Dying Embers

by B. E. Sanderson

  “Wisconsin?” she looked at Ben and then at the pattern they’d drawn on the whiteboard. “There’s nothing in his file tying him to Wisconsin.”

  “She said he only spent part of one semester there. He came out, and after she disowned him, he dropped out. Left behind a huge tuition bill and a permanently jilted girlfriend.” More rustling. “The old lady couldn’t remember the name, but she thought it might’ve been Ella. She never met the girl, and since her son was persona non grata, she never bothered to ask what happened to her.”

  “Sweet gal.” As he jotted the new information onto Bower’s slot on the board, Ben’s tone said he thought anything but. “Did they follow up with any of his old friends?”

  “They looked, but Bower made a complete break. He had friends up until he left school, and friends after school, but none of them are the same people.”

  “Damn.” Jace began threading her way across the carpet and back again. “Go over it again. Find anyone who was there when Bower was. And see if anyone remembers who his girlfriend was.”

  “You think she’s our girl?”

  “I know she is,” Jace said on her third pass. Walking past the board, she noticed Ben staring pointedly at one of the victims. “What?”

  “This.” He jabbed a thick finger toward their second body’s information. “Tom White has a statutory rape on his sheet. Why didn’t we think of that before?”

  Jace’s jaw dropped. After banging her head on a wall for weeks, and all the time the two of them had put into this today, she couldn’t believe they’d missed that. “Chalk it up to long hours and staring at the same information too long.” The words were to salve Ben’s conscience, but she couldn’t excuse herself with the same reasoning. He was new to the case; she wasn’t. She had every file memorized; every fact filed in her head for easy recall. With the way her mind usually worked, everything should be cross-referenced up there, damn it.

  “Frank? Dig into that. I need the name of that girl, even if you have to bribe someone to get it.”

  “I’m already digging, boss. I’ll get Lynn out of bed and get her on the computer. If she can’t find anything by morning, I’ll get on the phone and see what my charm and wit can get us.”

  The phone clicked, and Ben hung up on their end. “She’s our girl,” he said. “I know it. It’s all falling into place.”

  Jace wasn’t as convinced. Finding their killer this way seemed just too damn easy. “If the records aren’t sealed because of her minor status. And if it was really rape, and not just two kids with too many hormones and too few brain cells. And if we don’t find this girl sitting at home watching TV.” She stopped pacing and flopped into the room’s only easy-chair. “I’m not laying my hopes on this yet. Let’s see what we can ferret out of the other vics’ lives. If there’s an Ella Somebody in each of their pasts, then I’ll jump on the optimism wagon. Until then, I’m just waiting for the other shoe to fall.”

  “You mean another body?”

  Laying her head against the back of the chair, she wished for the opportunity to catch five seconds of relaxation, but wishes never happened like that. She closed her eyes and saw every page of every file staring back at her. “She’s not done yet,” she said as she reviewed the information in her head, “and if the rest stop murder was anything to go by, she’s branching out. There’s no way that kid had anything to do with our killer, other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “So even if we figure out who Ella is, we won’t know who she’s after next.” Ben filled in the latest data for her and threw the dry erase marker on the desk. Sinking onto the bed, he stared over at her. “You feds really know how to ruin a good time.”

  Opening one eye, she returned his glare. “It won’t be a good time until she’s awaiting execution.”

  #

  Emma stifled a laugh. The whole morning had gone as if divine intervention was making up for the fiasco at that damn rest stop. If the young man had just given her car a jump, instead of wanting to jump her, too, it never would have happened. If he hadn’t been undressing her with his eyes—those bright blue eyes that looked like Peter’s—she would’ve let him go on his way. Instead he did what all men do, and she did what she had to.

  Even if it meant departing from her careful plans.

  Today would be no departure. Already the yellow school bus had taken the little boy away. Minutes afterwards the big green truck took wifey on her errands. Devin was all alone.

  But not for long.

  Inch by careful inch, Emma lowered herself from her piney perch. The sun still hung low enough in the sky to throw the backyard into shadow, and she crept through the grayness until her fingers touched white plastic siding. Reaching the garage’s back door, she stepped through, unhindered by the locks any cautious man would use. Good thing for her, Devin had never been one for caution. It had been one of the things she loved about him, and now the trick he used to snatch her heart would be her tool to trap him.

  A brand-new SUV waited for her inside. It even had the dealers’ sticker in the window, like no one had the time to remove it. She opened the door, and the unmistakable smell some people paid good money to spray on their old upholstery wafted out. Perfect. Walking a few steps toward the back, she nodded. It didn’t even have plates yet. Identifying the vehicle would take Agent Douglas that much longer.

  She could’ve squealed with glee, if she didn’t have a job to do. Celebrating had to wait until after, and somewhere a nice bottle of champagne had her name on it.

  The epoxy wouldn’t take much time to set, so she had to work quickly. One long squeeze made crisscross patterns on the seat. Several careful lines along the steering wheel finished the job. Backing out onto the road would probably hurt like Hell, but Devin deserved to have hands as raw and bleeding as her heart.

