by James Hunt
Cooper shoved Marks against the wall, ignoring his defenseless stance. “You just keep turning up everywhere I look, Marks. Funny how that keeps happening.”
“Look, I told you I didn’t have anything to do with what happened to that woman. I was camping. With my girlfriend, who you already spoke with and who dumped my ass after all of this, by the way.” He slithered out from behind the wall and scurried over to McKaffee. “This is harassment.”
“Julian Weathers.” Hart handed Cooper the drug dealer’s file, and she tossed it on McKaffee’s desk. “We arrested him earlier this morning for running a meth lab. He had a few friends with him, and we noticed that the two of you were cozy during your time together at county.” Cooper inched forward slowly. “I bet it was cold during all those nights, alone. I mean, you had to get warm somehow, right?”
“Christ, it wasn’t like that.” Marks flailed his arms at his sides, looking between Cooper, Hart, and McKaffee. “Look, we were in that cell for most of the day. After two years, you get to know someone.”
“And the first phone call you make when you get out of prison just so happens to be to a man who was convicted of selling drugs, and who has now graduated to manufacturing,” Cooper said. “Not making enough money working part time at the laundromat, Zane?”
“Now, hold on a second.” McKaffee looked as if he was going to stand but only leaned back in his chair, which squeaked from the sudden shift in weight. “Mr. Marks takes a drug test every week. If you need to see his samples I’d be happy to provide them to you, but enough is enough, Detective.” He pointed to the door. “If you don’t have any hard evidence, then I’m going to have to ask you to leave, or I’ll be calling your captain.”
Cooper tried to take a step forward, but she felt Hart’s hand on her shoulder, and she held back the desire to leap over the desk but leaned forward enough to make the two uncomfortable. “You better walk the line, because if I even so much as see you jaywalk, you’re back in county. You understand me?”
“It’s time to leave, Detective,” McKaffee replied, though the tremble in his voice defeated the attempt at defiance.
Once Cooper and Hart were outside and at their car in the parking lot, Cooper smacked her fist into the hood. “That fucker is dirty.” She lowered her head, squeezing her fists together, slowing her breathing, and trying to lower her heart rate.
“Maybe he isn’t. Maybe it is coincidence,” Hart said.
“It’s not a coincidence.” Cooper climbed in the driver’s seat, while Hart rode shotgun. “Whoever killed Irene Marsh and convinced Kate Wurstshed to assist in a homicide and then kill herself marked the address for the purchase of those security locks at the storage unit on purpose.” She started the car then smacked her palm into the steering wheel in frustration. “I don’t know how or why, but it’s connected somehow.” She exhaled, leaning back into the seat and shaking her head. “You saw the photos, Hart. You saw the letters. This guy is smart.”
“I know,” Hart said.
Dispatch blared over the squad car’s radio. “Unit thirty-three, come in.”
Hart reached for the radio. “Go ahead, Dispatch.”
“We have a woman here asking to speak with Detective Cooper. An Annabel Mitchum.”
Hart looked to Cooper, who merely shrugged. “What does she want?”
“She says she has a letter for Detective Cooper.”
Before Hart could respond Cooper floored the accelerator and flipped the sirens. She weaved through traffic lanes, blew past red lights, and screeched to a stop at the first parking spot she saw outside the precinct.
The closer Cooper moved toward the waiting area at the check-in desk, the faster she felt her heart race. She didn’t know who the woman was, but she had an idea of who the message was from. The officer at check-in pointed to an elderly woman in the corner, but just before Cooper spoke to Mrs. Mitchum, she stopped at the sight of her picture on Channel Four News. The volume had been turned up, and she listened to the news anchor give the report.
