Watch Her Vanish: An absolutely gripping mystery thriller (Rockwell and Decker Book 1)

by Ellery A Kane

  Will glanced over at her in the passenger seat. On the surface, she seemed remarkably unrattled. Like still water. But he knew better. He’d seen it for himself. That woman, though, the one he’d held to his chest this morning, had been banished by this one. All heat and ice.

  He spoke first. “Just between us, they found DNA on Shauna’s body. Hair and semen. Guess we know it’s a guy now.”

  He heard the sharp intake of her breath. Then a confused, “Really?”

  “Why do you say it like that?”

  She shrugged. “Just strange he’d mess up now. In such a major way. That he’d leave so much evidence behind.”

  “Maybe he wants to be caught.”

  “Total TV show BS.” She’d come back to life now. “No killer wants to be caught. You know that.”

  Will immediately thought of Ben. All the lies his brother had told. All the favors he’d called in. All in the interest of getting off scot-free.

  “That’s not how I meant it,” she said, reading his glum face. “But in my opinion, this killer is not stupid or careless. He’s calculating. If he left evidence, it’s because he’s telling you something. He wanted you to find it.”

  “But why?”

  Olivia gave him a pointed glance.

  “Please spare me the old set-up Drake theory again.”

  “Rumor has it I know Drake pretty well. And I’ll bet you he’d never leave his DNA behind. Not after it got him locked up the first time.”

  “I’ll take that bet.” Even though her words rang true, he liked to push her buttons. “Winner buys ribs at the Pit.”

  Reluctantly, she shook his hand. “I talked to my dad, by the way. About Ben.”

  Her deflection put him right back in his place. With guilt weighing on his shoulders and his voice catching in his throat. “What did he say?”

  “He promised to look out for him. For whatever his promises are worth these days.”

  “I shouldn’t have asked you to do that. I just lost my mind when I saw that bird. I mean, if anything happened to Ben I’d blame myself. I know it’s not my fault, but…”

  The corner of Olivia’s mouth lifted ever so slightly. The hint of a smile. “A simple thank you will suffice, Detective.”

  He smiled back and pressed his luck. “So, how was it talking to your dad after all this time?”

  “Surreal.” She leaned back and rested her head against the seat, briefly closing her eyes, and he took the opportunity to study the freckles on her cheeks, the flutter of her lashes. “I’m not sure I can ever trust him again. Especially now.”

  “With what Morrie did, you mean?”

  She nodded, her eyes still shut.

  “Do you think he’s being honest about James?” Will wondered. Though the question had already been asked and answered in the cold, sparse room designed to elicit all manner of truths.

  Eyes open now, she turned to him. “I don’t know. I don’t get it. Morrie was supposed to be one of the good guys. That’s exactly why I don’t profile anymore.”

  “You said it yourself. It’s not science. People are unpredictable.”

  “People aren’t just unpredictable. They’re unknowable. Brownie points for quoting me, though.”

  Will tried to laugh, but it clunked out, hollow.

  He parked the Crown Vic in the empty spot beside Olivia’s BMW and followed her out into the late afternoon gloom. Fog and darkness threatening descent.

  “Are you sure you’re okay to drive home?”

  “Fit as a fiddle.” She unlocked her car, leaving the open door between them. He watched her scan the parking lot, the same way he did. The after-work crowd had begun to roll in, and the twang of old-time country music wafted from the Pit, along with the smoky aroma of brisket. It made Will long for something he knew he’d never have. A simple life. A life where work stays where you leave it. You don’t bring it home with you, rooted in the dark crevices of your mind.

  “I’m sorry you got caught in the middle of all this.”

  “Not your fault. But thanks for… you know…” She shrugged, kicking at the pavement with the toe of her sneaker.

  “Violating police procedure? You’re welcome.”

  He stepped around the door and reached to touch her, wrapping his hand around her wrist. “There’s only one person around here who gets to cuff you.”

  No sooner he’d said it, he cursed himself. Could he be any cheesier?

