Cal saw small holes where patches of wall were visible, indicating a tack had once held a photo. “Good eye.”
Riley was on the run, whether he had planned it that way or not. He didn’t care if Jaslene knew he was coming after her. Even more disturbing, Riley wasn’t even afraid of Cal. Did he know anything about his background? Cal had sent his own message—Riley shouldn’t threaten Jaslene and not expect retaliation.
Chapter 6
The following night, Jaslene and Cal entered Harley’s where Cal had chased Riley and lost him. Taking in the well-weathered interior, she realized the stalker had a secret life. As an IT expert, he made a decent salary and yet hung out in Chesterville’s only hole-in-the-wall bar. Cal used his extensive resources to uncover more about the man. He frequently flew to Las Vegas or drove to Summersville to gamble and regularly stopped at Harley’s after work.
She followed Cal’s tall form to the bar, trying not to keep looking at his butt in those black jeans whenever the puffer jacket rose up high enough as he moved. It seemed like a slow night, with only one man on a stool and two tables that held a raggedy, long-haired, bearded man, a woman in a dirty sweatshirt and two construction workers.
“You find Riley Sawyer?” the bartender asked. “He hasn’t been in here since you were last here.”
“Not yet. We’d like to talk to the waitress who served him the evening Payton Everett went missing. Sharon? Do you know where we can find her?”
The bartender paused in wiping the bartop. “I fired her. She drank on the job.”
Jaslene didn’t recall reading anything like that in any of the reports Cal let her read after he quit the force. “Was she drinking the night Riley was here?”
“Can’t be sure. No one complained that night, but she drank every other evening, so probably so. Staff complained about her breath and having to cover her tables.”
“Did you tell police?” Cal asked.
“Didn’t see a reason to. You already questioned her.”
Jaslene sent a look to Cal.
“We questioned several patrons,” Cal said. “And I’m not with the police anymore.”
“No one talked to me and I might have been here that night. I come here a lot.”
Jaslene turned to the lone man at the end of the bar. Clean-shaven with wavy dark hair that hung to his shoulders, he seemed healthy and bright-eyed. If he drank a lot, he didn’t show it.
“I heard about the missing girl but I didn’t know the cops came here to question anyone,” the man said.
She followed Cal down the bar. Cal sat to the man’s right and she to his left.
He held out his hand to Cal. “Hewitt Sadira.”
Cal shook his hand. “Cal Chelsey. This is Jaslene Chabot.”
Hewitt shook her hand, his gaze lingering on her face, telling her he thought she was attractive.
“You know Riley Sawyer?” Cal asked.
“Not well, but I’ve sat with him at this bar a few times. When exactly did this girl go missing? Seems it’s been a while, but what day?”
“The Friday before Memorial Day,” Cal said.
“Weekend before?” Hewitt rubbed his chin as he thought. Then he nodded. “The weekend before Memorial Day, I had plans to go to Pennsylvania to visit my grandmother. She wasn’t going to make it to Chesterville for Memorial Day because she just had a hip replacement. I remember coming here that Friday night. Riley was here.”
“What time was he here?” Cal asked.
“Right after he got off work. Sat here and had two beers and left.”
Jaslene met Cal’s eyes.
Hewitt turned to her. “Is something wrong?”
“Sharon said he left after ten.”
“You mean Sharon, who was fired for drinking on the job? She worked over by the windows that night.” Hewitt glanced back to the now empty tables. “A guy who looked similar to Riley sat at one of them. He was alone.”
And nobody had caught on to that? Jaslene remembered Cal told her Sharon had said the man at the table who might have looked like Riley had paid cash, so she could have mistaken him for Riley.
“Did Riley, or the man who looked like him, pay cash for his beers?” Jaslene asked.
“He always paid cash.”
The bartender finished serving the waitress with a tray full of beers and then headed down the bar toward them.
“Did you see Riley sitting at the table by the window the night Payton went missing?” Cal asked him, indicating the table where the lookalike had sat.
“No. I wasn’t here that night.”
The report Jaslene had read said police talked to regulars who said they saw him. One said they saw him come in and another agreed with the waitress that he was sitting at the table until after ten.
“Riley sat next to me at the bar and left after two beers,” Hewitt said.
The bartender turned from Cal to Hewitt, bewildered. “You sure?”
“Positive. He wasn’t here very long. The guy who looked like Riley was here longer than Riley.”
“How long?” Cal asked.
“I don’t know. I left at nine and he was still here.”
Jaslene turned at the same time as Cal and they shared a startled look.
Cal faced Hewitt again. “Tell us more about your conversation with Riley. Did he say where he was going after he left? Maybe explain why he left so early?”
Hewitt shook his head. “Just said he was leaving. I thought it was weird but didn’t think anything of it. Then that girl went missing. Everybody talked about it here.”
“Hewitt here is a regular but he doesn’t come in regular, if you know what I’m saying,” the bartender said.
“I work the night shift a lot. Don’t come in when I work those odd hours.” Hewitt’s mouth turned down.