“Detective Adila Cooper of the Central Baltimore police precinct has been assigned the toughest task any officer could be given, and that’s finding the killer who took her sister. It’s been nearly seventy-two hours since Detective Cooper was given the case, and it all started with the death of Irene Marsh, a Baltimore native who was found dead in an abandoned storage facility off of Highway 86. But while the killer was never caught, a woman, thirty-seven-year-old Kate Wurstshed, who was believed to have helped the killer, committed suicide in the same abandoned storage facility at the end of a high-speed chase. Now, this isn’t the first time Detective Cooper has been in the news. Almost three years ago her partner, Danny Corpelli, was convicted on racketeering and corruption charges. After sentencing, Mr. Corpelli was found dead in his cell where he hung himself. Detective Cooper’s testimony not only implicated her former partner, but also Baltimore Police Captain Jonathan Farnes as well as his brother, the former governor of Maryland, Quentin Farnes. Those accusations were never proven in court, and both Farnes brothers walked away free men.”
The television turned blank after Cooper reached for the power button, and it caught Mrs. Mitchum’s attention. “I remember you from that case a few years ago.” The old woman held a large purse in her lap, the skin of her hands that kept hold of the handle pruning from age. “What you did wasn’t popular, but it was the right thing.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Mitchum.”
The old woman smiled. “Please, call me Annabel.” She extended the weathered hand, her fingers curved and brittle from arthritis.
“Annabel, I was told you had something for me?”
The woman nodded and shuffled through the contents of her purse, the massive bag swallowing her arms. “I was heading out for my morning coffee and I found this on my doorstep.” She removed an envelope from the purse, and the paper shook from the light tremor in her hand. “It didn’t have a return address, and at first I thought it was a mistake, but a note was attached to the outside of the letter. It said I needed to bring it to you, that it was important.”
Cooper took the envelope carefully and held it up to the light to check its contents. “Did you see anyone drop it off?”
“No, I didn’t.”
The seal on the envelope hadn’t been broken and Cooper ran her finger underneath, breaking the adhesive. She pulled the letter out and before she even opened it Cooper saw the familiar shimmer of red through the folded paper. “Hart!”
Nearly instantaneously, Hart appeared from the bullpen behind the front desk. She extended him the letter, and once he read it he arched his eyebrows. “This doesn’t make any sense.”
Cooper returned the letter to the old woman, kneeling to meet her at eye level. “Can you take a look at this for me?”
“Of course.” Annabel shuffled through her purse and found her glasses, and then gently took the paper from Cooper’s hand. The old woman remained silent for a moment as she read. Then, when she was done, she lowered the letter and removed her glasses, her eyes red and glassy.
Cooper placed her hand over the woman’s thin arm. “Annabel, do you know what this letter means?”
The old woman reached for a tissue and dabbed the corners of her eyes. “Yes. I know what this is.” She looked up at Cooper, her eyes still glistening. “It’s about me.”
Cooper joined her in the adjacent chair, keeping one hand on the woman’s arm. “Annabel, I’m going to need your help with something. My partner and I are going to take you back to our office and ask you a few questions. Would you be willing to do that for us?”
Annabel nodded, though the continued tears suggested she’d fall apart before they arrived. But to the old woman’s credit, she managed to travel the length of the building and into Cooper’s chair without an outburst. “I’m sorry, it’s just, I haven’t even seen his name for so long.” She shook her head. “He went missing nearly thirty years ago. The police never found him.” Her voice grew thick with gri
ef. “They didn’t have the resources of cameras and things like that back then. They told me he just left. But I never believed it.” She shook her head more candidly. “Never.”
The letter lay open on the table between them, and though it was addressed to Cooper, the intimacies were of Annabel’s life.
Dear Addy,
Once upon a time there was a woman who lived alone in her downtown apartment. She worked as a seamstress for a clothing store, and every day she would wake up, go to work for the next ten hours, then come home, alone. She repeated this same, mundane torture every day for years. She was drowning in her own self-pity, and she thought this would be the rest of her life. Forever.
