Home Deadly Home

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Dust puffed under his footsteps. He stayed aware of his team, hating their vulnerability. He’d argued enough times. Patrolling this way felt suicidal.

  The crack of a gunshot had him diving for cover in one of those doorways. Christ – one of his men lay still in the street. Where were the others? Flick of black off to his left. Hem of the burqa. Bad call. His fault.

  Something bumped across the street to stop in the middle of the cluster of men covering their fallen teammate.

  “Bomb!”

  He heard his own shout as he opened his eyes to a dimly lit room.

  “Grant.” A hand caressed his cheek. “You’re okay. It’s the phone.”

  Cassie. Her glorious breasts swayed as she sat up, her worried gaze on him.

  His eyes still stung. He hated feeling exposed.

  The phone buzzed from somewhere on the floor.

  Grant shook his head, trying to rattle thoughts into place. “That’s yours.”

  “I know.”

  Buzz.

  She was climbing out of bed on the far side, but he reached down with one long arm and snagged her jeans. “Here.”

  As he handed the phone to her, he saw the number. Unfamiliar area code. That wasn’t good. She looked up and met his eyes, and he saw the same tension he felt. Unless this was the cell number for the caretaker she’d found for her dad tonight…

  Cassie cleared sleep from her throat. “Hello?”

  Still more befuddled than he liked, Grant flicked a glance at the digital clock. 2:18.

  An angry, metallic voice burst from the phone. Grant could just hear it.

  “You know Holcomb has had every woman in town, don’t you? Does he even remember your name? If I were you, I’d be feeling a little slimy right now.”

  Grant reared up. Cassie wouldn’t believe that shit, would she?

  If so, she brushed it aside. She did grab a handful of bedding and pulled it up to cover her breasts. “You’ve been watching me,” she said with astonishing poise.

  “When I’m not busy elsewhere.” There was a peculiar, snapping sound that Grant couldn’t label. “Tell me, do you have any shred of journalistic integrity left?”

  “My integrity is as unshakeable as ever. Who are you to question anybody’s?”

  Grant made a vehement gesture. Dial it down. Her mouth set mutinously, but then she nodded.

  “I keep my promises.”

  “What promises are those?” Cassie’s gaze never left Grant’s.

  “To take care of everyone on my list.” His laugh made her think of acid.

  “What did people do to be added to your list?”

  “Oh, they know,” he snarled. “Even the little princess knew. I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he said, sing-song. “As if that cuts it.” This laugh was even uglier, ending in silence.

  “Are you still there?” Cassie asked, but no one answered. After a moment, she set her phone down on the comforter. “You don’t want me to confront him.”

  Typical Cassie, still in challenge mode. “No, I don’t,” he said.

  “He won’t stop killing if I’m nice to him.”

  “I agree. But he’s already mad at you. Don’t make it worse.” Didn’t she get it? Did she want to rise to first priority for a crazy killer?

  Instead of arguing, she said thoughtfully, “The little princess. It isn’t all men he hates.”

  “Oh, shit. Homecoming has princesses.”

  Cassie looked as horrified as he felt. “Your date must have been one.”

  “Lauren Jeffrey. Yeah,” he said hoarsely. “We went together until after Christmas break my senior year. God. I need to make some calls.”

  “To her?”

  “Dawson first. Then Lauren.” His heart was beating too hard. “Crap, I can’t remember who the other homecoming princess was.”

  “I heard her name mentioned,” Cassie said. “Eileen…no, wait. It was Alicia somebody. She went to the dance with Brent…”

  “Brett.” Shit, shit. “Brett Saunders. They ended up getting married. He wasn’t at that meeting Mathison called, I don’t know why.”

  “He was a football player, then.”

  “Friggin’ great offensive lineman and defensive tackle.” Brett had actually played at Oregon State. Wasn’t a standout, but he and Grant were the only two members of the team who’d been recruited by any division one schools. Doesn’t matter now. “Alicia was a cheerleader.” Another grim thought.

