Why (Stalker Series Book 2)

by Megan Mitcham

  The pinwheel spun. Before she could blink, the results flooded the screen. As she gawked and scrolled, article after article offered their whitewashed, non-murderous version of the story. She tried the New York Times site, entered her subscription’s access code, and searched. It offered quite a hit. “Rita Ayers of New York City, heiress to the Ayers Financial Investments empire, died tragically while visiting friends in Connecticut.” The article doubled the other in both size and breadth. Their journalist was the only one, so far, who’d dug deep enough to find any details, but those tidbits were buried in the fold. “Ruled a tragic accident of teen partying gone wrong.” Her teeth ground together. It should have said underaged drinking gone wrong. They had all been so young. The article also sighted two eyewitnesses to the unfortunate events but didn’t name them. Alexa’s and Perry’s names were nowhere to be found in any article.

  Genevieve had seen enough to recognize a Carter cleanup when she saw one. It must have been nice to have family money. The moment she thought it, she rejected the notion. Money wasn’t nice. Too often, it equated to absentee parents. Squalor wasn’t nice either. Neither was the lower-middle-class upbringing she’d had.

  What was nice?

  Parents who loved you, not just by saying the words every time they looked at you, but also by protecting you from predators, trusting you when you told the ugliest of truths, and fighting for your rights as a human. Sentiment didn’t mean a goddamned thing. Not like actions did.

  Gen’s actions had been to defend her friend and mentor. What were the consequences? Had she released a murderer into the world, or had she kept free an innocent man?

  The call of the case files was too great. Genevieve shoved the laptop to the side, eased off the bed, and hurried to the corner before she thought better of it. Behind the neatly hidden door sat a bulging box of everything she could copy from Perry’s file without getting caught. Using every bit of ass and leg she had, she heaved the rectangular hunk of cardboard and looked at her bed. Too often, she’d needed sleep and found the thing buried under heaps of files, so she shuffled the box into the living room. The box smacked onto the carpet between the couch and coffee table, which was actually three tree trunks carved into teardrop shapes and positioned with their points facing the foyer. She sat on the edge of the couch’s heavy white upholstery, peeled off the box’s lid, and started dredging.

  Depositions for the defense went on the left teardrop. Depositions for the prosecution went on the right. She paused the digging, ran to the bedroom for a legal pad and pen, and then hurried back. Notes were everything in a case, especially one as bloated with files and motions as this one had been.

  Had been.

  She had no business going through this again. Yet her hands moved to the box and gathered the next heap of files. The juror notes, selections, and their information went on the floor behind the box. Perry’s pleading went with them. Circumstantial evidence sailed right and landed on the floor and slid just off the side of the carpet and onto the hardwood. Direct evidence she laid by her feet.

  The next chunk of files stole a beat of her heart or three.

  Gen stood, placing the crime scene photos and diagram folders on the floor on the other side of the coffee table. They were the last things she wanted to see. Every night when she put her head on the pillow and closed her eyes, she saw them as plainly as if the photos were pasted onto the backs of her eyelids.

  “Eyelids.” Genevieve closed her eyes and shook away the thought. It stuck. Thankfully, instead of the children’s—no—the victims’ hollowed-out eye sockets, her brain conjured an image of Detective Owen Graham. He had harped on the childrens’ eyes, or lack thereof, during his time on the stand and again when he’d accosted her the morning of the ruling.

  When the perpetrator of a crime knew a victim intimately or when the perpetrator showed some level of remorse for their actions, they often covered the victim’s face or turned their head away. That wasn’t the same thing as forcibly removing eyes with a knife. To Gen, the sheer horror of the act did not allude to remorse but a deep-seated hatred of the victims. It also spoke to disassociation of the perpetrator. They no longer saw the victim as a person.

  Even if Perry had pushed Rita to her death, it was a crime removed from gore. The extent of the crimes inflicted on the Carter family, the torture, was up close and personal. The two were not mutually exclusive. If he’d killed Rita, it didn’t automatically mean he’d killed his family.

