The Third to Die

by Allison Brennan

  Nothing connected him to any of the murders. Nothing! He was sure. He’d been so careful.

  The female cop walked behind the pool and looked out into the field. She might as well have been looking right through him. He was hidden well.

  Now he knew where he recognized her. She was the blonde who had drinks with Maddox at the hotel where the feds were staying. She was that fed. She had to be. Why was she here? Why would the feds be guarding Maddox? Because he was the deputy chief? Because he was oh-so-fucking-important?

  “Fucking fishbowl,” she said, her voice faint, carrying over to him on the cold breeze. Then she walked around the rest of the yard and back to the house.

  He breathed easier, then left.

  He didn’t like to deviate from his plan, but he had to. What was more important, killing Maddox or killing him the right way?

  Glen scratched his palm. He needed to do everything the right way. His mother had always told him there was a right way and a wrong way. A right way to fold the towels. A right way to bake a cake. A right way to make a bed.

  The knife, his knife, was the right way to kill.

  But he also needed to kill the cop. Which was more important? Doing it right or just getting it done?

  As he walked back to his car, his head began to ache. He left Maddox’s neighborhood and drove the twenty minutes back to his rental house in Spokane. Once he was outside of the Liberty Lake town limits, he breathed easier.

  He had some more planning to do; he was so close to fulfilling his goal. He could picture Brian Maddox dead. That was all the motivation he needed.

  40

  Liberty Lake

  7:30 p.m.

  Brian was grouchy now that they were back at his place. Kara checked the outside perimeter, searched the entire house, and secured the doors. “Why don’t you go to bed?” she said. “Your grumpiness is driving me crazy.”

  “I should be out there protecting my fellow cops, not locked in here hiding.” He glanced at the clock. “It’s only seven-thirty.”

  “Do you have food? Because you don’t want me cooking.”

  “We should be on patrol.”

  “I agree with the feds on this one. You are one of two possible targets. The other one, Theresa Corrigan, is under lock and key at her place—do you think she should be out on patrol?”

  “No, but—”

  “You’re the boss yada yada. I get it—you don’t like being sidelined any more than I do. But Glen Hamilton is a serial killer, and he’s got your number. Everything we learned about him today confirms that Hamilton is our guy. You saw his DMV photo, you’re not going to miss him, no matter how ordinary he looks. By the way, you’re sleeping in one of the kids’ rooms tonight.”

  “What?”

  “I checked the house from top to bottom. Went out back—there are plenty of places to stake out. Tomorrow morning when the sun comes up I’m going to send a couple of cops out there to look for signs that Hamilton has been watching you. Because Costa said this guy stalks his victims, and if I were going to stalk you, I’d do it from the rear.”

  “We have a safe neighborhood. We watch out for each other. And everyone here owns a gun. They hunt, they protect their property, they wouldn’t let some prowler just walk around.”

  “If they see him. We have to assume he knows where you live. Could have followed you from the station. We have to assume he has probably figured out which room is yours. Maybe he’s like Spiderman and can scale walls. Or a normal human and brings in a ladder. Isn’t one of the kids’ rooms downstairs?”

  “Trevor.”

  “So if he does get in upstairs, we’ll hear.”

  “Fine,” Brian snapped.

  “If you’d just have stayed at the hotel with the feds, we wouldn’t be dealing with this bullshit now.”

  “I can’t sleep this early.”

  He went into the kitchen and rummaged through the refrigerator and cabinets. He brought crackers and salami and cheese to the dining table, plus cans of soda. “I really could use a beer.”

  “So could I. But you don’t always get what you want. After this is over we’ll split a six-pack and toast to a job well done.”

  “Confident, aren’t you?”

  “Always. Rummy?”

  “I’ve never beaten you.”

  “I promise not to cheat.”

  “I wouldn’t even know if you did.”

  “You wound me.”

  They played cards. Kara won and didn’t even cheat. Then they ate ice cream and watched a movie. It was eleven when Brian said, “I’m going to try to sleep.”

