Her Silent Shadow: A Gripping Psychological Suspense Collection

by Edwin Dasso

  Crazy Sadie’s mouth dropped open in shock. A note of annoyance crept into her voice. “Why not? Shouldn’t you test it for fingerprints? Blood? All that CSI shit you cops are supposed to be good at? It’s not bad enough that you let him escape, but you want to leave his car for him too? I don’t understand it. I—"

  “Now calm down, Sadie. I’m not saying we should let him go. Quite the opposite. If he’s desperate enough, he’ll come back for the car.”

  “You’re using it as bait?” Sadie asked, her annoyance shifting to awe.

  “Exactly. We’ll keep eyes on it. Let him come back when he thinks it’s safe.”

  “And then you’ll arrest him!”

  It was hard not to smile at Sadie’s obvious delight at the thought of being part of a full-blown caper. Lacey suppressed a smile but from the look on Spencer’s face, she could tell he was annoyed. He didn’t like being contradicted. Especially by a woman. Ignoring his ire, she thanked Sadie for her help and the two officers left the store.

  “Why don’t you keep eyes on the car while I head to the station and run the plates,” she suggested, throwing Spencer a bone, knowing full well he’d prefer staying in the field.

  Sweet Home’s police station was a small brick building near the center of town. It shared a driveway with Bi-Mart and McDonald’s. Lacey parked the cruiser inside a gated lot alongside a small fleet of squad cars outside the station. Exiting the vehicle, she badged inside.

  Rebecca Martin was the station officer on duty today. Part cop, part den mother, she combined the perfect set of attributes for the public face of the department. Rebecca looked up in surprise when Lacey entered.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be off this weekend? A romantic getaway to Cannon Beach?”

  “Plans changed.” Lacey shrugged, careful to keep the bitterness from seeping into her voice. “Caleb wasn’t able to make it home and with Dixon on medical leave, we’re short staffed.”

  A look of concern filled Rebecca’s eyes. “But it’s your tenth anniversary.”

  “Technically, my anniversary’s tomorrow and really it’s no big deal. There will be others,” Lacey said, silently wondering if that was true.

  Rebecca met Lacey’s gaze and while she looked as if she had more to say, she kept her thoughts to herself. Lacey was grateful. She had been upset, angry even, when Caleb had called to cancel their plans. He had an interview lined up for a job that he hadn’t told Lacey about until she pressed him on why he wasn’t coming home. The job was a significant promotion, and if he got it, he would be staying in Fort Hood.

  The past summer, when Caleb had come home for Harper’s birthday party, they’d had a bitter argument and he’d promised to look for a posting somewhere closer. But that was months ago. Plans changed. Apparently, Lacey was no longer in the loop.

  Across the aisle from one of the windows, Lacey’s cubicle was located near the front of the building. Family photos were pinned to the cubicle walls in a haphazard collage of everyday life. Photographs marked the passage of time starting with the baby years all the way up to the official elementary school photos—Flynn, her proud first grader and Harper, the unstoppable force now residing in the third grade. And Caleb. This particular shot had been taken years ago, when they were living at Fort Hood. Everything about Texas, the flat brown expanse of the state, made her miss the green hills of Oregon with an ache she couldn’t ignore.

  The kids were just little then, and while Caleb had considered this the happiest time in their marriage, Lacey had never been more lonely. He had his fellow soldiers who were as close as brothers, and she had no one. No friends. No family. Just a baby, a toddler, and a husband who worked long hours.

  The decision to move home was a hard one and they’d promised to commute as many weekends as they could. Lacey would take the kids one weekend and Caleb would come home the next. But then Lacey had moved home and resumed her law enforcement career. Between the shift work and the weekend hours, commuting was hard, and Caleb came home less and less.

  The ruined anniversary plans were just another casualty of good intentions gone wrong. Shaking off the bitter thought, Lacey refocused her attention on the case, preferring to spend her energy tackling problems she could solve.

