The woman who answered the door would never have been described as pretty. Her face was too strong for that. Dark, piercing eyes dominated a broad face with a strong, square jaw. Rich, short chestnut hair softened the effect a little. Then the wide mouth broke into a huge smile, giving the strong face enormous warmth. Before uttering a single word, she reached out and enfolded them both in a huge embrace.
“Come in, come in! Pete's waiting for you by the fire. You go on and join him while I go make us some coffee. I'll slap together some toasted ham and cheese sandwiches for us too.”
“I don't think we'll have the time, Aunt Mattie,” Dawn began.
“Of course there's time. Tyrell's not here yet, is he? And you've got to eat sometime. Why not now?”
Dawn exchanged a look with Rafe, and then, with a sigh, followed Mattie into the kitchen. Rafe, in the meantime, walked down the hall and into an enormous living room, where he found Pete Nevo comfortably ensconced before the fireplace.
The scowl on Pete's craggy face may have intimidated some, but Rafe was wise to the act, and knew that underneath his fierce exterior, Pete had a heart as soft as marshmallow cream.
“You don't come around to visit nearly often enough,” Pete growled in his gravelly voice.
“Haven't you been reading the papers? Crime rate is way up. Dawn and I barely have a chance to catch our breaths nowadays, let alone pay calls on grumpy old men.”
“Who are you calling old? I could still take you down if I had a mind to, Rafe Melbourne.”
“Out of the room for sixty seconds, and they're already starting a pissing contest,” Mattie commented. Can't you give it a rest, even for a minute?”
Her husband grinned at her. “Mattie, my one and only love, engaging in pissing contests is as natural as breathing to us. You wouldn't want the men in your life to be unnatural, would you?”
“I'm not even going to dignify that remark with a reply. Why don't you make yourself useful and take that tray from Dawn? You can set it down on the coffee table.”
They settled down to eat the sandwiches and drink some of Mattie's excellent coffee. Rafe's mind was elsewhere, though. Dawn's face may have been carefully composed, but her eyes kept straying to the object on the wall next to the fireplace. A measuring stick had been set up there, and it was obvious that at some time in the past, a couple of proud parents had kept careful track of their children's progression in height as the years went by. Three names were marked off at intervals, with dates scrawled beside each one. Dawn. Josiah. Marina.
Despite her pretense at impassivity, Rafe knew that Dawn's thoughts, like his, were back in the past. Nearly sixteen years ago now, but as fresh in his memory as if it had been yesterday.
He'd been much younger then, a rookie just out of the academy, and Pete and Mattie had not even met yet, let alone gotten married. He wouldn't even have been at the scene, except for the fact that he'd been out having dinner with his Uncle Nick when the call came in.
He'd walked into the park ranger's office with Nick and spotted the girl right away. Pete, though a stranger to her at that point in time, was stationed protectively by her side. She was filthy, shivering, and soaked to her skin. Huge dark eyes stared blankly into space, shock deep within them. As Nick strode toward her, she shrank back in her chair, and Pete moved to stand in front of her. Nick flashed his badge and introduced himself quickly: “Detective Nick Melbourne. You get anything else out of her?”
“No. Only what I reported on the phone. At first, she kept repeating over and over, 'They killed my brother, they killed Josiah; he's dead.' But for the last half-hour, she's just sat there. Can't get a word out of her.”
Nick sidestepped neatly around Pete so that he could crouch in front of the girl.
“What's your name, honey?”
The terrified eyes took in first him, then Rafe, standing behind a little to the left of his uncle. Seeing her eyes fasten on Rafe, Nick sought to reassure her. “That's my nephew, Rafe. My name's Nick. What's yours, little girl?”
That got a response. “I'm not a little girl. I'm twelve years old. Why did you bring your nephew with you?”
“Because he's a policeman, just like me.”
“You're not wearing a uniform. Neither is he.”
“I'm a detective. We generally don't wear uniforms. And Rafe – well, he usually wears a uniform, but he's off duty right now.”
