Colton's Last Stand

by Karen Whiddon

  He pulled out his cell and called Will’s number. It rang a few times, then went to voice mail. He hung up and moved on to Lolly’s. Her voice mail also picked up. After disconnecting one more time, he dialed Brit’s number.

  She answered on the second ring, sounding rushed and out of breath. Music played loudly in the background. “Hey, Officer Bear, what’s up?”

  Her nickname for him usually made him smile. Not this time. “Are you at home?”

  “Oh God, Mom doesn’t have you looking for me, does she? I left a note, I told her I was going to Jared’s. I knew she’d freak out if I asked first, so I put the note on my pillow, but I thought I’d be home before she woke up and I could tear it up, and she’d never know, but—”

  “So you’re not at home.”

  “No,” she said guiltily. “Is she really mad?”

  “I haven’t talked to her. Is she home?”

  “If the cars are there, she’s there. She doesn’t walk, doesn’t ride a bike, and the cute scooter Dad got her just sits in the shed because she says the helmet messes up her hair.”

  “What about your dad? Is he home, too?”

  “Yeah. The only thing on the schedule this morning is soccer practice for Theo, and obviously that’s canceled. Why all the questions?”

  “Do me a favor, Brit. Don’t come home until I call you back.” Ben hung up and stood, gathering his plate and cup. “Brit sneaked out last night for a sleepover at Jared’s—”

  “Sweet,” Morwenna said as she lifted Oliver to the floor, then also stood. At his scowl, she said, “But not really, her being only fifteen and all.” She gave an emphatic nod that didn’t make him forget for an instant that she’d been a wild child herself and still found those impulses difficult to resist on occasion, despite being twenty-nine years old.

  She followed him into the house, closing the screen door behind her. “So Mum and Dad are supposed to be home, but they’re not answering their phones, and their door is standing open. Do you think they realized she was gone and ran out in a panic to look for her?”

  “Jared lives about as far from here as he can and still be in the city limits. They would have just called Brit, or maybe gone to pick her up. But the cars are both there.” Ben went into his bedroom and took his gun from the nightstand. He grabbed an extra magazine and a radio, then dragged out a slicker labeled Police.

  When he got back to the front door, Morwenna was ready to go, too, her Wellingtons in lime green a bright accompaniment to her red shorts, yellow shirt and purple slicker. Her psychiatrist mum had once asked her if she dressed the way she did to gain attention, and she’d honestly answered, I like colors. Sometimes her colors and patterns made his eyes hurt, but she was never dreary, and Ben appreciated that.

  They jogged across his saturated yard, the narrow two-lane road and into the Muellers’ equally wet yard. Their driveway, like his own, was dirt and gravel, so they stuck to the grass until they reached the sidewalk to the porch. At the top of the steps, he motioned to Morwenna to step aside, out of the rain and out of sight of the hallway.

  He rapped on the open door, noting the film of moisture on the tiles just inside, and called, “Will? Lolly? It’s Ben Little Bear.” When there was no answer, he raised his voice and called again, this time adding Theo’s name. Silence.

  Drawing his gun, he glanced back at Morwenna. Her face was pale, her eyes wide, and her cell phone was clenched in one hand like a lifeline. She was a dispatcher for the Cedar Creek Police Department, where Ben was a detective, and he could trust her, if she had to make the call, to do it efficiently.

  He stepped inside, gazing down the empty hallway, then up the stairs. Something caught his attention about six feet ahead, where the tile turned to hardwood. A smear, thin, watery, reddish in color. On the table to the right, beneath the stairs, a handbag sat next to a wooden bowl holding two sets of keys. A cell phone lay with them.

  Every muscle in his body tightened as he walked, sticking to one side of the hall until he reached the double-wide doorway into the living room. There he stilled instantly, everything but his gaze. He saw the rug, the couch, the armchair, the wood floor, the quilt on the ottoman, all splattered with red. Pillows had been knocked from the furniture. A wineglass was upended on the coffee table, along with a plastic cup and a puddle of white. Probably milk.

  Oh God, this was not looking good.

