Sight in the Dark

by A M Ialacci

  “Yes! Perfect!”

  She bowed and he returned the symbol of respect.

  Tiffany approached them, making faces at the mess they had made of the benches. “Cameron’s here. You can head back toward the office.”

  They found a young guy with a name badge that said Cameron in a tiny office with dingy walls, an old computer, and a whiteboard on the wall with a shift schedule. He was seated behind the desk and gestured for the two to sit in the folding chairs opposite him. The crusty black multi-line phone occasionally lit up but didn’t ring.

  “How can I help you?” Cameron asked, folding his hands, his eyes wide. He was nervous.

  Will introduced himself and Cleo and showed his badge to Cameron. “We are investigating a murder and have traced the murder weapon through the supplier to this store. I’d like to see if we might be able to trace this specific item to the person who purchased it,” Will explained.

  “That shouldn’t be too difficult, Officer Truman, unless they paid with cash, of course. I suppose you have a lot number from the supplier?”

  “This is the information they gave us.” Will handed Cameron a piece of paper.

  “All right, this is a start. Let me see what I can find.” Cameron brought the old computer to life, fans and motors buzzing into action. “Please be patient with me. This computer is ancient, and our inventory system isn’t very user friendly.”

  “Great,” Cleo mumbled under her breath, stomach still not quite right.

  After ten minutes of Cameron clicking away at the keys and the computer whirring at the work it was being asked to do, he said, “And the supplier told you the arrow was sold at our store?”

  “Yes, why?” Will sat up straight in his seat.

  “I’m afraid they must have been mistaken. I do not see that lot number or serial number in our past inventory at all,” Cameron said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “That is what the computer is telling me.”

  “Damn,” Will said. “All right, thank you for your time.” He stood and waited for Cleo to exit the office before him.

  “I just don’t get it,” Will said as he marched back through the store.

  “You were expecting some answers,” Cleo commented.

  “Yeah, I thought this was a breakthrough,” Will said, putting his hat back on. “Back to the drawing board, I guess.”

  They had reached the parking lot when a breathless Cameron shouted to them from the front door. “Officer Truman! Wait!”

  Will spun around. Cleo turned to see Cameron sprinting toward them.

  “I typed a number in wrong! We did sell it! Can you come back inside?”

  All three were walking so quickly they might as well have been jogging back to Cameron’s office.

  Once there, Will and Cleo stood while Cameron sat to look at the screen. “That arrow was part of a quiver that was sold late this summer. The name on the credit card used was Edward VanEckle.” Cameron looked up at Will and visibly paled. “He’s a VanEckle? Oh, Christ.”

  “Calm down, son. Keep this under your hat. You’ll be fine, I promise.” Will handed him his card and told him to call if he needed anything. “Can you print that out for us?”

  Cameron nodded, still looking ill. He handed Will the sheet of paper when the printer spat it out and remained seated, wringing his hands.

  “Thank you, Cameron,” Will said, and he led Cleo out of the store once more.

  “What the hell was that all about?” Cleo asked.

  “The damned curse. I told you the VanEckles were related to the first settlers.”

  “The ones who killed everyone else?”

  Will looked at Cleo and then nodded. “Some say the family has a history of taking a pound of flesh from the town every year to maintain their dominance. Of course, that’s never been proven…”

  “That’s what Cameron was afraid of—retribution.”

  “Sounds like it.”

  “I wonder if Nicholas should have been worried about that.”

  “Why?”

  Cleo sighed. “I didn’t mention this earlier, but I was almost run over by Vanessa VanEckle the day of the murder. And a young man in the passenger seat who I can only assume was her brother, this Edward character, made some rude comments about me and I flipped him off.”

  Will chuckled.

  “But he said something about a handyman totaling his car.”

  “You’re thinking it could have been Nicholas?” Will asked.

  “He referred to him as a fool, and I know how little the people in the town thought of him. And I’m pretty sure Vanessa mentioned it when we went to ask her about Travis’s alibi.”

