by DJ Erfert
Lucy couldn’t help her tears spilling over her lashes. “You may not have been able to fight with the murderer, I can understand that, but why didn’t you report her death? It took twenty-nine years before a stranger finally put a name on her unsolved murder file.”
He slowly shook his head, losing eye contact with Lucy. “I—I … couldn’t.”
“Why not?” Lucy demanded.
“Lucy,” Kate said, “how could Coop explain he knew where she was? Even we thought he did it. Remember?”
“I wanted to call the police—to turn in that insane killer, but the best I could do was to try to keep you safe from him.”
“So you changed our names …”
“And I moved to Phoenix hoping he’d never find us.” Cooper swiped at his face with the backside of his hand. “I’d do anything to keep you safe, Lulu. Anything.”
“Then help find her killer now.” Lucy pulled out of Johnny’s embrace and knelt in front of her dad. “It looks like that same man has been killing more women. Bridget has a thick file on his latest victims, just no leads. At least she didn’t before I was able to tell her about that tattoo on his left arm. We need a name. Dad—you told us before that you know who killed her.
Cooper closed his eyes again and he gave a single nod.
“Then tell us—tell us who killed Mom!”
“It was my brother!” he choked out.
~*~
“Your brother?” Lucy stood up. “I didn’t know I had an uncle.” She strode around her dad and headed to the door, but where would she go? She leaned her head against the doorjamb, thinking.
“I knew Chase had problems, Lulu. Ever since he came back from Vietnam, he was in and out of hospitals, sometimes due to his war injury, sometimes—”
“Vietnam?” Johnny asked. “How old is your brother?”
Cooper stood up, running his hand behind his neck. “He’s seventeen years older than I am. He was drafted in ’74, at the tail end of Nam when he was only eighteen years old.”
“Dad—” Lucy’s heart seized. “Does he have the same gift?”
“To Chase, it was never a gift, but a curse.” Cooper went over to the monitors and stared at the screen with his men in the rec room. “I’ve been in some tight spots during my career, but I can’t imagine being in a war situation, even for a single day, let alone a whole year.”
He glanced sideways at Lucy when she stepped next to him. “My dad told me Chase was being discharged on a Section Eight, a mental illness, but then came the end of the war, and everyone was being evacuated out, including Chase. The fighting got worse then, and as he was being evac’d he was wounded. His right hand was shot up. He never regained the use of it.”
“Now he’s left-handed, like in my nightmare,” Lucy said.
“That’s right.” Cooper shifted toward Lucy. “You have to understand that I never knew about Chase killing anybody else. I swear it!”
Lucy wrapped her arms around his chest. “I believe you, Dad.”
“But will Bridget?” Kate asked, looking doubtful.
“We’ll get around that,” Lucy told her. “She’ll just be glad when we catch her killer.”
“Your uncle,” Johnny reminded her.
“Yeah.” Lucy rested her cheek on her dad’s chest. “I have an insane uncle.” She gasped and pushed away. “Are your parents still living? Are Mom’s? Do I have—”
“Whoa,” Cooper said, taking hold of her shoulders. “You’re still incognito, Lulu. We can’t let Chase know where you are by breaking your cover.”
He sat down on the edge of the counter. “After what happened to your mother, I hid my parents away in case he wanted to hurt them, too. I didn’t know his motive for… doing what he did. You said he’s killed other women back then, and now there are new victims?”
“Bridget’s only assuming it’s the same killer,” Kate said. “The method sounds the same, but she hasn’t told us why she believes it’s the same man.”
Cooper let out a slow breath. “I wonder where Chase has been for nearly three decades.”
“Laying low,” Johnny said.
“He’s been in prison?” Kate offered.
“I thought he might’ve been dead,” Cooper said.
“What if he changed his name,” Lucy asked. “How can we find him?”
Cooper looked over at the monitor where his team relaxed and laughed with each other. “We’ll help the FBI follow the trail of dead bodies, while I keep you safe.”
“Join the FBI.” Lucy sighed. “That’s not something I thought I’d ever do.”
“You were on a joint mission with them for the past two days,” Cooper reminded her. “It wasn’t so bad. Was it?”
Lucy lifted a shoulder.
“How about you talk Jim into giving you a leave of absence, and join up with my team—just for a while, until we find Chase and take him out of action?”
Johnny took Lucy’s hand and asked, “Can it wait until after our honeymoon?”
“Honeymoon?” Cooper asked. “When are you planning your wedding?”
Lucy grinned. “Tomorrow, if we can get a lift to Las Vegas.”
Cooper smiled tenderly at Lucy. “So you’re not wanting that big wedding—long white dress, lots of flowers?”
Lucy stepped into Johnny’s embrace, feeling a wave of his loving warmth wash through her. “I just want to be married, Dad, and get on with our lives.”
Cooper stared at Kate, and said, “I think that sounds good to me. What do you think?”
“I do, too,” Kate whispered.
The End
Epilogue
Curly spirals drifted up from the cigarette smoldering in the tin ashtray the man had stolen from a bar. The smoke slowly snaked around his head as he scanned the local newspaper for any information on his latest victim.
A solitary low-watt bulb hung naked and exposed above the kitchen table, the light barely strong enough to cut through the acrid smoke left by the pack of Marlboro cancer sticks the man lifted at the same time as the ashtray.
Los Angeles was a large city, and the perfect place to lose himself when he didn’t want to be found, and for the past year he didn’t even want to be seen.