  “Remember, two of your best officers are outside as well. They’re down the street in an unmarked car so Hamilton might not spot them, if he’s planning on coming here tonight. Costa and Harris will be here in the morning. Tomorrow you stay inside the station. It’s the safest place you can be. You go on no calls—none. And then if we haven’t found him by end of day tomorrow, you’re not coming back here. You’re going to hotel headquarters for the night.”

  “Damn bossy badge,” he muttered.

  She grinned. “It’ll throw him off.”

  “And then what happens?”

  “That’s the million-dollar question. Maybe his head will explode. We can hope, right?” Kara started up the staircase. “I’m going to make a show upstairs—turn on the lights, walk around, turn off the lights. If Hamilton is watching from the field out back, he’ll think that you’re going to bed.”

  Brian rubbed his face with both hands and sighed. “Thanks, Kara. I’m sorry for being so stubborn earlier.”

  “I know how to wear people down.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Kara came back downstairs. She checked on Brian—he was reading in Trevor’s room. She’d already checked all the windows—twice. She saw Brian’s gun on the nightstand. “I’m leaving the door open,” she said.

  “Hope my snoring doesn’t keep you up.”

  “Why do you think I slept on your office couch this afternoon? I’m not sleeping tonight. Already started a pot of coffee.”

  She went to the kitchen and poured herself a cup. She wasn’t tired, but a steady infusion of caffeine would keep her alert. Not too much, not too little. She’d done this many, many times before.

  She had turned off all the lights except for one in the living room. The blinds were closed, and if Hamilton was watching, he knew that Brian came home with a cop. She didn’t want to make it easy for him.

  Her phone rang. It was Matt. She didn’t want to talk to him, but she had to because this was now a job, and no way in hell was she letting Brian Maddox get sliced and diced by a psycho nut job just because she was angry at the lead investigator.

  “Quinn.”

  “It’s Matt. I’m outside.”

  “Relieving SPD so soon?”

  “No—I want to come in. I just didn’t want to knock and send your adrenaline through the roof.”

  “I don’t think Hamilton will knock.” She hung up, looked through the peephole anyway to make sure Hamilton didn’t have a gun on Matt. He stood there alone, and she opened the door. He walked in, bringing a rush of cold air with him. She looked up and down the street. Nothing suspicious. She closed and bolted the door. “Brian doesn’t have a security system. But this is Liberty Lake—most people don’t. So why are you here? Think I can’t handle an all-nighter?”

  “I didn’t call Thornton.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “I think you do.”

  “I called Lex, my boss. He didn’t tell me everything about the investigation when I talked to him yesterday—but I knew the feds were trying to take my case away. So I called him on it. He didn’t want to tell me the details because he planned on squashing it before I returned, but he spilled when I told him what Thornton said. Bryce Thornton has had it out for me si
nce I called him on the carpet for fucking up one of my other investigations. So I’ll tell you this—David Chen—the bastard I arrested—is the only witness to my so-called deadly force against an allegedly unarmed suspect. Thornton wants to call it a civil rights violation because the guy I popped was Chinese American? What about the civil rights of all the people Chen owned? Chen runs what some people call a sweatshop but I call slavery, and so would you. He killed my informant. My informant, who I cultivated and protected.”

  Couldn’t protect.

  “I should have shot that bastard when I had the chance.”

  “What happened?” Matt asked quietly.

  She didn’t want to talk about it, but she was already agitated—at Matt because he listened to Thornton, at Thornton for trying to work with the bastard Chen to take her down, at herself because Sunny was dead and she couldn’t stop it.

  “I was undercover as a buyer for a big box store. We had the store on board with us, vouching for me. I worked it for over a year. Chen was good. Wined and dined me. Took me fucking forever to get inside, but when I did I recruited Sunny. She didn’t want to help. She was scared. I pushed. I’m good at that. I’m good at getting people to work against their own self-interest. She helped, got me exactly what I needed to take down that bastard. Then he killed her before I could get her out. I arrested Chen because I had the evidence, I built the case, I didn’t need her to testify. But she’s still dead.”