  The stolen plates were registered to a Pat Coyle from Corvallis, who drove a Ford Edge. There was no police report listing the plates as stolen. Perhaps the owners hadn’t noticed their plates had been switched. Lacey made a note to call them, then turned her attention to the Outback.

  Once they had the car impounded, she would check the vehicle identification number, but until then, she ran a stolen vehicle search across the state. The results returned a disappointing lack of hits. She ran the search again, this time, broadening the parameters to include Washington State. A few hits returned, but none of them matched the suspect’s vehicle.

  There was no answer at the Coyle residence, so Lacey left a message and turned her attention to the gun. She ran a search on the make, model, and serial number. This time, she got a positive hit. The weapon was listed among the items stolen four years ago in a home robbery in Bellingham, Washington.

  Lacey managed to locate the officer assigned to the case. Russell McBride was a twelve-year veteran of the Bellingham police force. It was just past noon when he returned Lacey’s call.

  “Heard you recovered something of interest,” McBride said with a chuckle in his voice.

  “Yes, the gun listed in the Bryant robbery turned up in the car of a suspect out here in Sweet Home, Oregon. Any idea how it got here?”

  “I wish. We had a string of robberies around the time the Bryant place got hit. The crew was good. Clean. They hit the houses during the day. In and out before any of the homeowners were the wiser. We suspected that there were two or three people behind them. Never had enough to charge anyone. Shame because the last house they hit; they surprised an older lady. She typically spent her mornings volunteering with the church, but on that day, she’d stayed home because she wasn’t feeling well. She surprised the robbers and they attacked her. Blunt force trauma to the head. Poor gal didn’t stand a chance.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Real shame. After that, the trail went cold. The suspects either lost their nerve or moved onto some other place.”

  “Did you find anything else?”

  “Nothing related to the robbery, unfortunately.”

  “Any suggestions on tracing the gun?”

  On the other end of the line, the detective sighed.

  “No good ones, I’m afraid. A gun like that disappears inside a virtual black hole and doesn’t surface again until ballistics ties it to a crime scene. It may have changed hands a dozen times since the robbery.”

  It was exactly the kind of news that Lacey didn’t want to hear.

  “Thanks, Officer McBride. I appreciate your time.”

  “Good luck and let me know if you uncover anything useful. Sure would like to nail those guys.”

  “I will and thanks again.”

  Lacey hung up, her case no better off than when she started. She wondered if the link to Washington State was significant. Did the suspect originally come from there or had the weapon traveled across state lines?

  There was little time to contemplate when Lacey’s phone rang. She picked up the phone and identified herself.

  “Pat Coyle here. You left a message?”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Coyle. I’m calling to notify you that your car’s license plates have been stolen.”

  The pause on the other end of the line was so long that Lacey wondered if the call had dropped.

  “Mr. Coyle?”

  “Did you say stolen?”

  “That’s right. We found them on a car in Sweet Home just this morning. Did you notice they were missing?’

  Pat paused, and in the background, Lacey heard a door open.

  “I’m standing on my front porch looking at the car now and it’s got plates on it but…”

  The h
anging sentence confirmed what Lacey already knew. Whoever had stolen Pat Coyle’s plates had replaced them with others that were close enough that Coyle never noticed the difference. Lacey asked for the plate number and Coyle rattled it off.

  “Have you been anywhere in the past few days like a mall, or a grocery store? Some place with lots of cars?”

  “My wife got her nails done at the mall.”

  Hope buoyed inside Lacey’s chest. Most malls had a decent network of surveillance cameras both inside and outside the facility. She could reach out and ask if the security staff could screen the video covering the time of Coyle’s wife’s visit to the mall to see if they could identify the culprit.

  “Exactly when was that?”

  “She’s right here. Hang on.”

  Coyle asked his wife. He relayed the information and Lacey jotted it down.

  “Thank you, Sir. We’ll be in touch soon.”

  The plates on Coyle’s car belonged to a gal in Albany who owned a Ford F-10. Lacey checked in on Spencer, hoping he was smart enough not to be parked in plain sight. With Spencer, you never could tell.

  “Any luck?”

