"Stuff it," Ethan mumbled as he climbed in the car.
As Caleb navigated the streets back to the station, no one spoke a word. Which was unfortunate because it gave him time to think back to the moment he and Ethan had pulled up to the hospital and seen Kara on the ground in a puddle of blood. He couldn't get to her side fast enough. Without verbally communicating, Ethan had gone inside for help.
Good God, he hardly knew the woman, and he felt as if someone had sucker punched him in the stomach every time he looked at her in the rearview mirror. She was sitting stick straight, trying to hide how terrified she was, and she still looked gorgeous. Even with the black and blue bruise that was starting to form on her temple and the dried blood in her hair that the nurse was unable to clean up, she was the most alarmingly beautiful woman he had ever seen.
What he wouldn’t give to be able to wake up to her every day. It was truly amazing that one woman could look so vulnerable and so strong at the same time. He had never in his life met a woman like her. And he was more certain than ever that he wanted her to be in his life, because as soon as he saw her on the ground with blood dripping into her eyes, he wanted to rip the throat out of the person who had caused her injury. An injury that was minor and paled in comparison to what she’d been through when she was abducted.
Caleb knew he was in trouble; his feelings were more intense than any he had ever felt for a woman. The primitive instinct to protect what was his, was so strong that he struggled not to scream out in pure, vicious anger at the bastard who had deemed himself worthy to touch her.
As if her morning wasn’t bad enough, now came the hard part, they had to tell her that Andrea Vincent was not the only other victim. She had already suspected as much, but to have the confirmation would surely rattle her. On top of that, she was about to bare the darkest details of her ordeal ten years ago. He knew he could handle the details. He knew Ethan could handle it, and he was sure she would get through it.
He just hated that she felt the need to air it out to everyone and that they needed to hear the details. Because while he knew it was good for her to talk about it, he didn't want her to air her dirty laundry out to everyone—for it to become part of the official record. It was part of what made her who she is, but he didn’t want her to feel degraded, and he knew Kara felt they didn't have any other choice.
Once they got to the station, both men turned to her to make sure one last time that she was sure this is what she wanted to do. And once again, she surprised him by being strong and adamant that this was the right thing to do. That even though it might be ten years too late, she was going to make an official statement. Her head had to be splitting, but she stood there with a look of determination etched across her face. A look that said, This is me; I am a force to be reckoned with.
Caleb was not oblivious to the looks when they walked into his department. It was obvious it was a mixture of concern and…something else. He could see the looks of interest on most of the men’s faces. It was clear that many of the men found Kara as attractive as he did. Which made Caleb feel jealous and possessive. He couldn’t help but think that they had better back off. A couple of the guys smirked and nodded, message received. A few others were clearly reacting to the injury she had sustained.
Before he knew what he was doing, he’d put his hand on her lower back. It wasn’t the first time he had felt the need to touch her. Surprised by his territorial attitude, Caleb tried to focus on the task at hand.
But it was useless because not only was he having a hard time ignoring the men checking her out, now he had to ignore the feel of his hand to her body. And now was not the time to get aroused, but touching her and smelling her combined with the spike of testosterone from seeing other men look at her was causing just that reaction.
"Montgomery, Vanderbilt. What took you so long?" Bob barked, clearly agitated.
No one could blame him; everyone was hoping Kara had the key to this case. It only took a glance at Kara for him to change his tone.
"What the hell happened?"
"Someone shoved her to the ground, and she took a solid hit to her head. They took her purse. My guess is it was as much to make it look like a mugging as it was to see if they could get information from anything in her purse," Caleb said.
“They wouldn’t learn much from my purse, and they already have my cell phone number.”
Caleb was still fuming that somehow the bastard had gotten her private number and had the balls to call and harass her. The question was, how had he gotten the number? His guess was that it was somehow obtained through the hospital personnel records.
"I would tell you to go home and get some rest and come back later, but we need you. Are you good to go?" Captain Bob Wickman asked.
"As ready as I can be." It was evident that she was pleased by the way the Captain had addressed her. He could tell that she was trying to show confidence in the inflection in her voice, but there was a barely discernible tremble to her words.
With a nod from Bob, they moved to the same conference room as earlier. Ethan and Caleb walked directly to the wall where pictures of Andrea Vincent’s body and the crime scene were pinned up, but Kara stopped them before they could remove them.
"No, leave them up. I’ve seen dead people before, and I might see something in the pictures that you missed."
Knowing she was right, they left the pictures up. Caleb pulled a chair out for her to sit on, and with a slight touch to her shoulder, let her know he was there for her and she could stop at any time if she wanted.
"I apologize for not introducing myself. I am Captain Bob Wickman. We can start whenever you’re ready. But we’re still waiting for one more person. If you could just wait a little bit longer?"
"Kara Vanderbilt," she said, shaking the hand he had extended to her. "That would be fine. May I ask who we’re waiting for?"
"DA Gloria Finnegan. We just want to have everything as legit as possible. Is that all right with you, Miss Vanderbilt?"
