“Do you know where he is?”
“Yes, but I’m afraid it isn’t good news. We believe that Mr. Cole Crowen has been murdered. We’re hoping that Miss Watson will come down to identify the body.”
He took the phone, turning on the speaker. “How do you know the guy in your morgue is Cole?”
Andrew straightened.
“I went through his computer and there were some photos. The manager pointed out one of Mr. Crowen. The hair color and height matches.”
“So he didn’t take her.”
“Take her?”
Justin explained the situation to the Detective.
“I think I can prove that Mr. Crowen didn’t take Miss. Watson. I went through the hotel’s surveillance. There’s another man who dressed like Mr. Crowen, but I don’t believe it’s him.”
“Can you send me a picture?”
“It isn’t clear enough, but if you make a trip down, I can let you take a look at the video.”
“I’ll head down now.”
Justin and Andrew folded the maps and headed out.
They were at the police department in less than an hour.
They waited for a few moments while a police officer went into the office and came out with a female detective wearing a gray pantsuit, her blonde hair tied back into a high ponytail. “Mr. Doyle?”
Justin stepped forward and took the detective’s hand. “Justin.” Cocking his head to the side, he continued. “This is Andrew Watson; Paige’s brother.”
“Do either of you think you can recognize Mr. Crowen from his built or tell me any of his birthmarks? Maybe he’s been in surgery before?”
“I don’t know him that well, but I can recognize him.”
Andrew nodded beside him.
“I’m afraid that won’t do,” Detective Linden said solemnly. “His face has been smashed in.”
Justin thrust his tongue against his cheek and took in a deep breath as his chest tightened. “We want to see the body. We need to know who has her.”
Detective Linden hesitated for a moment. “It is a rather gruesome sight.”
“I’m sure I’ve seen worst,” Andrew replied.
What’s the worst that could happen? Justin thought. He hadn’t eaten much anyway; there wasn’t anything he could throw up.”
Nodding, she led them down the hallway and took the lift to the basement.
The lift’s doors opened to a long corridor. A sense of muteness shrouded the hallway, and only their footsteps echoed through the long walkway that felt much colder than where they had just come from.
When Detective Linden pushed open a door, a wave of sharp, biting air rushed out and pierced through his bones. He was at least a head taller than Detective Linden, so he had a full view of the room.
Whitewashed walls lined with metal silver squares, a room he’d only ever seen on TV stood right in front of him.
He felt the heaviness of his feet as he took a step forward, entering the room.
He didn’t care much about Cole’s death. He only needed to confirm who had Paige and how to find her. But he had never seen a dead body before.
Pulling out one of the silver squares to reveal a white cloth draped over a dead body, Detective Linden stepped aside and glanced at him. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“I can do it.” Andrew stepped up. “There’s no need for both of us to see the body.”
As much as he appreciated Andrew’s concern, Justin was determined to see for himself if Cole was lying there on the slab. He needed to know. “Let’s get this over and done with.”
Detective Linden lifted, then folded back part of the cloth to reveal the corpse.
Justin couldn’t speak. He swallowed hard and turned, stepping out of the morgue in three large strides. He pressed his palms against the wall, using it as support as he shut his eyes and leaned forward.
He heard the click of the morgue’s door but didn’t turn around.
“Are you all right?” Detective Linden asked.
“It’s Cole. So whoever has Paige was the one who did that to him.” He thought knowing would make things better, but he was so wrong.
Whoever did this to Cole had no qualms about killing. Whoever did this to Cole still turned up at the bar at night after killing him.
“I saw the photos on Mr. Crowen’s laptop. I fought very hard to make this case mine. I want to help you find her.”
Justin turned over, leaning his back on the wall, while Andrew stood with his arms across his chest. “Why?”
Detective Linden reached into her pocket and took out her wallet. Flipping it open, she showed them the photo inside. “My sister went through the same thing Miss Watson did. No one would help her and she ended up taking her own life just so that she could be done with her stalker.” She tightened her jaws and her brows drew closer. “I swore I won’t ever be like one of the cops who turned her away.”
“Thank you.”
She nodded after a moment. “You all need to see something on the surveillance.”
They reentered the lift and stepped out to a completely different scene.
Instead of a long corridor, it was an open space filled with tables that was stacked with files and papers. He followed Detective Linden and strode past detectives flipping through files, talking on the phones, and typing away on the computer.
One of the male detectives on the phone glanced up at them as they approached his table, but continued his conversation when he noticed Detective Linden.
She led the way into a room with a small, old TV attached to a VCR player. Picking up the remote on top of the player, she rewinded the video a little then paused. “I believe this is Mr. Crowen.”
“That’s him,” Justin confirmed.
Then forwarding the video, she paused it when Cole reappeared on screen. “I thought this was Mr. Crowen, but according to the M.E., Mr. Crowen should be dead by then. I rewinded and played it a few more times. Something about the two didn’t seem right. So I measured the tibia of Cole before and after time of death. It’s different.”
