Deadly Forecast

by Victoria Laurie

  Dutch yawned again. “Well, at least you’re mine at the rehearsal dinner tonight.”

  I smiled. Yes. At least there was that. “Listen, I actually called to see if you could give me the name of that detective from APD who’s been your little buddy lately.” Dutch had been quasi-mentoring a young rookie from APD who thought FBI special agent Dutch Rivers walked on water.

  “Gavin?”

  “Uh…yeah. Him.”

  “Gavin Spivey. You want his direct line at APD?”

  “Please?”

  Dutch gave it to me and we chatted for a little longer before promising to see each other later. I then pushed all melancholy and troubled thoughts out of my head and dialed Detective Spivey’s number. The phone was answered by a woman. “Grayson,” she said, in a voice full of authority.

  “Uh…hello?” I was confused. Had I misdialed?

  “This is Detective Grayson,” she replied. “How can I help you?”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry. I’m looking for Detective Spivey.”

  “He’s off today,” she told me. “And I’m covering his desk. Is there something I can help you with?”

  I hesitated. I was hoping that I could talk Spivey into looking up any record associated with Mimi Greene that might link her to Jed Banes. I was pretty sure the young rookie detective would do it if he thought that the request had come through Dutch, but the fact that he was off that day put a bit of a monkey wrench into things.

  “Ma’am?” Detective Grayson said. “You still there?”

  I made a snap decision. She had the energy of someone you could trust, so trust her I did. I identified myself and told her that I was a civilian consultant with the FBI investigating a few leads connected to the bombing cases, and said that I was running down a lead on a possible connection between Mary or “Mimi” Greene and the retired detective Jed Banes.

  “That old bastard’s involved in this?” Grayson said, but there was a touch of humor in her question.

  “You know Banes?”

  “I do, although I haven’t seen him in a while. He got a bad rep and in my opinion a bad rap for some bullshit that went down a few years ago. But he always looked out for me, so I guess you could say I’m partial to the old geezer.”

  “Did you know he’s currently in the hospital?” I asked.

  “In the hospital?” she repeated. “Is he sick?”

  “My partner and I went to see him last week and he wasn’t well. Emphysema, I think. When we came back to reinterview him, we found him unconscious and in a really bad way. He’s had a stroke and he’s now in a coma and isn’t expected to live much longer.”

  Grayson was quiet for a time. “Well, damn,” she whispered. “The poor old geezer…” There was a little pause, then, “You say you’re trying to run down a lead between him and someone else?”

  I could hear her fingers clicking on a keyboard. “Mary Greene,” I told her. “But she went by Mimi. I doubt there’s a connection, but we just want to make sure that we’ve covered all our—”

  “Here it is,” Grayson interrupted. “Banes filed a report on a Mary Greene about a year ago. Looks like she had made some sort of comment to a friend about wanting to harm herself, and Banes was working some overtime out on patrol when the friend contacted police. Banes responded to the call, checked on the girl, talked with her for an hour or two, and determined that the threat wasn’t imminent. The report also shows that he followed up with her two days later to check and see that she was okay, and to drop off the name and address of a local support group. He says here that Greene was distraught over a breakup with her fiancé.”

  I was sitting forward on my chair, holding my breath, while Detective Grayson spoke. When she finished, I said, “Is there anything else in the report?”

  “Nope. It ends there.”

  Holy freakballs. We’d just closed the loop, but with Banes in a coma, we were helpless to get any more information out of him. He’d talked to Mary at length. He had to know something about her fiancé—this elusive “Buzz.”

  “Does it say in there who called in the report to APD?” I asked.

  “No,” Grayson said. “It says an anonymous male caller phoned it in and that he refused to give his name, saying only that he’d received a disturbing e-mail from a friend of his named Mary Greene, and then he gave her address before hanging up.”

  My skin tingled. I had a feeling that Buzz had been the “friend.”

  “Can you send me a copy of that report, Detective Grayson?” I asked.

  “Not without a formal request from the FBI.”

  “Yes, of course. I’ll have my boss call you. Will you be at this number for a bit?”

