This short article didn’t exactly delve deeply, though. Primarily focused on the bullying aspect, it shouldn’t have taken her twenty minutes to write. Although she kept asking herself why she hadn’t assigned the blasted event and article to someone else.
What else could she do to distract herself? Compile obituaries?
She stifled a groan, finding that once again her fingers had slowed to a stop on the keyboard. With the next blink, she saw Curt Steagall sprawled, so hideously dead, an arm draped over a strand of barbed wire. And then Grant, driving alone on an empty rural road. Or whatever he was doing. He ought to be sitting at headquarters coordinating the search, but already she knew him better than that.
The squeak of a chair jolted her back to the here and now. She hoped she’d hidden her betraying jerk.
“Taking a smoke break,” Paul Lawseth said. He didn’t wait for permission, starting toward the back door leading to the alley.
Tall and lanky, his hairline receding, he’d turned fifty-six years old not a month ago. When he was here at the office, he took at least a couple of smoke breaks an hour. Except for the stench of tobacco he’d waft on his return, she didn’t mind. He kept his breaks short, five to ten minutes at most. As long as he continued to willingly accept whatever assignments she gave him and turn in competent stories on time, his coming and goings were a non-issue for her. If his frequent, desperate need for a cigarette ever became a problem…that was Dad’s problem, not hers. She’d be gone by then. Surely she would.
So why was she having trouble tuning into her little fantasy of loading her stuff in the trunk of her car and driving out of town? Mountain pass, here she came. She’d dreamed every minute of the trip, up to walking into her own apartment. Right now…she couldn’t pull it up. Instead, she saw Grant, smiling crookedly at her, gray eyes glinting from beneath those heavy lids. Damn it.
In a very distant part of her mind, she heard the heavy steel door in back open, followed by Paul exclaiming, obviously startled. But then he said, “You’ll need to go around—”
The door closing cut off the rest of his instructions. But there’d been a peculiar sound, a sort of…gurgle. Gasp. Something. Probably in her imagination, or noise carrying from the cross street, or the hinges needed oil, or…
What had she heard? Without realizing, Cassie had swiveled her desk chair to stare at the short hall leading to the back door. Helen was in front, on the phone, probably not even having noticed Paul’s departure. No one else was here.
Uneasiness pushed Cassie to her feet. It wouldn’t hurt to glance out.
The door had closed behind Paul; it did that on its own, unless you blocked it. Feeling oddly tentative, she almost tiptoed down the short hall past a supply closet and a restroom and closed her hand around the doorknob. She was going to feel silly when she was greeted by a cloud of tobacco smoke and Paul’s surprise. She hesitated...and opened it.
Paul lay sprawled below, as if he’d fallen forward from the concrete pad to the asphalt of the alley. Cassie screamed, or at least she thought she did. She also looked wildly up and down the alley, which appeared completely deserted. Someone might be able to hunker down behind the Dumpster, but – she wasn’t going to be the one to go looking.
Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a small white plastic bag hanging from the doorknob on the outside.
“What is it?” Helen, behind her.
“Call 911.” Cassie stepped gingerly off the concrete pad to one side of Paul.
Helen cried out.
From this angle, Cassie could see his face, and his wide, shocked, dead eyes. A pool of blood glistened on the dirty asphalt surface. Her limited first aid knowledge wouldn’t serve any purpose today.
When she could make herself look away, she found herself alone again. Helen had vanished back inside. In fact, Cassie heard her voice.
She gingerly retreated into the hall herself, and lifted that small bag from the doorknob. ‘CASSIE’ was scrawled in bold red letters across the side. She touched one of them. The red didn’t smear, so…permanent marker. Turning the bag, she saw that it had originally come from the pharmacy two blocks away.
“Oh, Paul.” He must have startled the killer who was dropping this off, and who couldn’t afford to allow a witness to live.
