Denim Detective

by Adrianne Lee

  She felt a shiver down her spine, as if the spider had somehow stolen inside her clothes and crawled against her skin. She jerked toward the insect. It still hung in its web. She shuddered, feeling shivery all over. She hunkered down again, shoved the lid back on the box and replaced the box on the shelf. A metal creak behind her brought her lurching around.

  Too slow. Off balance.

  The shelf at her back, loaded with boxes, toppled straight at her.

  Chapter Sixteen

  A short while later, the sniper stood across the street from the office on Custer. Hugging the shadows. Watching for the next victim. Killing the day care woman had been daring and necessary, but not as much of a high as running down her sleazy son. That had been an adrenaline rush. Wiping out lowlifes always was. But face-to-face combat—that could be risky. Mrs. Carter’s feisty resistance had made it more so. She’d folded easily enough, though, faced with the pistol. She’d turned into a sorry, pathetic old hag begging for her life. Swearing she wouldn’t tell.

  She’d been right. She wouldn’t be telling anyone anything.

  She should have been the last loose thread.

  The last obstacle to the main target.

  But damn it all, now another nosy Parker threatened.

  Another squealer that had to be silenced.

  Too bad the killing did nothing to lessen or assuage the rage. It only increased the need to make Beau Shanahan pay.

  Had he found his precious Deedra yet?

  Would she be merely stunned? Critically injured? Crippled? Bleeding internally?

  Or had the heavy metal shelf struck a fatal blow?

  Whichever, Beau Shanahan would soon know the cost of what he’d done, would soon reap the devastation his thoughtless orders had sown.

  Maybe watching him implode will douse these flames of hatred and bring closure for me and my family.

  A form appeared in the office window grabbing the killer’s full attention. Ah, there she was. As per her weekly routine, she’d closed at noon today, but she hadn’t gone home. She’d retreated into the private back room. Her workout area.

  The woman in question stood spread-legged, lifting miniweights to her chest in repetitive jerks. Obsessed bitch ought to see a therapist about her compulsion to exercise. Or couldn’t she admit to herself that she was as neurotic as some of her patients?

  Hadn’t planned on killing her. Not here. Not today. But she’d discovered Deedra’s tapes were missing. Had been trying to reach the sheriff. She had to be stopped now, before she recalled who had access to her locked cabinet. But there wasn’t time to run home for the silencer, and a normal gunshot in this part of town would draw a crowd. No, she wouldn’t die from a bullet. But how?

  Watching the muscles flex in the shrink’s upper arms, the killer considered the best approach. This was no easy prey. No slack-bodied hag who would fold at the sight of a weapon. No grief-stricken mother distracted by thoughts of her missing child.

  She would be leery. On guard. Best to disarm her emotionally. First by this surprise visit. Second by asking her for something she’d need to go after, that would cause her to turn her back. And third by catching her from behind.

  Yeah. That was it. Make it look like an accident. Like she’d tripped and fallen into the shaft of her heavy metal workout bench and cracked open her head.

  Beau might think it was murder. Might even know it. But he wouldn’t be able to prove it.

  Grinning, the killer hurried to the office. The door was unlocked. No one locked their doors in Buffalo Falls. The killer slipped into the empty reception area. The back portion of the building was divided into two rooms. The doctor’s office and her exercise space.

  The predator listened to its prey, huffing and puffing, working off imagined fat. Imagined cellulite. The killer crept across the reception area. The door swung easily inward. “Dr. Warren, I was hoping to catch you here.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  By the time Beau finished returning phone calls, his gut was in a knot. It hadn’t been enough for the evil bitch to steal their daughter. No, she had to take the tapes of Deedra’s personal conversations with her psychologist. Had to invade Dee’s privacy, violate her most intimate feelings, denigrate her grief. He felt sickened. Infuriated. If the sniper had stood before him at that moment, he would have killed her with his bare hands.

  He shoved off from his desk and stalked to the coatrack for his hat, all but choking on impotent rage. Dee! Oh, God, how could he tell her? Hell, did he have to tell her? He blew out a hard breath. He’d promised there would be no more secrets between them. And he’d broken too many promises in the past. If he kept it up, even for her own good, they wouldn’t survive whatever new hell loomed on the horizon.