  “Do you suppose Alicia broke up with this guy?”

  “More likely, she turned him down. Or looked right through him. She could be...” He hesitated, settling on, “She thought a lot of herself.” Grant got out of bed and got dressed fast. “I need to go downstairs for my phone book.”

  She was mostly dressed now, too, he saw with a pang of regret. He left her to finish while he made his first calls.

  *****

  House was dark and quiet, which didn’t mean deserted. Or safe. Grant rang the doorbell, hammered on the door. He might be jumping to conclusions; “princess” didn’t necessarily refer back to Homecoming of his senior year. Although everything else had so far.

  Maybe the Saunders were away. He wanted to feel relief, but couldn’t. Blinds were drawn on the front window, keeping him from seeing in. Hand on the butt of his gun, he left the porch and started around the side of the house. In the back of his mind, he held onto awareness that this could be a trap – for him. He couldn’t be lured out to a distant pasture to mend fences, but isolating him like this? Not a problem. He couldn’t do his job if he huddled at department headquarters or home, or insisted on backup out of generalized fear.

  Grant had followed Cassie home before he did anything else but make those calls. He’d waited until he saw her go in and flash the porch light to signal ‘all’s fine’ at his request. Then he’d come here to check on Alicia Saunders while Jed went to Lauren Jeffrey’s townhouse, Grant’s choice of assignment deliberate. He’d rather not find a woman he’d once made love with dead.

  The night stayed quiet. Frozen grass crunched under his boots, but he detected no movement. This was a development of fancy new houses, by Fort Halleck standards, built on a rise to take advantage of a view across a winding stretch of Desperation Creek to the wide open country beyond. Tonight, there was enough moon to turn the water silver against a velvet black backdrop. Beautiful, but he was reminded unpleasantly of the night he guarded Chad Norman’s body.

  Alicia, Grant had heard, was the marketing director for a fertilizer company, one of the bigger employers in the county. Brett had gone to work with his father, a local developer who had probably been responsible for this neighborhood, come to think of it. Between them, they obviously had money. He wished he knew whether they had children.

  Taking out his flashlight, he played the beam over a large, multi-level deck in back, with two sliders. One had closed vertical blinds; the other led into a dining room. He nudged the sliding door with his elbow to see if it was locked, but it obligingly moved. Not good. People didn’t go out of town or even out for the evening and not lock their doors. Especially people who owned nice things.

  He didn’t buy that they were in there asleep, not after he’d rung the doorbell multiple times and beaten on the front door, too.

  With well-honed caution, Grant moved to one side rather than stand directly in front of the glass as he hitched the flashlight onto his belt and dug in his pocket for thin latex gloves. Once they were on, he pulled his handgun and moved fast, opening the door and calling, “Police! We’re coming in!”

  In the absence of so much as a rustling sound, he walked in. Turning lights on as he went, he glanced in the kitchen. He smelled food, and when he peeked beneath the sink, he saw the plastic tray and lid of a frozen dinner. Looking lonely, one glass and a fork sat in the shiny stainless steel sink. Did this mean Alicia or Brett had been home this evening?

  He glanced into a spotlessly tidy utility room on one side of the kitchen. The other direction, an arched ope
ning led into a vast family room with a built-in bar, plush carpet, and the biggest television screen he’d ever seen. Short hall. Half bath, pristine. The whole place was pristine, with that model house look he, personally, would hate. If not for a few items in the trash beneath the sink and that single fork and glass, he’d wonder if anyone lived here.

  The foot of a staircase. Ahead, the living room, the light murky, an odd shadow off to the right. He didn’t see a light switch there, and held his gun in firing position as he stepped forward to turn on a lamp at one end of a sofa built to form an L. The shadow swayed slightly as if he’d stirred the air.

  Fuck. A bright yellow helium balloon with the cheerful face was tied to a floor lamp. The moment he tore his gaze from it, in the soft pool of light he saw a bare foot and calf stretched out from behind an easy chair. Having the staircase and an entire uncleared floor of the house behind and above him made him uneasy, but, sticking to the perimeter of the room, he circled behind the chair.