He laid the paper down on the table before he picked up the cigarette with his left hand and placed it between his lips. He continued to read the article out loud as white-hot ash bounced off the end and floated down with each syllable he spoke.
“A local woman used the 2016 Chevy Tahoe she had been test driving from the McGovern’s Chevrolet to stop a Los Angeles Unified School District bus after it lost use of its brakes. The third grade class was on a field trip to the Aquarium when the incident happened.”
He wiped his dirty hand on his worn blue jeans before he reached down into his left boot and took out the switchblade he kept hidden there. The man then held the knife in front of his face and looked at it, pushing the button with a squeeze of his thumb.
The sharp double-edged blade shot out of its handle with a sensual metallic swish. Looking down at the black and white picture, the man sneered quietly at the face of the young woman he recognized.
The blade caught the dim light from the bulb and focused the reflection down onto the newspaper article. With a guttural voice, he said, “Hello, little Lucy. It’s been too long. I can’t wait to finally kill you.” He lifted the blade in his fist and swiftly stuck the tip deep into the wooden table, cleanly slitting Lucy’s picture at the chest.
Note from the Author: Thank you for reading Window of Death. I hope you enjoyed it. Please consider posting a review for this book on Amazon US. If you’d like to be informed of future releases, I’d love if you’d join my email list at debraerfert.com so I may tell you about when Window of Darkness, Book Three in the Window of Time Trilogy is released.
About Debra, DJ, Erfert
While growing up, going to libraries felt like an adventure filled with mystery and wonder to Debra. The hushed tones invoked secrets, and the dusty, sometimes moldy, smell
of paper was the same in each city she lived. Leaving the library with just a single book never happened. Years later, her love of reading turned to a passion for writing stories others might enjoy. She’s an award winning fine artist who lives in a southwest Arizona city with her husband, a retired police lieutenant, where the average summer temperatures are well above 100 degrees--truly hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk.
Connect with her online:
Facebook at AuthorDebraErfert
Twitter @debraerfert
Her blog is debraerfert.blogspot.com
And also, debraerfert.com
Join her email mailing list (she promises not to sell or misuse addresses) [email protected]
Also available from Debra, DJ, Erfert:
Window of Time, Book One in the Window of Time Trilogy from Amazon.com
CIA courier Lucy James never gets used to seeing innocent people killed, but she copes with it—every day. Cursed with the ability to glimpse into the future when a death is about to happen, she has a short window of time to interfere—risking her life in order to change it. No one knows about her curse, until she saves a handsome Los Angeles firefighter trapped between her and foreign operatives hell-bent on intercepting her current assignment.
LA firefighter Johnny Cartwright’s life changes the moment he meets Lucy. His uncomplicated days flip to dangerously unpredictable after he’s drawn deeper into her secretive world of premonitions. His attraction to Lucy grows as he helps her stop a terroristic plot against the U.S., putting his life between her and certain death.
Also available,
A Kindle Worlds novella, Royals of Monterra: It Takes a Sleuth exclusively from Amazon.
Taylor Hodges, field producer of Hollywood’s hottest reality show, Marry Me, hires Larabee Investigations after someone tries to kill her while scouting next season’s filming location in Arizona. Maxine Larabee hopes solving the celebrity’s case might end her company’s financial struggle, and at the same time prove to her lead investigator, Jace Atmore, she has what it takes to be a good detective.
But she has a bigger problem than just trying to prove her investigative abilities to a man with whom she’s attracted and probably falling for. The strongest lead in Taylor’s case trails straight to an ex-contestant of Marry Me, Lemon Beauchamp, a woman who’s engaged to His Royal Highness Prince Dante of Monterra. Getting to question her might be more difficult than keeping Taylor alive, or getting Jace’s respect.
Also available,
Changes of the Heart, a romantic suspense, at Amazon.com
A coincidence is God’s way of staying anonymous.
Buying the 1920s farmhouse south of Phoenix, where the rumors of John Dillinger’s gang hid out in the 30s, is supposed to be Grace Evanheart’s way of escaping an old romance. When she finds an ancient diary with a map under the bedroom’s floorboard, the rumors solidify into fact. She doesn’t know who to trust with the news; Micah Stevens, the handsome deputy and the great grandson of the original landowners with whom she’s attracted, or Jerry, the young historian who seems too intent on learning about her new home?
Micah seems convinced their paths cross exactly at the right time and in the right place for them to fall in love. Now he just has to convince Grace of the same thing before suspicions of his real motive have her running again.
Also available,
RELATIVE EVIL from Xchyler Publishing at Amazon.com.
Inspired by her father and his pretty young wife, novelist Claire Abney allows her imagination to run wild and pens a best-selling thriller. However, as Glen Abney suffers multiple freak accidents, she wonders exactly where the prose stops and reality begins. Claire screens her family from the prying eyes of success with a masculine pen name and her handsome editor, her shill for photo ops and book signings. But her father’s unexpected death, and bungled attempts on her own life, force her to admit the strategy may have backfired. Now, with the help of her brother and Max, her dreamy frontman, she must separate truth from fiction before life imitating art becomes deadly.
Acknowledgments:
I’d like to thank my family for putting up with my writing while neglecting them. Fortunately, they were able to feed themselves and knew how to do laundry.
I’d like to give a special thanks to Sara Werra, Janine Christensen, and Christina Tarbet for being the best beta readers and proofreaders a writer could find! They are truly awesome and good friends.
