Vengeance Is Mine (An Owen Day Thriller)

by Rachel Ford

  The reporter’s idea hadn’t been the worst he’d ever heard, in part anyway. He needed the sheriff to take a look at his evidence. But Halverson wasn’t going to do that, not on his say-so alone. Which meant Owen needed to give him a reason to pay attention.

  But not by alerting the serial killer that anyone was onto him. No, Owen needed an ally, someone to look at the evidence and discreetly make his case for him. Someone with a stake in the business, who wouldn’t waste time on crackpot theories. Who the sheriff would take seriously.

  And who better for that than the judge’s wife herself?

  It was a good plan, but it immediately fell victim to complications. The first was Marsha Wynder herself.

  Owen had seen the judge’s picture plenty of times. First, as a young man. He’d been a state Supreme Court justice, so he’d run for election every ten years. The last time, Owen had been in the army. The time before, he’d been a minor. But he’d seen his face then.

  He’d been a jovial looking guy, with a balding head of dark hair and round, red cheeks. Not fat, and not even overweight: just a round face, made a little rounder by the absence of hair on the top. He’d looked like a calm, collected lawyerly type. Unflappable.

  The more recent photos showed a balder, grayer guy whose face looked a little longer and more balanced, thanks to a neatly trimmed beard. Those were the shots Owen had seen starting Saturday, accompanying stories about his death. Those shots showed a man in his mid-sixties somewhere. But the same cool, level-headed guy. The picture of command.

  Marsha was a good twenty-years younger than her husband. She had no gray in her hair, and a well-balanced, pretty face: lean and oval and mostly untouched by age. And she looked anything but cool or unflappable.

  She’d been crying before she answered the door. The blotchy redness in her cheeks and the puffiness of her eyes testified to that. But she put up a brave face, looked Owen over, and said in a voice that shook, “Yes? May I help you?”

  Owen introduced himself by name. Unlike the reporter, Marsha didn’t show any signs of recognition. So he told her he was sorry for her loss. “But I think I have information about your husband’s death,” he explained. “You see, Mrs. Wynder, I investigate serial killers.”

  She stared blankly at him.

  “It’s kind of a hobby. Anyway, I think your husband was the victim of a serial killer.”

  She blinked. “A serial killer? No. No, he was killed by a hunter.”

  Owen shook his head. “I don’t think that’s accurate.”

  “Of course it’s accurate. What else could it have been? It was an accident. A terrible, awful accident. Who would want to kill my husband?”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. But I’ve been tracking these killings going back a decade now, and –”

  “A decade?” She stared at him, a mixture of confusion and horror on her face. “What are you talking about? Who did you say you were?”

  “Owen Day,” he repeated patiently.

  “And you’re what – a cop? A detective?”

  “No ma’am. Just an investigator.”

  “That’s what I said. A detective.”

  He shook his head. “No. More of a private investigator – but on an amateur level – using predictive models and behavioral analysis to –”

  “Are you working with the sheriff?”

  “No. That’s actually –”

  “Are you with the FBI?”

  “No.”

  She eyed him suspiciously. “Are you a reporter?”

  “No ma’am. I’m just a guy who follows the news, and I think your husband was the victim of a serial killer. A serial killer who has claimed at least twelve other victims, mostly in the Midwest, mostly along the interstates: I-35, I-94, I-29, I-39.”

  She blinked slowly, like she was processing the statement. “Twelve victims?”

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  “A serial killer?”

  “Yes. I know how it sounds, Mrs. Wynder, but I’ve got evidence: it’s the same modus operandi each time. A random shot from some kind of hunting or sniper rifle. No bullets or cartridges have ever been recovered from the scenes.

  “It’s always late in the afternoon or early evening. It’s always in remote areas. And it’s usually before or during some kind of weather event that makes tracking the shooter difficult.”

  She stared at him wordlessly.

  He held up his tablet. “I’ve got all the data here, Mrs. Wynder. If you could give me five minutes of your time –”

  Then the second complication arrived. An older guy, in his mid-sixties somewhere, dressed in blaze orange and reflective green, walking an energetic mutt also dressed in blaze orange.

