Colde & Rainey (A Rainey Bell Thriller)

by R. E. Bradshaw

  “Rugrats,” Rainey said, and the triplets giggled.

  Timothy came and took the phone from Katie and carried Rainey to the window.

  “Snow,” he whispered.

  “Yes, snow,” Rainey said in support of her children’s expanding vocabulary.

  This set all three off on a chorus of “Snow, snow, snow.”

  “They learned a new word,” Katie offered from somewhere behind the kids. “Tell Nee Nee bye bye.”

  Rainey could tell Katie was trying to wrestle the phone back from Timothy, by the erratic movement of the screen. His face appeared on the screen, very close, and then he open-mouth kissed the phone.

  Rainey heard Leslie’s voice. “Aw, that is so cute.”

  “Bye, bye, rugrats,” Rainey said, which again elicited giggles from the three.

  Katie’s face returned to the phone. “I love you. Call me later. I’m going to take them upstairs for their nap, before she gets going again.

  “She” was Weather, whom they spoke of in pronouns when she was present. Using her name, when she was in a mood, only meant they were paying attention to her and a prime time to display her newly forming manipulation skills. Weather had learned at an earlier age than her brothers that being obstinate sometimes got her what she wanted.

  “I love you too. I’ll call you before I go to sleep.”

  “Bye,” Katie blew a kiss at the phone and was gone.

  She didn’t ask what Rainey had found out. She had her hands full at home. Rainey was glad Leslie was there to help. The triplets were almost more than one person could handle, now that they were extremely mobile. Taking care of them was a full-time, never-take-your-eyes-away, job. Still, Rainey and Katie wouldn’t trade one minute of it.

  Rainey cranked the van and moved it closer to the Wise house. Before leaving it for the night, she opened all the various storage compartments looking for the extra shirts Katie carried for both of them. With three babies, the chances were high that the adults in the family could be in need of clean laundry at any given moment. Katie reasoned that being prepared for anything lessened the stress when things did go horribly wrong; as it did the time all three babies had a stomach virus. Rainey winced at the memory. She’d seen countless crime scenes, but that virus weekend tested her gag reflex even now. It was one of the reasons they had a new van. They could never get the smell out of the seats of the old one.

  Rainey had rarely driven the new van, usually only with Katie and the triplets in it. She was unaware of the extent to which Katie had turned the entire van into a giant diaper bag. The first compartment contained a diaper changing station; complete with diaper rash treatments, Vaseline, powder, baby wipes, and hand sanitizer for when the deed was done. The next storage bin was a food source. Crackers, juice, peanut butter, cookies, and more wipes—a person could live out of there for a month and have clean hands doing it. Rainey closed that bin and moved on to the third, finally locating a tee shirt under the box of thirty-gallon trash bags. She laughed at the thought of needing a thirty gallon trash bag for the garbage in the van, but then the memory of the trip back from the beach last summer, which coincided with the stomach virus onset, reminded her it was possible.

  Tee shirt in hand, Rainey walked back into the Wise residence. She stopped to shake the snow from her coat and hat, and hung them on the almost-empty coat tree in the foyer. Skylar and Gordon stood with a few people in the living room, coats on, finishing last minute conversations before braving the cold outside. Rainey moved down the hall and saw Benjy and Leda in the dining room, clearing away the catering table. Rainey did not see Bill, but she could hear voices from the back of the house.

  She followed the sound and arrived just in time to hear Harriet demand of her son, “William Wellman Wise, I know when you are lying. I have since you started talking. Tell me the truth. Your father was intentionally murdered, wasn’t he?”

  Rainey took in the room quickly. Ellie and another young woman were washing dishes at the sink but had stopped to stare at the confrontation. An older woman stood behind Harriet, a worried look on her face. Harriet was burning holes in her son with her eyes, and poor Bill was in the center of it all. His shoulders deflated and Rainey could tell he was melting under his mother’s glare.