  “Did she? Kind of a leap, but worth looking into now that we know it was Eddie’s arrow.”

  “Back to the mansion on River Road?” Cleo asked, climbing into the Mini.

  “You’d better believe it,” Will said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  River Road and the winding drive of the VanEckle estate looked much more sinister under overcast skies.

  “Does it ever snow before the Founders Day?” Cleo asked, leaning forward to look up through the windshield.

  “It’s pretty rare, but it has happened. Not quite cold enough for that yet, though.”

  Cleo parked the car and they walked up the sweeping steps yet again to the peach-colored manse. The servant opened the door within thirty seconds of their knock and they were ushered into the entryway.

  “Ms. VanEckle is not in,” he informed them.

  “It is actually young Mr. VanEckle that we are here to see this time, Stanley.”

  “Ah, yes. Of course. One moment.”

  Stanley ascended the winding staircase and was gone for several minutes. Eddie appeared at the top of the steps, looking wary.

  “Hey, Will.” He gave a half wave and took his time coming down the steps. When he reached the bottom, Will shook his hand.

  “How are you, Eddie?”

  “All right, I guess. What’s up?” he asked, crossing his arms.

  “Well, I suppose you’ve heard about Nicholas Stubbs.”

  “I have,” Eddie said.

  “I just have a few questions to ask you.”

  “Me? Why me?” The boy did not hide his emotions well. His eyes were wide and his face flushed, fingers spread as if ready to take flight.

  “Is there somewhere we can sit and talk?” Will asked.

  “Sure, over here.” Eddie led them to the neutral plush couches they had seen on their previous visit.

  “Do you hunt, Eddie?”

  “Sure. Everyone does around here.”

  “With a crossbow?”

  Eddie nodded. “One of the few things my father showed me how to do himself.”

  “I was sorry to hear about your dad,” Will said.

  “It’s all right. He wasn’t in great health.” The lines seemed rehearsed.

  “And where were you Friday night?”

  “I was with a few friends. We were hitting the town, as we do most nights.”

  “Those friends have names?”

  The blood drained from Eddie’s face, and his hands gripped his knees. “Uh, sure. There was a Spencer Tripp, Haywood Plimpton, and Kent Langdon. But to be honest, I’m not sure they were all there with me the whole time. There could have been others. I’m not sure…”

  Will smiled. “Must have been quite a night.”

  Eddie gave a weak smile in return. “Usually is.”

  “Do you have a crossbow currently?”

  “I do, but it went missing a week or so ago, during the charity dinner we held here in honor of my dad. I think one of those old buzzards wandered up to my room and ‘borrowed’ it.”

  “Did you report it stolen?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Show me how you discovered it was missing.”

  Eddie looked blankly at Will and then stood. “All right, follow me.”

  The three-person train went upstairs to Eddie�
��s room, which was about the square footage of Cleo’s main floor.

  “I came in here to look for something in my closet, opened the door, and— What the hell?”

  There, about a foot inside the closet was a crossbow.

  “Is that yours, Eddie?” Will asked.

  Eddie picked it up to inspect it. “Yeah, it sure is.”

  “Well, maybe ‘the old buzzard’ returned it,” Will suggested. “May I?”

  Eddie passed it over to Will, who wrapped an evidence bag around it before taking it. “What are those up there?” Will pointed to a box on the shelf of Eddie’s closet.

  “They look like night-vision goggles,” Eddie said, reaching for them. “But they aren’t mine. I don’t hunt at night. Only deer during the day.”

  “I’m confused, Eddie. If these aren’t yours, why are they here?” Will asked.

  “Search me!” Eddie said.

  “So, you don’t hunt raccoon, bobcat, or coyote at night?”

  “No, sir. I have other things to do at night,” he said, a rakish smile spreading across his face.

  “Mind if I borrow these, Eddie?”

  “Why?” Eddie’s smile vanished.

