Paranoid

by Lisa Jackson

  Mercedes Jennings Pope had been hiding out in an upper story, this confirmed by Billy Dee Johnson, who’d been with her when people started yelling, “Cops! Run!” Mercedes had never liked Luke and had made no bones about it. Billy Dee had been his friend until a football “accident” in practice had ruined Billy Dee’s chances at a scholarship. Luke Hollander had been the kid who had tackled him, the reason he’d had to settle for community college.

  Annessa Bell Cooper had not been far from the spot where Luke had fallen. She’d sworn that she’d seen another flash, behind Rachel, that she thought someone else had killed Luke. Though Rachel had thought she’d shot her brother with the very weapon her brother had handed to her earlier in the day.

  That was the hard part to swallow.

  Why would he do that?

  She could have killed or wounded anyone with that weapon. And it just happened to be unregistered, not linked to any previous crime. Where had Luke gotten it? No one knew; he hadn’t confided in anyone, or anyone who would admit to it.

  Back then, there was a missing gun: the one that had killed Luke Hollander.

  But Rachel’s own testimony, that she’d fired while trying to leave the building, dragging Violet with her, had been the reason she’d been arrested. Freaked out at what she’d done, that she’d actually shot and wounded her brother, she’d dropped the pistol after firing.

  No other bullets had been found, no casings or shells.

  One shot had hit Luke and he’d eventually bled out, being declared DOA at the local clinic that served as the emergency room for the area back then. And the doctor in charge who signed the death certificate? Richard Moretti.

  The case had been far from open and shut. Rachel’s confession had nearly sealed her fate, but her friends’ conflicting testimony and her young age and a soft judge had changed things.

  And she’d never gotten over it; never really let it go.

  Now, there was another missing pistol: a gun registered to Leonard Sperry.

  He glanced at the clock again and put the file away. Moretti wasn’t calling him back. “Screw it.” It was time to take matters into his own hands.

  After shutting down his computer, he grabbed his wallet, badge, and sidearm.

  “I’m heading out again,” he told Voss, who was sitting at her desk sipping iced tea while tracking down and reviewing footage from security cameras belonging to businesses not far from the crime scene. “Gonna track down Moretti’s dad.”

  “Let me know how that goes. I’m here if you need me.”

  “I’ve got this.”

  She nodded. “Looks like it could be a long night, but I think footage from The Right Spot tavern shows a car like Nate Moretti’s parked in their lot until about eleven-thirty last night. A deputy is picking up a copy and taking it to the lab to enhance. Turns out Moretti was a regular, so I’ve got a call in to the bartender who was working last night to see if he was there. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  “Let’s hope. We could use a break.”

  The Right Spot was a dive located about three blocks east of St. Augustine’s, a local watering hole where Cade had spent more than one night after his divorce.

  She gave him the high sign and he made his way to his truck. No reason to take a city-issued vehicle—after his conversation with the doctor he planned on going home. Eventually. After checking in with Rachel and the kids. He knew they’d spent the day at home and just wanted to double-check on Harper, go see how she was doing, and to make sure Rachel was working to get the security system installed.

  But first things first: Richard Moretti.

  Sometime during the afternoon most of the fog had dissipated, though a fine layer of mist hung close to the river. He found his sunglasses in the truck’s console and slipped them onto his nose and drove into the direction of the lowering sun, toward Astoria and the hospital. He pulled into the parking garage to the area reserved for physicians and settled in to wait, but it didn’t take long. He recognized Moretti the minute the doctor stepped off the elevator and with remote key in hand unlocked the doors of a silver Audi. The car’s lights blinked.

  Cade got out of the pickup, slammed the door shut, and intercepted Moretti just before he reached his car.

  “Richard Moretti?” he asked.

  “Who are you?” Moretti was instantly wary. On guard. In khaki-colored slacks and a blue button-down, he was tall and slim, the resemblance to his son unmistakable. His dark hair was graying at the temples and wireless glasses sat upon an aquiline nose.

