by Elle Gray
Copyright © 2020 by Elle Gray
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Epilogue
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Prologue
MacMillan Residence; Denny-Blaine, Seattle
The night is dark and overcast, and the air is crisp without being cold. It’s a pleasant autumn evening. I get out of my car and look up and down the street where I grew up, a small smile creasing my lips. September hasn’t even ended yet, but the Halloween decorations are already out in full force. Truth be told, nothing makes me happier. I’ve always loved Halloween: scary movies, haunted houses, trick-or-treaters giggling on the sidewalks… everything.
On the lawn next door— the Hendersons’ place— they’ve got a quaint little scene set up. Electric LED jack-o-lanterns are spread out on the bales of hay that are stacked-up, faux headstones, and a menacing-looking scarecrow stands vigil over the whole scene.
“You guys need to update your display,” I mutter with a shake of my head though I’m smiling.
The Henderson’s have rolled out the same Halloween display pretty much as long as I’ve been alive. Every year, it’s basically the same tableau. To be fair to them, it looks like this year, they’ve added a couple of jack-o-lanterns that glow with different colors, so I guess that’s something.
At least they make the effort though. Unlike my parents. Their house, as I approach it, seems like a person who is woefully underdressed at a formal cocktail party. Not one pumpkin, not one black cat… nothing. They say there’s no point in decorating with my brothers and me out of the house. Once we moved out, they stopped going all out with the decorations. It’s kind of a sad marking of time.
I see the Wilkins family walking their dog across the street and wave to them. “Good evening,” I call to them.
They look at me strangely but wave back tentatively. Turning back to the house, I frown. Most of the lights inside are off, which is strange. When my dad’s out of town, my mom keeps almost all of the lights burning inside. She always says it makes her feel safer without all the shadows around. I guess I understand that. Being all alone in a big house like this would be creepy.
The alarm on my car chirps as I hit the button on the key fob and follow the path from the driveway to the stairs. I walk up the three steps, cross the porch, and grab the handle, only to find the door is locked. Not surprising, given my mom’s penchant for paranoid security while she’s alone.
I fish my keys out of my bag and slip it into the lock, then open the door, immediately reaching for the security alarm panel beside the door. But the lights are all glowing green. It hasn’t been set.
“Weird,” I note to myself.
Closing the door behind me, I make sure to lock it, then turn and walk deeper into the house. There is just something in the air that doesn’t feel right to me. I can’t tell exactly what it is, there’s just a strange pressure in the air. A tension that makes the hairs on my arms stand on end.
“Mom?” I call out, pricking my ears for her voice from the silence. No answer.
My belly tightens as I walk through the foyer and see that the place has been wrecked. Furniture is turned over and smashed to pieces. There’s broken glass from shattered frames everywhere crunching beneath my feet. It looks like a tornado has torn through the inside of the house, destroying everything in its path.
“Mom?” I call again, the panic clear in my voice. “Are you home?”
Nothing but silence.
“Mom? Mom?” I scream but still get no answer
My heart is thundering in my chest. The adrenaline rush is making me tremble wildly. I run through the downstairs rooms in the house, the sight of such destruction bringing tears to my eyes. All of the rooms are empty, but the damage is widespread. It feels like somebody went through and made sure to break everything in the house just to be excessively cruel.
I dash upstairs and check the bedrooms and the office. The master bedroom’s been trashed, but she’s not anywhere upstairs either. Tears roll down my face, and I’m calling for her until my throat feels raw. The silence in the house is so complete, it feels like I’ve been dropped into a vacuum.
“Mom?” I call out again, my breathing ragged.
I still get no response. My heart is racing. I come down the back staircase and then notice the pool light is on in the backyard. It’s the one place I haven’t checked. And although it’s not likely, she could be out there, and I want to exhaust all possibilities before I freak out and call the cops.
I cut through the kitchen and push through the tall French doors that lead to the backyard. I look at all of the deck chairs, but they’re all unoccupied. The light in the pool is the only source of illumination. At first, I can’t comprehend what I’m seeing. But as I walk toward the pool, it feels like my stomach fills up with a nest of slippery, oily eels twisting and writhing around one another.
“No. No, it can’t be,” I whisper and shake my head as if my denying what I’m seeing will make it suddenly less real.
I step to the edge of the pool and see my mother floating face down in the water, completely motionless. Her hair floats around her head, moving and swaying as if it’s a living thing, like the head of a Gorgon. And surrounding her head is a crimson corona. I feel my gorge rising, and I fall to my knees. Unable to stop it, I vomit into the pool, the splash of water in the silence of the backyard loud as a gunshot.
