by Hanna Noble
Chapter Twelve
Cole stared at Naomi, his mind racing. If Lily Martin had met someone at the gym that night, it would explain why she was delayed in getting home. It would also provide a good reason as to why the Phantom had been so angry with her. Angry enough to kill. “It’s a good start,” he said jotting down some notes.
“It still doesn’t give us her killer.” She sighed, and looked at the folders.
He smiled at her frustrated tone. “You have to be patient,” he said, stretching out a kink in his neck. “It takes time to find clues and to piece a story together. Even with your woo-woo advantages, you’re still going to have to let the case reveal itself to you, step by step.”
“Woo-woo advantages?” she asked, wrinkling her nose. “Was that the latest vocabulary in this month’s issue of Scientific American Mind?”
He’d said it on purpose to make her smile. To chase away the shadows he’d seen in her eyes when they’d talked about the Phantom waiting for Lily. “No,” he said with a straight face. “Paranormal Quarterly, special psychic edition.”
She shook her head at him. “Why, Detective, here I had you pegged for a Skeptic Lawman reader.”
“I was a loyal reader, for years. But my subscription expired and I decided not to renew, to check out some new literature.”
She smiled, enjoying their exchange. “How’s that working out for you?”
“Shouldn’t you already know the answer to that?” He grinned. “It’s been a…compelling read.”
The atmosphere shifted, became charged with an awareness that he saw reflected in her eyes. Neither one of them spoke, unable or unwilling to break whatever what was happening between them.
She was sitting so close, the distance between them suddenly nonexistent. She moistened her lips, and he followed the movement of her tongue with his eyes, feeling his own body stand up and take notice. He just had to reach out a hand, and he’d be able to touch her.
“It’s always good to have an open mind.” Her voice was husky, and a little uneven. She dropped her gaze, picking up one of the folders and the moment was over, their connection broken.
“Naomi, I—”
“Can I look at these files?” She interrupted the apology he was about to make for ... whatever it was that had just occurred between them. “I want to see the pictures of his other victims again.”
“Sure.” He tried to gauge her mood. “They’re all in that blue folder.”
She was avoiding his eyes, acting like the last few minutes hadn’t happened. If that’s what she wanted to do, then he would ignore it, too. She was the one at a disadvantage, he reminded himself. She was in unfamiliar territory being asked to make herself vulnerable in a deeply risky way. He wouldn’t add to her burden by complicating it with the most potent chemistry he’d ever experienced in his thirty-three years.
He walked over to the fridge, pulling out a beer and taking a few minutes to recover, to get himself back to normal. When he felt in control once again, he made his way back to the living room, where Naomi had laid out the pictures of the victims in a row on the coffee table. There were eight in total. Six assaults, plus Lily Martin and Megan Collins.
He took a seat, not wanting to disturb her. She stared at each of the pictures in turn, concentrating. Her eyes squinted a little when she was focusing on something, he realized, and she drummed her fingers on the table. Her fingers were long and slender, and he wondered what they would feel like on his skin.
“Stop that,” she said without looking up.
“Stop what?” He forced himself to sound casual, and not panicky at the idea that she’d heard the tail end of his thoughts.
“Stop looking at me, I can feel it.” She glanced up, raising an eyebrow. “It’s distracting.”
“I can’t help it.” He looked at the pictures on the table. “I’m curious about what you could be seeing or sensing.” That wasn’t what he was thinking about at all, but it was plausible enough and certainly better than the truth. The truth was he had wanted to study her.
“I’m not getting anything,” she said, pushing the pictures away with a tired sigh. “I really wish it was that easy. Sometimes it is, but”—she shrugged—“sometimes you don’t get anything at all.” She looked frustrated, and Cole knew this case was eating at her as much as it was him.
“Let’s take a break, we’ve done enough for now,” he said, standing and rubbing his neck. “Why don’t you go relax for a while, take your mind off things.”