  Callie. His little girl’s image froze his hand on the knob, and the strangling lump in his throat wrenched tighter. He groaned and yanked open the door of his private office. He had to keep moving or the agony of wondering where his little girl was would kill him, would stop his heart dead in his chest.

  The booking area was a wasteland of unpeopled desks and deserted workstations. Neither of his deputies had returned, and Luanne seemed to have left for the day. “Deedra?”

  She didn’t answer. She wasn’t impatiently pacing the precinct waiting area. Had she gone out to wait in the car? He couldn’t picture her being comfortable on the street, not in this heat, not exposed as that would make her to the prying eyes of curious townsfolk…or to the sniper.

  He checked, anyway.

  Late-afternoon sun bore down, glaring off windshields and into his eyes. His car still nudged the curb. He had to walk right up to the passenger door to determine no one sat inside. Worry and heat brought moisture to his skin. He scanned the street in both directions, wiping a trickle of sweat from his temple. No sign of her.

  No sign of her. The fear he’d lived with the two months after she’d run away seized him, tore through his belly like razor-edged spurs slicing open scabbed-over wounds. Had she run away again? Left him to face this hell alone? No. He’d laid his heart open to her. He’d told her it would kill him if he lost her. He’d seen the aching pain his admission had caused her and had known in that moment that she would never run out on him like that again.

  Especially not now. Not when Callie might be alive.

  But if she hadn’t taken off, then where the hell was she? And why hadn’t she let him know where she was going? A horrible thought struck him, and his skin grew cold beneath the staggering sun. Maybe she hadn’t been able to tell him. Maybe leaving hadn’t been her idea.

  Cursing under his breath, he hurried into the precinct and began searching for something—a note, anything—that would give him a clue to her whereabouts. He checked Luanne’s desk first. Then Nora Lee’s and finally Heck’s. Nothing. Damn it.

  A noise from the back hall pulled him around. Oh, God. Of course, she was in the ladies’ room. He slumped against Heck’s desk and released a heavy sigh. Fear fell from him like shed weight, and Beau chuckled at himself. Idiot. Should have checked there first thing. He crossed to the water dispenser, filled a paper container and drank.

  Nora Lee came through the front door. He’d sent her to Butte to find out what the crime scene investigators had turned up at Nell Carter’s house. To check on autopsy results. He asked, “Anything we didn’t already know?”

  She dragged her Stetson from her head, ice-blond hair sticking up in spikes, and wiped at her forehead. Her faded-blue eyes were bright and her cheeks had the rosy glow of someone standing too long in the sun or someone who’d been strenuously exerting herself. “It was like you figured. A forty-five caliber shot to the heart at close range. Apparently, Mrs. Carter put up a struggle, but there was no tissue under her nails. Guess they deduced the struggle from blood spatter, scuff marks on the floor and that overturned lamp. They’re still checking her clothing for hair and fibers and latents.”

  Beau nodded, disappointed, his patience near snapping. He hated biding his time, wai
ting for answers that would give them something to work with, somewhere to start. Some way to find his daughter. “What about Callie’s dress? Have we heard anything on that yet?”

  “No. I called about it on my way back here. They’re still processing it.”

  “They call this a rush?”

  “Believe me, Sheriff, they know what’s at stake.”

  She said the last with so much sympathy, his breath hitched and his response came out gruff. “Yeah, I know.”

  Heck hustled into the building. He headed straight into the men’s room without greeting either of them. Beau could hear the water running, and his mind jerked back to Deedra. She should have been done in the bathroom by now. What was taking her so long? Some complication related to her health problem? Alarm sent him running to the back hall.

  Two rest rooms stood at the head of the hall across from each other, the basement stairwell halfway down and an exit door at the end. He thumped the ladies’ room door. “Deedra?”

  No answer. His pulse kicked a notch higher. “Deedra? Are you okay?”

  He banged the door open. The tinny stench of rusty water and aged pipes swept out, but the room—closet-size, only large enough for a sink and toilet—was empty.

