Smoke Screen (A Miranda and Parker Mystery Book 7)

by Linsey Lanier

  Go for the gun, Miranda thought. But he was still holding that remote.

  He popped up again. He put the remote into the pocket of his T-shirt. In both hands he held a long thin object.

  A baton?

  “Do you know what this is?”

  She nodded. “Music conductors use them.”

  His brows went up in surprise. “Correct. They conduct the orchestra, keeping time with these.” He waved it in the air and hummed some classical piece she didn’t recognize.

  Then he stopped. He stared at her and his green eyes seemed to take on an eerie glow. “But this one has a point. I sharpened it myself. See?” He touched the end to his fingertip and drew blood.

  Miranda felt her breath grow shallow. Was that what he’d used on Hannah Kaye?

  “Mother was a musician,” he said, delicately sucking the end of his finger. “She played the clarinet. But she also had batons. So many batons.”

  Miranda felt her stomach twist at the way he’d said that. The strange glaze in his eyes glowed greener.

  He took the stick and slapped it against his palm with a snap. “She used to punish me with them when I missed a note. Three strikes for every missed note. Four for every missed beat. I had to be careful. I had to be perfect. And I was. I was excellent.”

  Adam Tannenburg had played the clarinet like his mother. He’d earned a music scholarship to Northwestern.

  “But it wasn’t enough. It was never enough for her.” Agitated, he began to pace back and forth in front of the divider. “Even when I was a little boy she would take me to her room and make me take off my clothes and lie on the bed. She would touch me with her clarinet while she played Stravinsky.”

  Miranda could only imagine where she’d touched her son. Instinctively she inched away from him on the floor.

  “She would take her hand and grab me so tightly I would cry out in pain. Then she would tell me to be quiet. But I couldn’t be quiet. And when I kept screaming and crying she would hit me and poke me with her baton. Over and over and over. I still have the scars.” He lifted his T-shirt over his stomach. It was covered with old welts.

  Dear God. His mother was a monster. And she’d created another monster in her own image.

  Miranda stared at the man. He was in another world, reliving his nightmare. Was he incoherent enough for her to get to the gun and shoot before he used that remote?

  Suddenly he came out of the trance with a shrug. “But I paid her back. I killed her.” He said it as if he were talking about turning off the TV for the night.

  Miranda started. Was this the same guy she’d been looking for a month ago in Chicago? How could it be?

  She had to know the truth. “Your mother died in a house fire, didn’t she?”

  A broad smile crossed his face. The pride was back. “A fire I set.” He laughed again.

  A low guttural laugh. A sick, painful laugh that would have torn her heart out if she didn’t know how insane, how deadly he was.

  “It was easy. I mixed sleeping pills in her wine and when she’d fallen asleep on the sofa, I poured gasoline on her and set her on fire. It burned down that whole awful place with all those awful memories. But before I did that I tampered with the wiring to make it seem faulty. The police fell for it. They declared her death an accident.”

  It was him. “That house was in Evanston, Illinois.”

  He blinked at her as if she were the crazy one. “Well, you know that. You were there just a little while ago, weren’t you?”

  How the hell did he know that?

  He stepped a little closer to her. “I was there, too. Don’t you remember the feel of my arm around your neck?”

  Did the floor just quake? Were the walls coming down on top of her?

  Suddenly she was back in that mansion in Evanston. Standing in its ruins in the middle of the night. Picking through the rot and the ash looking for evidence. She’d sensed someone behind her. A rotten rafter overhead had snapped and tumbled to the ground. It would have crushed her but someone threw an arm around her neck and pulled her out of the way.

  But the grip around her throat had tightened and tightened until she passed out.

  It was him. This was Adam Tannenburg. And he’d almost killed her that night.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  So why hadn’t he killed her?

  Again she looked at the room. The paper lanterns, the padding, the pulleys, the cage with Gen inside it.

  This was why. He was waiting for this.