Then, one day, a young man entered the woman’s shop. He’d ripped his dress pants and needed them hemmed in less than an hour for a meeting. She set to work immediately, but unlike the other customers she served, the young man followed the woman into the back, talking with her as she sewed. Never in her life had she laughed so hard at work, giggling over the hum of the sewing machine. When she was finished her new suitor offered to take her out for dinner when she got off work. Blushing, the woman accepted.
On her way home that night to get ready, for the first time since she was a child, she felt the rush of excitement. And that evening was one that extended into the morning, and the next day, and the day after that, then through a wedding, and another year. It was the happiest time of her life.
But one day, the woman’s husband left for work and he never came back. He left no note, offered no reason for his departure. And so the woman was cast back into a routine of mediocrity, clutching onto the moments of happiness until those memories turned to dust and ash in her hands.
Life is precious, and you never know when that fragile cord will sever.
Love,
Beth
P.S. Today. 4:00 p.m.
Cooper set the paper aside and sat on the edge of her desk, leaning close to Annabel. “The man in the story, he was your husband?”
“Yes,” Annabel answered, a smile gracing her lips at the name. “That story is how we met.” She giggled like a girl, shaking her head. “He could always make me laugh. And it didn’t matter what we were doing, everything was always an adventure.” A few more tears cascaded down her cheeks. “We loved each other so much.”
“The police officers you spoke with,” Hart said, interrupting the woman’s story. “Did they fill out a report?”
“They did. But they never found any evidence of wrongdoing. The last person that saw him alive was me, the morning before he headed off to work.”
Cooper placed a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “What was your husband’s name?”
“Gary Beachum.”
Without another word Hart left the room while Cooper stayed with Annabel. If a police report was filed, then it would have been archived. With any luck, they’d be able to pull something out of the paperwork that they could connect to the killer. “Annabel, tell me about your husband.”
“He was a wonderful man. A hard worker too, but very giving. In the spring he would coach high school baseball.” The memories brought with it another flood of tears, and Cooper could do little more than hold the old woman’s hand as she was forced to relive the horrors from thirty years ago.
“Where was he from?” Cooper asked, trying to distract her.
“He was born here in Baltimore. We graduated from separate high schools. Otherwise I’m sure we would have met before we did. He would have loved to coach baseball for a living, but back then it wasn’t enough to support a family.” She smiled again. “We were planning on having children.”
“What did he do besides coach baseball?”
“He was the groundskeeper for Oriole Park at Camden Yards. He used to take me out on the field at night, and we’d have a picnic in the outfield under the stars. He always said it was as close as he was going to get to playing on the field.”
Cooper picked up the note once more and pointed to the time. “Is there anything special about this time? Something the two of you would have done together?”
Another wave of grief poured from her eyes as she nodded then finally choked out, “Today’s our wedding anniversary.”
Leaving Annabel to her grief, Cooper sprinted out of the room and found Hart in the bullpen, using one of the spare computers. “I need you to look up to see if there’s a baseball game today.”
But Hart just pointed to the screen, scrolling through the pages of digitalized reports that had been scanned into the server. “Look at these things. You can barely even make out the handwriting.” Hart shrugged, looking over the officer’s notes. “The woman was right. They never found anything. No fingerprints. Footprints. Nothing. It was like aliens abducted him. They never even found his car.”
“Hart, the game.”
He exited out of the database and pulled up a search browser. He checked the team’s website and nodded. “Yeah, it looks like they play the Braves at 4:00 p.m.”
Cooper checked the time on her phone. “It starts in less than ten minutes. Call the security at the ballpark and tell them we’re on our way and we’ll need their full cooperation.” Cooper left Hart at the desk and headed for the squad car outside.
Hart stood up at the desk, shouting over the cubicles. “Cooper, what’s going on?”
“The killer wants us to go to the game!”
Chapter 4
The dull roar from inside the stadium at Camden Yard spilled into the parking lot, where a few of the stragglers were still tailgating while others remained at the front gates, still going through security. Cooper stepped out of her squad car, accompanied by Hart and the head of ten K-9 units.