  Sprawled in a horrific pool of blood, the woman he recognized lay naked in an obscene position. Almost face down, as if she’d been kneeling or on all fours and pitched forward to die. One knee was still drawn up under her, the other outstretched.

  Gritting his teeth, Grant backed away. The possibility of children in the house still preying on him, he turned toward the staircase.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “You’re home.” Looking startled, the caretaker muted the murmur of sound from the television and rose to her feet. “Is there a problem?”

  Cassie smiled even though she didn’t much feel like it. “No, but my boyfriend was on call. Phone rang…” She shrugged.

  Cassie assured her she’d be paid for the whole shift but could go home now. Infected with some of Grant’s paranoia, she stayed in the open doorway until Mary was safely in her car and driving away. Then she shut the door hastily and checked the locks twice – before hurrying to the kitchen and verifying the back door was secure, too.

  After peeking in at her father, she took the caretaker’s spot at one end of the sofa, knowing she wouldn’t be able to sleep. Her concentration wasn’t the best as she skimmed notes on her laptop hoping for something to jump out at her. Of course, nothing did. She’d heard plenty of resentment, but that was only human. Cassie couldn’t find a single reference to Alicia; the name must not have seemed important when someone mentioned her.

  Finally she set the laptop aside and tried to read, but was so tense she kept having to flip back through the pages and still failed to absorb the story. Finally, she let the book drop and gazed at the dark television as if the thoughts and fears swirling in her head had become visible.

  Grant kept promises, didn’t he? If he didn’t call, she’d know what a huge mistake she’d made tonight. Even if he proved himself trustworthy, baring herself so completely might still have been a mistake…but not such an indefensible one.

  Her phone rang exactly thirty-seven minutes after she’d gotten home. She snatched it up. “Grant?”

  “Our theory was right. Alicia Saunders is dead.” Weariness and bleakness infused his voice.

  “I’m sorry.”

  He let out a long breath. “She wasn’t a friend of mine.”

  “But she was part of your past.”

  Quiet for a minute, he finally said, “Yeah.”

  “Was she…well, indoors?”

  “Yes.” He knew what she was going to ask next, because he said straight out, “There was a balloon. That’s off the record,” he added.

  The fact that he was continuing to show unusual trust warmed her. “Then it’s the same guy.”

  “Yes, although there are significant differences this time.”

  “He killed a woman.”

  “That’s the big one.” Restraint changed the timbre of his voice now. There was something he didn’t intend to tell her. “The indoor scene, of course. She was at home, not…set up.”

  “It didn’t seem as if Chad Norman was, either.”

  “No, that’s true. The killer simply waited for an opportunity. Maybe he’d been watching him long enough to know he regularly went for trail rides, even his favorite routes.”

  “Or Chad mentioned it to someone.”

  “That’s a possibility.” This was the cop talking to her, thinking twice about everything he said. What did he want to hide?

  It didn’t take any stroke of genius to guess. Alicia had been raped. If she’d snubbed the killer’s romantic overture all those years ago, rape would be a logical part of punishing her now…and would provide satisfaction, too.

  “Where’s her husband?” she asked instead.

  “At this point, we don’t know. To be on the safe side, we’re searching the property, but since there is no second vehicle in the garage, we assume he’s away.”

  “That poor man.” Imagine coming home to flashing lights in the driveway of your home. Brett Saunders would spend the rest of his life convinced he could have saved his wife if only he’d been home.

  Cassie’s throat spasmed. She, of all people, knew that you couldn’t always save your loved ones even if you were there. Sometimes, not even if you were looking into their eyes when they died.

  “That’s all I can tell you right now,” Grant said. “I’m sorry we were interrupted with something like this.”

  “Me, too,” she whispered.

  “Get some sleep, Cassie,” he said gently. “There’s nothing you can do tonight.”