If he could come into this bar regularly as the bartender put it, he probably would. Jaslene wondered if something had transpired in his past to make him turn to alcohol. “What did you and Riley talk about?” Cal asked.
“Work. The weather. And he said his girlfriend broke up with him. He was pretty torn up about it, but he never told me her name.”
“Tell me exactly what he said.”
Jaslene all but held her breath and clenched her fists in anticipation.
“I asked if he was seeing anyone. We talked other times we sat together there, so I knew he wasn’t married. I wasn’t married, either.” He held up his ringless hand. “Still not.” He lowered his hand to the bar. “He said he was with her until she broke up with him. He didn’t understand because he thought everything was good between them. He thought she needed time and she’d come around. I told him when a woman ends a relationship she doesn’t go back. He didn’t like hearing that. He said she’d come back. I told him he might not want to hope too much for that and asked what he’d do if she never did. All he said was, ‘She will.’”
He sounded certifiably crazy. What normal man would insist his ex-girlfriend would magically change her mind and come back to him?
“He finished his beer and paid his tab and left. I thought he left because of what I said.”
Or had he left to commence an evil plan to kidnap Payton?
* * *
Cal drove away from the bar with Jaslene in the passenger seat. She was as quiet as him. He kept going over possibilities of Riley being involved in Payton’s disappearance.
Riley’s neighbors had said they saw him arrive home after ten, which corroborated the waitress’s statement. Payton was seen leaving work at seven. Bank records showed she stopped at the market and paid for groceries at seven forty-five. Her neighbor witnessed her arriving home shortly after eight. Then her car was found the next day at a nearby park, abandoned. Had she driven there that night?
Had Riley waited for her in her house, done something to her and taken her to
a park?
None of the neighbors reported noticing any strange vehicles and no one had seen her drive away from her house. Cal had found only two people who had been at the park after seven and neither had observed a car matching the description of Payton’s. If she had been the one driving, she had gone to the park sometime after 8:00 p.m., which Cal had always found peculiar since the park was within walking distance of her house. If Riley had anything to do with her being there, then she would have had to arrive at the park before ten. There were no security cameras near the park.
Riley would have had plenty of time to commit a crime. He would have been able to be at Payton’s house before she arrived home. Her phone records didn’t show any calls to or from Riley that night, so Cal was sure Riley would have gone to her home and likely surprised her. There was no sign of a struggle at her house, and no sign a murder had been carried out there. Riley could have knocked her unconscious or threatened her at gunpoint and taken her to the park.
If Riley had driven his car to the park, it would have been after everyone had left.
If he could place him either at Payton’s house or at the park, then he could give the police enough to take him in for questioning.
“It’s getting late.”
He turned to glance over at Jaslene and then realized he had passed the road to her house. Automatically he’d driven toward his.
“Are you hungry? Why don’t you come over for dinner?” He didn’t know why he’d asked. The words just tumbled out. “I’ll have something delivered or we can pick something up. What sounds good?”
She didn’t answer for a few seconds and another glance confirmed she was fumbling over how to respond. “Um...sure. I know a place on the way. It’s a great deli. I don’t want anything heavy.”
He could do a sandwich and he liked not having to cook. He also liked the idea of spending some downtime with her. “Just tell me where.”
* * *
Getting out of Cal’s SUV, Jaslene had to take a moment to admire his house. Nothing could have surprised her more. The two-story Victorian home had white trim, shocking for a man who seemed to have sworn off family. The snow had melted except for the shady spots, revealing immaculately trimmed flower beds curving around the front of the house. The covered porch had outdoor furniture.
“Nice,” she said as she walked with him to the white, arching front door.
“People who lived here previously fixed it up. I didn’t have to do anything.”
But something must have made him buy it. He might have tried to convince himself he’d never give love another chance, or set some stiff boundaries that would be near impossible to breach, but somewhere inside him hid a man who still yearned for what he’d thought he had with his wife.
Cal put his hand on her back, guiding her so she walked ahead of him. He’d unzipped his puffer jacket and she saw the dark gray Henley he wore. The textured shirt fit the hard slope of his chest well. Noticing he craned his neck to look behind them and at the street, she followed the direction of his gaze.
A car pulled out from the side of the street, driving slow toward them. The driver’s window rolled down.
As soon as Jaslene saw that the driver wore a black balaclava and began to lift something in his right hand, she felt Cal shove her to the ground. She landed hard on her stomach just as gunfire erupted. Bark from the tree in Cal’s front yard broke apart and flew to the dead grass.
Cal got up to kneel, returned fire and then took cover behind the tree. The gunman fired again.
Terrified, Jaslene covered her head with her arms, hearing bullets hit the ground nearby. Cal’s gun fired in rapid succession as the car drove by and the shooter’s gunfire paused momentarily.
Jaslene stayed low and crawled behind Cal and the tree, staying low but sitting on her hip and frantically peering around Cal and the tree to determine if the shooter had gone.