  “Right?” Gen asked the files as though they could answer. She peeled open the first file and prayed they would.

  Time passed. The light peeking in the edges of the shades waned, and the room grew dim. She switched on the lamp and continued to pore over every line and note. The need for caffeine forced her off the sofa, but she brought a stack of files with her into the kitchen. Not all of them made it back. Pee breaks came and went. Thoughts zipped by, but none stayed for long. Her sense of dread grew roots.

  Incessant, intermittent buzzing finally forced her to leave the case. The balls of her feet pounded on the floor. She ran to her bedroom and found the phone jittering in her briefcase against the hard metal of her badge.

  A text string she didn’t have time for, even if it was from the girls, lit her screen. Gen closed the screen with one click while she headed back to the scattered mess she’d made. She shoved the phone between two couch cushions and returned to the diagram of Perry’s house. The whole of the crime had been contained in the formal living room, a room they never used as a family. Pamela and Perry used the space to entertain but not often. Only once or twice a year.

  Genevieve slid from the couch to the floor and found the file with her closing arguments and notes. She had painted a picture of Edger Sanchez with her closing arguments as a man used to power and luxury, a man used to getting his way with anything. In Mexico, he got away with everything. He was the revered and feared son of Amigo Ruez Sanchez, a cartel leader fresh on the scene and making loads of noise. In Mexico, he lived the good life in fancy homes with servants. All that changed when Edger’s father forced him to move to the States. He was sent to set the groundwork for his father’s growing empire, but Amigo failed to send the resources he needed to succeed. Here, he shared a modest home with his mother and sister. The two women were sent with Edger for their own safety. No reigning cartel wanted a newcomer on the scene, and it became increasingly apparent to Edger that no up-and-coming cartel leader wanted a son to murder him and seize the organization he built.

  She showed them proof of Edger’s spiral from wealth and power. She also showed them his attempts to get it back. She used Perry’s own case file, the pictures of the brutal attacks on a young Latin American woman, to help prove her points. She offered the crime scene, contained to Perry’s formal living room, as evidence of Edger’s hatred for Perry Carter and his family, who lived so well that an entire room in their home went largely untouched while he was forced to sleep on the couch most nights or share a room with his sister and her rotating door of Johns.

  Edger Sanchez was a brutally horrible man.

  That didn’t mean Perry wasn’t also a brutally horrible man.

  It had taken Alexa’s story for her to realize it.

  Between the cushions, her phone buzzed one long, unbroken string. Again, she ignored the irritating electronic. She crawled across the landscape of mostly gaping files and their contents that spilled across the floor toward the heap she’d hoped to avoid altogether. Her hands shook as she reached for the first of the three victims. They weren’t her friends. They weren’t the people who treated her like family more so than her actual family. Those three humans no longer existed. Their souls had left their body and gone to a much better place than this brutal pile of rocks.

  She disassociated as much as she could and flipped back the first tab. An eight-inch strip of professional-grade duct tape covered Pamela Carter’s face from one side of her jawbone, across her lips, to the other side.

  Genevieve
clamped a hand over her own mouth, blocking the sob that poured out of her. She slammed the file shut and slung it away as though the paper itself had attacked her. It had. Necessity had forced her to study the gruesome scene time and again. The need to save the last remaining Carter who was so dear to her had allowed her to get through the horror to look at the message each nuance of it sent. Now, she couldn’t look at them even to find the answer she so desperately needed.

  What happened that night inside the Carter home?

  Her search was too narrow and case focused. What she needed to determine was if Perry Carter had become a master at hiding the murderous side of himself. A side he let rule him more in his youth. Regardless of whether it was an accident or murder, Rita Ayers was dead. What she needed was to find Tiffany Renly, his summer of ’87 girlfriend. Gen needed to find out why exactly she dropped Alexa as a friend right after that Camp Caraway trip and what she remembered about young Perry Carter.

