Targeted (A Jenny Watkins Mystery Book 9)

by Becky Durfee

  Jenny let out a sigh; this was the one thing she wasn’t sure about. “Maybe he’s right, and it isn’t necessary. To be honest, I have no idea if it is needed or not…but let’s leave that decision to the professionals. If they say he doesn’t need to go back to residential care, then fine. Maybe he can just attend some outpatient meetings or something.” Jenny softened her tone. “Hopefully, if you take that approach, John will be willing to at least talk to rehab folks. Then we can work on a plan based on what they say.”

  Mick’s voice reflected resolve. “I’ll do that. I will give him a little more time first, though. I don’t think he’s quite ready for reasonable conversation yet.”

  After a little more discussion, they ended the call, and Jenny dropped the phone back into her purse.

  “I guess things aren’t going so well?” Zack asked.

  “Not so much.”

  “Well, hopefully we’ll have better luck with the cameras.”

  “I hope so,” she muttered. “I don’t think I can handle any more bad news today.”

  Shenanigans looked only slightly less crowded than it had the night before, but Jenny found the stale beer smell to be even stronger. “If I was pregnant and walked into this place, I think it would make me puke,” she told Zack in a hushed tone as they entered.

  “I’m not sure this is a popular hangout for pregnant people.”

  The couple walked toward the bar, where a different bartender than the night before busied himself with cleaning and stocking. “Hey,” he said as they approached. “What can I get for you?”

  “I don’t suppose you have coffee?” Jenny asked.

  “Sure don’t.”

  “Then I’ll take a diet soda.”

  Zack ordered a soda as well—with full calories—and then Jenny began to speak as she sat on a stool. “We’re actually here for a reason. We’re wondering if you have a security camera that would capture images from across the street. I parked there last night, and something happened to my car. I’m hoping it may have been caught on tape.”

  “You’ll need to speak to the owner,” the bartender replied, placing two sodas in front of them. “He’s in the back; I can get him for you.”

  “Thanks,” Jenny replied, throwing a ten dollar bill on the counter.

  “You want to get lunch?” Zack asked. “The nachos were pretty good last night.”

  “Really? I wouldn’t have expected that. This doesn’t exactly look like the type of place that would have good food.”

  “That’s often the case. Sometimes the best food comes from little hole-in-the-wall places where somebody’s grandma is in the kitchen.”

  “Cooking with love?” Jenny asked with a smirk.

  “Exactly. Those nachos had a lot of love in them; you could taste it.”

  The bartender emerged from around the corner, followed by a dark-haired man dressed in a black shirt with the Shenanigans logo, which seemed to be the required uniform for all of the bar’s employees. He greeted Zack and Jenny with a big smile, saying, “Hello. My name is Oliver Jacoby. What can I do for you today?” He had an accent, which Jenny couldn’t determine to be English or Australian, but it didn’t matter. She loved it, no matter where it was from.

  “Hi,” she began, “we were wondering if you have any security cameras that would capture images from across the street. I parked there last night, and somebody messed with my car. I was hoping to get a glimpse of who it was.”

  “I’m terribly sorry,” he replied. “We do have security cameras, both inside and out. Let me see what I can find out for you. Do you have an approximate time frame I should be looking at?”

  She turned to Zack. “We got here, what, about eight? And got to the car around ten-thirty?”

  “Sounds about right,” Zack said.

  “What kind of car do you drive? And where was it parked?”

  Jenny explained exactly where the car had been, giving him the make and model. “What you’ll find is someone putting a note on the windshield.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “A note? Was it a threatening note?”

  “Yes. Very.” While that was a bit of an exaggeration, it may have held an element of truth to it. Besides, he may not have agreed to look at the video if he knew it was only a smiley face.

  “Alright,” the owner said, “let me get on that straight away. I’ll come back out and get you if I see anything.” He disappeared back in the direction he came.

  “Did you hear that?” Jenny asked Zack like a giddy schoolgirl. “He’s going to get on that straight away.” She mimicked his accent, swooning involuntarily.

  “Should I feel threatened?” Zack asked with a smile.

  “Maybe,” she confessed, “although, I don’t want to sleep with him. I just want him to come home with us and talk to me all day long.”

  “Just talk?” Zack looked at her skeptically.

  “I guess he could clean the house while he was there, if he wanted to feel useful.” For a brief moment, Jenny envisioned Oliver pushing a mop across her kitchen floor, casually telling stories in his beautiful accent while she sat at the table eating doughnuts with her feet up. She had to force that thought out of her head, though, before she got too excited about it.

  After sipping her soda through her straw, she added, “Why don’t you order up a plate of nachos for us, and I’ll go outside and take a look at the front of the building—see where the cameras are located. Maybe that will give us an indication of whether or not we should hold out any hope.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” he replied.

  She got off the stool and walked out the door, looking up into the sun at the building’s façade. At first, she scanned for cameras along the roofline and under the awning, but something drew her attention to the bar’s name on the bricks. Three-dimensional green letters spelled out the name Shenanigans.

  A four-leaf clover dotted the i.