"Please call me Kara. Of course, I want everything to be done by the book. Once we find this bastard, we need to make the charges stick. I just hope we find him as soon as possible. Before we start, can someone fill me in on what new development sparked your wanting me to come in as soon as possible?"
All three men looked at each other and shared a pained expression. They hadn’t gotten a chance to tell her when they picked her up because of the scene they found when they got to the hospital. Ethan nodded to Caleb, giving him a gesture that relinquished the task to him. He sighed heavily. If Ethan was unable to bring himself to tell her, he preferred to be the one to tell her versus one of the others.
"When we were meeting this morning, the victim’s time of death was confirmed.”
"Andrea Vincent. I want everyone to say her name, she was a person; don’t refer to her as the victim. Please." Kara’s eyes were stripped naked at the near admission of how she felt about being considered a victim.
"All right. Andrea Vincent went missing for four days before she was found, and she died just as we had speculated, around the exact time you coded.”
"Is that all? I mean, I thought you had already figured that out. So, this is just confirmation?”
“We wanted you to hear that it’s official before it hits the press,” Ethan said. “But there’s more. We have reason to believe that we have linked another murder to this unsub.”
Kara’s shoulders sagged, and she looked at her hands. They were tightly linked, and her knuckles were white. And then she shook herself slightly and squared her shoulders and looked at the men in the room.
“So, I was right, which means there’ll be more. And the number on the note is, what? The number of victims?” She looked around the room at the people assembled and sighed. “The word ‘victim’ is only offensive to me if we actually know the name of the person who was brutalized. Once you know who they are, you should give them back their identity.” They all nodded once.
“Our working theor
y is that the number coincides with what number victim and the rhyme that accompanies the note is directed at you.”
“That doesn’t make sense, though, because with me it would be eleven victims. The note you found on Andrea said number twelve. Unless...”
“We’re working on the premise that you were not the first victim,” Caleb finished quietly.
“But I am the only one that got away. Then, in my opinion, the key to this case is finding victim one,” she whispered. “He’ll have made mistakes with the first woman he took.”
"We are going to do our best to keep as much as possible out of the papers. So, anything you tell us today is between us, unless we absolutely must tell someone else," Captain Wickman said.
"Captain Wickman, I assure you that I will not do anything to jeopardize this case. As it appears at this point that I’m a target, it would be foolhardy for me to go to the media."
"I know that. I’m just letting you know that from our end; we plan to keep you as close to a confidential informant as we can. Obviously, the media can be sly and eventually will figure things out on their own. But for now, we don’t plan to help them out. And please, call me Bob."
"Understood." Her voice faltered a little, and she looked down at her hands as if searching for the strength to tell them about that May.
"I thought there would be repercussions to my psyche if I came home. But even in my worst dreams, I didn’t think that other women were in danger all these years. The monster that did all those things to me is dead. How could I have known that someone else had picked up where he had left off? If I’d known, I would have done all I could to stop it. I would have made myself bait, something, anything to save those other women."
13
"The hell you would have! This isn’t on you; this is on the bastard killing those women. He’s responsible for the deaths, not you. And we are responsible to locate him and put a stop to him. Our responsibility and ours alone, not yours!" Caleb exclaimed sharply. His outburst caused shocked expressions to form on everyone’s face, including the tall and attractive woman who had just walked through the door.
"All right, what did I miss?" the woman asked. Kara assumed she was the district attorney they’d been waiting for.
"Kara was talking out of her ass," Ethan snapped, clearly as upset by her statement as Caleb was.
"I was not talking out of my ass, as you so eloquently put it. I was merely stating that it might be better for all of us if I talked all those years ago, been bait, something. I can't allow anyone else—especially someone I care about—to get hurt because of me." She knew her voice sounded pathetic, but she didn't care.
"I'm DA Gloria Walker, but you can call me Gloria." The beautiful woman smiled softly at Kara and shook her hand.
"Please, call me Kara."
"Kara, none of this is your fault," Captain Wickman said.
"I wouldn't be so sure if I were you," she said, knowing she sounded miserable.
“Kara, there’s no way you could have had the foresight to know that this would happen. Bob has brought me up-to-date on all the details. The person who attacked you died. There’s no way you could have known someone else was actively taking women in the same method," Gloria stated.
"Let's just start at the beginning."
"All right. You have the floor," Gloria said, her voice soothing.
Kara couldn’t help but think that Gloria Finnegan was very good at her job. She had the sympathetic voice down pat. Kara only hoped that she was as sincere as she made herself sound.
“Tell me something, Gloria.”
“Sure.”
“Have you had training in social behavior?”
“Very intuitive. I knew from an early age I wanted to be a DA. I also knew that I would have to talk to vic...people who were subjected to horrible ordeals. Therefore, I decided that a minor in psychology would be beneficial in helping me to be more compassionate, understanding, and forthright when cross-examining or having a simple conversation.”
Kara nodded slowly. Her suspicion was correct, and her feelings that Gloria was a person that could be trusted helped her immensely. She took a deep breath and then another, focusing on what she was here to do.