  Olivia’s muscles tensed beneath his fingers, but she didn’t pull away. His heart beat faster and faster as she leaned toward him, so close he could smell the clean scent of her shampoo. He chided himself for letting his eyes wander to her lips, but then he did it again anyway.

  “Well…” With a sudden jerk upward, Olivia grabbed his wrist and twisted it from her own, freeing herself. “Don’t get used to it.”

  Will stood there like a bumbling idiot, while she got into the car, retrieving her cell phone from the console.

  “You are going straight home, right?”

  “Where else would I go, Detective?”

  When she winked at him, sending his stomach on a loop-the-loop, that settled it for Will. Olivia had been dead right. People were predictably unpredictable. Her, especially. And as much as it scared the hell out of him, he liked it even more. He liked it a lot.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Olivia sat in the parking lot of the Hickory Pit long after Deck’s taillights had disappeared in the fog. She examined her left wrist. Even now, she could feel the heat of Deck’s hand around it more intensely than the cold metal sting of the handcuff. Her face flushed, thinking of how his eyes had lingered on her lips. How badly she’d needed the distraction. How easily she’d lied by omission, with a wink no less. Maybe Morrie hadn’t been so far off the mark, when he’d called her more Reilly than Rockwell.

  Fittingly, Olivia fired off a text to Emily, telling her she had to make a stop, and another to Leah, asking her to check on Em. Then, she drove into the thick of it, down Pine Grove Road toward the prison, until the wet, white smoke enveloped her.

  Something about the fog always unnerved her. As a girl growing up in San Francisco, she’d marveled at how it could disappear the entire Bay Bridge. The Golden Gate too. The fog made its own rules, created its own secret world. It hid things, swallowed them whole, revealing them only when it wanted to. When it was too late to get out of the way.

  The Ad Seg officer checked her ID and buzzed her in to the secure unit. When Olivia heard the door grind to a close behind her, she shivered. It felt different here. Airless. Like a prison inside a prison. No wonder one of her patients had told her, Solitary is where inmates go to die. Each solid metal door secured the worst of the very bad men who lived at Crescent Bay.

  She walked down the line until she found cell 117 and peered through the tiny bulletproof window.

  Morrie sat on a mattress, stripped bare of the sheets he might’ve wrapped around his neck. He wore a white jumpsuit and booties with no laces from which to hang himself. The empty cell devoid of any comforts he could’ve used to slice his wrists or gouge his eyes.

  Olivia turned to the guard on duty. “I need to speak with Mulvaney for a mental health check.”

  His eyes had that glazed over look. No different than most of the inmates in there. But he mumbled his agreement and sputtered to life. It took another twenty minutes to transfer Morrie by wheelchair down the hallway to a therapeutic module inside another locked room. The prison ran on its own time. Nowhere to go and no hurry to get there.

  “You okay in here alone?” the officer asked, dragging a folding chair into the center of the room for her.

  Olivia watched Morrie slump, hangdog, onto the small seat inside the cage. He rested his hands on the metal, sticking his fingers through the wire mesh. She half expected them to be dripping blood. But she didn’t fear Morrie’s hands. Only his words. The things he might tell her.

  “I’m fine.” She waited to speak again until the officer had left. Until
they were alone.

  “Why did you come here?” Morrie asked.

  “You’re on suicide watch. Someone has to check in on you.”

  “I ain’t gonna kill myself. I done lasted this long in here. It’ll be thirty-five years come January. What’s a few more?”

  Olivia’s heart deflated. Working at Crescent Bay, she’d come to realize that the absence of hope took a form more dangerous than any weapon. A shape, a sound, a smell. It could end a man’s life surer than a shiv to the heart, slower than a blood-letting. “But Morrie, you got a parole grant. I just don’t—”

  “You know as well as I do, the governor ain’t never lettin’ me out of here. You looked up my case, right? You saw what I did. Who I did it to.”

  She gave a solemn nod. Because Bill Jeffries, the man Morrie had taken a knife to at the Thirsty Traveler, happened to be an alcoholic like him. He also happened to be the son of one of San Francisco’s most prominent attorneys.