  Cade showed his badge. “Detective Cade Ryder, Edgewater Police.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Behind the clear lenses, his eyes narrowed. “You’re one of Charlie’s boys.” He wagged a finger. “Married to Ned Gaston’s daughter.”

  Cade didn’t bother to correct him. “I’m looking for your son,” he said. “Do you know where he is?”

  “Nate? At work, I suppose, or maybe on his way home.”

  “He didn’t show up today. Called in sick.”

  “Then at his house.”

  “Don’t think so. I went there earlier and no one was around. His car is missing.”

  “Then out of town.” Richard Moretti rolled his palms into the air. “I have no idea where he is, but maybe he decided to go camping, or on a trip, or whatever.”

  “But he would have told his employees. Instead, he left them a message that he was too ill to come in today.”

  “What?” Moretti pulled a face. “That doesn’t sound like him.”

  An older model Camaro sped around the end of the lot and barreled toward them, speeding toward the exit, music blasting from the open windows.

  Quickly Cade stepped closer to Moretti’s car, getting out of the Chevy’s path.

  Moretti made frantic pat-pat motions in the air, signaling the driver to slow down, but she didn’t see him, was too interested in lighting a cigarette, and then sped across a walkway, leaving a trail of exhaust in her wake. “What’s wrong with her?” Moretti said in disgust. “A health care worker at that!”

  “Know her?”

  Shaking his head, he said, “No. I’m only here a few days a week and it’s a big hospital, well, at least by our standards. But I can probably find out by the description of her car.” He scowled at the retreating sports car as it sped down the street and rolled to a near stop before the driver gunned it, squeezing into a free space in front of a minivan. “What the devil is she thinking? If she isn’t careful, she’s going to kill someone. Now”—he turned his attention back to Cade, some of his supercilious attitude dissipating—“let me see if I can get hold of Nate.” He slid a phone from his pocket, punched a preset number, and put the phone to his ear.

  Cade heard the phone ring, then be answered by the same recorded voice he’d listened to earlier. “Huh,” Richard said, then dialed again, and when someone answered said, “Hi, this is Nate’s father, Dr. Moretti. I’d like to speak to him.” A pause, then, “Well, when do you expect him in? . . . Yes, I know you’re getting ready to close . . . but you haven’t heard anything.... Yes, I’ll give Will a call.” He disconnected. “Maybe we should go out to his house,” he said, the lines across his forehead creasing more deeply. “I’ll call Will Hart on the way. He’s already gone home for the day.”

  “Do you have a way to get in?” Cade asked.

  “Yeah.” The doctor was nodding as he slid behind the wheel. “I know where he hides the spare.”

  Cade crossed the lot, climbed into his truck, and followed the Audi to Nate Moretti’s A-frame in the hills. The house and grounds looked as deserted as ever, and once his dad located Moretti’s key, hidden on a crossbeam of the small porch, they walked inside.

  “Nate?” Richard called, wasting no time as he walked through an open living room and kitchen, then straight to the downstairs bedroom. “Hey! What’s up?” But he was talking to open space. No one answered and the bed, sloppily made, was empty. The downstairs bath and extra bedroom were quiet, no one around. The upper
loft, with its steeply angled walls, was used as an office that stretched the length of the building, a window on each end.

  Nate Moretti was nowhere to be found.

  “Odd,” his father said, and tried texting. Without a word he walked through a door off the kitchen, down a hallway that was used as a laundry room, and directly into the garage.

  Which, of course, was empty.

  “He’s gone,” he said, stating the obvious. Then, after a thoughtful moment, he strode back through the house to the master bedroom, where he opened a storage closet that was filled with luggage—one complete set, other smaller duffels and bags. “It doesn’t look like anything’s missing . . . but he could have gone fishing. . . .” He stared into the crammed space for a second, then closed the doors. “If he were really sick, he would have called me.” Worry pulled at the corners of his eyes as they returned to the living area. “Let me call my wife,” he said, and before Cade could say anything, he’d punched in her number and she picked up.

  The conversation was short, the upshot being that she, too, had no idea where their son could be. As he slipped the phone back into his pocket, Cade asked, “What do you know about his relationship with Annessa Cooper?”