The gunman returned fire yet again. She made herself as small as possible behind the tree. Bullets kicked up dirt and grass as they hit the ground where she had just been crouching.
She heard the car speed up, tires squealing as it took a turn.
Cal fired a few more times and then bent to her. “Are you all right?” He checked her body and legs and felt her head, his eyes ablaze with what looked like adrenaline-fueled worry.
“Yes.” She breathed heavily, trying to calm down.
“Go inside.” He helped her up. “Lock the door.” He removed a key from his key chain and handed it to her.
“What are you going to do?”
“Go inside.” He ran to his SUV and got in and had the engine started and gear in Reverse before she even took a step.
Was he going to be all right?
She watched him peel out of the driveway and spin into a turn at the next street. The entire attack seemed to move in slow motion. What had taken seconds felt as though it had taken endless terrifying minutes.
Lights came on in the neighboring houses as some of Cal’s neighbors began to emerge. Jaslene hurried to the door and inserted the key. She felt ill from fear. Her pulse still throbbed through her veins and her mouth was drier than a pretzel. Once inside, she locked the door behind her and let her forehead fall forward, breathing to finish calming her nervous system.
Jaslene heard sirens a few minutes later. She finally caught her breath and slowed her heart rate; the neighbors must have called the cops. Going to the front window, she looked through the glass, trying to see where Cal had gone. No sign of him yet.
One of the policemen spoke with a woman across the street, who must have been the one to call 911. When she pointed to Jaslene’s house, several police walked over.
Feeling safe enough, she went back outside.
“Are you all right, ma’am?” the tallest of them asked.
“Yes. Someone in a mask drove by and shot at us. We just got out of the SUV and he started firing.” She pointed to the tree. “That tree probably saved our lives.”
“Our? Who else was here?”
“Cal Chelsey.” She spotted his SUV coming around the corner. “There he is.” She heard the great relief in her tone and felt it everywhere in her body.
The policemen turned and waited for Cal to pull into the driveway and park. He got out and hurried to Jaslene. He took her into his arms.
“Jaslene.” He held her close. “I was so afraid you’d be hit.”
His embrace was firm and full of emotion, as was his tone. His concern seemed out of character for him, a man who guarded so fiercely against love.
“I’m fine,” she said with her mouth close to his ear.
He moved back but kept his arm around her as he turned to the police, another intimate gesture that indicated he acted in agreement with his heart, at least for now.
“Detective Chelsey,” the policeman said. “Something must have changed in this case for someone to start shooting at you.”
“Apparently so.”
All they had done was talk to Dr. Benjamin and dig into Riley’s alibi.
Riley’s alibi.
Had he discovered what they had learned? He could be trying to stop them.
Cal explained what happened, including that there had been no plates on the car and he hadn’t been able to find the driver in his chase. Cal hadn’t seen where the other man had gone after he raced away. The police bade farewell and Jaslene turned to go back into Cal’s house, seeing the neighbors had gathered in front yards to watch.
All the excitement had worn on her. She felt tired but in need of some pampering. She wanted to go home and take a bath but didn’t think being alone was such a smart idea. She could be with Rapunzel.
Without adrenaline arresting her senses, Jaslene noticed the interior of Cal’s home. His place looked homier than hers, yet another indicator that he had set up a haven for a family.
She re
moved her jacket and boots.
“This is the only furnished room other than my bedroom and another room upstairs,” he said, as they walked into the living room. “I found it before my divorce and decided to buy it anyway since she took the house we were in.”
She didn’t miss how he said “took.”
“A work in progress. It’s quite lovely.” And a shame to let such a wonder go empty. A house like this could turn her into an interior decorator.
“Thanks.”
She faced him and found him watching her. Their eyes met and she couldn’t look away. He seemed to be about to say something difficult.
“I don’t think you should be alone,” he said.
She didn’t, either. “What about Rapunzel?”
“We can stay at your place.”
She looked around again at his tasteful residence, feeling closer to the man who lived here. “I think I’d rather stay here.” Stopping, she turned to him. “I know you are not a dog person but you might be now that you work for DAI. They might be more family oriented.” She tested him by saying that.
He smiled. “If my coworker Roman is any indication, then yes, they are very family oriented.”
He talked easily about others but what about himself?
“Why Roman?” she asked.
“He helped catch the man who killed his fiancée’s sister. And family means the world to him.”
Jaslene found that tantalizing. The single DAI detectives were desirable, indeed. When she began entertaining the possibilities of the same happening between her and Cal, she had to mentally block the fantasy. He was too distrusting. And she didn’t feel good about risking her heart on him.
“Let’s go get the critter and anything else you need.” He went to the front window and checked outside. “I have a daybed in one of the other bedrooms. I’ll make it up and sleep in there.”
That was awfully kind of him, but Jaslene’s dreams extended to testing him further: by sleeping with him. What would he do if he became intimate with a woman who wasn’t his ex-wife? Temptation flared within her as she grew eager to find out.
Cold Case Manhunt Page 7