  “That parole grant is bullshit. It’s window dressing. Like puttin’ lipstick on a pig.”

  “That makes it okay for you to take Tommy Rigsby’s life? I thought you’d changed. I thought your gang days were behind you.”

  Morrie threw his head back, and his bitter laughter echoed in the empty room. There it was, the sound of hopelessness. “You think I shanked Riggs for Oaktown?”

  “Then why?”

  “Not everything can be put into one of your neat little shrink boxes, Olivia. You don’t always get the why.”

  Olivia had learned that lesson well enough. For the last twenty-seven years, her father’s why had always been just beyond her grasp, slipping through her fingers like quicksilver.

  “Is this really about James McMillan?”

  He shrugged half-heartedly. Like he could barely lift his shoulders.

  “It doesn’t make any sense. You’ve always told me no good comes from talking with the cops. That the only good snitch is a dead one. Then you went and gave IGI a full confession. You pointed the finger at James. He’s got kids, Morrie. Kids who are already without a mom.”

  “He ain’t innocent. Lord knows, neither was Riggs. I don’t feel a thing for that sorry SOB.”

  Olivia winced. She recognized that line. Morrie had uttered those exact words when the detective had asked him how he felt about putting four holes in Bill Jeffries’ chest with his hunting knife.

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “Let’s just say, I had to choose between hurtin’ Riggs and James or watchin’ somebody I care about get hurt. That choice ain’t no choice at all.”

  “You always have a choice.” Even as she said it, she doubted it. Choosing was a luxury not everyone could afford.

  Morrie smacked the wire mesh with his palm. “Exactly! And I made mine. Your daddy saved my life too many times to count. I swore him an oath when you started workin’ here, and a man’s word is all he’s got left in the joint. That and his free will. Can you blame me for exercisin’ mine?”

  Olivia steadied herself, gripping the cold metal of her chair with both hands. Dread settled over her, a poisonous fog. Though she’d feared something like this, hearing it out loud made her sick to her stomach. “Who threatened you? The warden? The General?”

  Morrie shook his head. “If I told ya that, I might as well kill ya myself. This ain’t nothin’ to mess with, girl.”

  “Does my dad know?”

  “I’m sure word will get around.”

  “He wouldn’t have wanted this.” But that, too, she doubted. “Promise me you won’t hurt yourself.”

  Morrie chuckled, and it unsettled her more than his sour cackling. This man, chortling like he could have been anyone’s grandpa.

  “Ain’t no need to promise that. I don’t have the stomach for it.”

  “Then why do they have you on suicide watch?”

  Morrie grinned, beckoning her with a crooked finger, and she leaned in toward him. In the flicker of his eyes, she saw all of him. Old and young. Good and bad, too. Just Morrie. “How else were you supposed to get in here to talk to me?”

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Will still had Olivia on his mind when he pushed past a row of squawking reporters, through the station doors, and straight into the hornet’s nest.

  “How dare you interfere with my case.” JB wagged his finger at Graham. “When I got promoted to detective, you were still sticking marbles up your nose.”

  “Shows what you know, Gramps. I’m pretty sure marbles went out sometime in the 1920s. By the way, you’re welcome.”

  Jessie rolled her eyes as Graham guffawed liked a frat boy.

  “Is this a station house or a schoolyard?” Chief Flack poked her head out from her office. “Get to work.”

  After she’d gone, Graham retreated to his newly assigned cubicle like a scolded puppy.

  “Schoolyard,” Jessie muttered, earning a laugh from JB. He flopped into his chair and seethed at the blank computer screen.

  “That’s what happens when you get little kids to do a man’s job.”

  “What the hell is going on?” Will asked. “I leave for twenty minutes, and you’re taking names.”

  “Yeah. Defending your ass. And keeping that nitwit from blowing our whole case sky-high. I caught Tweedledum giving a statement to that tabloid hack, Hoffman.”

  “Fog Harbor Gazette’s Heather Hoffman?”

  “The one and only. That broad is ruthless.”

  Will removed a small paper bag from his jacket and joined JB at his desk. “What makes you say that?”