My vision is blurred with tears, and as I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, they start to fall. I look at my mother’s body and can’t seem to make myself stop staring at the red nimbus that surrounds her. A choked sob bursts from my throat. I stand and stagger backward away from the pool. It all still seems so utterly surreal that I can’t make myself believe that what I’m seeing is real.
I have to force myself to turn away. And when I finally manage it, I run into the kitchen and grab the phone, dialing 9-1-1 as fast as my fingers will let me. Holding the phone to my ear, the tears are falling fast and furious now, and a low whimper is issuing from my throat.
“9-1-1, what is the nature of your emergency?”
“P—p—please come to 3428 Covington Court, Denny-Blaine, please. Come immediately,” I answer. “M—my mother’s been murdered.”
One
Arrington Investigations; Downtown Seattle
“So, what you’re telling me is you have nothing,” I sigh, pinching the bridge of my nose.
“That’s… one way to interpret it,” Brody offers.
I stop pacing and
sit down in the chair across the desk from Brody. His desk is cluttered with papers and empty cans of Red Bull. To the side are a pair of computer monitors so big and wide, I practically have to lean around them to see him. And on the credenza behind him are two more monitors.
Right now, they’re showing the fields of vision of the eight different security cameras stationed around the office. Between all of the cameras, there isn’t one square inch of the office not covered visually. Ever since we learned the first serial killer we tracked down— Alvin Perry— had stopped by, with us being none the wiser until after the fact, Brody’s been pretty obsessed with security around here.
Not that I’m ungrateful for it. The thought that a man who’d taken as many lives as Perry did could stand no further from me than Brody is now— without my knowledge— is unsettling, to say the least. Personally, I'm glad for Brody’s diligence about security. But that doesn’t help with the matter at hand. I look at him and arch an eyebrow.
“Is there another way to interpret it?” I ask.
Brody nods. “It’s complicated, man. This guy is good, and back-hacking him is tough. He’s bouncing off proxy servers all around the world,” he explains. “It’s just a matter of finding the right trail to follow, but I’m making progress.”
“So… you have nothing.”
Brody sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “It’s a Gordian knot, man,” he says. “I just need to find the right thread to cut, and the whole thing unravels. And once it does, I’ll have him.”
I lean back in my chair and look through the smoked glass of the windows in Brody’s and into the rest of the office beyond my frustration simmering. I watch Amy, who’s already gotten a promotion from secretary to office manager, talking to Nick, our second investigator. In such a short span of time, we’ve gone from a small PI start-up to a growing and thriving firm. Having had a hand in bringing down a pair of— high-profile serial killers has helped, of course.
As I look out at the office, I see the future. It’s a future that would most definitely not exist without my past; a past I’m clinging to every bit as desperately as a man floating in the ocean would cling to a piece of driftwood. The thing is, I was so close to finally being able to set my past aside and move on. It’s what I wanted more than anything.
But over the course of my last case, I had some revelations about myself— yeah, I learned about myself from a serial killer, who could have seen that one coming? It took a lot of reflection and work, but I finally realized that maybe I was clutching the memory of my late wife Veronica a little too tightly. Maybe I’m not honoring her by obsessing about her death now that she’s been gone for nearly three years.
For the first time since she’d died, I started to think that perhaps I was seeing smoke where there was no fire. I was so desperately searching for meaning in her death and seeking somebody to hold accountable for it that I created a conspiracy in my mind. For the first time since she died, I started to think that maybe I was wrong and everybody else was right. Veronica’s death really was nothing more than what it seemed— a tragic accident.
But then I got the anonymous email.
I know what happened to your wife. It should have been you instead.
The words scroll through my head on an endless loop, just as they have ever since I first read them. That email proved to me that my instincts were right, to begin with. That I had been right from the start. Veronica’s death wasn’t an accident. It was exactly what I’d always thought: murder.
“Don’t worry; I’m going to find him,” Brody tries to reassure me. “It’s just going to take a little time and a little patience.”
“I’ve already waited three years, Brody. I’m tired of waiting for answers,” I snap, a little more callously than I mean to.
I shouldn’t be tearing Brody’s head off like this. I know it. In addition to being the master of all things technical here, he’s also my oldest friend. Brody’s a good man, and given that he’s put up with me as long as he has, should probably be put up for sainthood at some point.
“Sorry, man. I’m doing the best I can. I promise.”
I shake my head to bring myself back to my senses. “Yeah, I know you will. Sorry. It’s just...”