  Miranda’s heart began to beat with fear. But why her? Why Gen? Why Parker?

  Adam Tannenburg had had a sweetheart. Could she appeal to that side of him? The nice young man she’d learned about in Chicago? Find it buried inside the killer?

  “Tell me about Lydia,” she said softly.

  He glared at her. “Do not speak her name. No one is allowed to say her name but me.”

  So he still cared about her. “You were in love with her.”

  His eyes glowered as he stared at her. “You already know. You know we met in art school.”

  He had stalked her in Chicago. How had he known she was there? A chill went through her. Because he had been Gabriel Pierson, the cleaning man. And after that he’d been Tommy Drew, the delivery man at Saint Benedictine’s. He’d stalked her in Atlanta, too.

  “I fell in love the instant I saw her,” he continued, his voice dreamy. “She was so beautiful. All that luscious blond hair. That perfect skin. Those big bright hazel eyes.”

  Just the way Lydia Sutherland had looked in the photo Miranda had seen in her case file in Chicago.

  “And she fell in love with me, too. We spent every spare moment together. After only two weeks I asked her to marry me. She said yes. We would have been so happy together.”

  “What happened?”

  “You know what happened,” he shouted. But he told her anyway. He needed to tell someone. “It was the middle of December. Just before the holidays. She asked me to stay overnight at her house. I drove her there in my Mustang. She made us hot chocolate with rum. We drank it together, then finished the bottle of rum. And a second one. We smoked some weed, talked about school, our future.”

  He smiled, reliving the best part of his past.

  “We laid together in her bed but I didn’t touch her that night. We were both too intoxicated. We fell asleep.” He ran a hand through his hair, growing agitated again. “It must have been around two in the morning when I woke up. I heard someone breaking in the door. I was going to get up to find out what was going on but before I could, he came into the room.”

  He? Who was he talking about?

  “I shot out of bed. Told him to leave. He stood there yelling at Lydia. I tried to fight him but he was better trained. He threw a hard punch and hit me on the jaw. I fell to the floor. I hit my head on a table and passed out.”

  Dear God, was that what had happened that night?

  “When I came to, at first all I could hear was screaming. I opened my eyes and saw him on top of her on the bed. ‘What are you doing with him, you bitch?’” he cried. ‘Don’t you understand you belong to me?’ I tried to get up but the room was spinning.”

  He struck a fist into the air as if he could punch the man now.

  “‘I’ve been following you for weeks now,’ he said. ‘You’ve been fucking him, haven’t you? Haven’t you?’ And then…I watched him rape her. She cried out, told him to stop, but he wouldn’t. I saw him writhing over her body on the bed. Holding her down. Taking her from me. He kept yelling at her. ‘Whore! Whore! Whore!’”

  Miranda felt numb. It was Leon. Leon was the one who’d killed Lydia Sutherland.

  “He had his hands around her neck. He was shaking her and shaking her. I watched her go limp in his hands but he just kept shaking her. And then finally he stopped. He’d strangled her. She was dead.” The man before her began to whimper in agony. “I watched him climb off of her and stare down at her body. I was so afraid I pretended to still be out. I hu
ddled on the floor and hoped he’d go away so I could mourn my Lydia. But he’d come to his senses by then. He knew he’d be charged with murder. If anyone found her.”

  Oh, my God.

  Adam wiped his tears away with both hands and sniffed. “He ran into the kitchen and got some gasoline or something. He kicked over Lydia’s space heater and poured the liquid over it. It went up in a burst of flames.”

  Exactly the details the fire marshall had determined.

  “Then he ran out of the room. I followed him out. I knew I’d be burned and die with her. I saw him go out the back door so I ran toward the front. I was so afraid. I got outside and into my car and drove away as fast as I could.”

  So Lydia’s neighbor had been right. Adam Tannenburg had been with Lydia that night. And he’d driven away in his Mustang after the fire started.