  Nora Lee came up behind him. “Sheriff, what’s wrong.”

  “Deedra. She was waiting for me with Luanne an hour ago. But when I came out of my office, she was gone.”

  “You think they went somewhere together?”

  “No…” Why would she? Where would she? “I…I don’t know.”

  “You want me to call Luanne?”

  Heck came out of the men’s room looking relieved and catching the tail end of their conversation. “I passed Luanne on my way back into town. She looked to be headin’ home.”

  “Was Deedra with her?” Beau asked.

  Heck shook his head. “Far as I could see she was alone in her pickup.”

  “Maybe Ms. Shanahan told Luanne where she was going,” Nora Lee said. “I’ll phone her and ask.”

  Before she took a single step, Heck pointed at something behind them. “Hey, who left that open?”

  Beau and Nora Lee jerked around. The exit to the alley was always kept shut, locked from the inside. Now it stood slightly ajar.

  Nora Lee lifted puzzled blue eyes at Beau. “Would Ms. Shanahan use this exit?”

  Beau didn’t even want to guess the reason Deedra would have for that. He strove to hide the depth of his distress from his deputies with a shrug. “Why would she?”

  Nora Lee shook her head. “I don’t know. I’m just asking.”

  Heck strode past the stairwell to the back exit. He kicked the door wider and peered outside. “Nobody out here ’cept a coupla rats chawing down in the garbage cans.”

  He came back in and pulled the door tight. The lock engaged with a click.

  Heck’s face was flushed. “You worried Ms. Shanahan’s gone off on—” He broke off, rethinking his callous question. “That maybe she mighta had another…episode like the other day?”

  “No,” Beau barked the word, chopping it off the way he’d like to chop off his mounting worry.

  Heck’s neck reddened as if Beau had chopped it instead of his word. He pointed toward the booking area. “I got some reports to finish up.”

  Beau nodded and stared at his feet, grappling with his disquiet.

  “I’ll call Luanne,” Nora Lee said.

  “Okay.” He hit the hall switch, dousing the overhead light, but a dim glow of yellow still warmed the end of the corridor near the stairwell. Frowning, he stepped to the landing and glanced down. The light shone from below. The nape of his neck prickled.

  “Luanne’s not home yet.”

  Nora Lee’s approach startled Beau. He glanced over his shoulder at her. “Did the janitor forget to turn off that light again?”

  “He hasn’t been here this week.” She was frowning. “You think Ms. Shanahan’s down there?”

  He called down, “Deedra?”

  Silence wrapped them, stirring a niggling unease in Beau’s belly and along his nerves. In low tones he told Nora Lee to get Heck and cover his back. He drew his gun from his holster and started down. It felt like what he imagined it would feel like to descend into hell: hot…hotter…hottest. Until the air seemed to hold no oxygen.

  Boiling in summer, freezing in winter. That could not be good for the papers stored down here, he thought abstractly. If his life ever returned to normal, he would check into correcting that before all of the case files were lost forever.

  But first things first.

  “Deedra?” His voice echoed back at him, wrapping him with unease. He moved with caution. Each tread creaked beneath his weight. At the bottom of the stairs, he found the janitor’s door closed and locked. He drew a lungful of the heavy air. Readied his gun. Schooled his muscles. “Whoever you are, you’re cornered. So, come on out.”

  No response.

  He charged the evidence room. The door hung open. Horror ripped into him and he swore. Two of the center shelves had toppled like tipped dominoes against each other and into an end wall. Boxes had dumped, papers flown everywhere as though a minitornado had blown through.

  Heck clambered down the stairs, then stopped dead in his tracks at the doorway. “Holy crap. What a frickin’ mess. How the blazes did this happen?”

  “Unless we had an earthquake I didn’t feel, I’d say someone did this on purpose.”

  “What purpose would that be?” Heck scratched his head. “’Cept to cause us one helluva mess to pick up.”

  “And who?” Beau caught the keys dangling in the lock and pulled them free. Deedra? He jerked back to the wrecked room. His heart thundered. His gut roiled.