“Tibia?”
“Length from knee to feet. They should be the same if they are of the same person,” Detective Linden explained.
“So it’s just someone who looks and dress like Cole,” Justin stated and turned to Andrew. “Do you recognize him?”
Andrew stared at the TV and shook his head. “No,” he said, almost in a sigh.
Andrew hadn’t said anything since seeing the body. He must have arrived at the same conclusion and realized what a precarious situation Paige was in.
“I believe it’s someone Mr. Crowen knew. There wasn’t any sign of struggle in the room or the car. No one reported any altercations outside the hotel either.”
“Paige did mention that he didn’t have many friends.”
“I only know of one,” Andrew added. “He’s a colleague, Daniel something. But Shawn ran a background check on him. Squeaky clean, except for a couple of traffic violations.”
“Sometimes, you need to look closer. We don’t have other leads anyway.” Detective Linden walked out of the room, gesturing for them to follow.
Everything that they had been chasing down had led to nothing. Now here they were, stuck again.
Justin heaved a sigh and shook his head. It wasn’t the time to get frustrated.
Detective Linden headed straight to a table and pulled up two chairs for them before settling in front of her table.
Justin sat on the chair next to her desk and watched her turn on the desktop monitor.
Detective Linden scanned the area around her, then said in a softer voice, “I ran a check on my sister’s stalker. I wanted to see if there was something I could do to throw him in jail.”
“Was there?”
“No, but I did find something interesting. His credit card purchases. There are certain things that you can’t buy at stores but easily found online.” She ran Daniel’s social security number on the computer. “We just n
eed his bank accounts and we can call the bank for credit card details.”
“They’ll just hand that over?”
“A step at a time.” Then, she paused, her eyes still on the computer’s screen. Her brows furrowed while her fingers bounced softly up and down on the keyboard, not typing anything.
“What?” Justin asked.
“His traffic violations, all of them occurred in Boston.” Her fingers typed across the keyboard again. “His last known address is in Boston, too.”
“Maybe he moved.”
“How long ago did the stalking begin?”
“Over three years.”
“His last ticket was just over four months ago.” One of her hands moved from the keyboard and toward her lips. Her fingers formed a fist while her thumb hooked under her chin. “He couldn’t have been driving there and back every day. Stalking takes a huge investment of time.”
She pulled up a phone directory website and a simple search gave them a phone number. “No harm making a call.”
She placed the phone on speaker and grinned when the number worked.
“Hello?”
Detective Linden picked up the receiver and said, “Hi, is this Daniel Mansell? I’m calling from the police department in Cheyenne. Yes. I was running down some leads for a murder case when your name popped up. Yes. I’m sure it’s some misunderstanding, but it’ll help if you answer some questions so that we can resolve this without having to involve you.”
Detective Linden’s grin grew wider while listening to the reply on the other end.
“Okay. Yes, just a few questions. Have you been down to New York? Yes, our victim was from New York. If you can prove that you haven’t been to New York, we can eliminate you as our suspect.”
There was another pause, but this time, her eyes narrowed and her frown deepened with each passing second. Justin leaned forward, staring intently at her, wishing he had some form of super hearing.
“Tax issue?”
Another bout of silence.
“Why didn’t you report this?” Detective Linden’s head bobbed up and down. “So you haven’t been in New York over the past few years? Right, thank you, Mr. Mansell.”
She put down the phone and turned to him. “We got him. Daniel Mansell had never been to New York before. He’d some tax issues over some double salary and tried reporting it, but the IRS never got back to him. When he called them back, they informed him that his tax had been paid. The same thing happened over the past three years, he thought it was some computer glitch and didn’t bother since he didn’t have to pay anything.”
Andrew shook his head. “I can’t believe Shawn missed that.”
“Background check wise, he would’ve come up clean. We were just lucky,” Detective Linden said. “This fake Daniel Mansell, he must’ve a police record. If you recognize him, we can comb through sexual offenders. I suggest beginning with offenders who lived close to or someone who has been in the same company as the real Daniel Mansell. He must’ve come across the real Daniel’s info somehow.”
“I’ve seen one of his photos on Paige’s laptop. I’ll get it.”
“I’ll get the files.”
Chapter Twenty Four
Fear had kept Paige up in New York all the time, torturing her with every creak she thought she heard and with every movement she thought she saw.
That night was the first time it’d actually worked in her favor.
She needed to stay awake.
There were so many questions in her mind, all of them injecting their own dose of fear, threatening to crumble her already vulnerable facade of peace that she was trying so hard to hold on to.
Why did Daniel dye his hair and dress up like Cole?
Where was Daniel intending to take her?
What was going on in his mind? What was he going to do to her?
How was she going to get out of the situation?
