Smoke Screen (A Miranda and Parker Mystery Book 7)

by Linsey Lanier

  Miranda stared at him open-mouthed. He’d been right. Some psycho had sent her those anonymous texts messages and this was the guy. “Have you tracked him down? Is he in jail?”

  But how could he have sent that message to Parker’s phone this morning? Had to be the same guy, right?

  “I attempted to,” Parker said. “I visited Diana Westbrook at Gypsum yesterday and got Pierson’s employment records.”

  Miranda didn’t know the woman.

  “It seems Pierson has a very interesting address.”

  She frowned at him.

  “A high-rise apartment on Ponce de Leon. Unit nine-twenty-nine.”

  “What?” She shot out of the chair and moved to the window.

  That’s where I was yesterday, she wanted to say. But instead she kept her mouth shut. She didn’t want to go into the horrendous details of Hannah Kaye’s case right now.

  Hugging herself she stared out at the city. Gen’s situation was getting more bizarre by the minute. The cleaning man who’d sent her those anonymous texts weeks ago—who presumably sent Parker that message about Gen this morning—lived in unit nine-twenty-nine? But that couldn’t be true.

  She paced back to the table and grabbed her soda for a fortifying swallow.

  Parker watched her agitation. She had to know more about that apartment and the man who’d pretended to rent it. He prayed it was enough. “You’ve been looking for someone name Thomas Anthony Drew, haven’t you?”

  Miranda nearly choked on her soda. “How do you know that?”

  “The landlord at the high-rise told me you were there asking about him yesterday. Just an hour or so before I was there asking about Pierson.”

  Miranda put a hand to her head to keep it from spinning right off her neck. “But Drew hadn’t rented that unit. He gave a false address.”

  “As did Pierson.”

  “The same one?” Still holding onto her soda can, Miranda sank back down onto her chair.

  “That’s just crazy,” Wesson said. She obviously hadn’t been filled in on these details.

  Neither had Holloway. “Are you sure there wasn’t a misprint or something?”

  “I’m sure,” Miranda told him.

  “Positive,” Parker agreed.

  Then he turned back to the laptop and went through Drew’s history. Parker had already done a background check on the guy? And he’d found exactly what she had.

  “The fact is Thomas Drew, the truck driver, had no history until three years ago. And the same is true of Gabriel Pierson, the cleaning man. The real Gabriel Anthony Pierson was a carpenter from Macon. He was eighty-five when he died three years ago.”

  “Oh, my God,” Miranda murmured.

  She thought again of her last case in Chicago and the ninety-one-year-old man in the nursing home named Adam Foster Tannenburg. But he wasn’t the real Adam Tannenburg.

  Parker continued. “Drew drove a light gray Hyundai which was impounded by the police two nights ago.”

  Miranda blinked at him in surprise. Parker must have contacted the police about Gen. He must have learned about the Hyundai from Lieutenant Erskine.

  It was time to stop holding back. “I know,” she said.

  All three of her former colleagues turned to her in unison. Hey, it was Parker who was the clairvoyant here.

  “One of my…client’s men found the Hyundai that night,” she told them. “That’s where I got Drew’s drivers license. How I dug into his background.”

  Holloway gave her a crooked grin. “Good going, Steele.”

  She didn’t smile back. “I need to tell you about Drew.” The things Parker didn’t know.

  She rose to her feet again, moved over to the abstract painting with the slate blue and earthen colored rings and cubes. She paced back and forth in front of the cherry credenza covered with globes and decorative metal pieces in the same colors. Parker must have hired a decorator.

  How was she going to say this?

  “So with the drivers license, I did a run on Drew and discovered he worked for a place called Phelps Supply Company. He was a truck driver, delivering medical equipment to places like Saint Benedictine Hospital.”

  Parker nodded sharply. “While you were in rehab there.”

  Of course, he’d know that, too. He’d run Drew’s background himself.

  Becker sucked in a breath. “Was Drew stalking Steele at the hospital?”