  Barely breathing, he stepped into the room, just enough to see that no one was there. No bodies—thank you, Jesus.

  Backing up, he pivoted and went to the porch, where he handed his pistol to Morwenna. “Call Sam,” he said grimly. He shucked his slicker and his shoes, pulled off his T-shirt, dried his feet the best he could with it, then tugged it back on.

  “Are they...?”

  He took back his gun as he pulled his cell phone out. “There’s blood in the living room. Signs of a struggle.” After fiddling with his phone a moment, he held it out. “Then call her and ask her to get here.”

  “Yashi Baker. Who’s she?”

  “Will Mueller’s cousin. Brit will need somebody.” He breathed deeply of rain, flowers, weeds, woods, then blew it out. “I’m going back in.”

  * * *

  When the phone rang while she was in the middle of a jaw-popping yawn, Yashi considered not answering. It was all the way at the other end of the house, she reasoned, and she was so comfy on the window seat with her tablet, a glass of chocolate milk and half a honey bun.

  But all the way at the other end of her tiny house was only twenty-six feet, and in her barely-a-business, she couldn’t afford to ignore any calls. With a sigh, she nudged Bobcat off her legs, grinning when his gold eyes narrowed in response. “Sorry, Bobbo, some of us don’t have the luxury of lazing twenty-four hours a day.”

  With just a few strides, she snatched up the phone on the kitchen counter, giving the screen a cursory glance even as she answered. The name there stopped her, though. Everything inside her went hot, then icy, and trembling started at the top of her head and swept all the way to her bare feet. She sank onto the dining seat behind her, heart thudding, and wondered if she could choke out any recognizable words around the lump in her throat when she realized the voice coming from the phone wasn’t male. Wasn’t Ben.

  Still shaking, she lifted it to her ear in time to hear the woman say “—you there, Ms. Baker? Hello?”

  “Y-yes. Sorry. Th-this is Yashi Baker.”

  “This is Morwenna Armstrong. I’m a dispatcher with the Cedar Creek Police Department, and our officers are requesting that you meet them at Will and Lolly Mueller’s house as soon as possible.”

  Virtually all thought of Ben—how much she’d loved him, how badly she’d betrayed him—disappeared, replaced by instant concern for her cousin’s family. “What’s wrong? Is it one of the kids? Are they all right?”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t have information to give. Can you go to the Mueller house?”

  Jumping from the chair, Yashi dashed up the stairs to the loft, grabbing running shoes and socks. “Yes, of course. I’ll be there in ten—” Rain pounded on the roof inches above her head. “Fifteen minutes. Do you at least know if they’re okay?”

  The dispatcher hesitated. “I know Brit is.”

  Meaning Will or Lolly or Theo might not be. Dear God.

  Yashi dropped the phone on the bed, shoved her feet into the shoes and socks, then ran back down the L-shaped stairs. Immediately, she rushed back for her phone, hit the bottom step and started out the door before turning back for her purse and keys. At the last instant, she remembered her rain jacket, yanked it on and ran out.

  What could have happened to warrant the police wanting her presence? Had one of her cousins been assaulted? Arrested? Had someone broken into their house? Had Will done something to protect his family?

  His family. Her family. The only family she had in the whole world.
If anything had happened to one of them, any of them, she would... God, she didn’t know what she would do.

  Her lemon-yellow Volkswagen Bug was the only bright spot in the sodden morning. It was small and dinged and scratched, but it was paid for, and that counted for a lot in her world.

  Her office, with the house on wheels parked behind, was located on Highway 66 halfway between Cedar Creek and Tulsa. Weather wasn’t keeping anyone from running their Saturday morning errands, so she forced her attention narrowly on traffic to keep it off the fear in her gut. Her hands gripped the steering wheel until her fingers hurt, and bands were tightening around her chest. Periodically, she glanced at her phone in the passenger seat, but she resisted dialing Will’s or Lolly’s number. Whatever was wrong, she didn’t want to find out while driving in torrential rain.

