Adrenaline flooded his system as he walked purposefully toward her car. He scanned the parking lot. There was a grocery store employee wrangling carts and trying to line them all up. Otherwise, there was no activity.
He pulled the knife from his pocket and stabbed it into the rear driver’s side tire of Carolina’s car. The air whistled out as the tire deflated. He considered slashing all of the tires, but that would look suspicious. He didn’t want to alarm her. He just needed to slow her down, so he could get to her house first.
He sat in his van and waited for her to exit the store.
Pushing her cart toward her silver Honda, he watched her put her grocery bags into the trunk.
She started to walk toward the car door, then stopped and looked down. Perfect. She’d noticed the tire. Her shoulders slumped, and she kicked the flat tire. As she dug through her bag probably for her phone, he pulled out of the parking lot.
“GREAT. JUST GREAT.” It was getting dark and Carolina had a flat tire. “Just my luck.” She looked around and then dug into her purse. She had roadside assistance, but it always took too long to get a tow truck out. She put her phone back into her purse and popped the trunk. Pushing the grocery bags to the side, she lifted the floor mat and spied the spare tire. Her father had taught her how to change a tire, but she’d never actually had to do it before. She set her purse inside the trunk and wrangled the tire out.
It took her ten minutes to get the car jacked up and another five to remove the lug nuts from the tire. She had one more to go and it wouldn’t budge. “God damn it.” Her hands were black with grease and dirt and her white dress would likely end up as a dust rag after this. She was frustrated and out of breath as she stepped on the rod of the tire iron to try and force the last lug nut to release.
“Pardon me. Can I give you a hand?”
She looked up at the source of the voice. An older man wearing a button-down plaid shirt and a cowboy hat smiled at her.
“I can’t seem to get this last lug nut to come loose.”
The man stepped toward her. “Let me give her a try.”
“Thank you.” Carolina looked at her dirty hands.
He stepped on the tire iron and it twisted. “That one was a little tough, but you loosened it up for me.” He put the nut on the ground beside the others before he pulled the tire off. He trailed his thumb over the tread. “That’s a pretty big hole there. Did you run over something?”
Carolina shook her head. “It was fine when I went into the store.”
“A slash this size would’ve flattened your tire right away. This wasn’t a slow leak or a nail.” He knelt down and slid the spare on. It only took him a few more minutes to secure it into place.
She inspected the flat tire. He was right. The hole was about an inch long. Weird.
He stood and wiped his hands on his jeans. “That’ll hold for now. Stay off the interstate though. These spare tires are flimsy as paper these days.”
“Thank you so much.” Carolina held her hand out, but thought better of it. “My hands are dirty.”
He laughed. “So are mine. But it’s okay, young lady. Be careful and get yourself a new tire soon.”
“I will. Thanks, again.”
“No problem.” He waved at her as he walked across the lot and climbed into an old pickup.
NATHAN STARED AT THE sketch Carolina had given him. It was lifelike but wouldn’t work in a facial recognition scan. That required an actual photograph. If only the asshole had turned his face toward the camera after Mallory’s funeral.
He turned his attention to the partial plate matches. There were six names. Six men with gray sedans that had the letters and numbers on their plate. He typed the first name into their search engine. A picture of a heavy-set man popped up. Harold Carl Frenley. Harold had silver hair and was born in the early thirties. Not likely their suspect.
Next was Billy Sam Cornwell. He looked like he’d done a stint on Duck Dynasty. Without the beard, he might match the suspect. Nathan put Billy’s name on a new list.
Dennis Stafford was the right age and had the right hair color. He was thirty-two. Dennis’s name was added to the list beneath Billy’s. Three of the six were eliminated based on age or hair and eye color. Nathan had a list of three. Billy Cornwell, Dennis Stafford and Jacob Serta. Make that a list of two. Jacob was freakishly tall at six-seven.
Dennis and Billy were his two promising suspects.
One thing he would fault his predecessor for was not entering the murders in Arkansas into the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. The database didn’t have the greatest track record, but it couldn’t hurt to try. A lot of cops felt it was a waste of time. Nathan pulled up the website for ViCAP and went about entering all the information he had on Mallory’s murder. He copied and pasted the narrative from his computer files. ViCAP was known to time out while entering that part and nobody wanted to lose everything they’d entered. Nathan had learned that the hard way back in Los Angeles. It took him two hours to add the other local murder cases. There had been one in Little Rock and one in Maumelle. The victims had been well educated and well-off. Whoever their perp was, he had a hard-on for affluent women.
Then he searched his killer’s signature. The hair mutilation. Most of the cases in ViCAP were rape homicides. He found two in Texas, one each in Oklahoma, Tennessee, and New Hampshire. All the vics had their hair cut in some fashion.
Ten minutes later Nathan had printed out the relevant reports. The only one that didn’t really fit the MO was the murder in New Hampshire. The victim was a blonde teenager. The murders in Arkansas were all businesswomen in their mid to late twenties with dark brown hair.
The cases in Texas were the most recent but were three years cold. Nathan called the Dallas Police Department and asked for the detective whose name was on the report.
“Homicide.”