  “Don’t know for sure,” she replied, trying to keep her voice steady.

  But now that she’d heard the words out loud, they sounded all too plausible.

  She took a deep breath and went on. “What I found was a bookkeeper who thought Drew had a fixation for her.”

  “A fixation?” Wesson asked.

  “Hung around her office all the time. Got close enough one time to sniff her perfume. She said Drew looked at her once like he wanted to kill her.”

  Everyone stared at her.

  Miranda licked her lips and began pacing in front of the credenza again. “I found the details on Hannah Kaye’s car—that’s the missing exotic dancer my client hired me to find,” she explained when Becker frowned. “I put a GPS tracker on Hannah’s car and got a hit yesterday afternoon.”

  “You found her?” Wesson said, wide-eyed.

  “Yeah, I found her. She’d been missing since last Thursday.” Her legs feeling shaky, Miranda pulled out a chair on the far end of the table and sat down. “I found her in a deserted place thirty miles east of the city. She was dead.”

  She told them the rest of it. All of it. Her drive to the grungy house in the woods. Her search that revealed the occupant was long gone. And what she’d found on the lower level.

  Hannah Kaye’s body strung up like a ham, with gory wounds and bruises covering every inch of her. The horrible smell. The insects. And the blood. So much blood.

  When she finished, her colleagues’ faces were as grim and somber as she’d ever seen them. Parker’s eyes were moist and he looked deadly pale.

  She knew he felt for Hannah Kaye, but right now his thoughts mirrored hers. What might Gen be going through this very minute?

  “Wait a second.” Wesson pressed her palms to her head. “I’m confused. We think Drew is the one who stalked Steele at Saint Benedictine’s.”

  “Yes,” Parker replied.

  “But Pierson’s the one on the surveillance recording from the Agency. The one who got Steel’s number off her phone. The same guy who texted her and Mr. Parker this morning, right?”

  “Correct.”

  “So are we looking for two killers? And which one has Gen?”

  Miranda lifted her hands. She didn’t even know Parker had come up with another guy until a few minutes ago. But he seemed to have an idea.

  He took command of the laptop again, and she came around the table to see what he was doing.

  “This,” he said, “is Gabriel Anthony Pierson.” He clicked on an icon and a photo of the cleaning man appeared.

  Pierson had bushy dirty blond hair and blue eyes. His uniform looked tight over his bulky shoulders, or maybe it was his slouch that made him seem so uncomfortable. Or the mean look in his eyes that gave Miranda a chill.

  Parker clicked another icon. “And this is Thomas Anthony Drew.”

  Miranda gritted her teeth as the face she’d been studying for two days came up on the screen. The dark wavy hair, the good looks, the pencil mustache. This was the man who had so brutally murdered Hannah Kaye.

  He wasn’t a man. He was an animal.

  Parker moved the photos on the screen so they were side by side. And when he did, she felt her stomach twist into a hard knot that made her dizzy. There were differences but they looked so similar.

  Parker watched his people as they studied the photos. He hoped they were seeing what he had seen.

  “Drew’s features are shaped a little differently,” Holloway noted after a few moments.

  Parker nodded. “True, but features can be altered. Let me remind you that both of t
hese identities, Gabriel Anthony Pierson and Thomas Anthony Drew are stolen.”

  Miranda felt her blood go cold.

  Becker’s eyes went wide. “So we’re dealing with…”

  Parker nodded. “Someone else entirely.”

  Wesson pointed back and forth at the photos. “And these two could be…”

  Becker gulped. “The same guy?”

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Before anyone could reply to that, a window popped up on Becker’s screen.

  “It’s the surveillance recording from the mall parking deck,” he said, smoothly taking the laptop from Parker.

  The place where Gen was snatched this morning. Miranda’s heart beat in heavy thumps as he brought the film up on the screen, replacing the two photos of Pierson and Drew.