  “I’ll wait on the call, Miss Cooper.”

  I thanked her profusely, hung up, and did a quick hobble step into Candice’s office. After filling her in, we both called Brice, who promised to call Grayson. “It explains why this Buzz guy may have called Banes,” I said to Candice after we’d hung up with Brice. “He was the only person in this whole chain of people who took the time to try to help Mimi.”

  Candice tapped her finger to her lips. “But why call him at all?” she wondered aloud. “I mean, if Buzz thought Banes had tried to help Mimi, then why call him to taunt him with the threat of an explosion going off in two hours?”

  I felt I knew the answer. “Because Buzz is creating a ritual. He was the one who originally called APD to report that Mimi might harm herself, and Banes responded to that first call.”

  “How do you know that?” Candice asked me.

  “It’s a gut feeling,” I told her, knowing deep down that I was right. “I bet he got Mimi’s e-mail, sensed she was feeling depressed and guilty, and maybe there was even something in there about wanting to die, so he called nine-one-one. We know that Buzz has a history of keeping close tabs on the women he’s been abducting—I bet he was watching Mimi’s apartment that night after he called, and I bet he tracked down which officer responded to the call.”

  My partner still looked doubtful.

  “Buzz is repeating history, Candice,” I pressed. “He’s eulogizing Mimi by repeating certain things that led up to her taking her own life. The two hours on the timers of the bombs represent the two hours he waited for Mimi at the altar. The women he’s choosing are all connected to her. The venues he forces them to go to are all wedding vendors they may have used for their own wedding. The call to Banes is just another part of that narrative.”

  Candice sat quietly for a moment, taking all that in. At last she nodded. “We have to find Salisbury,” she said. “If Buzz knows the photographer is one of the few people that can identify him, he may try to kill him again.”

  “Any ideas where to look?” I asked, already sensing she’d come up with a lead.

  She held up a piece of paper. “Salisbury’s younger sister lives on the east side of town.”

  “What’re we waiting for?” I asked, already turning to head back to my office for my purse and Fast Freddy.

  We arrived at a low ranch home with burnt-orange shutters and white trim about twenty minutes later, and the moment Candice put the car into park, we knew we’d hit pay dirt.

  In the driveway was a silver Ford F-150 with the license tag PHOTOG. “Well, hello, Mr. Salisbury,” Candice whispered with a satisfied smirk.

  We got out and approached the front door just as it opened and out stepped the elusive photographer. He seemed truly startled to see us coming up the front walk, and I saw him tuck a duffel bag behind him protectively. “Hey, Simon,” Candice called breezily.

  “Who’re you?” he asked, his eyes darting warily between us.

  “You don’t recognize me?” I asked. “Aw, Simon, and here I thought we shared something special the other day.”

  He squinted at me. And then he glared hard. “You’re the bitch that had me put in that cop car and taken in for questioning.”

  I smiled and placed a hand over my heart. “Guilty as charged.”

  “This is har
assment—,” he began, but Candice cut him off.

  “Relax, buddy. We just want to ask you about this guy.” Candice pulled out the rather generic sketch of Buzz and presented it to Salisbury.

  He glanced at it before lifting his gaze back to us, but then I saw his eyes flicker to the sketch again and the tiniest hint of recognition appeared on his face. “Don’t know him,” he said quickly. Too quickly.

  Liar, liar, pants on fire…, went a small voice inside my head. “Bullshit,” I told him. “Who is he, Simon?”

  Salisbury scowled at me, and I knew we’d never get him to cooperate. He was too mistrustful of authority. “I said I don’t know him.”

  I balled my hands into fists. “Oh, cut the crap! Who the hell is he?”

  Salisbury shook his head and adjusted the strap on his duffel bag. “I gotta be somewhere,” he said, attempting to move past us.

  Candice stepped in his path and held up the sketch again. “Why would this guy send a bomb to your doorstep, Simon?” she asked.

  “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about!” he snapped, working to move around her.