“That sounds like a great idea,” she said, pushing back from the table and rising to stretch. He tried to ignore how the motion revealed a tantalizing strip of skin where her sweater had risen up slightly. “I think I’m going to go upstairs and curl up with a good book for a while.”
He nodded, forcing himself to focus on anything but the idea of her in a bed, all sleepy and soft. After she was gone, Cole sat back down to go over his notes again.
He had told Naomi to be patient, but he was feeling antsy. The idea that this guy could still be out there was haunting him, despite the fact that the attacks had stopped. For the first time in his career, Cole didn’t believe what the evidence was telling him, was choosing to listen to his gut instinct.
The second they had found Lily’s body in a suitcase and seen the image of that tiara on the billboard, he had known in his gut that the two cases were related. Even without proof, without any logical reason, he had known.
That thought made him pause. In a way, he wasn’t so different from Naomi. Maybe, it was a heightened instinct, being attuned to a type of energy like she had explained earlier. After all, wasn’t being a detective all about being able to see the signs that other people missed?
It was like he could feel a piece of his brain shifting. For once, he was ready to consider possibilities that existed outside of his strict worldview. After months of denying who and what she was, of hiding behind his skepticism, he was finally ready to open himself up to the unfamiliar.
He sighed. At this point he would believe anything if he thought it could help him get this asshole off the streets. He shifted his attention to the Megan Collins file.
He ignored the crime scene photos, instead choosing to look at the picture provided by her family. He didn’t want to think of her only as a body, a statistic in the city’s crime report. Megan had been someone’s daughter, someone’s friend. Someone who had lived and dreamed, right here in his city. She was a pretty redhead with bright green eyes who was in her first year at Harvard, pursuing a Masters of Journalism degree. She had every indication of a bright future ahead of her, until Randall Carr had murdered her.
Crime scene investigators had found Randall’s DNA in Megan’s apartment, including hair follicles and fingerprints. They’d also collected fibers that matched one of his sweaters. A search of his car had unearthed some of her things as well as two pieces of underwear belonging to Rachel Li, the last victim before Megan’s body was discovered.
Confronted with this evidence, Randall had requested an attorney and then confessed to being the Phantom. He’d known things only the real killer would know, like the fact that he tied his victim’s hands with plastic cable ties—a fact that Naomi had also known but that had never released to the press.
At the time, that had puzzled Cole as well. Naomi had been right about the ties, but so wrong about everything else. Or so he’d thought. Now it was looking like she might be right about everything.
He looked at Randall’s mug shot again. It had never made sense to him, why he would confess to being the Phantom when they could only tie him to one other attack. Still, the trail of evidence that he faithfully followed had said otherwise, and so Cole had been happy to see him behind bars.
Where did that leave them? They had two cases that appeared, on the surface, straight forward. Lily, found washed up in a suitcase. Megan, found dead in her apartment. Both killed on the same night.
At first glance, it looked like they were unrelated. But Naomi’s
vision said that Lily was killed by the Phantom. And the Phantom had confessed to killing Megan. Both things couldn’t be true. So, either Naomi’s vision was wrong, or there was something suspicious about the Collins case, that would implicate his fellow officers. Was he grasping at straws here? Was he reading too much into a sloppy investigation, overblowing what could be an honest oversight? No officer was perfect and mistakes did happen.
He rubbed his face, feeling overwhelmed. He was too close to this case. He’d been looking at Lily’s case files nonstop and now with Megan in the mix everything was starting to jumble together, a confusion of dates, names, and faces. He pulled out his cellphone and dialed his partner’s number.
“What’s up?” Owen picked up on the second ring.
“I want to bring Leah in on this,” Cole said, blunt and straight to the point. He knew it was risky, his friend was still recovering from Shauna’s death, still adjusting to a world where her partner wasn’t there anymore. “She’s the only one I trust.” The four of them, Shauna, Leah, Owen, and Cole, had become close friends over the past couple of years, both on and off the force.
“Ok,” Owen said, thoughtful. “Do you think that’s a good idea?”