Hart shook his head, gazing up at the massive structure and the forty thousand boisterous fans inside. “I don’t see how we’re supposed to cover all of those exits. We don’t even know what we’re looking for.”
One of the lieutenants from the K-9 unit walked over. “Where do you want us, Detective?”
Cooper scanned the parking lot. “Whatever we’re going to find will be in the stadium. The chief doesn’t want to cause a panic, so we’re going to be working in coordination with the stadium’s security team. Once we meet up with the head of security we’ll assign each of your men a section. If you find anything, we’ll need to evacuate the ball park.”
“Christ, Detective, what are we looking for?”
“I’ll tell you when we find it.” The combination of security guards and police officers gave them a force of fifty men, which had to search nearly three hundred sections of ballpark. “We’ll start at the top and work our way down. I want eyes everywhere.” She looked to the head security guard. “You have your men watching the cameras?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Let’s get to work!” Cooper clapped her hands, and the teams dispersed. Cooper and Hart descended into the lower levels, watching the units climb the stairs.
The noise in the stadium was deafening. The crack of bats, the taunts, boos, and cheers, all of it offered a level of electricity that brought the stadium to life. She peered through the rounded view of the binoculars, while Hart manned the radio.
“You really think he’s here?” Hart yelled over the crowd, letting a cotton candy vendor squeeze by. “This seems out of his MO. And we don’t even know what he looks like.”
Cooper kept the binoculars glued to her face. “Up until now he’s made us believe he’s killed only women. But the message he made Beth write tells us that he’s killed men too. He wants us to know that no one is off limits.” She spotted one of the K-9 units to the far right of the stadium clear its first section then lowered her binoculars.
“How do you know the woman’s husband was killed by our guy?”
Some of the fans had already noticed the heightened security presence, and Cooper felt the anxiousness of the crowd. “He wouldn’t have sent it to us if he hadn’t.”
Hart looked around to the thousands crammed into the stadium. “You think
he has something big planned? Some kind of killing spree?”
“No.” She lifted the binoculars again and found another K-9 unit working its way through the empty rows of seats near the upper deck. “He may kill both men and women, but he only does one at a time. Whatever’s here is just meant to get our attention. He’s tired of his work going unnoticed.”
It wasn’t long before the first three innings passed and the K-9 units had worked their way to the more-crowded lower levels, where the nervous whispers and anxious glances had spread like a virus. The head of security walked over, his face red from the hot afternoon sun. “Hey, we’re getting a lot of questions from the crowd.” He looked around timidly. “I don’t know what we’re supposed to tell them.”
“Training exercise,” Cooper replied. “That’s all they need to know.” The loud crack of the bat shifted Cooper’s attention to the field, and she watched the batter sprint to first base, where the umpire called him safe and the crowd booed. She lifted the binoculars and scanned the outfield, wondering if the killer had planted something on the field for her to see, but found nothing. “Something’s not right. It’s taking too long.”
Hart shrugged as Cooper lowered the binoculars. “Maybe we missed something in the letter?”
Cooper shook her head. “This was a special place to the victims, which means it’s also a special place for the killer. He inserts himself into his victims’ lives. And if he’s the type of psychopath that I think he is, then we’re in the right place.” She turned back to the stands, locating one of the K-9 units working down a row of spectators as they stood from their seats.
“Hey, did you see that?” One of the fans next to Cooper pointed toward the Jumbotron. “It looked like a woman with a sign.”
Cooper shifted the binoculars to the screen but saw nothing but the stats of the batter at the plate. She grabbed Hart’s attention. “Keep an eye on that.” She located the man decked out in Oriole gear who’d pointed at the screen in the first place and flashed her badge in his face. “Baltimore PD.” She pulled out her phone and swiped through her pictures until she found one of Beth. “Is this the woman you saw?”