  I stepped into his path too. “He’s the guy that strapped a bomb to a woman and told her to go visit you, Simon,” I said. “Why would he try to blow you up?”

  Salisbury looked as if he was becoming increasingly uncomfortable…. Also…increasingly scared. “Get the hell out of my way!”

  But we wouldn’t. Every time he tried to move around us, we double-teamed to block him. Finally he moved to shove past Candice and she caught his duffel bag and pulled it right off his shoulder. “Ow!” she cried, pretending to fall to the ground with the bag. “Dude! You hit me with this bag!”

  “Give that back to me!” he yelled, moving to grab the handle.

  Candice swung out her leg and caught Salisbury midcalf. He went down hard and she was on top of him in an instant. “How dare you attempt to assault me!” she said, pulling his arms behind his back and securing them with her knee. Then she looked up at me and added, “Call for backup.”

  While I was on the phone with Brice, Candice pulled the duffel over to her and unzipped it. All the while Salisbury struggled to get up, but she had her knee jammed hard against his elbow, and every time he squirmed, the pressure threatened to dislocate his shoulder.

  I was giving Brice the address when Candice unzipped the bag, and I saw her hand fly to her mouth. “Hey, hold on a sec,” I told Brice. “Candice, what is it?”

  Candice lifted her chin to me and I could see a look of utter horror and abject disgust on her face. She held open the bag and I saw that it was filled with photos. Photos of young girls wearing all sorts of S&M paraphernalia but otherwise naked. The youngest girl I saw couldn’t have been older than ten. “Oh, you son of a bitch…,” I whispered.

  “That’s not my bag!” Salisbury shouted. “I was holding it for a friend!”

  My stomach turned and I said to Brice, “We’ve got another problem…”

  * * *

  Hours later we were still dealing with our encounter with Salisbury. Cox and Rodriguez had come up with bubkes. When they got the warrant early that morning, they’d noticed that the tape across the door of the photography studio had been tampered with, and when they went inside, they discovered Salisbury’s computer was missing—along with all his customer files.

  Salisbury himself had completely clammed up, and wasn’t saying a word until his lawyer got there. We all knew we weren’t going to get a peep out of him about our unsub until some sort of a deal had been made on the child pornography charges, but we were days away from assessing how many crimes Salisbury had committed, and special teams from both the FBI and APD had been dispatched to his home and photography studio in search of more child pornography evidence. In the attic and in a wall safe in the back of the studio, they found plenty. The bastard.

  The sun was starting to set when Candice came to wrap an arm around my shoulders while I stared meanly through the mirrored glass at the slime bucket photographer. “Rodriguez just got word that Mimi’s phone records will be available to us on Monday.”

  I glanced up at the clock. It read quarter after five. “Leave it to the phone company to take their time expediting critical evidence,” I grumbled.

  Candice squeezed my shoulders. “Yep. But what it really means is that it’s finally time for you to set this aside, Sundance.”

  I squinted at her. “What do you mean?”

  “You need to step away from this case and head off to the altar, honey. It’s time to let it go and let us take care of it. With the phone records coming next week, we’ll finally be able to put a name and a face to this Buzz by Monday afternoon. Tuesday at the latest.”

  I sighed and rested my head against her shoulder. Part of me wanted to continue to work the case until Buzz was brought in, while another part of me wanted only to walk away from it forever.

  “Come on,” Candice coaxed. “Let’s get you dressed and to your rehearsal. Your sister will kill us if we’re late.”

  The wedding rehearsal was only slightly better than a well-orchestrated disaster. Candice and I were late; Dutch, his brothers, and Milo had hit happy hour a little early (and were thus in giggly, slaphappy form); Brice had to skip the event because he was still hard at work on the bombing case; and Cat was making everyone wince through the use of her bullhorn.

  Poor Jenny Makeanote looked harried and was scribbling so fast on her iPad that I thought she’d need to have her wrist checked for carpal tunnel later, and to cap it all off, the minister arrived coughing and wheezing and in full chest cold mode. His voice would never hold up through the ceremony the next day, but he gave his best effort, and after only eleven practice run-throughs, Cat let us go, but she didn’t look at all happy.