  “To be honest, we have to figure out why an arrow you bought wound up in Nicholas Stubbs’s stomach. We’re going to run some tests, if that’s all right with you,” Will said.

  “Do I need a lawyer?”

  “Not yet, son. You’re not being charged with anything. We’re just asking questions right now, okay?”

  Eddie nodded slowly. “All right then. I don’t have anything to hide.”

  Will handed Cleo an evidence bag, and Eddie handed her the night-vision goggles. “Can you write the boy a receipt for his things? And then we need to go,” he said.

  Cleo did as she was asked, and then they went out to the landing. Vanessa VanEckle had just walked in the door and looked up at them. “What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” she asked.

  “Eddie is letting us examine some of his equipment,” Will said, hustling down the steps, Cleo close behind.

  “I don’t think so,” Vanessa said, making a grab for the crossbow. Her gloved hand grabbed only air as Will yanked it out of her reach.

  “Not your call, Vanessa. He’s of age, he says it’s his property, and he’s given me permission to take it. Out of the way, please.”

  Vanessa glared up at Eddie. “You know what’s going to happen. How could you be so stupid, Eddie!”

  “He said he wasn’t charging me, Vanessa!”

  “Not yet, dumbass!” Vanessa charged up the steps toward her brother as Will and Cleo slipped out the front door. They could still hear the yelling after closing the doors to the Mini.

  “That was close,” Will said. “Another minute and they would have rescinded Eddie’s permission.”

  “Time to go!” Cleo agreed and didn’t hesitate to throw a bit of gravel in her retreat.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  “He’s been arrested, then?” Cleo sat in the chair Will had pulled out for her.

  “He has. We know it was his arrow, and that he had a weapon and night goggles in his possession.” Will turned on the monitor, leaning over Cleo. “The friends he said he was with do not remember him being there, although to be fair, they don’t remember much from the evening. And he had a motive.”

  “Something about a tree limb?” Cleo asked. She could smell his aftershave and was momentarily distracted.

  “Apparently, Nicholas was trimming a tree at the estate and asked Eddie to move his car several times. Eddie ignored the requests. Nicholas trimmed the tree and the limb fell on Eddie’s souped-up red Mustang. It was totaled and Nicholas was fired and never paid.” Will stood.

  “Poor Nicholas.”

  Will nodded and put a hand to her back briefly. “It seems like we have our man.”

  “Any injuries to his hands?”

  “He has a lengthy scratch on his right hand that he insists is from a shattered drinking glass.” Will traced a line on his own hand to illustrate. “We’re taking DNA anyway.”

  “Has he lawyered up?” Cleo asked.

  “Of course. But he’s told us he has something to share with us. Ready?”

  Will had set Cleo up at the same desk to watch the interview in the interrogation room. Eddie VanEckle sat in a chair, hands shackled through a stainless-steel loop on the table. He looked small and scared, quite unlike the arrogant kid who had called her a cow. A grim-faced attorney in a pinstripe suit was seated next to him, whispering last-minute instructions until Will entered the room and took the seat opposite.

  “Eddie, can I get you anything?”

  “No.”

  “All right, what do you have to tell me?”

  “I have an alibi,” Eddie said.

  “We’ve already checked that out, Eddie. Unfortunately, none of your buddies could say for sure that you were there.”

  “No, I have a real alibi.”

  “Oh?” Will leaned forward.

  Eddie looked at the attorney, who gave him a subtle nod. “Vanessa and I have a complicated sibling relationship.” He sighed. “I love her, but I hate her. She’s always told me what to do, and with no mom and a dad who was never there… She’s had a lot of control over my life. And now that my dad is dead, there’s no one to rein her in.”

  Will said nothing but nodded.

  “I wanted to teach her a lesson, I suppose, to get her off my back and her focus elsewhere.”

  “So you…” Will prompted.

  “So I asked around and met someone who could help me do that. Her name is Radhika and she lives in Riverside. She’s a hacker, and I was with her. All night.”