It would be reopening a lot of old wounds. It could be a disaster. “I don’t know,” Cole admitted. “That’s why I’m talking to you about it. She wasn’t exactly Naomi’s biggest fan.”
Owen scoffed. “That’s putting it mildly.” Leah had been devastated after Shauna’s death, and her grief had morphed into a scathing fury at Naomi’s alleged hindrance of their investigations. “She was pissed off for months. I couldn’t mention anything about the case or Naomi without having my head bitten off. To either of you.”
Cole sighed, knowing it was true. “I thought Naomi was a fraud who’d proven me right,” he said, keeping an ear out for any noise upstairs. He didn’t want Naomi to overhear this conversation. “Leah believed in her, had been supporting her; it destroyed her to think she’d been betrayed.”
“How much would we tell her?”
That was the million-dollar question. “I’m not sure,” Cole replied, torn between wanting to protect Leah and telling her the truth. “It’s not a question of trust, but I have a feeling our little investigation is going to get messy. It might be better to leave her out of the line of fire.”
“Fair point, though she won’t thank you for keeping her out of the loop.”
“Now who’s talking in understatements?” Cole grimaced. “She would totally kick my ass.” Leah had a mean streak and a killer left hook. He’d seen the evidence when they’d sparred at the gym.
“Where does that leave us?”
“We can ask her to take a look at the Megan Collins case. To look at the evidence with a fresh pair of eyes. She’d do it without asking a lot of questions,” Cole said, knowing Leah trusted them without question, would always have their back. “We can bring her in on Naomi’s involvement later. We’ll ease her into it.”
Owen sounded disbelieving. “If you say so, Cole.”
“You know, you’re not exactly going to come off innocent in this. I’ve deliberately implicated you,” Cole threatened. “You’re an accessory to deception now.”
“The hell you say,” Owen said, and Cole could hear the grin in his voice. “I’ll deny everything, argue deception under duress. No jury would ever convict me.”
“It’s a risk I’ll have to take,” Cole said, appreciating Owen’s humor. He knew that his partner would have his back no matter what. “So, we’ll tell her?”
“Tomorrow morning, before shift.” Owen’s calm voice steadied Cole, reminded him that despite their joking, they were in this together. “How are things going otherwise?”
Cole filled him in on the afternoon’s progress. “We’re getting closer to piecing together Lily’s movements. I’ve requested the data from her gym, and hopefully something will turn up.”
There was nothing more frustrating than a case whose trail had gone cold.
“We’ll get this guy,” Owen said, and Cole heard the simmering anger in his partner’s tone. It always surprised him, since the big man was usually calm and even tempered. “Stop looking at the files, and try to relax.”
Cole smiled, hearing his own advice to Naomi echoed back at him.
“I will,” he said. “See you tomorrow.”
“Tell Naomi I said hello, maybe give her a kiss from—”
“Shut up,” Cole muttered, hanging up the phone. Owen was probably cackling to himself in glee. Sometimes life felt just like high school, except with more responsibilities and less fun. But, damned if he didn’t feel himself getting hard at the thought of kissing Naomi.
Pushing away from the table, he walked over to the couch and plopped back down with the paper he’d pretended to read that morning. He’d been so distracted by Naomi that he’d stared at the same page, thankful she hadn’t seemed to notice.
Their interactions this morning had been surprisingly fun, a glimpse of what it would have been like without their complicated history. He liked her quick-witted comebacks and her easy-going nature. It wasn’t hard to like her, in fact, it was entirely too easy. He shook his head. He was in the middle of the most explosive case of his career and all he could think about was how nice it was to be around her.
Trouble. He was in big trouble.
Chapter Thirteen
The next morning, Cole sat at his desk reading over the case notes he’d made the night before. He wanted to believe they were making some sort of progress.
“Hey.” Owen appeared in front of him, holding a cardboard tray with three coffee cups. Cole sniffed the scent in appreciation, but raised an eyebrow when he spotted a familiar green logo.