  Chapter 14

  “I think this place holds the key,” Jenny said excitedly when she returned to her chair.

  “Good camera angle?” Zack asked.

  She shook her head. “The four-leaf clover…I’m pretty sure I know what it means.” She explained her finding, adding, “I got this feeling over me when I saw it out there, like someone was taking satisfaction that I finally got the hint. And, you know, I thought about it…Rachel was already dead when I found the clover. She’s probably the one who led me to it.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “She’s the only one who has even the slightest clue about the killer’s identity. She heard his voice, and it’s familiar to her. Although she doesn’t know exactly whose voice it is, I believe she’s under the impression that he’s related to Shenanigans somehow.”

  Zack frowned as he considered the idea. “Sounds plausible. Now, we just need to figure out who the voice belongs to.”

  Jenny tipped her glass toward him like a toast. “At least now we know where we can narrow our focus.”

  After the nachos had been eaten, Oliver came back out and approached the couple, placing one hand on each of their backs. “I think I’ve found something for you,” he said in his beautiful accent. “It isn’t the clearest image in the world, but it’s better than nothing, I suppose. If you follow me to my office, I can show you.”

  Jenny eagerly walked in the back, hopeful that she—or Rachel—would be able to recognize the man who had left the note. While she realized he would most likely appear as a mere shadow considering it was night time, she was guardedly optimistic that the person’s mannerisms would be clear enough to be recognizable.

  Oliver’s office was small and horribly disorganized, dashing Jenny’s fleeting dream of him one day cleaning her house. “Excuse the mess,” he said with a chuckle. “I wasn’t expecting visitors.”

  “It’s okay,” Jenny said. “I’m just grateful that you can show us something.”

  He sat in the chair in front of a monitor, using a mouse to click the fuzzy, black-and-white movie in
to motion. “If you look,” he said with a point, “you can see the man come up and stop at your car.”

  Jenny squinted, trying to get a better view of the grainy image in front of her. The man appeared to be somewhat stocky, not necessarily tall, and wearing a baseball hat tucked low over his head. Aside from that, none of his features were discernable in the low-budget video.

  “Huh,” Jenny said, a bit disappointed. “Can I see it again?”

  “You can see it as many times as you’d like,” Oliver replied. He clicked and dragged, causing the man in the video to walk quickly backwards away from the car. When he released the mouse, the scene played out again at regular speed. “Want me to pause it?” he asked.

  “Please.” He stopped the video at the spot where the man was at the windshield. Stepping even closer, Jenny practically put her face against the monitor. Unfortunately, nothing struck her about the person she was looking at; both she and Rachel were coming up blank.

  “Is there any way I can get a copy of this video to the police?”

  Oliver looked curious. “It’s really a police matter? The note was that bad?”

  “It may be related to the women who have been turning up dead around here.”

  His eyes grew wide. “You mean that could be the man who’s been doing it?” He pointed toward the video.

  “It’s possible.”

  “Just outside my bar?”

  Jenny didn’t want to disclose that she suspected the man was a regular inside the bar. She responded with a simple nod.

  “They found another victim this morning, you know, “Oliver continued, “out in Kensington.”

  “Yeah,” she replied, “we were there this morning.”

  He looked at her with awe, apparently realizing her involvement in the case was more than he’d anticipated. He also seemed to comprehend the potential importance of that video. “I will figure out a way to get this to the police,” he said emphatically. “I won’t do anything else until I do.”

  Jenny smiled graciously. “Thank you. Hopefully, with a little help from your surveillance tape, the victim in Kensington will be the last.”

  “What do you say?” Zack asked as the couple approached Rachel’s house, where Jenny had been officially granted permission to go inside. “You think our note-leaving friend could have had a size fourteen shoe?”

  “I couldn’t see his feet in the video,” she replied.

  “He wasn’t all that tall. Stocky, but not tall. I wouldn’t think that—a—he’d be able to fit through a window, and—b—he’d have shoes that big.”

  Jenny tried to envision the windows the killer had used for entry; they were relatively high. Would that stocky man from the video have been able to pull that off? “It depends on what constitutes his stockiness,” she concluded. “Were there muscles under those clothes, or just too many potato chips? If he was a short, body-builder type, he may have been strong enough to climb through the windows.”

  “Or maybe it’s not the same guy.”

  “I can’t imagine this isn’t the guy,” Jenny replied. “Why on earth would somebody just randomly target my car if it wasn’t related to the case?”

  “I didn’t say it wasn’t related,” Zack said. “I just suggested it might be a different person leaving the notes.”

  She glanced at him as she pulled up to the house. “You think there are two people involved in this?”

  Zack shrugged. “I’m just looking at the facts. We have a nimble guy climbing through windows to kill these women, and we have a stocky guy leaving notes on the car. Either the nimble guy is stocky, or the stocky guy is nimble, if you prefer to look at it that way…or else we have two different people.”

  “The only thing scarier than the thought of one lunatic running around killing women is two lunatics on the loose.”

  “There are more loonies than that out there, I assure you,” Zack replied. “They’re just not directly involved with this case.”

