The Third to Die

by Allison Brennan

  She still felt the murders were committed by a younger man, based on several factors, not the least of which was his chosen murder weapon and the time before the first kill. She wouldn’t rule out Hamilton, but McCafferty fit better. The lone survivor in his family. The lawsuit itself was tragic. He’d been trapped in the car with his dead family for an hour. What could that have done to a teenager? The lawsuit was clearly filed by an ambulance chaser. They had sued everyone, and no case had merit. But the young man could have believed that the hospital, the police department, the fire department, that everyone was to blame. He’d been impressionable and facing a horrific loss. If he didn’t have the support of extended family, he could have internalized his pain and yes, years later, taken it out on those who he twistedly decided to blame. And he was younger than Zachary Hamilton. Catherine’s entire profile had been built on skewing to a younger killer. McCafferty would be thirty-four now, right in the middle of her profiling sweet spot.

  Yes, she leaned toward McCafferty. On paper, he worked. And she firmly believed that whatever happened that March 3 out on the interstate so many years ago started this string of murders. The police responded. Anne Banks—the trauma nurse—had made a difficult decision. The principal? Was there a principal involved in the accident? The cause of the accident? Or maybe in the aftermath, a principal hurt McCafferty in another way.

  Catherine sent off the memo to Matt and realized that Chris would be here any minute. She had several files that came late yesterday about unsolved stabbings in the three states involved, plus bordering states. She sensed that there might be something there—that there were no hesitation marks on Anne Banks’s body told her that Banks wasn’t his first victim. He could have been perfecting his style, or just growing comfortable with killing, before he went after his real target.

  But it would take her hours to go through these reports and if she started now, they’d be on her mind for the rest of the day, and she wouldn’t be fully engaged with her family.

  Two hours. She could turn her back on violence for two hours.

  Chris called her from downstairs, right on time. She grabbed her purse and shut the doors of her office, as if shutting a door in her mind. She wished it were that easy.

  She slid into the front seat and turned to look at her beautiful daughter, Lizzy. The girl unbuckled her seat belt, leaned forward, and hugged Catherine so tightly it brought tears to her eyes.

  “Hi, Mom! I have so much to tell you.”

  Catherine kissed her. “I can’t wait to hear.” She turned to Chris. He leaned over and kissed her.

  She wanted them back.

  She didn’t know how she could make this work.

  “I was thinking,” she said as they drove off. “Next weekend we have the party on Saturday. Maybe I should stay over and cook brunch like old times.”

  “Really?” Lizzy said, bouncing in her seat.

  “It’s your birthday. It’s whatever you want. We can go out, of course—”

  “No! No, no, no! I really, really want you to make brunch. Please? That’s all I want for my birthday.”

  Catherine said, “Chris, maybe we should return the present if we can get away with just feeding our child.”

  “Maybe we should,” he said with a grin.

  “You wouldn’t,” Lizzy said, and laughed. “This is going to be great. Can I make the menu?”

  “Sure. I’ll go shopping on Friday.”

  Friday... Because no matter what, the killer would be captured or gone, and Catherine would have succeeded or failed to stop him.

  Damn, she wished she could just put it all aside for two hours! What was wrong with her? Why was she thinking about the Triple Killer when she should be thinking about Lizzy’s birthday and the sheer joy in her daughter’s voice when Catherine said she’d be home next weekend?

  Chris reached over and took her hand. He kissed it. The simple affection almost made Catherine cry. “I’m on vacation for a week starting Friday,” he said. “Not on call, no patients to monitor, free and clear.”

  “A week? But what if someone needs you? What if there’s an accident. You’re the best pediatric surgeon on the East Coast.”

  Chris laughed. “I like that you think that, Cat, but there’s one or two other qualified doctors out there. This was a good time. For me. For us.”

  She didn’t know what to think.

  “Maybe,” he said, “it’s time for you to take that sabbatical, for real. When you’re done with this case.”

  “Maybe,” she said.

  Maybe he was right. Maybe everything would be better if she came home.

  33

  Liberty Lake

  9:00 a.m. PT

  “You didn’t sleep here again,” her grandmother said as she came into the kitchen. “That’s two nights.”

  Kara was making oatmeal. She was probably one of the few people who actually liked oatmeal, but she only liked it when she made it herself. She had her favorite oats—not instant—and blueberries and honey. Sometimes when she was in the mood she’d add bananas and pecans.

  “Want some oatmeal, Em?”

  “You made it from scratch? Yes, thank you.”

  But the distraction didn’t work. Em set the table and said, “So where have you been sleeping?”

  “Sorry, Em. I didn’t think you’d notice. Late nights working.”

  “Of course I noticed. You’re supposed to be on vacation.”

  “I don’t like vacations.”

  “Honey, you’re tired.”

  “I’m fine.” Sleep was overrated. She rarely got more than four hours a night. Four hours was fine. Less than that and she was a zombie, more and she felt restless, like she’d missed something while she slumbered. She poured another cup of coffee. It was her third. She poured coffee for Em, with lots of cream and a heaping teaspoon of sugar.