A part of her brain was thinking coolly. The rest was scrabbling desperately for this not to have happened. Paul Lawseth was a nice man, married with two daughters in their twenties or thirties. Telling his wife…
If only she’d made conversation, delayed him by a minute. Thirty seconds.
Shaking, angry, sick, she lifted the nearly weightless bag. Should she open it, or wait for police response? No, she had to know, and it wasn’t as if they had high level forensics at either the police station or the sheriff’s department, anyway.
And it would be an FHPD officer who’d be responding. She could only hope there wouldn’t be some kind of territorial spat about this.
Sucking in a deep breath, she carefully separated the edges and looked inside. First she saw a small, folded piece of paper. Not wanting to touch anything, she jiggled the small sack until she could see a single, typed line on the paper. Below it…was a bullet. Distorted and coated in rust red.
Blood.
More blood. She shuddered, and her stomach roiled. In the distance, she heard a siren. No, two. Of course they’d have sent an ambulance.
She made herself read the single line on the torn half of a sheet of paper. No handwriting; this came from a printer.
Since they can’t find their asses from a hole in the ground.
In place of a signature, a sticker with a smiley face.
*****
The graying uniformed police officer who responded took one look at the body, and retreated to his car to use his radio.
The paramedics were the next to arrive. Still hovering in the open doorway, feeling some obligation to guard Paul’s body, Cassie watched one of them examine him and then rise, shaking her head.
A plainclothes officer used his unmarked car to block the other end of the alley. Cassie judged him to be near retirement age. Stocky, with the kind of belly men seemed prone to, he was almost completely bald. He’d shaved what little hair was left.
She led him to the conference room, where they sat across the table from each other.
After introducing himself as Detective Oakes, he asked, “You that little gal who’s filling in for her daddy here?”
Almost choking on the condescension, Cassie opened her mouth to fire back, but she couldn’t deny she was a gal, and little, and filling in for her daddy, too. She was torn between believing Detective Oakes really disdained women, and suspecting this was his way of establishing authority. Put down the person you’re going to interview. It might work for some people. She wasn’t one of them. Still, she let it slide, saying only, “I’m currently the managing editor in my father’s place, yes.”
She told him Paul’s death had to do with the two, or now maybe three, killings being investigated by the sheriff’s department.
His eyebrows climbed. “And you know this how?”
“Because of what was left on the doorknob.” She pushed the small bag across the table.
He started thrusting his meaty fingers in to grasp the note.
She snapped, “Don’t touch!”
He shot her a look of dislike, but withdrew his hand. Like her, he had to tip the bag until he could see the bullet and then read the note. “Don’t see what makes you so sure there’s any connection.”
He wouldn’t have been told about the balloons, she realized. “Call Sheriff Holcomb or Detective Dawson.”
Oakes couldn’t seem to understand why she’d gone to the back door. They went over it half a dozen times. No, she couldn’t be sure what the odd sound had been, but now assumed it had been a death gasp. She pointed out that she’d have checked out back in ten or fifteen minutes if Paul hadn’t reappeared, anyway. Since whoever had stabbed or shot him had already fl
ed, her getting there quickly hadn’t made any difference that she could see. Unless she’d saved someone coming down the alley for innocent reasons, or glancing down it, from finding a murder victim.
“Now, we can’t jump to conclusions,” Detective Oakes chided her. “We don’t know yet what killed him.”
“You think he stabbed himself?”
“He could have met with an accident.”
She’d have given a lot to be sitting across this table from Detective Dawson right now instead. Or, better yet, Grant.
She stayed where she was after he left the room to interview Helen. That’s the word he used. Interview. A woman who’d taken one peek and called 911.
He hadn’t paid attention when Cassie grabbed her phone on the way by her desk. Now she called Grant, waiting tensely through several rings.
Before she worked herself up to being scared again, he answered, “Cassie?”
“One of my reporters was murdered on the back doorstep.”
“What?”