“Starbucks? Feeling fancy this morning?” He was a Dunkin’ man, like any self-respecting Bostonian.
“Aren’t we planning to talk to Leah this morning about the case?” Owen asked, placing a cup in front of him.
“Yeah, so?” He’d come in early to get some time with her before they started their shift.
“So, she loves Starbucks,” Owen said. It was a fact they razzed her about all the time.
Cole grinned. “A bribe,” he chuckled. “Smart. It’s hard to say no to someone armed with luxury coffee.” He sipped his black Americano and glanced at the last remaining cup, which was twice the size of his. “What is that thing anyway?”
“It’s a venti two-pump sugar-free vanilla caramel drizzle extra hot light foam skinny caramel latte.”
Cole stared, mouth open. “What does that even mean?” he asked in horror. “And is that technically still considered coffee?”
Owen shrugged. “A distant relative, maybe.” He glanced up and smiled. “Here she comes now.” He called out her name and waved her over.
Leah was dressed in a black pantsuit with a crisp white-collared shirt. Her long blond hair was tied in a low twist at the nape of her neck. Her composed and cool demeanor on the job had earned her the title “The Ice Queen,” a name she not only found amusing, but actively tried to cultivate. She possessed a quick mind and steady hands, two qualities Cole had been thankful for on more than one occasion.
“Your Majesty,” Owen teased, bowing to her as she approached.
“Good morning, my serf.” She nodded in mock seriousness before perching on Cole’s desk. “You two are here early.” Her eyes landed on the drink in Owen’s hand. “Is that for me?” He nodded and handed it over. She took a sip and closed her eyes, a look of bliss on her face. “That’s amazing.”
“It’s all sugar,” Cole argued, disgusted. “It’s not even coffee!”
“No one asked you, peasant,” she replied. “Let me enjoy this ambrosia and then we can discuss the favor you need. It must be big if you’re venturing into a high-class establishment such as Starbucks.”
“Busted.” Cole grinned. This was why he liked working with Leah. She was quick and never missed a thing. “We need to talk. Somewhere private.”
The three
of them walked into an unoccupied interrogation room. Owen closed the door behind them and nodded at Cole.
“I’m going to ask you something that’s going to sound odd.” Cole kept his voice low, not wanting to be overheard. He handed Leah a copy of the Megan Collins case file. “I need you to look at this for me.”
“The Collins homicide?” She eyed both of them. “Why? It was a rock-solid case. They caught the guy, remember?”
When neither of them answered, she narrowed her eyes. “Ok, I’ll play,” she said, placing the folder under the crook of her arm. “Are you at least going to tell me what I’m looking for?”
“We don’t want to bias you.” Cole leaned against the wall. “I just want you to go over it, see what you find. Trust us. I know it’s asking for a leap of faith.”
“I don’t like the sound of this.” Leah frowned. “We lost a lot because of this case,” she said, her voice tinged with sadness. “And in the end, Randall Carr confessed.” She shook her head. “Is this about us being wrong? Some sort of crusade to make amends? That won’t change anything.” She paused. “It won’t bring Shauna back.”
“Just look,” Owen said, coming up to stand beside her, placing his hand on her arm. “You know the Phantom case as well as we do and this was the final piece. Please, Leah.”
She turned and touched Owen’s shoulder, her fingers brushing the spot where he’d taken a bullet. She didn’t say anything, but Cole knew she was remembering that awful night at the hospital. The night they’d almost lost Owen as well.
Leah sighed, giving Cole hope that she’d agree. “I don’t think Risso is going to appreciate me checking up on his work,” she said. Jerome Risso had been the lead detective on the Megan Collins case, the one who had apprehended Randall Carr. “The DA was able to get a quick conviction because of Risso’s leg work.”
“The department’s pride and joy,” Owen said, his sarcasm evident. Risso had been on the force for fifteen years. He was loud, brash, and hotheaded. Competitive to a fault, he had taken an instant dislike to Cole and Owen’s rapid advancement within the department.