  The door into the house stood open a crack. Wifey must follow in her husband’s footsteps—or live in his shadow, like Emma had with Will. She almost felt sorry for the bitch. Then she remembered the woman’s complicity in her own heartache, and she regretted her vow to leave the mother untouched. If it wasn’t for the boy, that score would be settled, too.

  “Back so soon?” Devin called from his office at the other end of the house.

  Emma laughed. “Is twenty years soon?” she said.

  “Pardon me?” A chair rolled backwards across a wood floor. “Is everything all right, Honey?” Footsteps came down a long hallway toward the kitchen—with Emma leaning against the butcher block in the middle as if she owned the place. “There isn’t a problem with your truck again, is there? The shop just looked her over last week and…”

  He stood in front of her looking almost as he had the day he ended their relationship. A little gray had streaked through his soft brown hair and peppered his well-trimmed beard. His deep brown eyes held the same sparkle they’d held for her all those years ago. Until he saw her, and the light died.

  “Who are you, and what do you think you’re doing in my house?”

  “You shouldn’t leave your door unlocked, Dev. Anyone could walk in while you’re working, you know.” Emma shook one formerly-manicured finger at him, and regretted what the mission was doing to her nails. Pushing the thought aside, she took a couple steps and leaned against the counter, upsetting a half-full glass of orange juice. As the liquid ran across the granite and onto the floor, his eyes didn’t leave her own. She could almost see the wheels turning as he puzzled out her identity.

  “Who are you?” he asked again with a strident note to his voice.

  She laughed, and the trill came out of her like a growl. “I’m hurt you don’t remember me.” With one easy movement, she pulled the gun from inside her purse. “You’ll remember me for the rest of your life, though. I guarantee it.” One quick jerk of the weapon toward the garage made her meaning clear. As they stepped out, he took one look at the still-open door to his SUV and balked.

  “I don’t know what you want, but I think you have the wrong g
uy. I don’t have any money. Kidnapping me won’t get you a cent.”

  As if she would stoop to such a pedestrian act. “Get in the car and shut your mouth.”

  Still he refused to move. “Please. I have a family. My wife—”

  Emma stabbed him with the nose of her revolver. “Move it. Or…” Running her free hand over his wiry shoulders, she purred in his ear. “We could wait around until she gets back. I’d enjoy seeing her, too.”

  He took one hesitant step. “My little boy—”

  “Is at school and safe.” She gave his cheek a hard pinch. “Quit stalling. I don’t have all day.” This really felt a little too movie of the week for her tastes. Her tongue clicked against the roof of her mouth. “You used to be such a man’s man.” One more push with the barrel, and he took another step. If he kept dragging his feet, the damn adhesive would set before he touched it, and she’d have to shoot him like those others. After hefting Greg’s burly ex-Marine ass around, she didn’t doubt she could move Devin’s thin body, but what a pain.

  “Move or I might just ki—” The last time she threatened to kill her victim’s family—before she got him in the car, afterwards was just for fun—she had a real fight on her hands. “—borrow your son for a while.” Her muscles twinged with the memory of struggling to subdue a grown man, but on the night of her first kill she’d grown a resolve that somehow made her stronger. Pain no longer mattered. Only this mission mattered.

  “Keep your hands off my son, and I’ll do anything you want. If you want money, I’ll find a way to get it for you. Just don’t hurt my family.”

  Her lips twisted in a wry curl. “I don’t need your money. For all your lofty talk about ‘money can’t buy happiness’, you still think it solves everything.” Devin came from one of the wealthiest families in the town her university called home. Every day they were together, he professed his hatred of all that money, but he never hesitated to use it when his need outweighed his philosophy. “I don’t want your family’s dirty money. I want something much more precious.”

  He drew in a ragged breath as realization dawned on him. “You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?”

  “You didn’t used to be this stupid, you know. Always so smart. Always knew what was best for everyone concerned. Marriage has sucked the intelligence right out of you, Dev. Maybe it wouldn’t have if you’d married the right woman.”

  He stopped moving again and began to turn toward her. The barrel of the gun hit the side of his face with a crack.

  “Quit stalling and get in the car already.”

  “Em?” His horrified whisper brought a grin to her face.

  “See? I knew you’d remember if you tried.”

  “What are you doing here now? What happened between us… That was twenty years ago.”

  “Which means you lived twenty years longer than you deserved. Now get in the car before I shoot you right here and leave you for the boy to find.” She caressed his back with the barrel. “I don’t want to leave that kind of memory on a little kid’s brain—even though he should’ve been my child and you deprived me of him. Do you really want him to have the sight of your dead body rambling around in his brain for the rest of his life?” Without another word, Devin walked to the open door and lowered himself inside. “I thought that’s what you’d say. Put your hands on the wheel. Ten and two, just like the teachers told you.”

  “What’s all over in here…? What the fuck?”

  “Do it, or I shoot. Simple as that. Wouldn’t it be great if everything in life were so simple?”

  He put one hand and then the other onto the sticky surface. “I never realized what a sick person you were, Em.”

  “I am what you made me,” she said between clenched teeth. “You and all the others. Now you’ll all get to see what it feels like to be on the losing end of the relationship.”