  She turned west on First Street, which became Highway 66 again in a few miles, and she followed the road out of town. When her cousins had bought their house out here after Theo was born, they’d been in the county, but the city had incorporated section after section until they’d wound up within city limits. They hadn’t liked that, but they’d been philosophical about it. They loved the house, loved the fifteen acres that kept anyone from building too close, so they’d accepted it.

  By the time Yashi reached the short road where the long-extinct Dixieland Amusement Park had grown up nearly a hundred years earlier, she was having trouble breathing, and her knees were quivering. She was a lawyer. She’d been an assistant district attorney. She’d had dealings with law enforcement most of her adult life. Where was her professionalism? Her much-touted ability to stay calm in any crisis?

  After she turned left onto Ozark Trail Road, the old original Route 66, the road wound through a shadowy curve, trees canopying overhead, underneath an old railroad bridge and around another curve cut through rocky hillsides. She slowed, always her habit, as the left-hand turn into Will’s driveway came when the road began to straighten, but this time her speed dropped to practically nothing.

  Police vehicles filled the driveway and the short stretch of grass along the road. There was barely room for her little Bug between a big white pickup and a black SUV, both bearing police markings. She eased the car into the space, cut the engine and sat there trying to breathe.

  Oh God, oh God, oh God.

  The rain hadn’t let up. Four figures huddled together on the porch, talking: Sam Douglas, the chief; Daniel Harper, a detective she’d dealt with only a few times before leaving the DA’s office; Lois Gideon, a uniformed officer who knew more about the department and the town than the rest of them combined; and a young woman in shorts and a T-shirt, dark haired and pale skinned and, considering that she’d made the official call requesting Yashi’s presence from Ben’s personal cell phone, probably Morwenna the dispatcher.

  She’d probably been at Ben’s house when whatever had happened, happened.

  He liked to sleep in late on his days off. She’d probably been sleeping in late, too.

  With him.

  Not important, Yashi’s brain reminded her. Her family was the important thing here, and there was no sign of them.

  At least there were no ambulances or fire trucks among the vehicles. That was good. That meant no one was hurt.

  Or they were beyond the help of paramedics.

  Sweat broke out across her forehead, the trembling of her hands increased and anxiety fluttered in her chest. If she didn’t calm down, she was going to go into full panic mode, and that—

  A knock on the driver’s window startled her, drawing a shriek as she whirled about in the cramped space. Ben was standing there, bent down from his substantial height of six feet four inches to gaze in at her. He wore a slicker, the hood pulled over his head, but his face was streaked with rain, and he looked grim.

  “Oh please, no.” The groan was torn from her at the sight of him. Ben was stoic. He had the best poker face she’d ever seen. He rarely let his emotions show, particularly on the job. He was quiet and calm and studied, and no one could ever guess what he was thinking, but now—

  He pulled the door open a few inches and said in a flat voice, “Drive over to my house. I’ll talk to you there.”

  A moment later, he passed in a blur behind her car. She grabbed her cell, praying for a call from Will, saying, it’s all right, just a misunderstanding. After pulling her keys from the ignition, she jumped out, slammed the door and ran after Ben. The air was muggy, too thick to breathe, a combination of August heat and a deluge of biblical proportions.

  In seconds, everything from her hips down was soaked. When he stepped across the ditch, then climbed up the path there to his yard, she did the same, missing the flat wide stepping-stones, setting her feet into the cool water rushing down the slope. Her shoes squished and slid as she started up the path, nothing but a stretch of grass kept mown to provide easy access between neighbors.

  Ben never once looked back at her. He climbed the steps to the porch, paused at the door and then finally faced her. The grimness was still there, but it was better concealed. This was more in line with what people jokingly called his detective face. The joke: it was also his normal-conversation face, his reading-a-good-book face and so on.

  “Do you want to go inside? It’ll be cold.”

  She shook her head so strenuously that water streamed from her hair. Even while getting drenched, she hadn’t thought to pull her hood over her head. Ben used to tell her that she resembled Bobcat when he got a much-hated bath.

  “Sit. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  When the door closed behind him, she walked to the end of the porch, turned back and went to stand at the railing directly across from her cousins’ house. Now there was a crime scene vehicle, and pulling in behind the others was a pickup truck. Quint Foster—former assistant chief, demoted to just officer—climbed out of the driver’s side, and a shorter form, definitely a woman, got down from the other side. They joined the people on the porch, took off their jackets, their shoes, put on booties and went inside.