She bit her lip, hard. “You heard me.”
“Damn. Okay. Tell me what happened.”
Appreciating his willingness to listen, she described how fast it had happened, and then told him about the bag hanging from the outside knob. “It’s holding a dented bullet that looks like it’s covered in dried blood. And a note.” Fortunately, she’d memorized it.
When she told him Detective Oakes had taken the bag and was thus far the primary – only? – investigator assigned to Paul’s murder, Grant snarled a string of obscenities.
“You know him?”
“Unfortunately,” he said tersely. “Damn. We’ll have to extract the bullet from them.”
“He started to grab the note bare-handed. He looked really annoyed when I stopped him. Since the killer has been careful so far, I don’t suppose it matters. Still…”
He muttered something she couldn’t quite make out.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“Unfortunately, I’m on horseback in the back of beyond, trying to find one of the last couple of cops we haven’t yet tracked down. This guy boards a horse that he took out for a ride.”
Envisioning the bullet, she asked, “Can you give me a name?”
“Not until I know for sure.”
His grimness told her he did know. He just hadn’t found the body yet.
“Are you alone?” She didn’t like the idea of Grant riding out in lonely country with night approaching, expecting to find a corpse.
“Yeah, but you’ve just received proof the killer isn’t out here,” he said wryly. “He had time to find his bullet, drive back to town, probably take a nice warm shower, get a bite to eat, and drop off his latest present to you.”
And kill a man, only because he’d happened to get in the way.
“I wish—” She stopped herself.
“What do you wish, Cassie?”
“That I’d delayed Paul. Or hurried when I heard him talking to someone.”
“I’m happier than I can say that you didn’t rush back there. If you had, you’d be dead, too.”
“I might have seen him running away.”
“Maybe.” He sighed. “I’d still rather you don’t ever set eyes on this guy.”
Given how small a town this was, the chances were really good she already had, but she didn’t remind him of that. Instead, she said only, “Be careful.”
“I’m sorry I’m not there with you.”
He sounded tender, but had ignored what she’d said about being careful. Given his job – multiply that to jobs, she realized with disquiet, past and present – that probably wasn’t a promise he could ever make.
She should say goodbye, but she was having trouble letting this connection go. No, wait – he hadn’t made a sound in ages. Had the call already been dropped?
But suddenly he said, “Gotta go”, voice flat, hard, and she knew. He’d found what he was looking for.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Grant regretted not bringing a whole lot more with him, starting with portable lights and a thermos of hot coffee. Because damn, it was cold out here when you weren’t moving. And when you were. The only way he could keep his joints flexible was to pace, do stretches, jumping jacks, jog in place. He just hadn’t anticipated having to wait quite so long for help to arrive.
The temp had dropped rapidly after the sun went down. Twilight had come and gone, and now the moon was rising, turning the curves of Desperation Creek silver against the dark backdrop. Given the abundant local wildlife, he’d had no choice but to stay to guard the body. Already he’d heard rustling once and turned to see a pair of glowing eyes in the dark. A coyote, at a guess, scenting blood.
The OSP investigative support unit would have to find their own way here. The only positive was that he’d completed at least two-thirds of the loop before he found Chad Norman, which meant help would arrive a lot faster than it had taken him to get here.
He hoped like hell that this time the killer had left behind some microscopic bit of evidence pointing to him, but the fact that the body half lay in the creek wouldn’t help. Grant’s guess was that he’d toppled there from his saddle. The cold, rippling water was probably carrying any evidence away, along with the blood. Having Chad’s dead eyes staring up at him from beneath the surface bothered Grant in a way a more gruesome scene didn’t. He’d wanted to take a few pictures with his phone, then pull Chad all the way onto the bank, but of course he couldn’t do that. The one blessing of darkness was that he mostly didn’t have to see the face anymore.
The irony of finding a man shot dead at Desperation Creek didn’t escape Grant.