  The judge’s wife recognized him. He recognized the judge’s wife. They waved to one another. But he didn’t recognize Owen. He glanced a question at Marsha. She shrugged. “He’s got some idea about Rick’s death.”

  The guy with the dog harrumphed at that. “You know the guy who did it?”

  “No,” Owen said. “But I know he’s done it before.”

  “He thinks he’s a serial killer,” Marsha said.

  “Serial killer? My ass. It’s one of them damned hunters, staying out past curfew.”

  Owen tried to explain that he had evidence to the contrary, that he’d found a pattern of exactly this kind of murder. Marsha tried to explain that she’d already told Owen the same thing.

  The guy with the dog didn’t seem interested in listening to either of them. He was too busy complaining about the sheriff. That’s who was responsible for Rick’s death. Not the guy who pulled the trigger, whoever the hell he was. No, Halverson was to blame “for sitting on his ever-widening ass instead of doing his goddamned job.”

  Owen tried again. “Mrs. Wynder, can I come in? It’ll take five minutes – less than that. I can prove everything I’m talking about.”

  She turned back to him, from the other guy. Her eyes filled with tears. “Mrs. Wynder? I’m not Mrs. Wynder anymore, am I? Not now that poor Rick is dead.”

  “Course you are, Marsha,” the guy with the dog said.

  She started to sob. “I’m a widow, not a wife.”

  The guy with the dog hustled up the steps, throwing a fierce glance at Owen before he wrapped his arms around her. “There now,” he said. “There now. It’ll be alright, Marsha.”

  “Oh Ted, what am I going to do? I still can’t believe he’s really dead.”

  “I know,” he said. His tone was vaguely uncomfortable, bordering on patronizing. Like he was making an effort to be sensitive, but it didn’t come easy. “There now. It’ll be alright.”

  Marsha’s sobs became wails. The dog started to whine and slipped between their legs to get inside. The guy, Ted, glared at Owen. “Let’s get you inside now,” he said to the woman. “Let’s get you something to eat, and something to drink. That tea you like.”

  Owen cleared his throat. “I…I can come back later.”

  Ted turned Marsha around and ushered her through the door. He scowled Owen’s way a final time, and said, “Don’t bother.”

  Then he slammed the door shut, leaving Owen alone on the front steps.

  Chapter Four

  Sheriff Halverson was reading the coroner’s report for the dozenth time when his phone rang. He picked it up with a sigh. Not because the call would be interrupting any kind of progress. The medical examiner’s findings were about as straightforward as they got.

  Judge Wynder had been hit in the front of the head, and the bullet had exited at approximately the same height through the back of his skull. The size of the entry wound did point to a hunter, at least theoretically.

  The coroner speculated the shooter had used a .30-06 or .308 cartridge – both favorites among local hunters. He couldn’t say for sure, of course. It was an estimate based on the size of the entry wound and the extent of the damage to the cranial cavity. That too pointed to a hunter, because – if it was a .30-06 or .308 – the damage would be consistent wit
h a shot from hundreds of yards away. Too up close and personal, and the damage would have been even more devastating. So it made sense that it had come from the woods across the street somewhere.

  Public land. Hunting land. And yet, in his gut, Halverson knew it wasn’t a hunter.

  So it was the lack of progress that annoyed him. He rubbed the bridge of his nose and lifted the phone. Then, he saw the incoming number, and snapped to a kind of attention. “Sheriff Halverson here.”

  “Trey? It’s Marsha.”

  He’d guessed, of course. He’d seen the judge’s name and number on his screen. Which meant someone was calling from the landline. “Morning Marsha. How are you doing?”

  She hesitated for a long moment. Then he heard a shaky breath through the receiver. “Not well.”

  “I’m sorry, Marsha.”

  Silence.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “Oh.” She seemed to recollect herself. “Oh, I wanted to ask you about a guy.”