  Yashi’s hands gripped the railing while she bounced on the balls of her feet. She wanted to go inside, too. She wanted to see Will and Lolly, wanted to find out what was going on and how to fix it. She wanted assurance, comfort, a fear-soothing hug, an absolute promise that whatever was wrong would soon be okay.

  The door closed behind her, and she felt rather than heard Ben’s approach. No comforting or hugging would be coming from him. She’d destroyed all his softer feelings for her. The first year without him had been impossible, the second merely miserable. She’d cried a million tears over him, had flung two million curses at him and a billion more at herself. She’d missed him more than she’d ever missed anyone.

  For a kid who’d lost both parents at age six, that was saying a lot.

  * * *

  Ben brought a notepad and an ink pen with him. He left his jacket on a chair to drip, wiped the sweat from his neck and sat in his favorite chair to begin the interview. Daniel and Sam had both offered to do it. It was common knowledge Ben was more comfortable interrogating than interviewing. Or, Sam had suggested, they could wait for their newest hire and first female detective, JJ Logan, to arrive. But he’d said a stiff no, thanks. They didn’t know he had reason to avoid all contact whatsoever with Yashi Baker, and he didn’t intend to tell them. No one outside the Muellers had known about their yearlong relationship, and he meant to keep it that way.

  “When was the last time you saw the Muellers?”

  Yashi was still, her head erect, her spine straight. Though she looked tall and elegantly lined, tension radiated from her. She stared at the house a long time, seeing nothing, before turning to face him. “Last Sunday. We had dinner after church at Pablo’s.” Her voice quavered, but a breath steadied it. “I talked to Will on Wednesday about Theo’s next soccer game, and Lolly emailed me some recipes Thursday. I had a text from Brit yesterday. She wa
nted to know if I’d teach her to drive the Bug. She’s got high hopes of getting a car for her sixteenth birthday, and she thinks a Bug might suit her.”

  “Did they mention any plans for today?”

  Yashi slipped out of her jacket and, as he’d done, draped it over a chair back to drip. She was dressed for a morning at home: gray cotton shorts and a T-shirt that had seen better days. It was a leftover from her days at the University of Texas, and she usually wore it to sleep in.

  Gathering her blond hair in her hands, she wrung water from it, then shook it back. “Theo always has practice of some sort on Saturdays. Lolly picks up groceries during practice, Will works in the kitchen and Brit tries to put as much distance between herself and them as she can. Not,” she hastily added, “that there’s a problem. It’s just... She’s fifteen.”

  Ben hadn’t asked for or needed an explanation. He knew the Muellers were close, probably unusually so these days. Besides, he had three younger sisters and two brothers. One of them, George, had put so much distance between him and the family that none of them had seen him for coming on twelve years.

  Whatever had happened with the Muellers had nothing to do with their teenage daughter longing to be grown up.

  Yashi was silent until he finished making his notes, then she met his gaze. “What happened?”

  Part of him wanted to refuse to answer her questions. That wasn’t the way a police interview worked. He asked the questions. She answered them. Simple. But the part of him that might be a better cop than he was a man wasn’t juvenile enough to resort to that. They were her family. She had a right to know at least the basics. Trouble was, the basics were all he had to offer and raised nothing but questions.

  “Morwenna and I were having breakfast when she noticed the front door was open there.” He didn’t look at her, didn’t care if she wondered whether he and Morwenna were involved, didn’t care if she did or didn’t give a damn who he slept with.

  “I called Will and Lolly and got no answer,” he went on. “I called Brit, and she’d sneaked out in the night to go to her boyfriend’s house. She thought she’d be back before anyone woke up. They’re supposed to be home. Their cars are there. Lolly’s purse and keys are on the hall table, and so are Will’s keys and phone. And...” His mouth thinned as he recalled the scene in the living room. The amount of blood wasn’t an incompatible-with-life scenario, unless it all came from one person. It was the lab’s job to figure that out.