
“The voice in my head was female,” she said, “definitely female.”
“Good,” he said, as he led the way to the kitchen. “Stefan said you had two spirits, one good, one bad. This latest revelation of yours seems to confirm that.”
“Which brings us back to what Stefan said. That maybe she’s tethered here because of somebody else, not necessarily me.”
“And that’s possible,” he said, “but is it likely?”
“I’m not sure I have an answer for you,” she said. “It’s just such a bizarre scenario. I don’t have a clue.”
“Well, that’s fair enough,” he said. “Let’s go eat, and then we’ll figure it out.”