  Matt was watching her closely. She didn’t care. Maybe the feds all had a cushy life, never seeing the underbelly of society. Never looking a predator like David Chen in the eye and knowing he would kill her as soon as look at her. Thornton certainly never had.

  “So he fell off a roof evading arrest and broke his fucking leg,” Kara said. “Boo hoo.” If only the roof had been taller, he’d have split his head open instead of only breaking his femur. “He was down and out and I was taking him into custody. His goon came after me with a knife. Fortunately he had bad aim or it would have been in my back rather than slicing my arm.”

  Though he’d seen all her scars the other night, she pushed up her sleeve and turned around to show Matt the latest. It still itched, it was still red, but it was healing.

  “I turned and fired. Completely justified.” She leaned forward. “And if Thornton wants to go toe to toe with me because I shot a man who had thrown a knife at my back, and I didn’t wait until he got out his gun or his backup knife, both of which I found on his person when I searched him, I’ll fight him. And now Chen is testifying against me to the feds? I call bullshit when I see it. And hear this—Chen killed my informant in cold blood. He was responsible for trafficking more than five thousand Chinese nationals—women, children, old men—to serve in sweatshops throughout the country for the last ten years. He ran the entire operation and I took him down along with a dozen of his cronies. And Thornton wants to give him a plea deal in exchange for testifying—for lying—against me? No. Never going to happen.”

  She was pacing, a sign that she was both angry and nervous. She hadn’t wanted to tell Matt all that. But she was so damn mad that he listened to Thornton, that he called her on it, that he thought he had some claim to her what? Her life? Her integrity?

  She was her own person. Always had been. Figured that out really early when her parents put her out to con people. Cute little blonde girl couldn’t be a pickpocket. Cute little blonde girl couldn’t be faking that injury. Cute little blonde girl could cry on cue.

  She had hated herself for a long time for going along with all the stupid scams and cons. And when she put an end to it—when she finally stood up for herself—she vowed she would never be used again. By anyone. By her parents. By her boss. By any man she chose to sleep with. She didn’t need anyone to do it for her. And fuck everyone who tried to use, manipulate, maim or kill those around her. They would pay.

  “Forgive me, Kara,” Matt said. “Please forgive me.”

  He sounded sincere. He looked like he actually felt bad for what he’d done, but she didn’t want his pity.

  “Nothing to forgive,” she said. “You’re a fed. You believe other feds. It is what it is.”

  “I didn’t believe or disbelieve him. I listened, then I asked you.”

  She tried to calm down. She usually did much better at keeping her anger under control. “Look, Matt, I’m happy to have this case. You know that—I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to be. I wouldn’t be helping you if I didn’t want to help. This psycho needs to be stopped, and if I can protect my friend Brian from getting a knife to his gut, I’ll do it, no question. But this time next week you’ll be back wherever it is you’re from, and I’ll be back in LA battling to save my case or working my next one. Maybe one day our cases will collide and if you’re unattached and I’m unattached I would be happy to share your bed again. But I’m not naive, and neither are you.”

  “And that’s it?”

  “It is for now.” She pointed to the clock over the fireplace. “One minute to midnight. Showtime.”

  41

  Tuesday, March 9

  Spokane

  6:00 a.m.

  Matt didn’t sleep much when he got back to the hotel—he crashed around three in the morning and woke up just after five, but immediately he was thinking that they needed to catch Glen Hamilton today and started running through a variety of scenarios on how to do it.