He kept brooding. If the killer hadn’t made a mistake, the body count had risen by two today and he hadn’t learned anything meaningful to the investigation. He’d already known this monster had a massive ego, and liked the spotlight.
No, Grant corrected himself; he had learned what tied the victims together. Given three victims plus an extra, and a killer taunting him, he needed to bring the FBI in. Not that he had the usual small town cop’s reluctance to work with the feds. He only wished he thought they could help. This killer was moving fast. A profile was sometimes useful, but in this case, Grant had come up with one on his own: male, age 34-37, likely grew up in a particular rural county in eastern Oregon, certainly attended high school there. And played football. Or didn’t, for a reason he bitterly resented.
That he hadn’t hesitated to kill a man he had nothing against, just because the guy had surprised him at the wrong moment, argued that this killer was a genuine sociopath. And yet, logic said he was acting on long-held resentment.
Maybe that profile could tell them why he hated his three planned victims so much – or whether he actually did. Grant had to wonder whether teenage bitterness was only an excuse for a bout of killing. He’d lay money that Curt Steagall hadn’t been this killer’s first victim – or probably his second or fourth or fifth. He’d practiced his hobby elsewhere.
Grant had entered the first two murders in ViCAP, but the damn balloons, the most obviously distinctive part of these crimes, hadn’t popped up from murders committed elsewhere. Death by sniper’s bullet turned out not to limit the field as much as he’d have liked. God knows the military had trained plenty of guys who could shoot from five hundred yards out, some more.
His mind jumped to one of his obsessive worries. Why had this nutcase chosen to talk to Cassie? Purely because she was managing editor and served his purpose? Because he delighted in her name, Cassandra who would never be believed? Or did he remember her from those long ago days, which might make her part of his plan?
Today a man had been murdered maybe twenty feet from her, and the message left behind had her name on it. Grant felt seriously crazed thinking about it. What if she’d walked out with Lawseth, wanting to discuss an assignment with him? What if she’d interpreted what she heard in an instant and gotten that door open too soon?
He couldn’t deal with thinking about her
dead, all that fierce intelligence and wicked humor and unexpected compassion just gone. This ache overrode even his current misery. He knew one thing: it might not be smart, but he had to see her tonight.
The buzz of an ATV heralded his first support. Thank God. He turned on the flashlight and waved it even as he stamped his feet a few more times. His legs, clad only in uniform pants, had gone numb first, and his feet were halfway there. The pair of horses snorted and sidled as far as their reins would allow when the small headlights picked them out. The killer had been thoughtful enough to tie Norman’s Quarter Horse to a branch of a scrubby cottonwood along the bank. Shame from the horse’s point of view, of course, because otherwise he could have trotted straight home to his warm stall and a bucket of mash.
Of course, if the horse had appeared at the stable riderless, the body would have been found a lot sooner. The killer might not have been able to accomplish the rest of his plans for the afternoon.
A small figure climbed off the back of the ATV, a big man off the front. Grant didn’t want to blind them by shining the flashlight in their faces, so he walked to meet them.
“Jed,” he said in relief. “Mrs. Brown. You don’t need to see this.”
“Don’t want to,” she returned briskly, and he could see that she was being careful to look only at his face. “I came to take Officer Norman’s horse back. Yours, too, if you can hitch a ride.”
Realizing he and his feet had lost touch altogether, he said, “Tell you the truth, I may ride back with you. Detective Dawson is better dressed for this cold than I am.”
“The crime scene folks are right behind us. I said I’d light up a place for the helicopter to land.”
Grant pointed one out, just as Jed turned his head. “I think I hear it.”
“That was fast.”
“They’d been out in Wheeler County—” He jogged away from the trees hugging the bank of the creek to sweep his flashlight over a reasonably bare, almost flat spot.
Grant followed to make sure he knew about today’s victim as well as the note and the bullet, but Cassie had called him, too.
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