Nathan gave the spiel about who he was and why he was calling.
“I’m sorry. Detective Mason is no longer with this department. This is Detective Ramona Carbajal. What can I do for you?”
“I’m investigating a string of murders in the Little Rock area that have a similar MO to two murders in the Dallas area about four years ago.”
“Do you have a report number?”
“Yes.” He rattled off the number at the top of the report.
There was the sound of keys clicking on the other end.
“All right. Yeah. I’m looking at the summary now. The complete file has been archived to cold cases.”
“Did you guys have a suspect in the case? Anybody that looked good for the murders?”
While Detective Carbajal looked over her records on the other end of the phone, Nathan searched Billy Sam Cornwell. Mr. Cornwell was doing a ten-month stint in Grimes, and he’d been inside for half of that already. Billy wasn’t their man.
That left Dennis Stafford. As Nathan typed his name into the system, Detective Carbajal came back on the line.
“Nathan?”
“I’m here.”
“It looks like we had two suspects. Johnny Cray and Dennis Stafford.”
Bingo.
“I’m also looking at Stafford. Do you have DNA on him?”
“We don’t have his DNA. But we have crime scene DNA. Never could match it to anyone and we didn’t have enough on either of these guys to get a warrant for a sample.”
“Can you have your ME send our ME the DNA? If we can link them, we can possibly put this to bed for both of us.”
“I’ll put in a request to have it sent over to your department.”
“Thanks, Ramona. Do you have any other info on Stafford? I don’t see any criminal record.”
“He was clean as a whistle. But it looks like our detectives were sure he was the perp.”
“Yeah. This isn’t a coincidence.”
“There are no coincidences in murder.”
Nathan hung up and dialed the ME’s office. He left a message for Dr. Preston.
HE PARKE
D HIS VAN IN the woods again. The recent rain had left the grass wet and the soil soft. Mud caked around the soles of his shoes as he jogged across the field to the rear of her house.
He’d been inside before so he knew how the entrance looked. What he needed to know was how he could get in; what the points of entry looked like.
Carrying a ladder across the field would be too much work so he’d have to find a spot on the first floor. He was about to step onto the patio when he looked down. He’d leave footprints if he walked up to the doors. Although he was only about fifteen feet away from the glass, he pulled out his mini binoculars to get a better look inside.
The sliding glass door didn’t have a curtain or blinds, and he had a clear, magnified view into the kitchen. The flowers he’d delivered a few days ago still sat on the table where he’d left them. The petals had wilted some. He imagined they were starting to smell like funeral flowers as they began to die. Nothing lasted forever.
HE CAME BACK IN THE morning. Carolina’s car was parked outside the garage. After giving it a lot of thought, Dennis decided it would be easier to just push his way in. Breaking in and hiding would be more exciting, but he was running out of time. Patience might be a virtue for others but not for him. He rehearsed what he’d say when she answered the door. Or maybe he’d say nothing at all. Sometimes less was more.
Knocking on her door, he waited. A dog barked, and he heard her voice. That sweet, high-pitched voice.
“Coming,” she called.
The door opened and she smiled, a flash of recognition crossed her face. Good. She knew who he was. She remembered him.
He smiled back at her. “Hello.”
“Hi.” She looked at him and tilted her head. “Can I help you?”
“Yes. You can.” He shoved her inside the house and slammed the door.
She landed hard on the wood floor and hit her head on the bottom step of the staircase, knocking her out cold.
He paced for a few minutes, then stopped to make sure she was still breathing. If she died now, his plan would go to shit. The screeching started, and he shook his head.
He reached down and grabbed her wrists, pulling them up over her head. The roll of duct tape had been in his waistband, and he yanked it out and began wrapping her wrists. Unconscious, she was like a doll he could pose however he wanted. Dennis trailed a finger down her cheek.
Her eyelashes fluttered, and she licked her lips. Carolina grimaced and groaned. She tried to pull her hands apart and then her eyes snapped open. Her breathing accelerated as she stared up at him. Then she let out a blood-curdling scream.
He clamped his hand over her mouth. “Shhh. We have plans to make, sweetheart.”
CAROLINA’S MOUTH WENT dry, and she was afraid her throat would close up. His hand was covering her lips and her nose and it was hard to pull in a breath. Her fingers tingled from the lack of blood flow and her head pounded.
Why was he doing this? What plans was he talking about? Adrenaline surged through her body, and she tried to abate the panic that was just below the surface. Fight or flight. Flight didn’t seem to be an option. Not with her hands bound and the intruder standing over her.
There was a .38 in the drawer of her nightstand ... upstairs. Trying to talk him into taking her up to her bedroom was probably a bad idea. The odds were that it wouldn’t go as she would like.
But she had to do something. So, she clasped her hands together to make a sort of fist. With one swing of both arms, she knocked his hand away from her mouth and pulled in a ragged breath. Then she screamed again.
In a quick motion, he slapped her and then grabbed her chin hard. “You scream one more time and I’ll snap your neck. Do you understand?”
The shock of the blow shut her up. Her cheek stung, and her stomach roiled.