  Matt’s team—and most importantly Catherine—believed that he was the Triple Killer, but they had nothing more than a theory—which meant they had no warrant. They couldn’t run his credit, they couldn’t look at his bank statements, they couldn’t grab his phone records. The AUSA said if they could prove that the John Doe in Bozeman was Hamilton’s father, Zachary, they might be able to get a limited warrant for Glen Hamilton’s travel, phone, and credit statements. If Matt’s team could prove that Hamilton was in the same cities at the same time as the Triple Killer, the warrant could be expanded. They’d called his phone through a secure, private line. No answer. The voice mail was automated. Matt hadn’t left a message.

  The only thing the team could get now was Hamilton’s DMV record, which was accessible to local law enforcement without a warrant. No tickets, no accidents, but they had a copy of his most recent photo, taken six years ago. Yesterday, they’d sent the photo to every cop in the Spokane Valley. A black Honda Civic was registered to his name, but Seattle FBI confirmed that it was housed in his garage in Tacoma. He was probably renting a car—hell, he could have bought a second car, registered it in any of the other states—but they wouldn’t know for sure until they could access his records. He had Spokane PD send out a notice to all other law enforcement agencies to run the name, but so far nothing had popped.

  Sometimes playing by the rules was frustrating. One piece of solid evidence and he could get a warrant for everything he needed—but that solid piece of evidence was elusive.

  Matt sent Ryder a message to bring everyone in ASAP to discuss how to flush Hamilton out. Maybe they were wrong about this guy. But the fact that they couldn’t find him—couldn’t talk to him on the phone or sit down face-to-face—was damn suspicious.

  Just not suspicious enough for their lawyers to fight for a warrant.

  As soon as he stepped out of the shower, Matt called Chief Packard. Though they’d had a rocky start—Matt still didn’t like the guy—Packard had definitely stepped up to the plate this weekend. Matt had Brian Maddox and Theresa Corrigan under twenty-four-hour surveillance all day yesterday and certainly today. The teams had been checking in regularly. But if they were wrong about the killer’s motive and potential targets, then the other cops who simply were using the buddy system might be at risk. They needed to verify that no one was missing at regular intervals throughout the day. The first check in was 6:00 a.m.; it was six-fifteen now.

  “I was just about to call you, Costa,” Packard said in lieu of a greeting. “I’ve heard fr
om every officer and civilian on payroll, and just received notification from Detective Knolls in Liberty Lake and the Spokane County Sheriff—all is clear among our men and women in blue. No one is missing.”

  “Good to know,” Matt said. “Debriefing at eight?”

  “Everyone will be here—on or off duty.”

  “Thank you, Chief.”

  It was nearly 6:30 a.m. by the time he stepped into the war room. Ryder and Michael were there; Jim was not. He was already at the lab preparing to meet the assistant ME, who was driving in John Doe’s remains from Bozeman through the night because of the pending storm. It was going straight to the morgue, where they could perform a second autopsy, if necessary.

  “Brainstorm,” Matt said, and poured himself a cup of coffee. “How do we catch Glen Hamilton before he gets to a cop?”

  “Release his photo to the press,” Michael said. “Someone has to have seen him if he’s in town.”

  Matt had thought of that. And he was still thinking about it. “Pros and cons.”

  “He’ll go to ground,” Michael said. “Disappear.”

  “But he can’t hide forever,” Matt said.

  “He could go after anyone, because he may feel trapped or desperate,” Ryder said. “He might change his MO.”

  “Catherine raised that concern after Kara initially posed the question the other day. Still, if it’s Hamilton, he’s been here for weeks, if not months. He’s originally from Liberty Lake, and he knows the area. He can hide. Bide his time. The million-dollar question is, if he doesn’t claim his victim today, before midnight, what will he do?”

  “I think the more information out there the better,” Michael said. “Don’t say he’s a suspect, just that he may be a witness, and we’re trying to talk to him.”

  Matt nodded. “That’s good. We can work with that. Maybe he’ll walk in on his own, thinking he can one-up us.”

  It had happened before. It wasn’t common, but sometimes the smartest criminals were the ones who thought they were too smart to be caught, no matter what they said to the police.