The questions brought tears to her eyes, stinging her lids.
She had to stop thinking about them or she wouldn’t be able to control her tears. If she were to start crying now, Daniel would only get more hysterical and it wouldn’t end well for her.
Feelings were so unreliable. When she reminded herself how God was watching over her, how He would keep her safe, she’d be confident and some sense of assurance would calm her down.
But once her thoughts drifted to her current situation, fear returned.
Between fear and faith, fear had a much louder voice, making it impossible to ignore.
Taking quick, shallow breaths, she forced her tears back and focused on what she could do instead.
No point worrying over things she couldn’t control or mulling over questions she didn’t have answers to.
Short, achievable goals, she told herself.
She had read memoirs of people who had gone through terrible ordeals, and the way they survived had always been to concentrate on short, achievable goals.
For now, she could make sure she remembered how they got to wherever they were heading.
So, with her eyes were closed, she paid attention to everything her ears were receiving.
She could tell when they left the highway. The noise from all the cars’ engine got more distant and soon, there was nothing but the monotonous whir of the air conditioner within the car.
There hadn’t been many turns since they were last on the highway, so it probably wasn’t a densely populated area.
The question she had was how isolated it was.
She could run, she could easily run over five miles continuously. Not many people, even men, could do that.
And she was fast.
But all that wouldn’t matter if they were in the middle of nowhere.
“We’re here.”
The car came to a stop and she opened her eyes, looking at the house ahead of her.
A two story house with brownish walls and dark gray roof, contrasted with white window grills stood in front of the car. She breathed out through her nose as she stared up at the house.
She took a quick glance around the area and forced a smile even as she battled her tears.
Daniel definitely picked the right place.
From the car, she couldn’t see any neighbor. Just their house and a road leading to an open field of nothingness on one side and trees on the other.
Short, achievable goals. She needed to get out of the house. There was no way Daniel would let her out, but it didn’t matter. As long as she could see another person, there was a chance.
First step, goodwill.
She turned to Daniel and flinched back against the window. She’d been so caught up with her own thoughts that she hadn’t noticed the gun Daniel had pointing at her.
“I’m not going to hurt you, but I know you love to run. I can’t risk you running away. You understand that, right?”
His soft, gentle tone was back. But in his eyes, the same hysteria was clear.
She quickly nodded.
“Take off your shoes.”
She kicked them off.
“Stretch your hands over.” Daniel reached into the compartment by the door and pulled out a handcuff.
Her first instinct was to reach for the door and run.
Instead, she shook her wrist, bringing her watch back in place and stealing a quick peep at it. Nearly an hour and a half had passed since she closed her eyes on the highway.
Then she stretched her hands over, locking the muscles in her arms to stop herself from withdrawing them.
With a deep breath, she swallowed the scream that was already at the brink of her throat.
She needed goodwill, she needed to show that she was compliant. She allowed Daniel to cuff her without any struggle, not even when the cold, hard metal cut into her skin.
“All right, ready to see the house?”
The sudden change in his expression was remarkable. A wild spark of excitement twinkled in his eyes that had inched wider, and a broad smile showcased his teeth. Still, despite
the delight he had, a sense of frenzy lingered behind those eyes.
She knew she had to match his excitement.
She wasn’t a good actress, but she was an avid reader of all sorts of books.
Body language 101, a fake smile would never reach the eye. So she imagined herself without the handcuffs, imagined the person before her eyes was Justin, and imagined they were going to look at the beautiful colonial house she saw on his computer.
“Absolutely.” She grinned.
Her method worked.
The gun disappeared from her eyes as Daniel bounced out of the car, heading over to her side and opening the door for her.
“Come, take a look. I searched really long for this place.”
He helped her out of the car, placed a hand on her back, then jammed the gun against her rib as he pulled her closer toward him.
Paige clenched and released her fists, quelling the urge to shiver and push him away from her. “When did you buy this?” Her voice trembled a little at the end of her question. She cleared her throat and straightened her back. “Was it expensive?”
“Don’t worry about the money, dear.”
She clenched and opened her fist again. “So when did you buy it? Did you renovate it yourself?”
“So many questions,” he said, enunciating each word in a low, skeptical voice.
Twirling the ring on her index finger, she smiled back at Daniel as if it was still Justin standing before her. “I’m curious, I always have been. You should know that about me.”
“I do,” Daniel said. “I know everything about you.”
He took her hand just as the tremble she could no longer suppress ran through her skin.
Thankfully, he was so electrified that he didn’t seem to notice.
Pulling her into the house, he glanced over his shoulder and beamed at her.
She wanted to shake her head at the insanity of it all.
His blissful smile at her, despite her hands being cuffed and the gun in his other hand. The way he tenderly held her hand as if they were a young couple deep in love, thrilled about starting their new lives in the new house.
It was so tiring to pretend.
A Fresh Start Page 29