  “Not yet. But that pastor’s been and gone with a pretty little thing half the size of his wife.”

  Lacey frowned. “That’s none of your business, Spencer.”

  “I know, but that wife of his is going to tan his ass when she finds out what he’s been doing.”

  “Maybe so, but don’t go spreading gossip. You’ve got one job. Watch that car. You hear me?”

  “Aw, you’re no fun, Lacey.”

  “So my kids say. Just keep your eyes open and your mouth shut.”

  Lacey shook her head and hung up. She’d never understand how Spencer managed to squeak through the Academy. She needed someone she could trust watching the car. Maybe she should sub him off.

  No, her time was better spent elsewhere. It was only thirty-six miles to the mall. She might take a drive out there to see if there was video footage of the plate theft.

  “James, get me up to speed on what’s been happening with the burglary at the hardware store,” the chief said.

  He gestured for Lacey to follow him down the hall to his office. She stood inside the doorway while he hung up his coat. He’d just returned from city hall, where he’d met with the Mayor and other town officials about the annual Thanksgiving Day parade.

  Though he was in his early fifties, he maintained a youthful appearance with a smattering of gray threads in his close-cropped hair. Fine lines around his eyes lent an air of experience to the angular planes of his face.

  Sunlight slanted through the blinds and fell across the photographs on his desk. He had two girls, both in college. He was a good man who’d survived hard things. His wife was gone, killed by a distracted driver a few years back. Sweet Home was lucky to have him.

  “Just past ten Sadie made the call,” Lacey said. “Spencer’s watching the vehicle to see if the thief comes back for it.”

  The Chief’s dark eyes cut to the clock on the wall, calculating the time, and Lacey didn’t need to ask what he was thinking. She was starting to think the same thing.

  “You don’t think he’s coming back?”

  The chief shrugged his thick shoulders. “It’s possible, but where’s he going to go?”

  “I figure he’s in the woods. Waiting.”

  “Spencer’s on the car?”

  The slight note of derision underlying the chief’s tone left little doubt in Lacey’s mind that the chief had about as much confidence in Spencer’s abilities as she did.

  “I suppose he can’t fuck that up too much,” he said. Lacey suppressed a grin. “All this for a hammer?”

  It was a fair question, one that Lacey hadn’t stopped long enough to ask herself, but now that he’d said it, she allowed herself to ruminate on whether the investment was warranted. It was a petty theft case, but when you combined it with the stolen plates and the gun, it didn’t smack of a typical smash and grab.

  “Why Sadie’s place?” she asked, speaking low, as if to herself.

  The chief cocked his head, and a spark of interest lit his eyes. “Meaning?”

  “Well, he’s not from around here. There are other places where stealing would be easier. Albany, Corvallis, Eugene. Why not choose a Home Depot or Lowe’s instead? I mean, they wouldn’t be as apt to notice a stranger right away, not to mention a missing hammer.”

  The chief smirked. “Bad luck for him that he chose Sadie’s store?”

  “Yeah. Sort of. I mean, maybe he thought stealing from a small-town store would be easier. Those big box stores have way more surveillance systems and automation. Harder to get away without leaving a digital trace.”

  “Interesting. So you think he stole the hammer because he didn’t want a record of having actually purchased it.”

  Though she hadn’t fully articulated the thought the way the chief had, it made sense. A hammer wasn’t expensive. It would be simpler just to buy one.

  “When you combine the burglary with the stuff in his trunk. Ropes. A tarp. A gun.”

  “Wait. He had a gun?”

  The chief’s tone sharpened, and Lacey shifted her weight between her feet. The gun should have been one of the first things she mentioned. She quickly compensated for the lapse by relaying the details about the gun, including how it had been stolen from the Bellingham house.

  The chief tipped back in his chair, kicking his feet onto his desk in a contemplative pose. Lacey remained silent, letting him think.

  “He’s not a dumb guy,” the chief said.