  “The next day the police picked me up and questioned me about what happened. I lied and said I wasn’t there that night. They let me go.” He inhaled a raspy breath. “Then a month and a half later, they picked me up again. On sexual assault. But I had never been with anyone but Lydia.”

  A month and a half. He had been arrested in February. Just like Parker had told her today.

  “It was that night I learned who I truly was. What I was meant to be.”

  From Leon’s visit to his jail cell?

  Leon had turned into as sick a psychopath as any Miranda had known. He’d stalked her for years and tried to kill her. Had he somehow passed on that legacy to Tannenburg? How?

  “He told me what a slut Lydia was. How she’d fucked so many other guys before me. And he had had her more than any of them. She was a whore. She deserved killing. My sweet, gentle Lydia. I loved her so, but she used me. She hurt me. More than Mother ever had.”

  He began to weep. He wasn’t looking at her now. He was lost in his past. If only she could get him away from that remote and get to her gun.

  She dared to move her butt a little closer to where it lay near his feet. He didn’t see her.

  He drew in a breath and raised his eyes to the ceiling. “And that was when we made the deal.”

  “Deal?” To leave town, right?

  “He said the police had physical evidence. They knew I was at Lydia’s house the night of the fire. He reminded me they had already charged me of raping her and that they were about to file murder charges against me.”

  It wasn’t true. She knew that from the case file. There hadn’t been any physical evidence against Tannenburg. Leon had pulled strings with his buddies just the way he had when he took her daughter and put her up for adoption without her knowledge.

  “He told me I just had to do this one thing.”

  Leave town. Disappear and never come back. Miranda waited, not daring to prompt him. She watched his chest heave up and down as he relived his past. He’d confess it all soon. Tell her where he went, how the killings started. Who and how many.

  He calmed himself and turned to her with that frightening grin. And when he spoke, the sound of his voice suddenly became all too familiar.

  “He said he had a wife at home who needed to be taught a lesson. He wanted me to rape her.”

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Outside the house the sun had set and fireflies and insects buzzed through the thick humid air.

  Still stationed behind the kidnapper’s truck, in the dark Parker pressed the bud into his ear and watched the screen on Dave’s computer as it recorded the conversation inside.

  This couldn’t be right. There must be a malfunction in the system. But he knew that thought was his own denial.

  Denial of what he’d just heard over the wire.

  The man inside, the man who had kidnapped Gen, the man who had taken Miranda’s gun was Adam Tannenburg. And it was Adam Tannenburg who had attacked Miranda one wintry Chicago night in February fifteen years ago.

  It was Adam Tannenburg who was the man Mackenzie had been looking for. Her birth father.

  Dear God in heaven.

  How could he have been so wrong about this man? Why didn’t he see it when he’d discovered Leon Groth’s visit to Tannenburg’s cell fifteen years ago?

  If he hadn’t been so obsessed with protecting his wife, maybe he would have been able to think clearly. Maybe he would have put the pieces together before now.

  But how could he? It was so bizarre, so evil, even for a man like Groth—to blackmail someone into raping his wife?

  Thank God Groth was dead.

  But Tannenburg was very much alive. And he was about to do to Miranda and Gen what he did to that poor college student.

  Not if he could help it.

  He turned to Becker and whispered low. “Man the station here, Dave.”

  Becker looked at him with questioning eyes. “What do you mean, sir?”

  Parker drew the weapon he was carrying in his shoulder holster. “I mean I’m going in there. Holloway, Wesson, cover me.”

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  The dank ugly basement with its padded walls and lanterns and pulleys receded into a dream. No, not a dream a far worse nightmare.

  Miranda wasn’t here anymore. She wasn’t in Georgia. She wasn’t in Jaspar County. She wasn’t in this house.

  She was back in Chicago on that awful night fifteen years ago.

  She saw the shadows of the convenience store and the warehouse and the cold dark alley they formed. She saw the black ski mask hovering over her, felt the hands groping her, ripping off her clothes. She felt her flesh tearing on the icy pavement. The bitter wintry February cold on her bare skin. Heard his sickening grunts as he took her. And her own helpless screams.