  “A guy?”

  “Yeah. He showed up at the house today. Ted said I should report him.”

  Halverson tamped down his urge to groan. Ted’s advice was, as a rule, always to be discounted. But he said, “Oh?”

  “He called himself Owen. Owen Day, I think. Said he had some theory about Rick’s murder. Something to do with serial killers.”

  Halverson did groan this time. “That son of a –”

  “Ted said he might have been a burglar, trying to get into the house. Or maybe a murderer. Or – well, he has a lot of ideas. And I thought maybe it was nothing. But what if it’s not? What if he had something to do with Rick’s murder, you know?”

  He told her he didn’t think Owen Day was connected, that he was some kind of true crime crank and nothing worse. “But I’ll have a talk with him, Marsha. I’ll make sure – whether he’s involved or not – he knows better than to bother you again.”

  Which she accepted. Then she asked about his progress. She asked if he’d had any luck tracking the hunters. She asked if he thought there was any possibility that her husband had been targeted by a serial killer.

  He told her he didn’t have any updates yet, and that she’d be the first to know when he did. He told her he hadn’t found anything to indicate the shooter had been a hunter. He told her that the serial killer theory was just some nutcase with too much time on his hands trying to make himself important.

  She asked if he was sure. He said he was. She asked how he could be sure, if he didn’t know who the killer was.

  Which meant that, by time Trey Halverson hung up the phone, he was in a bad mood. He set the coroner’s report aside. He put the car in drive and pulled onto the road.

  He’d been parked just behind the Welcome to Yellow River Falls sign. He’d been hiding there for the last twenty years. Everyone in town knew about the speed trap just outside the city limits. That suited him just fine. He didn’t like writing tickets, and people tended to behave when they knew they were being watched.

  Which was more or less his plan for Owen Day. Maybe it should have been, but it wasn’t illegal to be a moron. It wasn’t illegal to talk to someone, even a grieving widow. It wasn’t illegal to piss off the sheriff. And that definitely should have been.

  But it meant he couldn’t arrest Day. He couldn’t even threaten him with arrest. Not directly. But he could have a conversation. A stern conversation, the kind of conversation that might give Day the impression that he’d be better off leaving town than staying.

  He drove down Main Street. He passed the courthouse and the city hall, the grocery store and liquor store. He passed a Baptist church and a Catholic church. He passed a tavern and a bar. He passed all five stop lights.

  He reached the hotel and pulled into the parking lot. He drove past the parked vehicles. None of them were the SUV he’d seen Day get into that morning. If he was staying at the hotel, he wasn’t back yet.

  He crossed the street and cruised the diner parking lot. He bounced and sloshed through the slush and potholes. But the SUV wasn’t there. Day hadn’t come back for an early lunch.

  He sat for a moment and considered his options. Then he turned out of the diner’s lot, heading out of town, toward the replica house. If Owen Day tried to come near the widow again, he’d have him to deal with.

  At that precise moment, Owen Day was seated at a wooden table on a hard wooden seat in a dark coffeeshop on the other end of town. He was drinking an oversweet latte in an oversized coffee mug. He was thinking he should have listened to his gut, and gone with his standard dark roast and milk.

  But he was on a mission to try one new thing per week. A mission assigned to him by his niece, Maisie. A mission that was supposed to broaden his experiences or some such thing – but that had, so far, only impressed upon him the foolishness of taking advice from children.

  He had his tablet up in front of him. He was reviewing his evidence: twelve cases. Twelve unexplained deaths.

  Twelve cold cases.

  He knew that Marsha would have believed him, if she’d only looked at the cases. He knew the sheriff would have. They were too similar to be coincidences: random shootings with no evidence left behind. Clean crime scenes. Single shot, instant kills in remote locales. And all of them near interstates.

  Serial killer. The pattern was there. The data didn’t lie.

  But they hadn’t looked at his data. Not Marsha, and not the sheriff. He frowned at his tablet. He wondered what he could have done differently. He stirred his coffee absently and took a sip.