Still her eyes were on Rafe. Nick sensed that a connection had somehow been made, so he motioned to Rafe to move forward a little. Rafe got down on one knee so that he was at eye-level with the girl.
“Would you let me see your uniform sometime?”
“Sure thing. But first we need to know your name, and what happened to you.”
After a brief hesitation she whispered, “Dawn. My name is Dawn.”
After a little prodding, she'd told him her last name, and where she lived. She'd told them enough to have Nick call for back-up, and when it arrived, they'd sped out to the Cimarron ranch. He would never forget the sight that greeted them. Not just her brother, but her entire family destroyed, wiped out...
A throbbing, humming noise like that of a thousand bees descending on a field full of clover called Rafe back to the present. Mattie cocked her head toward the door and announced, “Tyrell's here.”
As one, they moved toward the big picture window, just in time to see Ty set the sleek black helicopter down in the middle of the meadow.
Dawn, Pete, and Rafe scrambled into their coats, said goodbye to Mattie, and headed toward the waiting helicopter. Climbing aboard and getting themselves strapped in and settled was a work of mere moments. Then the big bird was aloft again, with Pete up front next to Ty, and Dawn and Rafe seated behind them. All three of them had their binoculars out, scanning the terrain below, looking for any sign of the missing vehicle. Pete had already picked out some spots he thought they should check out, but it was unlikely that they would be able to canvass all of them before the light failed.
As the sun started to descend slowly toward the horizon, they finally had to change course and head back. Three of the areas that Pete had pinpointed had been thoroughly scanned, without any positive results. As Ty set the helicopter down once again in the meadow next to the ranch house, Dawn noticed that her car was not parked where she had left it. Giving Ty the laser eye, she inquired, “Okay, Mr. Highhanded Busybody: What happened to my car?”
“Being a far-thinking person and in the interest of saving the police from wasting valuable time, when I got the call to meet you here I arranged for someone to come out and drive your car back to town. Anything to help out the boys and girls in blue, you know.” When he noticed her reaction, he said, “You know, you roll your eyes entirely too much, Dawn. It's probably bad for you. I'm going to look it up on the Internet when we get home.”
Dawn stopped herself from grinding her teeth with great effort and preserved a dignified silence as Ty took the bird up again and headed toward Nyetimber, the airfield where he'd established his local headquarters for the private charter company he had founded, Lewellen Air.
Just as Ty set the helicopter down at Nyetimber, Rafe's cell phone signaled an incoming call. Checking the caller ID, he commented, “Well, well. It's Gwen Mallinder. Wonder what the world's most acrimonious step-sister has to say?”
While Rafe walked a few steps away to take the call, Dawn turned to Ty. Feeling that he deserved some payback for not consulting her before arranging to have her car picked up, she informed him, “I'm going to have to use your car. Rafe and I need to put in a few more hours tonight. Looks like something is breaking on another case we're working on.”
“The Torrense case? The kid who was found stabbed in the park?”
Dawn nodded. “That's the one.” As Rafe walked back in their direction, she could tell that whatever Gwen Mallinder had told him was hot. So she held out her hand for Ty's car keys and said goodbye, knowing that the fact that he'd have to make other arrangements to get home wouldn't in
convenience him one little bit. What a pity.
Once they were seated in the car, she turned to Rafe and said, “So give. What did Gwen Mallinder have to say?”
“You're going to love this one. Turns out that Gwen got a letter today – from Cullen.”
“From Cullen?”
“Uh-huh. And from the postmark, it looks like he mailed it just before he was murdered.”
Chapter 3
Michael examined the cuts and bruises on his body, tuning out the pain by forcing himself to look at them from an artistic point of view. After that first kick, instead of collapsing like an accordion the way he should have, the boy had fought back like a rabid wolf. Michael had the cuts and bruises to prove it. If the boy's balance hadn't been compromised, Michael doubted he'd have been able to take him down. In the end, his timing thrown off by the drugged beer, the boy had aimed a punch at him that he'd been able to sidestep, then land a blow that caused the boy to stumble back to the very edge of the drop-off. His arms had flailed wildly as he attempted to recover his equilibrium, but his efforts had been to no avail as he lost the battle with gravity and plummeted over the cliff.