  The view changed to gray, water-stained cement walls and vacant parking spots. The lighting wasn’t great, but Miranda could make out enough detail to see the lot was empty.

  “Scroll to nine o’clock,” Wesson said. “That’s when the stores open. Gen wouldn’t have gotten there any earlier.”

  Good point.

  Becker followed her command and let the film play.

  For a long while the view remained static. Miranda studied the layout and the oil spots on the cement. At nine-oh-eight, an employee pulled into a spot, got out of his car and went inside. At nine-twelve he was follow by a woman in a Civic.

  Finally, a sapphire blue Infinity turned the far corner and pulled into a spot.

  Wesson came to life. “That’s her.”

  Miranda inched forward and watched Gen get out of her car carrying three packages and head for the mall. “What’s she doing?”

  There was silence for a long moment.

  Finally Parker spoke. “Returning anniversary gifts.”

  From their party? The one she’d never gone to? “Oh.” She hugged herself tighter and kept her eyes on the screen.

  Minutes passed.

  Getting impatient, Becker fast forwarded. Then he went back. There was movement again. “There,” he said pointing to a truck that had just pulled into view.

  “Is that it?”

  It was a rust red F-150 with an off-white stripe. Had a crew cab and a dent in the door. The driver didn’t get out.

  The room was silent while everyone stared at the screen and waited.

  Finally Gen appeared again. She stopped to make a call on her cell phone.

  That was when the driver got out of the truck. He didn’t go toward the store. He moved toward Gen.

  He wore jeans and a baggy gray T-shirt. He had a matching ball cap pulled down so you couldn’t see his face, but he was muscularly built.

  As soon as he reached Gen he grabbed her from behind.

  She struggled, tried to kick, bite him. Good for her, Miranda thought.

  But she couldn’t escape that powerful grasp. He was too strong for her. He dragged her to the pickup, put a rag over her face. He was drugging her so she wouldn’t fight.

  Her body went limp. She was out cold. He tossed her into the back seat, climbed inside and drove off.

  “This way,” Becker cried. “Turn this way.”

  And as if he had cast some sort of spell over the footage, the truck turned toward the camera. And as it curved, the license plate came into clear view.

  “Stop the film!” Parker cried. His voice was raspy. Miranda had never seen quite that much agony on his face.

  But Becker had already paused it. The number on the plate was blurry but readable.

  “I’ve got a GPS tracker,” Miranda offered. “But it’s slow as Christmas.”

  “We have the Agency’s tracker,” Parker said. And he grabbed Holloway’s laptop, brought up the program, and entered the truck’s information as fast as he could.

  Miranda watched the tension in his shoulders as he worked and her heart broke for him. She couldn’t stand seeing him in this much pain. She hoped the Agency’s program was as fast as she thought it was.

  He had the tracker up and running within two minutes, but it would still take time to process.

  “We’ve got it, sir,” Becker assured him. “We’ll find her now.”

  Miranda prayed Becker was right.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Gen’s eyes fluttered open and then shut again. How much had she had to drink at the club last night?

  Only a few zombies. And she’d left half of the last one.

  Still her head pounded and swirled as if her brain was about to explode. Her tongue was so dry it felt like overused sandpaper. She’d never had a hangover this bad. Was she getting the flu?

  She wrinkled her nose.

  What was that awful smell? Musty, moldy, like an old locker room. Wow, what a dream she’d had. She thought someone had grabbed her at the mall. Enough of that. It was time to go to work.

  She reached over, she felt for her alarm clock but instead of the snooze button her fingers touched something hard and cold.

  She opened her eyes and let out a scream.

  It was a cage. She was inside a cage! How did she get in here? She tried to sit up and bumped her head on the top of it. Dear God. What was going on?

  There was a door. She tried to push it open with her hands, but a padlock held it firmly in place. She pushed harder, harder. Until the whole cage rattled. Open. C’mon now. Open.

  She looked down at herself. All she had on were her panties and bra. Where were her clothes?