“I know, bud.” He gives me a tight smile. “It looks like you were right, and I was wrong. We were all wrong.”
I shrug. “I can’t say I can blame you, given the evidence to that point. I want to,” I say with a small grin. “But I get it.”
“Yeah well, I feel like crap for doubting you.”
I get to my feet and chuckle. “Not the first time you doubted me, and it won’t be the last, I’m sure.”
“Yeah well, it might be the first time I was actually wrong.”
“It’s really not.”
As I make for the door, he stops me. “Where are you headed?”
“Have to tail Mr. Towson around for a while. Snap some pretty pictures.”
“Give it to Nick,” Brody offers. “Come have drinks with Marcy and me.”
“Thanks, but I kinda need some quiet time tonight.”
He frowns at me. “Too much quiet time is bad for the soul, you know.”
“You assume I have a soul.”
He chortles and waves me off.
I turn and walk out of his office to get ready for my evening, the smile on my own face dropping rapidly.
The picture is crystal clear. I’ve got a full view of the hotel room on the tablet mounted to the dashboard. I hit the button on the side of my seat to recline it a bit. Since I’m probably going to be here a while, I might as well settle in and get comfortable.
It took a little digging— which Brody obviously helped me with— but we learned that fifty-nine-year-old Gerald Towson, attorney to the wealthy and famous, goes by the pseudonym Michael Ross for his... less than above-board activities. Said activities usually relate to his ongoing relationship with twenty-year-old student Melanie Sutter, though she is apparently not the only substantially younger woman in his life. It remains to be seen whether or not Melanie is aware of that fact.
After that, it wasn’t difficult to find out that he’s a frequent guest at the Hotel Theodore, no doubt where he carries on his trysts with Melanie and his others. For a fifty-nine-year-old man, I have to say, he’s got pretty good staying power… although, I assume he’s probably helped out chemically. But still, approaching sixty with the libido of a teenage boy? That’s kind of impressive.
Though, it would probably be more impressive if he was more into somebody more age-appropriate— like his wife— rather than young women fresh out of high school. I don’t think I’ll ever really understand the drive older guys have to bed women young enough to be their daughters. I mean, I know some people have said it’s because some guys are trying to reclaim their youth, whatever the hell that means.
Personally, I tend to think it’s about power. An old creep like Towson probably has this ingrained need to manipulate others to get what he wants, to control others at all costs. And it probably makes him feel big and manly to flash his money at young women to manipulate them. No way it’d work on his wife. Mrs. Towson is a strong, intelligent woman, who also happens to be a lawyer in her own right, and she does not suffer fools. I have a healthy respect for her. If he wasn’t so creepy, I’d almost pity Gerald Towson. She is going to tear him to shreds in court, and he will deserve it.
Anyway, once we got the alert that Michael Ross had booked a room at the Theodore for the night, I stopped by. It took a little sweet talking and palm greasing, but the housekeeper let me into the room he’d reserved, and I set up the cameras and mics. And now I wait. Mrs. Towson was specific about wanting video of his transgressions, so video she will get. The woman is documenting everything and is going to take her philandering hubby to the cleaners. And to that, I say good for her.
I pop a couple of peanuts into my mouth and chew as I think about the email again. To just get a message out of the blue like that, so long after Ver
onica’s death, and right when I was on the verge of finally wanting to turn the page… I’m not sure what to think of it. I’m not one for superstition, omens, or anything like that.
But the timing of it all just struck me as odd. Still strikes me as odd. It’s like whoever sent that message knew I was about to finally accept her death as a terrible accident. Like it was sent just to stir everything inside of me back up again. I don’t want to call it divine intervention or Veronica making contact with me from the great beyond, but it’s weird. It’s an oddly timed coincidence. And I don’t like coincidences. They make me uneasy. I like to believe an explanation can be found for everything if you look hard enough and in the right places.
I’ve thought about that email endlessly. Thought about it a million different ways. Tried to figure out the who’s and why’s of it. I’ve gone so far out of the box as to consider the possibility it’s my arch-nemesis, Seattle PD Chief Ricardo Torres— the constant thorn in my side— screwing with me. I rejected the thought pretty quickly after I had it. I don’t think he’s that creative. If he was going to screw with me, he’d go after the low hanging fruit: my concealed carry permit and PI ticket.
All of it has left me still standing on square one though. I have no idea who sent it or why. More than that, I don’t know their relation to Veronica or how they know what happened to her and why it was meant to be targeting me instead. And until Brody is able to track down the person who sent it, I’m not going to have any of my questions answered.