  “Annessa? The woman who was found yesterday? A classmate of my son’s, yes, but what relationship?” He appeared absolutely confused. “Was he in one? You mean romantically?” His forehead furrowed as he thought. “You’re saying that he and Annessa were seeing each other?” He thought about it and shook his head. “I, um, I suspected he might have a new girlfriend, but he didn’t say anything.” Then he sighed. “She was married, wasn’t she?”

  “Yeah. And now she’s dead.”

  “Oh. Wait. Nate had nothing to do with that. My son . . . he’s not a killer. Is that what you’re implying?”

  “They were supposed to meet. Last night.”

  “No . . .” He was shaking his head, denial his first instinct, but a wary light entered his eyes. “Oh, Christ.” And then when the situation gelled in his mind, his eyes sharpened. “Wait a second. What’re you getting at? What, exactly, are you saying, Detective?”

  “I think your son is missing because of last night. Either he was involved with Annessa Cooper’s homicide and left, or saw something that scared him and he took off, or, possibly, he’s a victim himself.”

  “What?” The doctor was shaken, his pallor washing white. “This can’t be,” he whispered, but was obviously piecing what he knew together, as he thought about it.

  “Come down to the station and tell me everything you know that could help in locating your son,” Cade suggested.

  “Fine,” he said. “I’ll be there in half an hour.”

  “Good. And bring your wife.” He left the house, climbed into his truck, and drove down the lane, checking in his rearview mirror to see Moretti’s Audi following. Moretti seemed to be talking, to no one in the car, probably calling his wife on a Bluetooth device connected to his phone.

  Unless Moretti actually knew where his son was and was warning him, but Cade didn’t think so; the man was cut off at the knees hearing that his boy was not only involved with a murder victim, but also missing. His phone rang on his way to Edgewater, and seeing it was Voss, he answered, picking it up from the cup holder where he’d tossed it.

  “Yeah?”

  “You on your way back?”

  “Should be there in less than fifteen. Something up?”

  “Possibly. I talked to the bartender at The Right Spot, and guess what? He remembers Nate as he’s a regular. Nate got caught in a conversation with a guy the barkeep didn’t recognize. Nate left, the guy finished his drink and took off. I’m checking the footage now and it’s interesting. Nate left the bar alone, left his car there—the time stamp says eleven forty-six—and when he came back, about an hour later, he wasn’t alone. A guy was walking close to him. And Nate didn’t get behind the wheel. His companion did. You gotta see this.”

  “Same guy?” Cade asked, and he felt that little sensation that maybe they were getting a break in the case.

  “Possibly. Not sure. Both were wearing baseball caps, but the bartender can’t or won’t say that it’s the same guy. He said that he thought the patron who was talking to Nate had been wearing jeans and a jacket and a baseball cap. The guy in the film is wearing a sweatshirt with a hood—a hoodie—though you can see the bill of a cap poking out from under the hood. Face in shadow, of course. I’ll have the lab enhance.”

  “Can we ID the guy who was talking to Nate? He’s got to be the last one to have seen him before he went missing.”

  “If he and our friend in the parking lot are one and the same. But no, not so far.”

  “No credit card receipt?”

  “Nope. Didn’t get that lucky. He paid with cash.”

  “Damn.” Frowning, he stared through the windshield and as he swept around a final corner, caught a glimpse of the waterfront and the town of Edgewater spread upon the Columbia’s shores.

  Ten minutes later he was inside the office and Voss was showing him the tape of Nate Moretti getting into the passenger side of his car, on her computer monitor. He did seem to stumble and nearly fall into the car, his companion helping him in and slamming the door shut before getting behind the wheel. Was Moretti being coerced? Ordered into the car and complying? Or was he not driving because he’d had too much to drink?

  “Bartender said Nate left at 11:45, which this tape confirms—see there, 11:46,” Voss said as they both eyed the grainy black-and-white footage. “But check this—these guys come back at 12:57. An hour and eleven minutes later. Nate should have been sobering up.”