  “A hacker?” Will’s eyebrows shot up.

  “We were working to…sabotage my sister’s blog.” Eddie hung his head. “But you can’t tell her! You have to promise!”

  “I can’t promise you that, but I won’t offer it in conversation with her. That’s the best I can do,” Will said.

  Cleo’s phone chirped with a message. It was from Kiara.

  Look at this, it said with a link to a video.

  Cleo opened the link, and up came Vanessa’s blog. The latest post was a scathing condemnation of the Crimson Falls Police Department for detaining her brother and bringing him in on false charges. At the end of the post was a video of Eddie with his friends, supposedly from the night in question as evidenced by the time stamp.

  What the hell?

  Cleo was having difficulty paying attention to the live feed from the interview room and the video on her phone. Will needed to see this. Should she interrupt? Looking around, she noticed that no one was paying attention to her, and she could easily slip down the hallway and knock on the door where Will and Eddie were. She checked her peripheral vision one more time, then made a break for it.

  Will answered the door, probably ready to yell at a subordinate, and ended up coughing when he looked down at Cleo. His head turned in confusion. “What—”

  “You need to see this,” she said, dragging him into the hallway. “Shut the door behind you.”

  Holding her phone so Will could see, she pressed play on the video on Vanessa’s blog.

  “What the hell?” he said, scratching his head.

  “That’s exactly what I said,” Cleo said, hand on hip. “It seems as if Vanessa is calling for some heads to roll here in the department, most likely yours, because you’ve arrested her brother when this video clearly ‘proves’ his innocence.”

  “But how could he…?”

  “You heard him. He has a hacker friend, right? ‘Hacker Friend’ doctors a video to look like it was taken the night of the murder. Sends it to Vanessa knowing she will use her social media presence to put pressure on you to release him.”

  “But he’s just provided us with an alibi… Oh,” Will said.

  “Hacker Friend has provided him an out without him having to tell his sister what he was really doing.” Cleo waggled her eyebrows.

&n
bsp; “We need to meet this Radhika Gupta,” Will said.

  “And if she verifies his real story, you’ll need to release Eddie before this place becomes a madhouse with protesters,” Cleo warned.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Will checked the address Eddie had given him again. They were in the warehouse district of Riverside, but there weren’t any residential addresses in sight.

  “Why would he lie? It’s got to be here somewhere,” Cleo said.

  They both turned when they heard a whistle.

  “Over here.” A petite young woman waved them toward the back of the building behind them. She was at the top of four flights of steps, backlit by the door behind her.

  “Radhika Gupta?” Will asked, hand on his sidearm, the first time Cleo had ever seen him reach for it.

  “Yep,” she yelled. “Come on up!”

  Will and Cleo were both a bit winded when they reached her. She held the door open to her apartment, and in the light, they could see that she looked like a pretty normal young adult rather than the skilled threat to Internet sites and security that she was. Her short dark hair framed a pretty face with fine features, her golden skin turning dark brown in the shadows.

  No wonder Eddie was so invested in his pet project. Not only would he get to bring his sister down a peg, but it was an excellent opportunity to spend time with an intelligent and gorgeous young woman.

  Her apartment was a studio with a mattress and a cheap lamp on the floor. The mattress was mounded with clothing and a sleeping bag. In the small kitchenette, there were several plates and takeout containers stacked in the sink, with flies buzzing around. A stained single-cup coffee maker sat on the equally stained laminate countertop, and the small stove had a thin layer of dust on it. Luckily, the microwave door was closed, and whatever fresh hell was behind that door couldn’t be seen by the casual observer.

  In contrast, the back half of the apartment was neat and tidy, centered around a glass-top desk in front of a complicated set of brackets to hold the seven monitors there in place. There were two keyboards and two separate CPUs under the desk. All of the cords were tidily corralled and labeled with silicone bands, and one of the monitors showed the interior of the apartment itself. On a bookshelf, multiple drives were stored labeled with dates.