  Rainey had to say something, “Mrs. Wise, Harriet, may I speak with you in the study?”

  “Go on, Mrs. Wise,” Ellie said. “We’ll take care of everything.”

  The other young woman at the sink walked over to Bill and kissed his cheek. “Go on, honey, take care of your mother. I’ll see to the guests and get the house back in order.”

  He smiled down at her and brushed a bang from her brow, “Don’t do too much. I’ll help when we’re done.”

  Rainey led the way to the study, but did not step behind the desk. Instead she went to the couch and asked Harriet to sit with her. Bill moved a chair close and slumped down in it, the weight of the world on his shoulders. Rainey didn’t have a mother to take care of when her father died. Well, she did have a mother, but Rainey’s experience with her father’s death was much different from Bill’s. He could not fully manage his grief with his mother to worry about. On the other hand, Harriet appeared to have her grief well in hand. That was until about thirty seconds after entering the study. She burst into tears, prompting Bill to reach for a box of tissue from the desk, before he buried his head in his hands and wept softly, while his mother vented her frustration.

  “I knew it. I told him all that poking around in other people’s business was going to get him killed. What did he know? What did he find out that would make someone shoot him like an animal? How could he have survived all he did and die like this? All those nights as a soldier’s wife not knowing where he was or if he was alive—” She gasped for air before her anger forced more of the broken-woman rant from her lips. “I thought we’d gotten past that. I thought we would grow old together, away from war and killing, but he just had to go looking for trouble. It’s just so goddamned senseless.”

  His mother’s use of profanity brought Bill’s head up. Rainey took a tissue from the box he had placed on Harriet’s lap and offered it to him. He took it and wiped his tears away.

  “Mom, Dad’s death will not be senseless. We’ll find out what he knew and who that information scared into killing him. If he did uncover some crime, it’s on that desk and I’ll find it. He will not have died in vain.”

  Harriet turned to Rainey. “What did you find out there?”

  Rainey did not want to tell too much. What she knew should be in the hands of trained investigators, not a grieving widow. Bill might tell her later, but she hoped he wouldn’t.

  “I believe the person who shot your husband was a trained marksman. That tends to discredit the amateur hunter theory currently under investigation. I’ll call an acquaintance in the Dobbs County Sheriff’s department. I’ll tell him what I know and what the detectives should look for when they return to the scene. The snow may actually preserve much of the evidence the first assessment of the scene missed. Please know it wasn’t sloppy crime scene work. I had more information than they did. That gives me a little different perspective on what I saw. They saw a hunting blind, because that is what they expected to see.”

  “I didn’t know I should have told them,” Harriet whispered apologetically.

  “You couldn’t know what they needed until they asked. Did anyone ask you about enemies or reasons someone might want your husband dead?”

  “No, they just came to the house and told me a hunter shot him by accident. I didn’t think about this stuff in here until later. By then, they had made up their minds it was a scared kid that ran off after he shot Wellman.”

  “They will probably reopen the investigation when they have all the pieces we have. Bill can show them where to look. But please, it is imperative that none of this information leaves this room. If Bill chooses to share what he knows with you, I can’t stop him, but it would be best if you wait until he has spoken with t
he police, and even then, you must not discuss this with anyone else.”

  The reality of the situation suddenly hit Bill. “If this person killed Dad because he knew too much, they might try to kill me or Mom if they think we know it too. That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so.”

  “My soul, what has Wellman gotten us into?” Harriet asked.

  Rainey laid it out for them. “Granted, this is just a theory and I have only scratched the surface in that folder; I believe at least one of the deaths your husband was investigating was not an accident, but a murder. The person who committed that murder discovered that Captain Wise was poking around. He spooked somebody, spooked them bad. That means he was close to naming them or they at least thought he was. He called me and left a message saying he wanted to talk about a cold case, or I thought that was what he said. I know now it was the Colde case I had discussed with him back in 2000, when Graham Colde killed his neighbors.”