  Lacey agreed. “He’s gone to great lengths to cover his tracks. He swapped the plates on the Outback at a mall in Corvallis.” She stopped as the statement triggered another thought. “Wait. He’s not going back to the car. It’s already burned. He’s going to look for another car to steal so he can get out of town.”

  The chief nodded. “Now you’re onto it. If you were going to steal a car in this town, where would you go?”

  Lacey thought for a moment. Then she had it.

  “Murphy’s. The veneer plant.”

  “Get going,” the chief said.

  4

  “I still can’t get used to seeing you in that uniform,” Randy Fletcher said, giving her a slow twice over that made Lacey’s skin crawl.

  “Well get used to it,” she snapped, resting her palm on the butt of her gun.

  How, in god’s name, had she ever found Randy attractive? It was a long time ago. Before she knew better. Lacey chalked up her lack of judgement to a weak moment at a high school field party and a bottle of Everclear. His once toned body sported an extra fifty pounds, at least half of which was a beer gut overhanging his belt. Lacey averted her gaze and promised herself that she would start hitting the gym.

  “That husband of yours still at Fort Hood?”

  “What business is that of yours?”

  “Nothing. Just thinking that a girl gets lonely.”

  He let the innuendo hang. Even in her most desperate moments, Randy was hardly what she would consider fit company. He was about as enticing as a fly-covered turd.

  “Seen anything strange out here today?” she asked, moving the conversation along.

  “Like what?” Randy asked with a smirk.

  “Anyone skulking around the parking lot?”

  Randy gave a snort. Lifting the peak of his baseball cap, he scratched his head.

  “Only strange thing I’ve seen today is you.”

  Lacey rolled her eyes. “Can I take a look at the footage from the camera overlooking the parking lot.”

  “What for?”

  “God, you were always such a pain in the ass. Can I look, or do I need to call the chief?”

  At the mention of the chief, Randy snapped to. Over the years, he’d had enough run-ins with the law to make him respect the badge.

  “All right,” he grumbled and motioned for Lacey to follow him into a room not much bigger than a closet.

&
nbsp; He held the door, allowing her to precede him, then brushed against her as he made his way toward a desk where the computer sat. Lacey clenched her teeth, desperately wanting to teach him a lesson in respect, one that would leave him with a fractured wrist and a few bruised ribs, but she let it pass. He grabbed hold of the mouse and summoned the ancient computer back to life. The hard drive heaved, and the monitor flickered, displaying several live feeds from cameras placed at various locations around the facility.

  Lacey pointed toward the square window showing the parking lot. The angle was far from ideal, but it would have to do.

  “Back the footage up to 10:30.”

  Randy fumbled with the controls. It took every bit of Lacey’s patience not to push him aside and do it herself, but she knew better than to stomp on his pride. Her foot tapped impatiently. Finally, Randy reversed the video feed to 10 am and pushed play.

  The footage showed nothing remarkable other than the occasional car pulling in and out of the lot. Randy increased the speed and scrolled through the next hour within the span of a few minutes.

  “See, I told you,” he said, casting a self-satisfied glance over his shoulder.

  But Lacey’s gaze remained focused on the monitor. Her patience was rewarded when she saw a shadow slip between the cars in the back row.

  “There.” She pointed to the screen.

  Randy grunted, and backed the video footage up. He pushed the play button. Lacey recognized the suspect. Same build. Same dark clothing. He drifted car to car until he found a beat-up old Chevy that was unlocked. The suspect climbed inside.

  “That’s Barry Owens’ truck,” Randy said.

  A few seconds later, the truck backed out of the parking space and exited the lot.

  “He hotwired it,” Lacey said.

  “Nah. Everyone knows Barry leaves the keys in it. I mean, who in their right mind would want to steal an old piece of shit like that?”

  The irony wasn’t lost on Lacey.

  “Call Barry. We’ll need the plate numbers.”

  5

  The bad news was that the thief had a twenty-minute head start. The good news was that according to Barry, the truck had less than a quarter tank of gas. Lacey knew that a truck like his wouldn’t get more than twelve miles a gallon, which meant the suspect wouldn’t travel far without either having to fill up or switch vehicles.