  Over the years, Genevieve had learned that using Google was not the best way to find someone. It took a lot of time and provided a ton of false leads. She’d been spoiled by the private investigator on retainer for Carter, Cleary & McMellon, but no way could she use him this time. Gen scrambled to the couch on hands and knees and fished her phone from the depths. Her screen lit with a missed call from Larkin, a voicemail, and again the text string between the girls. She cleared them away and hunted through her contacts.

  “Detective Graham.” His contact was in her phone just so. Months ago, before the Carter case and before he’d signed the papers to transfer to her precinct, she’d gotten his number from a detective in the department. She had intended to call the new detective, introduce herself, and begin courting him. It was one of only a few times that her wooing had nothing to do with sex. She needed him, as she’d needed the retiring detective with whom she’d worked with for five years, to know they were on the same team. If they worked together, they could successfully put away more criminals than he’d ever imagined.

  She’d never made the call. Two days later, three of the people she loved most in the world were murdered, and she was called to defend the man charged with their murders.

  Her finger hovered over his name. If she tipped her hand to him, he’d hate her more than he already did. If she didn’t tip her hand, he wouldn’t help her find Tiffany Renly. A smile, so foreign to her lips these days, re-emerged. She scrolled down her contacts to the name that conjured it and smashed the screen to call him. The line rang several times before coming to life. The light whoosh of car noise filled her ear.

  “Miss Holst, how may I be of service?” Douglas’s crisp, deep voice was kind and so endearing.

  “You’ll find yourself in a heap of lady troubles by asking every woman how you can service them.”

  His quiet laughter filtered in through the line. “Not in many, many years have I had that sort of trouble, Miss Holst.”

  “Please, I know more than a few who’d happily take you up on the offer. And call me Genevieve or Gen. I swear, do you still call your daughter Miss Ashford?”

  Yeah, that revelation had shocked them all. Larkin’s kind, caring, totally badass driver for more than fifteen years had turned out to be her father.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “When it’s just the two of you?”

  The older man’s stubborn silence caused Gen’s smile to grow. He probably didn’t know that Larkin had told all the girls the big reveal. For Douglas’s and Larkin’s safety, they’d decided to keep the revelation under wraps. He had to have known under wraps didn’t include her, Marlis, or Libby. Of course, those goodie-goodies surely never alluded to Douglas that they knew.

  “No,” he finally admitted.

  “It took you long enough. Do I have to make you my daddy before you’ll call me Gen?”

  He quietly waited her out. No matter how inappropriate she’d been with Douglas over the years he’d driven Larkin, never once had he been inappropriate back. She tested him more than most men because, well, he was a hot older man, he never reacted, and he drove one of her best friends around. She’d had to be sure he wasn’t going to take advantage of Larkin. These days, she messed with him for fun.

  “Fine,” she relented. “I need to find Tiffany Renly, forty-five years old, went to school with Alexa Carter, Perry’s sister, until the beginning of the 1987-1988 school year.”

  Gen held her breath for an interrogation. Douglas, more than most, could chase down the information he sought with one or two well-placed questions.

  “I’ll get on it and let you know what I find.”

  “You’re the best. I owe you one.”

  “One?” He chuckled. “You owe me two for tonight, alone. I haven’t bothered to tally the past decade. You’re welcome.”

  “Two for tonight?” Genevieve’s heartbeat kicked up a notch. Her mind skittered to Larkin’s missed call, and the text messages she’d ignored.

  “You should know your friends better than to think they’d give up on you after no response to texts and a call. If anything, they think they’re on their way to save your life from a deranged killer.”

  “On their way?” she squeaked.

  “Oh, yes. They’re all in the back. We’re five, no, four blocks away, traffic is light, and you know as well as I do that they won’t take no for an answer.”

  “How’s traffic light on a Friday evening?” They couldn’t be blocks away.

  “Everyone’s in the Bronx for the Yankees game,” he explained.

  “I owe you a million. Gotta go.”