  Bill shifted uneasily in his chair. Rainey noted his body language. He knew something. His mother was right. Bill was easy to read.

  Rainey concluded her comments with, “I believe your father connected the dots and it all goes back to that list from Colde’s pocket. Only four people remain alive from the original list. There are several scenarios that answer a lot of questions. One, Colde did have a silent partner who has spent the last fourteen years collecting on injustices from high school. Or one of the people on the list is actually a murderer. I can’t begin to guess at a motive at this point. Or the list has nothing to do with his death and he was simply a target of opportunity, highly doubtful, in my opinion. Of course, it could be that Graham Dean Colde has been out there finishing what he started, after convincing the state’s psychiatrists that he was not a risk to society. That happens more often than you think.”

  Bill leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, chin resting on his folded hands. He was processing the information and, Rainey suspected, about to tell her what he knew. He had the confessional posture she recognized from hours of interrogating suspects and witnesses. She waited for him to come to his own conclusions, ready to prompt or prod if necessary. Something Rainey said had made him very uncomfortable.

  “I think I can eliminate the Colde scenario,” he began. “He really doesn’t exist anymore. His name wasn’t all that changed. His memory of that time has never returned. The personality in his body today, as it was explained to me, is essentially a brand new person. He was a complete clean slate when he woke up. He had to relearn everything, like a newborn. I really don’t think Colde returned to finish the job. He can’t remember any of these people anyway.”

  “That’s right.” Harriet confirmed Bill’s statement and added, “He doesn’t even remember his own mother.”

  “So, you know where Colde is now?”

  “Yes,” Bill said. “I work with him. I’ve been helping him with a game design. I sent it to Dad to verify the gunplay is authentic. He was disturbed by it, though. He said he wanted to talk to me about the game when we came down this weekend. I’m sure it was just the graphic nature he objected to. I warned him about it, but really, it’s tame compared to games in this genre.”

  “What genre?” Rainey was curious, now.

  “Well, it’s kind of funny that you ask. The female protagonist is a profiler gone rogue, looking for the man that scarred her for—”

  The light that came on in Bill’s brain could have lit New York City.

  “Oh my God, it is you,” he said, going pale.

  Rainey stood up. “Show me this game.”

  “What does that game have to do with Wellman’s murder?” Harriet asked.

  “I don’t know, maybe nothing, but your husband called me for a reason. He could have wanted to talk to me about the list or this game. Either way, I think it’s something I should take a look at.”

  Bill walked to the desk and sat down. Rainey moved in behind him, while he woke the laptop and clicked a few keys. Harriet came to stand beside him.

  He turned to his mother. “Mom, you probably don’t want to watch this. The violence is pretty extreme.”

  “Bill, I thought you designed programs for the military. I didn’t know you worked on video games you wouldn’t want your mother to see.”

  “Mom, you would not want to see half of what I do, including the stuff for the military.” Harriet hesitated. “Really, Mom. I can’t show this to you.”

  “Good Lord, Bill, what is it.”

  “At least part of it, now that I’ve met her, is what happened to Rainey.” He turned to focus on Rainey. “I had forgotten about reading that story in the paper until I met you today. I kept thinking the game’s storyboard sounded vaguely familiar, but all these types of games have an element of truth in them. Especially the serial killer profiles.”

  “People play games about serial killers?” Harriet said in disbelief.

  Rainey knew all about these kinds of games. “Perverse, but true. Some of them are just crime genre fare, a little bloody, but the emphasis is on finding clues and solving a murder. Others are more graphic versions of the same thing.”

  “This game is different,” Bill said. “In this one, you can be the killer, while outwitting the profiler on your heels. It’s really quite technically brilliant as a game. I have some problems with the content, but that isn’t my call. Not even close.”

  “And you can’t say no?” Harriet asked.