Why hadn't the drugged beer worked this time? It had worked on the girl. She had been dazed, almost unconscious when he had turned to check on her. The boy should have been out of it as well, allowing Michael to search the pockets of his jeans for the car keys before helping him over the edge. He'd had a bad moment when he realized that the keys might have gone over the cliff with the boy. If he hadn't found them in the pocket of a parka back at the tent, his carefully laid plans would have been ruined. But he had found them, so he'd been able to proceed as planned. Another sign that the goddess was with him.
At first, he'd thought about sending the car over the cliff right then and there, after he'd removed all of the girl's belongings from the tent. But then he realized that it would be too suspicious. Sooner or later the authorities were going to identify the boy, and his friends, no doubt, would inform the cops that the girlfriend had been along on the camping trip. If the police then found the boy and the car, but not the girl, they'd automatically suspect foul play. If the car were missing as well, however, there were all sorts of other possibilities. The two of them could have had a fight, for example, and she'd taken off in the car. It was too bad that she'd had an accident and had then gotten lost trying to reach help on foot.
It was the most likely scenario, and to give credence to it, he'd removed all of the girl's possessions from the tent and placed them in the SUV. After carefully removing the batteries, he'd taken all the electronic devices with him too. From what he'd read, it was possible to trace their signals as long as they were powered up and active.
He'd chosen the spot for the boy's SUV well. A bad curve with a copse of trees below. With any luck, they wouldn't find it until spring.
Before he'd left the campsite, he'd taken his dirt bike out of his pickup truck and tossed it into the back of the SUV. Once he'd found the spot where he intended to crash the SUV, he'd removed the bike and then sent the vehicle over the edge. Then he'd ridden the dirt bike back to the campsite. A quick look in the back of the truck had assured him that the girl, whom he'd taken the precaution of tying up, was still unconscious. After that, it had been easy. He'd simply driven out of the park and made his way to the house that he had rented in advance.
He'd had a bad moment this morning, though, when he'd heard on the news that the boy had survived. A few minutes' reflection had been all that was necessary to calm himself, however. The boy was in a coma. He wouldn't be able to tell them anything. Besides, there was nothing to tie him to the artist named Michael. He'd been careful to change his appearance, after all. On top of that, they hadn't identified the boy yet, and there had been no mention that he'd been accompanied by his girlfriend. Michael could afford to wait for a little while and see how everything played out. It would be a pity to have so little time to spend with this latest incarnation of the goddess. Only after the appointed time of preparation had passed was he wont to release her spirit and fuse her mortal body completely with winter's frosty embrace. However, he was a realist. Sometimes hard choices had to be made. He might have to cut down the period of preparation this time...
*****
Only a second after Dawn and Rafe had knocked on her door, Gwen Mallinder opened it to let them in, saying impatiently, “I thought you'd never get here!" Thrusting out a piece of paper toward Rafe, she said, “Read that!”
“Just a minute, Ms. Mallinder,” Rafe said. “Let's all sit down first.”
Gwen waved them impatiently into chairs in the living room and waited while Rafe pulled on a pair of gloves. Only then did he accept the letter. Holding it where both he and Dawn could see it, Rafe read Cullen Torrense's last communication to his stepsister:
Dear Gwen,
I'm writing this letter to you because I know you won't open any emails or read any texts that I send you. So I figured hey – you don't have to put your name on an envelope sent by regular mail – just the return address. Since I was pretty sure you wouldn't recognize the return address of the apartment I'm living in now, I decided to give it a shot. If you're reading this, I guess it worked, huh?