  Genevieve ended the call and jumped to her feet to survey the living room. Files, legal papers, and notes littered one corner of the rug to the other. They were mounded on the couch, and some had spilled off onto the floor. When, she couldn’t say. Pen marks and highlighter decorated her hands. Her feet were bare, and there were near permanent creases in the material that folded at her hips.

  She hurried to the bathroom and nearly screamed at the reflection that stared back. Mascara and eyeliner sagged low, creating dark circles. Her hair went every which way except the one she wanted it to go. A shower would do wonders, along with a new outfit and a new face of makeup, but there was no time for it. She settled for a wipe of tissue under both eyes and across both lids, a couple of swipes of her brush, and a fresh swipe of deodorant. Her reflection glared at the hideous, sleeveless turtleneck dress. Too soon it was forgotten and the reason for it stepped into the forefront. She peeled the edges of the fabric down. Garish light-purple fingerprints marred the left and right sides of her neck, reminding her it would be at least two more days before makeup would come close to covering the evidence.

  The buzzer announced her friends’ arrival. It announced them four more times by the time she made it to the intercom and pressed the button. Two, no, three faces bobbed in the camera. Four, if she counted Douglas, standing sentry by the Larkin’s extra-long Town Car, not to be confused for a limousine, which it totally was.

  “Oh, thank goodness, you’re okay.” Marlis sighed before Gen had a chance to say a word.

  “Of course, she’s okay.” Libby’s hand shot into the frame in a thank-you-Lord gesture.

  “Right, like you weren’t nervous too,” Larkin hissed.

  “What, you three can’t take a hint?” Gen groused. Though she gave them a hard time, just seeing their faces lightened the worrisome load on her shoulders.

  “Told you she was ignoring us,” Larkin offered.

  “Hell no, we can’t take a hint.” Libby shoved Larkin to the side and pushed her—what looked massive from the angle—nose toward the camera. “You should know us Brooklyn girls don’t give up easily.”

  Larkin grabbed a handful of Libby’s hair and yanked her backward, reclaiming her space. “Us Manhattan girls don’t either.”

  “Unless you ask nicely.” Mar’s head bounded with each jump she took in an effort to sweetly get screen time.

  Libby and Larkin gagged in unison.

  “Let
us up,” Libby demanded.

  “Can we go to dinner?” Genevieve offered her most pitiful expression. “I’m starving and have exactly zero edible things in here.”

  “What about those strawberry panties you bought last time we went to The Pleasure Chest?” Libby quipped.

  “Gross.” Larkin bumped her out of the way. “If you’d bothered to return ten texts or a phone call, you’d know that’s what we’re doing.”

  “True.” Gen winked. “I’m coming down.”

  “Good.” Libby butted in again. “’Cause if you weren’t, we were coming up.”

  Genevieve released the button, grabbed her purse and phone, and took one last look around her apartment. It was a few pushpins shy of a serial killer’s lair. A chill slid down her arms. She locked up and rushed down the flights of stairs and out the front door where warm arms, cool kisses, cheers, and quips greeted her. They filed into the car one at a time while Douglas held open the door.

  When it was her turn, she paused in the doorway, reached up on tiptoes, and pressed a kiss to Douglas’s cheek. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “You’re welcome, Miss Holst.” He winked.

  Fourteen

  They parked their asses at a four-top across from the bar at a trendy little farm-to-table restaurant in Brooklyn that Libby had been raving about for months. Greenery hung in neatly lined copper pots fastened to the wall overhead. Dried herbs adorned the small open kitchen just down from the bar, and past that, through a door, more food sprouted from planters lining the back patio.

  “So what’s up with you?”

  Larkin asked the question, but Genevieve had been so caught up in the ambiance, it took her a minute to realize she aimed it straight between Gen’s eyes. Both Libby’s and Marlis’s gazes were locked on Gen, awaiting an apparently eagerly sought answer. If one of them at the table had the most interesting or exciting life, it certainly wasn’t her.