  Jenny stopped the car and put it in park. “I could have done without that little nugget of wisdom,” she said.

  She got out and walked through the crowd, which was smaller now than it had been before. Lifting the crime scene tape, she ducked under and continued with determination, finding Detective Brennan standing near the front steps. The detective was holding a coffee, which Jenny assumed was once again a substitute for sleep.

  “Glad you could come back,” Detective Brennan said, swirling the cup in her hand. “You ready to go inside?”

  Jenny took a long, hard look at the front door; it looked intimidating. Despite the fact that she wasn’t really sure if she wanted to see what was inside, she replied, “Yeah, I’m ready.”

  After putting covers over her shoes, Jenny walked in through the front door. Detective Brennan followed, saying, “Rachel’s bedroom is…”

  “Don’t tell me,” Jenny interrupted, holding up her hand. Realizing she’d been rude, she looked back and added, “Sorry. I just want my information to come from Rachel, if that’s okay.”

  The detective bowed her head and held up her free hand, signaling she was willing to do this Jenny’s way.

  Focusing her attention back on the house, Jenny felt overcome by familiarity. She drank in the sight of the living room furniture—something Rachel had taken for granted but would never see with her own eyes again. The nostalgia of it all was nearly overwhelming.

  Memories flooded Jenny’s mind in a giant wave. Closing her eyes, she saw Lauren and Bella appear on the couch, dressed as if they were ready to go out for the evening. Bella had a beer and Lauren sipped from a large glass of water; Jenny had a full shot glass in her hand.

  “Do you think he’ll be there tonight?” Jenny heard herself ask.

  “He’s there every night,” Bella replied, taking a drink from her beer.

  Jenny felt a tingle brewing inside her at the thought of seeing him.

  “You haven’t given up on that yet? He’s awfully young.” Lauren noted.

  “No, I have not given up on that…and I won’t until I get what I want. I’m not looking to marry the guy, I just want my turn with him,” Jenny clarified with a sly smile. “Last week he was flirting with me, I swear it.”

  “How do you even remember?” Bella asked, her words slightly slurred from the alcohol. “You were totally wasted by ten o’clock.”

  “Oh, I remember. I wouldn’t forget that.”

  “How would you even kiss him?” Bella asked with a look of confusion. “He’s, like, ten feet tall. You’d need a ladder just to be at eye level with the guy.”

  “I would make it work, believe me.”

  “Well, I don’t know about you girls, but I’m ready to get out of here,” Bella said, downing the last of her beer.

  “Yeah, me too,” Jenny replied. “Just give me a sec.” She held up her shot glass. “To the three musketeers…all for all and one for one.”

  “You’re hammered already,” Lauren noted, “and we haven’t even left the house yet.”

  Jenny shrugged. “Whatever.” She tilted her head back and let the shot slide down her throat.

  The roommates faded from view, and Jenny opened her eyes. While she was fairly confident that Rachel had been talking about Luke Thomas, she didn’t want to disclose her discovery just yet. She wanted to see what else the house had in store before she explained any of her findings.

  Instinctively, she knew which way to go to Rachel’s bedroom, although she took her time getting there. She looked at each wall hanging, appreciating them more than Rachel ever had in her lifetime. Somehow, Rachel had assumed she would always be able to look at them; had she known her time was so limited, maybe she would have looked at everything just a little bit harder.

  Entering the bedroom, Jenny was taken aback by what she saw. Blood. Everywhere. On the bed. On the walls. On the nightstand. On the lamp. On the book she had been reading. It was a library book; Rachel was supposed to return it.

  Jenny instinctively placed her hand o
n her neck, fully aware that was where all of this blood had come from. Sadness engulfed her. Rachel had been too young to die. Lauren and Bella should have never seen this. The whole incident was just so tragic on many different levels.

  The person responsible for this needed to be put away.

  Jenny took two steps into the room, and the whisper of a voice echoed between her ears. To drink to excess is the devil’s work. May God accept you and keep you, despite your sins.

  She closed her eyes, focusing, trying to recall exactly where she’d heard that voice before. It was so familiar, yet she simply couldn’t place it.

  The devil’s work.

  The wheels in Jenny’s brain turned frantically.

  May God accept you and keep you.

  Think. Think. Think.

  Despite your sins.

  Jenny clenched both fists and held them to her temples. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t determine whose voice that was. She pounded her fists into her head, hoping that would help, but it only made her grunt with frustration when she still came up empty.

  In another sudden image, Jenny lay on the bed, grasping her neck, feeling the blood spurt between her fingers. Her killer leaned over her, whispering his chilling words into her ear.

  He was close to her.

  She understood.

  The vision left Jenny’s mind in a flash. She looked over her shoulder at Detective Brennan, stating with wide eyes, “She got him.”

  “She got him? What do you mean she got him?”

  “She bled on him. She marked him.” Jenny couldn’t hide the excitement from her voice when she added, “The killer may not be leaving his DNA at the scene, but she left hers on his clothes. If you find the guy, you’ll definitely be able to connect him back to this crime.” She looked back at the blood-soaked bedroom. “Now, we just have to find him.”

  Chapter 15