  “Thanks, dear.”

  Em didn’t ask again, thankfully. She was very liberated about pretty much everything, but if Kara told her she’d spent two nights in bed with the same man, she’d want to meet him. Em would think there was something special, and Kara couldn’t explain to her grandmother that it was just really good sex.

  This morning, she hadn’t wanted to leave Matt. She wouldn’t have minded enjoying a leisurely day, including morning sex in the shower and going back to sleep and then sex in the afternoon. But of course she left—Matt was in the middle of a murder investigation and while he might be able to spare an hour at midnight for hot sex, he would be hitting the ground running as soon as he was up.

  Going to Matt’s room last night had been stupid and oh-so-right. No talking, just sex. Hot, satisfying sex. And she slept—she slept hard for four and a half hours, longer than any night since she arrived in Spokane. But her internal clock woke her at five. She watched him sleep for a few minutes, considered waking him for morning sex, then didn’t. He needed sleep because this case was intense, a ticking time bomb, and she needed to leave before she—or he—developed an attachment neither of them really wanted. She had one more week here, and he’d probably be gone before then.

  Yesterday had been a really shitty day, until last night. Finding the body, first off. It wasn’t lost on her that she’d found both bodies attributed to this psycho. Then Andy falling apart and questioning his career choices. That had come out of left field. But she was also angry because she thought he had her back, and he didn’t. That anger had fueled her for the rest of the day, leaving her both melancholy and frustrated.

  Why did she even attempt to trust anyone? She should know better. Years of watching her own back should have taught her that.

  Then the clincher—Lex calling and telling her the case she had painstakingly built was falling apart—yet he wouldn’t let her come back to fix it. That fucking bastard David Chen was going to walk—she knew it, in her gut—and there was not one damn thing
she could do about it. She wanted to throttle the feds. Why were they being such dicks? Who was behind it? She’d pissed off a few of them, but she never thought she’d made them so angry that they’d negotiate with a human trafficker in order to nail a use of force charge against her.

  “I’m having dinner with Brian Maddox and his family tonight.” She needed to change the subject and get her Grams off the topic of where she had been spending her nights—and who she had been spending them with.

  “That’s nice. He’s such a nice man. And his wife, Julia—”

  “Julie.”

  “Right, Julie, she always brings me homemade cookies for Christmas, and a bottle of that port I love so.”

  “They’re what you’ve always called good people.”

  “I’m sure Mr. Maddox would hire you. He’s in Spokane now. That’s a big city.”

  She would have laughed if it wouldn’t have insulted her grandmother. “I like Los Angeles, Em.”

  “It’s so far away.”

  “Maybe you should move to Santa Monica. There’s lots of things to do there, it never snows, and there’s a seniors community not far from my place.”

  Emily scowled at her. “I’m not that old, Kara Leigh.”

  She winced. Emily rarely disciplined her, but when she did, she called her by her full name.

  “I didn’t say you were old.”

  “I’m not leaving. This is my home, young lady, and I don’t want to move to California.”

  “I’m sorry, Grams.”

  Emily refilled their coffee and sat back down. “I worry about you.”

  “Likewise.”

  “Will you visit again?”

  She almost sounded like a child. Kara felt guilty—she’d spent most of her time working on a case she wasn’t even getting paid for, doing things she didn’t have to do. No one would blame her if she stepped away and spent time with her grandmother.

  “I’ll be here for a whole other week.”

  “Working.”

  “Not the whole time. I think the FBI is close—they’ve been pulling out all the stops.”

  “You never liked the FBI.”

  “No, because most FBI agents I’ve met are assholes. But the ones here, not so bad.”

  “They’re lucky to have you helping.”

  Kara grinned. “I’ll tell them you said so.”

  “You do that because I mean it.”

  The doorbell rang, and Em said, “I’ll get it. You finish that oatmeal.”

  Kara was almost done, and dished up two bowls. Em loved bananas, so Kara sliced a banana and drizzled honey on top. She fixed her own and turned to see Andy Knolls standing in the threshold, in uniform, his hat in his hand.

  “Your grandmother said you were in here.”

  Kara called out, “Em! I have your oatmeal ready!”

  Emily came in and picked up her bowl. “I’ll eat in the sunroom.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “I want to. I don’t want to hear about this case. Everyone is talking about it, and I’d rather not think about those things.” She shuffled off.

  She didn’t want to talk to Andy, or offer him breakfast, but realized she’d have to do both.

  “I made oatmeal. Fresh.”

  “I’m fine. Gracie and I had breakfast after church.”

  She glanced at the clock. It was after ten.

  “I wanted to come by before the briefing. Are you going? Do you want a ride?”

  “I don’t need to be there,” she said. She sat at the kitchen table and motioned for Andy to sit.

  “I’m sorry about yesterday, Kara. I really am. I couldn’t sleep last night thinking about how I disappointed you, how I let down my entire department.”