  Heck said, “Luanne must’ve given the key to someone. That there is her set.”

  A low moan issued from somewhere within the pile of rumble. Beau jolted. “Dee! Nora Lee, get Dr. Haynes! Now!”

  Fear for his wife broke free. What would Deedra want to see in this room? Her case file? But why? He wanted to tear through the debris, rip away the twisted metal and disgorged boxes, but, terrified he’d hurt her more than she might already be, Beau moved with care. He instructed Heck to do the same.

  Slowly, torturously, they cleared a path. Beau kept calling her name, speaking to her, reassuring her that he was coming. Deedra didn’t answer. She didn’t moan again. Fear tumbled inside him. Then he saw a patch of blue. The blouse she’d been wearing.

  Beau grabbed one edge of the first shelf, shouting at Heck. “Help me get this off her!”

  They levered it up and away from Deedra. Beau dropped to his knees beside her prone body.

  “Geeze.” Heck’s foot came down hard on the concrete flooring. “Frickin’ black widder. It didn’t bite Ms. Shanahan, did it?”

  Had it? Fear coiled in Beau’s belly. He lifted a box from her abdomen. Blood leaked from her forehead, the way it had when she’d been injured in the accident with Callie. Her face was ashen. Her pulse weak. The air was more stagnant here than in the stairwell area. Too little oxygen. And she was too still.

  His mind filled with visions of nearly losing her after the Jeep wreck. With the agony he’d felt during those long days and nights pacing the hospital corridors. With all the ugly, unimaginable scenarios he’d conjured of where she was and what might have happened to her during her two-month absence.

  This morning Dee had said the killer wanted to bring him to his knees. He’d said the only thing that could do that was losing her.

  Beau’s heart cried.

  BEAU PACED THE CORRIDORS of the hospital, wearing grooves into the same tiles he’d paced six months ago, waiting for word on Dee’s condition. Then, and now, the waiting was interminable. Sean and Pilar and even Cassidy had joined him, bringing him coffee, offering reassurances, praying. None of it eased the fear in his gut.

  All he knew was that the spider hadn’t bitten her and that she was unconscious. Tests. They were running tests. His life seemed one big mass of t
ests lately. Results. That’s what he needed. Positive results. For Deedra. For Callie. For himself.

  “What’s taking so long?” Beau asked no one in particular.

  Cassidy had been standing to one side, still dressed in her nurse’s uniform. “Let me see what I can find out.”

  She disappeared into the examination room. The next five minutes felt like five hours. Cassidy returned, her expression so gentle Beau’s muscles went taut, the flesh on his face tightened, the moisture in his mouth vanished. His breath jammed. So great was his fear, he couldn’t speak. Couldn’t ask the question.

  Sean asked it for him. “Is she going to be okay?”

  “She’ll be fine. She’s a bit dehydrated. Has a slight concussion. Nothing as serious as six months ago. But the doctor wants to keep her overnight for observation.”

  Doctors always wanted to keep patients overnight. That didn’t bother Beau. Deedra’s female problems of late had his imagination tripping over worries of internal bleeding, of hemorrhaging. Silently he pleaded for Cassidy to understand without his having to say it. “I lifted a heavy box from her stomach. I…I think it struck her abdomen when it fell.”

  To his relief Cassidy caught the gist of his fears. She shook her head, her long braid slapping her shoulders. “No internal bleeding. She has some cuts and contusions, one really nasty bruise on the area near her left hipbone. The doctor said something heavy likely struck her there, so I’d guess that’s probably where the box impacted. It will be sore for a few days, but nothing permanent, nothing to worry you.”

  Nothing to worry him? He’d believe that when he saw her with his own eyes. “Is she conscious? Can I see her?”

  DEEDRA ACHED as if a semi-truck had plowed into her. Her head, her hip. Her everything. Oddly, though, not her back, for once. What the hell had happened? She touched a hand to her forehead, felt a bandage, and it all came back. The scuff of a footstep. The shelves tipping over, boxes falling, all of it landing on her. Beau’s voice sifting through the black fog.