  “We never had a real relationship. Why couldn’t you ever see that?”

  She slid into the seat behind him, pushing aside a baseball mitt and a half-eaten bag of corn chips. “As far as I’m concerned, we never stopped having one.” With one hand, she reached into his pants pocket to grab his keys. It was empty. The other was empty, too. “What kind of man doesn’t carry his car keys on him?” she barked into his ear.

  “The kind of man who wasn’t planning on going anywhere today.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Fuck off.”

  One hard whack—gun butt meets temple—spoke for her, and then she went back into the house. A row of pegs on the wall hung empty. The kitchen counter was cluttered, but keyless. In the back of the house, his desk looked like a tornado had blown through, but underneath the papers he’d been working on that night, she found her prize.

  “You really should’ve just told me where they were, you know,” she said as she got back into the car.

  His only reply was a soft, sleepy breathing.

  “Wake up, you sissy. You’re not fooling me.” One of the others, she couldn’t remember which, pulled the same gag on her. Grabbing a handful of Devin’s hair, she pulled hard. The other guy had screamed. This one was still silent.

  “Fuck.”

  Smooth move, Emma, Will said over her shoulder. You hit him too hard.

  “Shut up!”

  What are you going to do now, Einstein? Torch him and the house along with? That’d be a pretty sight. Who knows, you might start a forest fire with all the kindling around here. This’ll be your chance to leave a mark. A huge, ugly, black mark—on the world.

  She glanced behind her, expecting to see his apparition. Nothing was there. “Shut your mouth, Will. I told you to stay put.” She’d left the urn in the car. She’d been certain he couldn’t follow her if she left the urn in the car. Why wasn’t he in the damn car?

  Well? His wife will be home soon. Did you really think a gallon of milk would take all day?

  Emma’s mind raced. She had to kill Devin, but she couldn’t risk a fire in the woods.

  And you can’t drive the car with him glued in the driver’s seat. You really fucked it up this time.

  She couldn’t drive the car, but she could push it. Once the car sat in the driveway, it would be far enough away from the house and the trees to prevent anything else catching. For once, Will didn’t make fun of her ideas.

  Pushing the button raised the garage door, and popping the car into gear was easy. The hard part lay in pushing a two ton hunk of metal out of the building. Once she got it rolling, though, the rest was simple.

  The SUV settled to a stop about fifteen feet from the house, and although it was still too close to the trees, burning it here would be a chance she could afford to take. She grabbed the gas can stashed under the pine trees. After dousing the unconscious figure of her old boyfriend, she splashed some more around for good measure. Too bad the little boy would come home to this picture, but it couldn’t be helped. Devin had to die, and she had to make him pay here and now.

  She reached into her pocket for the special box of matches. It said Juniper Bar and Grill on the cover. A little reminder from the restaurant Devin picked to dump her in. She saved the matches as a memory of that night, never dreaming they would ever be used. Finding them after burying Will had been a stroke of good luck.

  One wooden match out. The box closed for safety.

  Strike against the friction strip… Nothing.

  Tossing the dud aside, she cursed and pulled out another to repeat the process.

  Tires crunched up the gravel road fifty yards away, but she couldn’t stop now. It was almost finished. All she had to do was light the match and toss it.

  “Hey! What do you think you’re doing?” The woman’s shout hit her like a bucket of cold water, killing the fire inside her. “Devin?”

  Flicking the match against the side of the box, Emma watched it flare and threw it in the same instant. She didn’t even pause to see if it caught before she took off on foot, racing along the ground.

  Over the huffing of her own
breath, she thought she could hear the crackle of Devin’s last seconds on Earth.

  Chapter Ten

  “This can’t be our girl,” Ben said as they entered a tree-lined driveway in the mountains of Utah.

  Jace kept silent as she looked at the yellow tape fluttering around a new SUV. Several men hovered around the vehicle, all of them looking a little anxious to get inside. Other than removal of the victim, her hands-off order had been followed, but she knew none of the locals were happy about it. If her initial glance at the crime scene warranted the S.C.I.U.’s involvement, her own unit would handle the majority of the evidence gathering. If not, the local officers could have at it with her blessing.

  At first glance, nothing about this fit with their killer’s MO. Aside from being intact, the vehicle, while new, didn’t meet the ‘high end’ requirement. The crime scene was in a driveway and not at the bottom of some ravine, even though they’d passed at least a half dozen such geographical goodies on the drive. And the conflagration she’d come to expect hadn’t happened here.

  From the report she’d been given, epoxy had been present. Even an accelerant had been liberally doused over the car and its occupant. But she’d forgotten the one crucial piece she’d never failed to leave.

  A dead body.

  She glanced at her companion. “When I got to La Junta, I thought this couldn’t be connected, but I was wrong. Remember?”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  He sounded tired. She didn’t blame him. After all the miles they’d driven over the past few days, anyone would be ready to rethink his participation in this twisted hunt. “When we get to Salt Lake, take a plane home.”

  “Oh, no.” He shook his finger at her. “You’re not getting away from me that easy, lady. I’m in this, and like it or not, I’m seeing it through to the end.”

  Jace raised one eyebrow. “I could order you off the case.”