  She was fine with him not sleeping.

  “I’ve seen dead bodies—car accidents, mostly. A man who shot his head off, suicide. That was three years ago. It still haunts me, but it’s not the same.”

  She didn’t see the difference. To her, the only difference was if you knew the victim. When you saw the dead eyes of someone you had spoken with, someone you liked, someone who trusted you—yeah, that was fucking hard to deal with. She felt bad that Jeffrey Ogdenburg had been murdered in his sleep, but his death was her job. In a manner of speaking. It was a cop’s job. She could separate her emotions from the scene.

  “Andy,” she said, “you grew up in a quiet town. Murder isn’t pretty. It’s violent and vicious and usually the reasons are stupid. A guy gets popped for ripping off his drug dealer. A girl gets strangled for leaving her boyfriend. A husband beats on his wife and kids because he’s a fucking asshole. It happens.”

  “It doesn’t happen here.”

  “It has now. And it will happen again. If you can’t handle it, yeah, you should quit.”

  His face fell.

  Damn, she was no good at this psychology shit.

  “Look,” she said bluntly, “you’re a good person, and you can be a good cop. Everyone here in Liberty Lake likes you. They trust you, they listen to you. And they no longer feel safe. You can fix that, but you’re going to have to want to. You’re going to have to work for it. And that means sucking up whatever fear is inside and dealing with this psycho. That means going back to training so you don’t leave your partner high and dry at a crime scene. You have to want it. If you’d prefer to stand around feeling sorry for yourself and your town, go ahead. Just give your badge to that idiot Pierce Dunn and be done with it.”

  She leaned forward. “Remember this, though. If you resign, you’re still here in Liberty Lake, and this will fester in your gut for the rest of your life. The guilt. The failure. Do you really want to live like that?”

  Slowly he shook his head.

  “You’d better get to the briefing. Let me know if there’s anything new. I was with the feds last night going over the lawsuits from the hospital where Banks worked, and we pulled out a couple names to run. Maybe there’s something there, maybe there isn’t. But you need to be at the briefing.”

  “The next victim is going to be a cop. It really hit me last night.”

  “No. There are going to be no more victims because we’re going to find this guy and lock him up for the rest of his fucking life.”

  “You believe that?”

  “Yes.” She did. She had to believe with every case that the good guys would win. If she didn’t believe it, she’d turn in her shield.

  “I’ll let you know if anything new comes up. Thanks, Kara. For everything.”

  34

  Spokane

  12:00 p.m.

  Michael Harris was running down the individuals they’d identified last night so he wasn’t at the briefing at Spokane PD. Matt had enough information to share with the group of cops and former cops, and hoped they had information for him. Nearly fifty men and women were in the room, and Maddox said the only people who were missing had moved from the area. “I called them all yesterday and spoke to them personally,” he said. “They will be extra cautious for the next few days.”

  That was the best they could do for now, but Matt suggested that Maddox assign someone to follow up with them again tomorrow and Tuesday. “Considering that our unknown subject brought Manners from Spokane to Liberty Lake, he could very well go to another state to grab a cop.” Though he didn’t think that was likely. Matt had a sense that the killer was leaving the victims on the doorstep of his next target.

  Matt had everyone settle down and jumped right into his presentation. He brought Ryder with him because he wanted to show pictures, and Matt’s advanced tech skills were nonexistent.

  “You all know that the Triple Killer struck again yesterday—sometime between 1:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. on March 6.”

  Matt looked around the room. He spotted Andy in the back, standing. Good, because Matt needed him—he knew
everyone in this room, which was an advantage.

  Matt went through all the information they had to date, starting with the first victim, Anne Banks. He wanted to make sure that each cop in this room understood that they could be the next target. Showing the victim in happier times—then the crime scene photos—put the situation in perspective.

  “We’ve made a lot of inroads to identify this killer, and while we don’t have his name or address, we may have found his motivation. We have two possible suspects—but again, we have no evidence against them other than a possible motivation. Anne Banks was a specific target—the other two nurses were killed based solely on their profession.”

  Ryder swapped out the photos of Banks for Marston. Matt explained their theory that John Marston was the specific target, and that the vice principal in Portland and the most recent victim were, essentially, distractions.

  “We believe that the killer not only knew Marston, but that they may have had a run-in at some point. A witness said that a former employee had attacked him at school one day, but Marston didn’t file charges because the employee had recently lost his wife. While that may not be connected to our killer, we can’t discount it as possible, and Deputy Chief Maddox is working with the superintendent to find out the employee’s identity.”

  Ryder swapped out Marston’s photos with the photos of the first two cops who were killed. “Based on the pattern,” Matt said, “the Triple Killer kills first a nurse, then a principal, then a cop. Since we now believe that Banks and Marston—both living in Spokane at the same time—were specifically targeted, we think that the cop who is next on this guy’s list is also from this area.”

  A cop in the front of the room said, “But we’re all from Liberty Lake. Why isn’t every cop in Spokane listening to this?”