  “Mmm. Unless they went somewhere else, drank more or got high. Who knows?”

  “Nate seems to lose his balance, the other guy catching him.”

  “Or forcing him into the car. Could have a weapon.”

  “The lost hour.” She replayed the tape on slow mo. Moretti was recognizable. The other guy, not so much. He was about the same size, slim enough, but his face was in shadow, hidden within the hood of his sweatshirt and the baseball cap.

  “So what happened? If Moretti was supposed to meet Annessa Cooper, why’s he with this guy? Did they kill her together? Is Moretti a victim? And who the hell is this guy?”

  Voss frowned and squinted at the screen. “Don’t know.”

  “Yet,” Cade said. “We’ll find him.”

  “Yeah, but will we find him alive, or strung up like his girlfriend?”

  Cade didn’t want to think too hard about the options.

  CHAPTER 32

  Sweat dripping from the tip of her nose, Kayleigh pushed harder, riding the stationary bike in the gym, pushing her way through a preprogrammed routine of hills and valleys, her legs beginning to ache after spending time working through a kickboxing drill and weight training before ending up here in a long row of bikes going nowhere. She should have swum laps, she thought, as she’d been a swimmer in college and always enjoyed the feel of cutting through the water, breathing regularly, away from all the worries of the world.

  But not today.

  Somehow the workout seemed to mimic her life: spinning her wheels and getting nowhere.

  She was listening to Axl Rose screaming near the end of “Sweet Child O’ Mine” when her phone cut in and she saw Cade’s number flash onto the screen. Her stupid heart leapt and she silently cursed herself as she answered.

  “Hey, what’s up?” she asked, breathing hard, the pounding beat of Guns N’ Roses suddenly silenced.

  “Thought I’d pull you in.”

  “On what?”

  “Nate Moretti’s missing. He’s—”

  “Annessa Cooper, your victim’s lover, yeah, I know.”

  “He’s missing. At least we think so.” Then he explained about Nate Moretti calling in sick and not being at home, not answering his phone.

  “You think he’s running?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Or ended up a victim, too. In the wrong
place at the wrong time.”

  “Again, possibly. I’m on my way to the station. To interview the father. He was also connected to the Luke Hollander homicide.”

  She made a deprecating noise. “You still trying to link the two? Connecting nonexistent dots?”

  “More like filling in very existent blanks.”

  “Okay, I’ll see you there.” She clicked off and stopped pedaling, and caught a disparaging glance from a toned forty-year-old guy on a nearby bike. Oh, get over your bad self, she thought, as she swiped her face with the towel draped around her neck.

  So cell phones were off limits in the gym, so what? Ignoring the pinched-faced woman in her perfectly matched workout wear, Kayleigh half jogged to the showers, where she stripped, stepped under the hot spray, turned the temperature to cold, then turned off the water. Seconds later she’d toweled off. She was dressed and out of the gym in less than five minutes from the time Cade’s call had come in. No makeup, wet hair starting to curl despite being swept back in a quick ponytail.

  Good enough.

  On her way to Edgewater, she thought about Nate Moretti being MIA.

  She’d seen the texts, knew he’d been planning to meet Annessa at the school.

  Had he bailed?

  Had something come up?

  Or had he made the tryst and been scared off?

  Or become another victim himself?

  “Time will tell,” she said aloud as she drove along the highway skirting the river. As she approached Edgewater, she saw the old cannery, a blackened building rising out of the mist that had settled over the Columbia, the decrepit old building where, Cade seemed to think, all the horror had started twenty years before.

  “Really?” she said aloud and turned her attention to the road again, where the semi she was following slowed as it entered the city limits. She peeled off at the next corner and wound her way through the business district and pulled into the small lot next to the police station.

  Inside she found Cade in an interview room with a man and a woman, both of whom looked tense and unhappy, but dressed as if they belonged to some country club set. He was slim and tanned with a full head of hair just starting to turn gray, she as trim as he, her red hair cut short and spiky, a few freckles visible, her eyes wide with worry, her lips trembling slightly.