“Is this all, just the four of us? You don’t want Cathy, Shirley, and Brett here?” Gloria asked.
“No, I didn’t want to have too many ears in the room, and I want Kara to feel comfortable.”
“If there are more people that are part of your team, then you should have them come in. Honestly, the whole team should be here. I don’t matter. What matters is that we find this person—this unsub—before it’s too late.”
Ethan nodded once and stood to leave the room, presumably to get the other team members. Kara was ready. As hard as it was going to be, she was ready to share her story. But she didn’t want to hesitate. The longer they waited, the more likely she would get cold feet and run screaming from the room.
And just when she was about to jump out of her skin, Ethan returned with two women and a man. Obviously, the aforementioned Cathy, Shirley, and Brett. As she watched everyone take a seat, she focused on each person intently. They all appeared to be solid, open, and honest people. People that were going to help take down this monster.
Shit, he hated this. He didn't want to have to make her tell her story; he didn’t want to have to hear it, not because it would change what he thought about her or how he felt about her, but because he knew it would make him so angry, and he’d want to wring the man’s neck who’d hurt her. But he would never be able to do that.
There was a quiet knock on the door and Lois, the office clerk, brought in a folder for him. He had requested the file on Kara’s case before he left to go pick her up. But he found himself frowning at the size of the file; it certainly didn’t appear to be very large. He would have expected the folder to be huge, even if Devon Bristol had died and made it an open-and-shut case, there should still have been some due diligence in the investigation. Which would have resulted in more paperwork than the single sheet he found when he opened the folder.
The sheet of paper merely consisted of a case number and nothing else. No evidence. No statements. There wasn’t even a statement from Kara, the farmer that found her, or the officers on the scene. It was the most obvious lackluster attempt at building a case he had ever seen. Was this all the officers assigned to the case managed to pull together? If so, they deserved a kick in the ass. Was the evidence lost? It seemed unlikely. If that were the case, surely the whole file would be missing. Or did something more nefarious happen? Was the evidence destroyed? Whatever the answer was, it wasn’t good. Somehow, all the evidence was gone or had never been collected. It wasn’t merely a case of bad filing because that, too, would result in the whole file missing, and not just 99% of the legwork.
“Before you start. Um...I took the liberty of requesting the folder from your case.” He paused before continuing and then cleared his throat. “However, it appears we have a problem.”
Every set of eyes in the room looked at the folder. Kara was the only one who didn’t have a startled look on her face.
“What do you mean? That’s the folder? There should be more than just one piece of paper,” Ethan’s voice roared. Kara’s hand reached out to touch his.
“Surely, you aren’t surprised? After all these years, how can you still be surprised about anything that surrounds me or that case?” Caleb was certain that her voice was colder than she had meant it to be; once again, she was deflecting her pain by portraying herself as cold.
“What do you mean?” Ethan asked.
“Come on, already. Why can’t you just see it for what it is? Our sweet old parents had that file disappear, and you know it. Since I know for a fact that I gave a statement, even if it wasn’t very detailed, and I also know that Henry Stanford gave a statement. I have maintained a relationship with him; he would be disgusted by the lack of papers in that file. I also know that the officers gave statements. In fact, when I last s
aw that file, it was brimming with papers.”
Now all eyes turned to look at Kara.
“First, when did you see the file? Second, what would make you think our parents had anything to do with it? I know they can be pretty horrible, but what purpose would there be to make it disappear?” Ethan spat out, angrier than Caleb had seen him in a long time, and he was sure Kara had never seen that anger directed at her. And to her credit, she never flinched because she could see that Ethan wasn’t mad at her. He was mad at the situation and the knowledge that he knew she was right.
“You find it so hard to believe that dear old Dad and manipulative Mommy wouldn’t have a reason for that to disappear? Maybe, just maybe, if you sat back and considered all the pieces to the puzzle, you might be able to put a few things together. And to answer the question about when I saw the file, that would be a few days before I left our home. I saw that file in our dad’s hands.”
“The hell you say?!” Ethan’s voice squeaked.
“I’m not following you,” Caleb said, trying to diffuse the situation.
“My dad was talking to two officers the night I left. They had my file and Father was looking at it. You see, our parents only like publicity when it serves to help them, and I have no doubt in my mind that they made that folder disappear that night so that the pictures taken of my injuries wouldn’t be leaked. Once I was found and the usefulness of my disappearance to get my father the seat as governor faded, it turned into damage control. After all, we couldn’t have details of what had happened to me become public knowledge. How could they possibly marry me off to the highest bidder?”
“Why would they do that? What are you implying?” Ethan asked.
“Mother and Father never wanted me to speak to the police. They wanted it to all get brushed under the covers. I refused. Back then, I wanted to explain everything. I wanted to tell what had happened. I let it appear to them that I didn’t want to give a statement, and then I went to the police station and gave one. I allowed them to think I hadn’t talked to the police. Because they had encouraged me to not talk to them.”
In the Night (Darkness Falls Book 1) Page 10