  “I know.” The silence left her unsure whether he’d already ended the call, but she couldn’t stop herself from saying, “Be careful. He was angry at both of us.”

  “I will,” Grant said, in that same low, intimate voice. “I don’t think you’ll hear from him again tonight, but…”

  “You’ll be the first to know.” She’d said that before.

  “Okay. Goodnight.”

  She clung to the phone even now that the connection really had been severed, and wished she thought she could wander off to bed, to sleep with pleasant dreams.

  Instead…instead she’d worry about Grant, and she’d dwell on the stomach-churning thought that a hateful, crazy man might have raped Alicia tonight only because he was furious with Cassie. That he might have been brutalizing the other woman, murdering her, at the very same time Cassie and Grant had been making love.

  Her stomach heaved. Cassie pressed her palm to her mouth and ran for the bathroom.

  *****

  “We have company.” Staying well out of the way of the crime scene crew, Jed stepped close to the large front window of the Saunders’ home and parted the blinds. “Maybe the long lost husband.”

  Looking past him, Grant saw a shiny silver pickup truck brake behind the ambulance, which would be filling in today as a morgue van. A big man erupted from behind the wheel and ran toward the house.

  “That’s Brett,” Grant agreed. About damn time, he thought. The sky was pearly pale with dawn. “I’ll intercept him.”

  Saunders almost barreled into him when Grant stepped out on the porch and closed the door behind him. His eyes were wild, his hair disheveled, and he stank like a brewery.

  “Get out of my way! This is my house! I have to see—”

  “No. You really don’t.” Grant laid a hand on a beefy shoulder. “Let’s go around back, talk in the kitchen.”

  Brett lunged for the door, knocking Grant off balance. He recovered in time to grab his former offensive lineman and shove him to the side, face into the clapboard siding.

  Seeing the desperation, the misery, on the man’s face, Grant felt only pity. And suspicion, of course, because that was his job. Maybe even his nature.

  “I can’t let you into the living room. Brett, I’m sorry. Alicia is dead.”

  “How…?”

  “She was murdered.”

  “But…how could that happen?” Tears welled in Brett Saunders’s brown eyes. “She wouldn’t have let anybody in.”

  “We’re not certain yet how he got in.” If one of
the locks had been jimmied, it had been done with remarkable skill. It was equally possible she had indeed let him in, because she knew him. “Come around to the kitchen with me, Brett.”

  Stumbling, shock apparent, he let Grant steer him around the house to the deck in back as if he was a child. A toe caught on a step and, if not for Grant’s grip on his elbow, he’d have crashed down. In the kitchen, he sank onto a chair, his head turned toward the sound of voices in the living room.

  “I have crime scene investigators working in there.” Grant poured a cup of coffee and dumped a couple of teaspoons of sugar into it. “They’ll be removing Alicia’s body soon.”

  Brett tried to get up. “Why can’t I—?”

  “That’s not how you should remember her.” Grant set the coffee down in front of him. “Do you take cream?”

  “What?” He sagged back onto the white-painted wood chair. “No. It doesn’t matter.”

  Grant’s sharp ears caught the sound of the zipper closing. He hoped Brett wouldn’t notice and have to visualize his wife being enclosed in a body bag. When the front door was opened, though, he slumped, burying his face into his hands. “I should have been here.”

  “Why weren’t you?”

  He was crying now. “We had a fight.” He lifted his wet, ravaged face. “Not that kind. I’d never have hurt her. I wouldn’t. You have to believe me.”

  How many times had Grant heard that? But in this case, he was inclined to think Brett was sincere, mostly because of the smiley face balloon. No, the phone call was the more compelling reason. He’d swear that voice, even altered, wasn’t Brett Saunders’s. And really, what were the odds Brett had somehow overheard the leaked detail about the balloon, and also had the desire and the cunning to think he could use the knowledge to get by with killing his wife? It happened, though. Or, once again, the other murders could have been committed to reduce the chance of suspicion falling on Brett.