  “Saw it with my own eyes. A couple years back, I arrested her myself. She got caught slashing Suzie Medina’s tires.”

  “Who’s Suzie Medina?”

  “Exactly. Eliminate the competition.” With a few keystrokes, JB pulled up a photo of a young raven-haired reporter who’d won an award for Best Feature at the Gazette. “Suzie left town, refused to testify. Hoffman lives another day. She’s just waiting for her big break from print into television. This kind of story—the s word—well, it might as well stand for salivate. ’Cause that’s exactly what she’s doing.”

  “Speaking of…” Will opened the bag from the Stop-and-Shop and angled it in JB’s direction. “I got you a little something.”

  JB made a show. Sniffling, he pretended to wipe tears from his eyes. “What’s this for?”

  “For having my back.”

  JB reached in, removed the orange package, and tore it open, taking a bite of the first Reese’s cup. He closed his eyes and moaned. “Hell, for one of these I’d let you call yourself lead detective.”

  “I am lead detective.”

  “There you go, City Boy. That’s what you call an affirmation. Keep repeatin’ it and who knows what might happen. C’mon, say it with me. ‘I am lead detective. I will solve this case. I will make out with Olivia Rockwell.’”

  Will huffed out a laugh. “So, why did Graham say you’re welcome?”

  JB nodded at the flash drive on his desk. “He thinks he found a smoking gun. In exchange for yapping his trap, Hoffman gave him a copy of some cell phone video taken outside the Hickory Pit the night Shauna disappeared. Supposedly, our guy Wickersham is in it.”

  “And? Have you watched it?”

  JB finished the last peanut butter cup and dabbed at the corners of his mouth with a tissue. “Nah. I was waitin’ on the lead detective.”

  The video opened on a polka-dot umbrella. It weaved and wobbled through the parking lot in the driving rain.

  “That must be Shauna,” Will said, as the camera panned out revealing the yellow Mini parked near the edge of the lot. “Looks like our videographer was sitting inside a vehicle facing the main road.”

  JB nodded. “Here he comes.”

  The camera shifted focus to Hank, barreling out the front entrance with no umbrella of his own. He shielded his face with his hand, his shirt already plastered to his chest.

  Back to Shauna, with a whiplash glance over her shoulder. An almost-fall.
The umbrella lost in a gust of wind.

  The Mini came to life, headlamps on, as Hank ran toward it. Smacked the window. His mouth like a pike, teeth bared.

  “Jeez,” JB said. “Somebody needs anger management.”

  “What’s he saying?”

  “There’s no sound. I can’t tell.”

  “Play it back.”

  After a few more tries, one in slow motion, they agreed on two words. Drunk and crazy.

  The camera stayed with the Mini as Shauna sped out of the parking lot and onto the main road, nearly taking out her chassis. Then, it panned back slow and steady to the parking lot, where Hank brought it home, waving his arms and dropping to his haunches before the screen went black.

  “Weird,” JB said.

  “Very.”

  “On the count of three, say why you think it’s weird.”

  Will twisted his mouth at JB. “What are we, five?”

  “I just don’t want to influence your opinion.”

  “Bullshit. You want to prove you’re a good detective.”

  “That’s like proving gravity, my friend.”

  “Alright.” Will smirked at him. “I’ll play. But what if I’ve got two reasons?”

  JB groaned. “Just pick one. In three, two, one—”

  They answered simultaneously, JB shouting, “No audio!” like a game show contestant, covering Will’s quiet pronouncement.

  “The truck.”

  “What truck?” JB asked, as Will rewound the footage to the methodical pan of the road and the parking lot. He paused the image, tapped the screen. Zoomed in.

  “Does that say what I think it does?” he asked.

  JB squinted at the still shot. “Looks like the Crescent Bay State Prison emblem there on the side. Might be our guy. Might be a coincidence.”

  “That seems like a pretty big coincidence. You know, I was gonna say the audio thing too.”

  “Sure ya were.” He leaned back, hands behind his head, preening. “Who makes a video these days without sound? Without their own asinine commentary?”