  “No, Mom, I can’t. Extreme gaming is a big business and this game is going to be about as extreme as this type of game gets. My name will not be on it. No one will know I had anything to do with it. Plus, it’s still in development. It might not get all the way to production. I just sent Dad a working edition, because I had some questions about how certain weapons impact the human body.”

  Harriet appeared conflicted. Rainey wanted to see the game, so she moved things along. “Bill is going to show me the game, and then I’m going to look through this file. I’ll need some time alone to really concentrate, so I don’t miss anything.”

  Harriet took the hint. “Okay then, I’ll go, but if you need anything just come find me. I’ll probably be in the kitchen. There is so much food to put away. The storm sent everyone home before they could eat it all.”

  “I’ll be there in a few minutes, Mom. Just sit down and let us take care of you.”

  She bent and kissed her son on the top of his head. “You have always been the perfect child. Your father and I spoke of it often. He loved you very much.”

  “I know, Mom.” Bill stood and hugged his mother. “Go rest. I’ll be out soon.”

  Once Harriet cleared the room, Bill opened the game folder he’d sent his father with a few clicks of the mouse. The title screen appeared, touting “Come For Me” in letters dripping blood. Written beneath was the tag line, “Be the hunter or the hunted.” The artistic style reminded Rainey of the “Sin City” graphic novels with a nod to film noir. Dark, foreboding music, with a bass line mimicking a heartbeat quickening, vibrated the small laptop speakers and mixed with a raging storm soundtrack. Brush strokes indicating pouring rain sliced across the screen, almost obscuring a small house in the background.

  The narrator’s deep, ominous voice began, as the point of view moved in closer to the house, “The hunter becomes the hunted.”

  Bill hit the pause button. “Rainey, I’m not sure you really want to see this.”

  “Play it,” Rainey said in a tone that left him no room for argument.

  The video began again with the camera view instantly switching to the interior the house, which looked familiar to Rainey. Crime scene photos popped into her head. The images from her memory matched the home on the screen, as the camera moved down a hall toward a lighted room at the end. Rainey had only fleeting memories from the night she was abducted, but she had reviewed the file often enough to recognize the creator of this game had seen the crime scene photos too. When the camera view finally entered the bedroom at th
e end of the hall, any doubts she may have had disappeared.

  Bill moved around nervously in his seat. Rainey stood silently still as she observed a naked female game character tied down to a bed, with a black-masked man straddling her, and carving an “S” into her chest. Flashes of the night a serial killer carved a shallow Y-incision into her skin crowded into Rainey’s mind. The part of her brain not sickened by what it was seeing had already begun to question how someone outside of the FBI would have access to this much detail.

  Sirens began to wail over the speakers. The killer ran away. A cast of law enforcement crashed into the room. A tall, redheaded man in an FBI windbreaker, who was a spot on representation of Rainey’s old partner and her children’s godfather, Danny McNally, cut the woman on the bed from her bonds, and kissed her passionately.

  “Well, that never happened,” Rainey commented, as the camera zoomed in for a close-up of the female’s rage-filled eyes.

  The narrator spoke, “Saved from the clutches of a madman, Special Agent Stormy Weathers turns her back on the job and the man she loved,” the screen changed to a dark office and a close up of Stormy Weathers in the glow of a computer monitor, looking rather deranged, “to hunt the man that scarred her for life.”

  Rainey wasn’t really interested in the story line or what the narrator had to say. The hair on her body had started to prickle to attention. She leaned closer to the screen, taking in the dark office details.

  “Oh my God,” she whispered. “He’s been in my house.”

  Rainey was no longer looking at the screen. She was focused on Bill. Her expression must have frightened him. His eyes grew wide and he reflexively sat as far back in the chair as he could, creating distance between them.

  “Who is he?” Rainey demanded. “That fucker has been in my house—where my kids sleep. Tell me now, where is Graham Dean Colde.”

  “His name is Theodore Suzanne and he lives in Chapel Hill.”