  Too sweet.

  No, there was no way he was going to be able to do this. Sorry Mais. He got up and headed back to the counter. He ordered a second coffee: extra-large dark roast with milk. No sweetener.

  He waited while the barista got his order, glancing absently around the room. Not the most happening place, that was for sure. There were two other customers in the building: an old couple reading print newspapers at a table together.

  Then his coffee came. He took a sip and nodded. He dropped his change in the tip jar out of sheer appreciation. A good, bold roast with just the right amount of milk: perfection in a mug.

  He headed back to his table and his tablet. Someone opened the far door just as he was settling back into his seat. A blast of wintery air hit him: cold, the kind of cold that only comes from passing over snowdrifts.

  An old guy walked in with a slow step. He pulled a pair of oversized mittens off, and stuffed them in the pockets of his oversized winter jacket. Then he loosened the flaps of his ushanka-hat and pulled it off too. He shivered visibly.

  Owen recognized him as one of the breakfasters from the diner. He’d been sitting alone, and no one followed him now. He stood in the doorway, brushing snow off himself with the ushanka, which he then also stuffed into a pocket.

  The old guy then teetered forward on stiff legs, his dark coat still zipped, its pockets bulging with the rest of his winter gear.

  Owen went back to his work. He could hear the old guy and the barista discussing the weather, and what would be good to drive the cold out of his bones.

  Alas no, she couldn’t put whiskey in his coffee. But she could make him hot chocolate, if he liked.

  He wanted to know if it made with real chocolate, or that powdered crap from a packet. She snorted, like the idea of hot chocolate from a packet offended her almost as much as it did him. “You better believe it’s the real thing.”

  The old guy ordered hot chocolate, and declared it smelled delicious when his order came. Then he hobbled over to the tables.

  Owen focused on his tablet. He didn’t want to look approachable. He knew better than that. In his experience, old guys loved to talk. He was pretty sure it was some kind of universal constant: the older people got, the more likely they were to strike up random conversations with strangers.

  Owen, on the other hand, didn’t like to talk, especially to strangers. He liked to keep to himself, and he liked to get his work done. And he had plenty o
f that right now. He had to work out how to get Halverson to take notice of the serial killer right under his nose.

  So he hunched over the tablet and stared at it with a serious expression. The kind of thing that hopefully would look unwelcoming enough to ward off even the most social member of the species.

  The old guy walked past. He stood in the center of the shop and glanced around. It wasn’t a big space, but it wasn’t small either. There were maybe ten tables and nooks throughout. One was occupied by the elderly couple with their newspapers. Owen had another.

  That left about five tables that would have afforded the old guy a measure of privacy.

  He didn’t choose one of the five. Instead, he walked right up to the table nearest Owen’s, pulled out a chair, and began the laborious sequence of seating himself. First, he set his hot chocolate on the table and slid it to the far side. Then he shimmied over, facing the table, his backside to the chair. He planted his palms on the tabletop. He grunted and teetered forward.

  At this point, Owen, who had been surreptitiously watching the entire thing, felt compelled to offer assistance. He didn’t want the old guy to fall. “You need a hand?”

  The old guy looked up, halfway between standing and sitting. “What?”

  “Do you need a hand?” Owen said again, a little louder.

  The old guy shook his head and lowered himself slowly into place. Then he straightened his legs in front of him, under the table. Left leg, then right leg. “It’s just the cold,” he said, “in these damned old bones.”

  “Ah.” Now content that the old man wasn’t in any danger, Owen was ready to be ignored. He went back to his tablet.

  The old man sipped his hot chocolate noisily and let out a long sigh. “Wow. That is damned good stuff.”

  Owen pretended not to hear. He took a sip of his own coffee and stared at his tablet.

  The old guy shifted in his seat, grunting and rearranging his legs by degrees, for comfort presumably. He reached into his cavernous pockets and produced a little paperback book and a pen. A sudoku puzzle book.

  Good, Owen thought. His neighbor didn’t mean to converse any more than he did.