You're probably wondering why I'm bothering to get in touch with you at all. Well, I've got a couple of reasons. First, I wanted to apologize to you. After I got busted the last time, the judge ordered me into rehab. I've been in rehab before and I always just went through the motions, but this was a residential program, and it was different. There was a therapist there I really connected with. He convinced me to do one of those twelve-step programs, and I'm sober now for the first time in years. To make a long story short, I've reached the step where you have to make amends to people you've wronged in the past. Since I've realized that I was a selfish, spoiled brat who made life miserable for you the whole time that we lived together, I wanted to let you know that I'm sorry. I know this is probably a big surprise to you, but I've changed some since you last saw me. After your dad died and you moved out, I got a taste of what it was like for you. My mom was really angry when she found out that your dad had changed his will and his insurance beneficiary before he died, and with you two gone, she took everything out on me. Big surprise for me, but maybe not for you, I guess.
Anyway, the second reason I'm writing is actually more important. I guess I started thinking about contacting you after I went over to the house last week to try to mend things with my mom. You heard she kicked me out, right? Well, when I showed up on her doorstep, she was talking to Mrs. Lillipinner across the street. As soon as she saw me, she raced across the street, threw her arms around me, and started crying and hugging me at the same time. So I was thinking that everything was going to be fine. But it all changed once we got inside the house and nobody was watching. She told me that she didn't know why I had bothered to come back, unless it was for money, and I wasn't getting another penny out of her. Then she started ranting and raving that I was nothing but a disappointment to her, and she wished I'd never been born. She told me that she'd met someone while I was in rehab. In fact, she was getting married again, and her fiancé had a wonderful son whom I couldn't hold a candle to, so she didn't want me around anymore, especially when they were there. Finally, she told me to get out and never come back.
Well, needless to say, that shocked me. But it scared me, too, and here's why. When my dad died, he left me some money. It's all tied up in a trust fund, and I can't touch it for a couple of years – not until I'm 21. Anyway, one day, not long before she kicked me out, I was going through my mom's desk. (I won't lie to you – I was looking to see if I could find some money. You can probably guess why.) I didn't find any money, but I did find something else that surprised me. I found a copy of the trust with a note clipped to it. The note was in my mom's handwriting, and it said “Find out what happens if C. dies before he's 21.” Well, that made me feel a little uneasy, but I was arrested for possession not long after, and I had other things on my
mind for a while. Lately, though, I started thinking about it again. I told you that my mom was furious when she found out that your dad had taken her off as the beneficiary of his life insurance policy and put you on instead. She was counting on that money, Gwen. She raged for weeks, talked to lawyers, schemed and schemed for a way that she could cut you out and get that money. I'd never been afraid of her before, but she really started to scare me. And then one night when she'd had a little too much to drink, she said that you got the double indemnity only because of her efforts, and you didn't deserve it. When I questioned her about it, she told me to shut up. But she'd gotten me curious, and when I started to think back, I remembered something else.
I was at home that whole week, right before your dad was killed, remember? I was suspended from school because of the stink bomb incident. Well, I never told anyone this, but a few days before the accident, right after you left for school one morning and your dad was out watering the garden, I saw my mom doing something under the hood of his car. My grandpa – my mom's dad, was a mechanic, and Mom knows a lot more about cars than you'd think. Well, after she finished what she was doing and shut the hood, she saw me standing there watching her, and boy did she get mad! She told me not to tell your dad that I saw her even touching his car, because that car was his baby, and he'd be really angry at her. Then she sent me to my room. But I sneaked down again later after your dad drove off to work. She was in the garage again. She scrubbed the garage floor with some sort of industrial strength cleaner and then hosed it off. She did that every day that week, Gwen, always after you'd left for school and your dad went to work. I'd never seen her do such a thing before, and I never saw her do it again afterward, either. So I got to thinking: What if she did something to the car, something that caused the accident that killed your dad? What if she did it so she could collect on the life insurance?
When the Tiger Kills: A Cimarron/Melbourne Thriller: Book One Page 4