  And she smelled the nauseating odor of cheap cologne.

  She raised her head and saw Tannenburg staring at her. He was smiling.

  He wanted her to relive it. To feel what she was feeling right now. He was a sick, sadistic bastard. He was the monster in her head. The demon who had haunted her dreams for fifteen years.

  His mouth was moving. He was speaking to her. She hadn’t heard it all, but now his words were clear.

  “I saw you on the news in Lake Placid,” he said. “I knew then I could find you and finish the job.”

  “What?”

  “He wanted me to kill you that night in February. He said he’d send you out for ice cream and he didn’t want you to come back. But I couldn’t do it. I was too weak then. I went back home and hid from him for awhile. I thought he would kill me. But Mother wouldn’t leave me alone. That was when I knew I could become what he wanted me to be. It took me months to come up with the plan, to work up the courage to set her on fire. But after I did that, I knew I could do what he wanted. But I couldn’t find you. And so I had to find others to replace you.”

  Miranda thought of the dozens of murder cases Chambers had found.

  “My first was in Downers Grove. That was when I came into my own.”

  When he’d started on the path he was on now, he meant.

  “But my first lasted only a few hours. I honed my technique. I became an expert. It’s taken me years. And now I can make them last days.” His breath grew ragged, like a hungry wolf.

  Slowly he turned to her. “And all this time I’ve been looking for you. Waiting for you. Getting ready for you. And now?” His teeth glistened with his ugly smile. “It’s high time we got started.”

  He moved toward her, pointing that awful stick at her.

  She shot to her feet and stepped back. “No.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m going to do her first.” He nodded toward the cage with Gen in it. “But I want you to watch. It will bring back memories of me.”

  She’d have enough memories of him. She wasn’t going to let that bastard get to Gen. And she wasn’t going to let him touch her either.

  “Get away from me.” She used the commanding tone she should have used that night. The one she’d learned in the dozens of self-defense courses she’d taken since then.

  He chuckled, took another step toward her. “O
h, my. Aren’t we bold.”

  She glanced down. He was as far from her gun as she was now but that electrical remote was still in his pocket.

  “I know you killed him,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “Him. I saw that on the news last October. Lake Placid.”

  He meant Leon.

  “He was right about you, you know.” He took another step.

  She braced herself. “Get any closer and you’ll be sorry.” She still had the martial arts skills she’d been honing for fifteen years.

  But again he only laughed. “You might have killed him but you won’t kill me. That will be my job. After I’m done here.”

  Was he talking about suicide? Along with a double murder? He was going for all the glory, wasn’t he?

  He lunged forward with the baton. She tried to bat it away but he was too fast. He stuck her in the breast with it.

  Damn. It was sharp as a dagger and it stung like hell.

  She felt blood stain her T-shirt. Normal is Boring. What she wouldn’t give for normal now. A normal afternoon with her daughter. Dear God. She just realized this madman was Mackenzie’s father.

  As if he were fencing he charged in and stabbed at her again. This time she managed to block the full force but he nicked her upper arm. More blood oozed into the short sleeve.

  He lunged again and she whacked the stick away. But as he came close she saw something on his neck.

  A round dark spot, just like the one her daughter had. The sight of it made her sick.

  Another swipe and he got her in the stomach. She could smell him. That sour odor of cheap cologne. She felt herself going under again. Back to that night. That time when she was so weak and defenseless.

  Keep your head, dammit. She wasn’t that woman any longer. Hadn’t been for a long time. She’d battled her demons. They might keep coming back but she kept beating them down.

  She’d do that to this monster, too.

  She danced away from him and took stock of her position. One solid roundhouse kick to the head and she could knock him out. Or at least stun him enough to get that remote away from him.

  And that stick.

  But she didn’t have enough room. She was too close to the wall. He was going to pin her to it soon.