  She approached me gripping her bullhorn with fire in her eyes. “We have a problem.”

  “Only one?” I asked, maybe a weensy bit too sarcastically.

  Cat glared hard at me and raised the bullhorn. “I’m not in the mood, Abby!”

  I winced—man, that thing was loud.

  Candice came to my side in a show of support. “Hey, Cat,” she said. “Everything okay?”

  Cat shoved a clipboard at me but replied to Candice. “No!” she yelled (thankfully without the use of the bullhorn). “They’re predicting rain tomorrow and twenty-five-mile-an-hour wind gusts! We might have to move the ceremony inside, which means no butterflies, swans, or cupids!”

  In that moment I’d never prayed so hard for rain in my whole life.

  But Cat continued. “Also, I hear that some of the guests have been leaving messages on Abby’s voice mail. I have no idea who’s coming and who’s not!”

  Cat looked like she was close to having a meltdown. She’d been shouldering all of the stress of the wedding for me and I started to feel really guilty—especially since my cell indicated I had something like twenty-two voice mails on it that I hadn’t bothered listening to. “Okay, honey,” I said to her. “I’ll check it over. And don’t worry about the ceremony. Inside, outside—what does it matter?”

  Cat looked at me with such fury that I took a step back. “It. Matters.”

  Candice and I were quick to nod. “Yes, of course it does,” I said. “Sorry. I think I’ve got the prewedding jitters and stuff is just coming out of my mouth all willy-nilly—”

  “Sundance,” Candice interrupted.

  “Yeah?”

  “Shut it.”

  “Okay.”

  Candice and I both pushed big old smiles onto our faces and squared our shoulders like good little soldiers.

  Cat’s glare intensified, and then her gaze dropped to the guest list in my hands like she expected me to get right on it…and I wasn’t about to do that because it sounded like a real pain in the keister and why not just let the guests come or not come on their own?

  Candice lifted the clipboard out of my hand and surveyed the guest list. “I’ll help Abby with this, Cat,” she promised, which was Cand
ice-speak for “I’ll tell you what you want to hear if only you’ll cut us some slack, Cat.”

  Cat’s glare diminished to a simple scowl before she raised her hand and snapped her fingers. Jenny Makeanote was at her side in a hot second, and with one nod from Cat, Jenny was off again, hurrying into the reception tent only to rush right back out holding two garment bags, which she gave to Cat, who in turn handed one each to us. “Here are your dresses. The limo will be at Candice’s condo at eight thirty a.m. and the driver will take you anywhere you’d like for breakfast, but you’ll need to be here promptly at ten a.m. I’ve assigned you the two dressing rooms on the ground floor. Abby, you’ll have the one at the back of the corridor straight off the main hall. Candice, yours is the second-to-last door on the left of that corridor. I have hair and makeup scheduled for both of you at ten thirty and eleven—there was some mix-up with the schedule, so you’ll each be getting makeup before hair. Please don’t put on your gowns until after you’ve had your hair and makeup applied. Abby, Jenny will be available if you need someone to help you dress.”

  I felt my face flush. She was starting to sound a bit too much like my mother for my taste. “I’ll be fine, Cat, thanks.”

  “The ceremony is at three, right?” Candice said.

  “Yes. Promptly at three. If the rain holds off, then we’ll do the ceremony first and most of the pictures second, but, Abby, the photographer will want to get some photos of you prior to the ceremony, so be ready for him no later than two o’clock.”

  “Are Dutch, Milo, and Brice getting ready here?” I asked, glancing at my fiancé, who was still laughing and joking with Milo and his brothers.

  “No. They’re having breakfast together along with Dutch’s brothers, his mom, and his aunt. Then everyone will be driven here, where Dottie and Vivian will be given the upstairs dressing rooms, and the boys will be given full run of the guesthouse.”

  “Guesthouse? What guesthouse?”

  Cat rolled her eyes. “The one right over there.” I looked to where Cat was pointing and saw a modest-sized cottage on the other side of the lawn about fifty yards away.