  She peered through the wires of the cage and saw she was in some strange place. It looked like a basement of some sort. There was padding on the walls. Paper lanterns with candles in them lined up along the floor.

  Overhead wooden beams ran crosswise along the ceiling. And over one of the beams hung a pulley with thick ropes suspended from it.

  What the hell was that for?

  And then she heard footsteps. She craned her neck upward and saw a man coming toward her. Large feet clad in running shoes. A pair of baggy jeans frayed at the hems. His T-shirt was baggy, too. And gray.

  His hair was shaggy and light colored. She’d never seen him before.

  He leaned down and grinned at her. “Well, hello there sleepy head.”

  The sound of his voice made her cringe. “Let me out of here,” she demanded.

  He pouted with a frown. “Is that anyway to greet your host?”

  Host? He wasn’t her host. “You’d better let me out of here right now.”

  He chuckled to himself.

  Her heart started to pound. “Who are you?”

  He didn’t answer. Just kept laughing.

  “You won’t get away with this, you creep. My father’s the best investigator in the southeast. He’ll find me and when he does, there’ll be hell to pay.”

  The man stopped laughing and leaned down as if to get a better look at her. “Oh, I know who your father is. Wade Parker.”

  She stifled a gasp of surprise. “Then you know what he’ll do to you when he finds you.”

  “Oh, he’ll find us all right. And so will Miranda Steele. And when they do, the party will start.”

  What? What did Miranda Steele have to do with all of this? Was this her fault? How did this guy know about her? How did he know they were coming for her? Nothing made any sense at all.

  All she knew was that she was dealing with a crazy man.

  “Look,” she said to him, trying to keep her voice calm. “Let’s be reasonable about this. We both know once my father gets here, you’re going straight to jail. But if you let me out of here now and give me my clothes, I promise I won’t press charges.”

  He laughed again.

  What the hell was so damn funny? “I’ll tell them to give you a light sentence. I’ll tell them it was all a…a misunderstanding.”

  He squatted down in front of the cage and took a key from his pocket. He began unlocking the padlock.

  Had her promise worked? Was he going to let her out? He was. Thank God, he was!

  He opened the door.
/>   She tried to climb out but he blocked her with his legs. It was then she saw he had a water bottle in his other hand.

  “Are you thirsty, sweetie?”

  Thirsty? Hell yeah, she was thirsty. Her mouth felt like she’d been stranded in the desert for a week. But she didn’t dare drink anything he gave her.

  “Here you go.” He twisted open the lid and she saw it had already been opened.

  More alarm bells went off in her head.

  He put the bottle close to her face. “Here, sweetie. Have some water.”

  Instead she clutched his pant leg and gave it a yank, trying to throw him off balance. It almost worked.

  But he reached inside the cage and grabbed her by the hair.

  “Now that’s not very polite of you.” He forced her head back and poured the water into her mouth.

  She fought and spat and tried to keep her mouth closed, but he was too strong. He got the water between her lips, her teeth. It tasted good. She was so thirty.

  But there had to be something in it. Her resistance caved almost immediately.

  Her jaw relaxed and he poured the rest of the water down her throat without a protest.

  As she swallowed the last of it her eyes shut and once more her muscles went limp.

  Through a thick cloud she heard his voice again. “And when your father and his whore get here, I’ll make you pay for trying to escape.”

  Her head felt like it was filled with cotton. The room began to sping.

  And the last thing she heard was him re-locking the cage.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  While they waited for the GPS tracker to work everyone got busy around the fancy dining room table.

  Parker watched anxiously for results on the screen, Holloway and Becker fiddled with something on his laptop, and Miranda reviewed all the new data she’d learned and wrote up a report with Wesson on her machine.

  An hour went by. Two. Still no results.

  Parker ordered a pizza and they all chowed down while they kept working. But even though they were busy, Miranda felt they were getting nowhere.

  She hated just sitting here, but it would be pointless to go off on a blind hunt. Gen could be anywhere in the state of Georgia by now.