He squeezed her chin harder. “Do you understand?” His breath smelled like licorice or anise, and his deodorant was working overtime. Sweat beaded his forehead, and the scent of baby powder wafted toward her.
Carolina nodded. “Yes. Yes.” She darted her eyes, looking around for a way to escape. If he planned to kill her, she had nothing to lose by trying to get away from him. The keys to her car were on the table in the foyer less than five feet away. She’d have to disable him some way. But how?
For the first time in her life, she wished that Douglas weighed sixty pounds instead of six. Her father had told her that she should invest in a guard dog. He’d said it wasn’t safe for a young woman to live alone. But Carolina hadn’t listened to him. She loved Douglas; loved that he could fit in her shoulder bag. And none of these thoughts were a solution to the current predicament she was in.
She knew this guy. Didn’t she? Who was he? He grabbed her by the shoulders and hauled her up off the floor. She tried to walk, but he dragged her toward the living room as she stumbled to try to keep up pace with his long strides.
He turned her around and shoved her down on the couch. He stood before her. “We’re going to talk.”
“O-okay.” She wished her voice sounded more confident. Fear was a palpable emotion, and she knew that he knew she was afraid. He was keeping her in a submissive position to hold onto that power.
Douglas was out on the patio with Stellaluna. His whines were faint since the door was closed but Carolina heard his little claws sliding over the glass of the sliding door. Part of her was glad he wasn’t inside the house. Who knew what this crazy man might do to her dog if he bit him.
Dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt with a logo she didn’t recognize, he looked like an average guy. But she’d seen him before. Where?
“We’re going to go away. You and me. You’re going to pack a few things, but not too much. Starting over means leaving your old life behind.”
She stared at his hands while he used them to gesture. His fingertips were stained a faint shade of green. Like he’d been rubbing freshly-cut grass between his fingers.
Carolina looked up at his face. His eyes were dark blue or were they hazel? There was a small scar above his left eyebrow like a gash had been stitched up a long time ago.
“What? What are you talking about?” Flowers. He was the flower guy. The delivery guy. He’d been at her house on her birthday and then she’d coincidentally run into him at the grocery store shortly after that. Maybe it hadn’t been a coincidence.
“Listen to me.” He amended his tone as if speaking to a child. “I have a place in New York. No one will know us. We can start fresh. I’ll get a job with my brother-in-law, and you can stay home and raise the kids.”
“New York? Kids?” Carolina’s heart hammered. “I-I don’t understand what you mean.”
“We can be together. Get married. Start a family.”
More alarm bells rang in her head. Actually, they were more like sirens during a tornado. He was clearly unstable and had imagined some fantasy life where they were a thing when she barely knew him. She didn’t know him at all, really. How could he think they were connected like that? Like she’d run away with him and get married and have his children.
She didn’t know what to say to him. “I ... we don’t know each other. Are you confused maybe? Do you know who I am?”
He smiled but it wasn’t a nice, friendly smile. It was more sadistic. “I know who you are. Carolina Leigh Sinclair. Born April 22nd, 1991 to Mitchell and Loretta Sinclair. You’re an only child because your mother was selfish, and your father didn’t like to rock the boat with her. You have a college degree but no job. You live off a trust fund.”
Her mouth hung open. “How ... how do you know all this?”
“You just have to know where to look and it’s all at your fingertips. The internet is a great thing.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a worn leather wallet. Flipping it open, he showed her a picture in a cheap plastic sheath.
She swallowed hard. It was a picture of her from her high school graduation. “What do you want from me?”
“I don’t want anything from you. I just want you. I
want us to be a family.” Sincerity and desperation could be the same thing under the right circumstances. Carolina wasn’t sure where he was coming from.
Had he been her boyfriend, the words would’ve been sweet to hear. But considering her wrists were duct taped together and he was a random florist delivery guy, Carolina was scared shitless. This was bad. So bad. Where was her phone? If she could call someone, anyone, she could get some help.
“Um. I don’t think I can give you what you want.”
“Of course, you can. You’re perfect.”
Maybe reasoning with him would work. He had the wrong image of who she was. If she could make him see that, he’d know she’d be a terrible wife. “No, I’m not perfect. Not even close. I’m a bad housekeeper. I sleep a lot.”
“Babies will cure you of sleeping.” He smiled wide.
“No, they won’t. I can’t have children.”
His mouth fell into a frown. “What? Don’t lie to me, Carolina.”
She stared up at him. “I’m not lying. I’m sterile.”
Chapter 11
Nathan cruised by the address for Dennis Stafford. He’d asked Dr. Preston’s office to rush the DNA. Even if they matched, he’d still need to find a way to tie Dennis to it. Even the bad guys have a Fourth Amendment right. And sometimes, rarely, circumstances just made someone look guilty when they weren’t.
The building was old and a little run down. The beige stucco was chipped and peeling on the corners. Parking for the apartments was around the back. Nathan angled the Dodge through the narrow driveway. The apartments on the bottom floor had black wrought iron bars on the windows.
A brunette woman with bags under her eyes stood by the rear of the building smoking a cigarette. She had the look of someone who hadn’t slept in days, probably from meth.
Nathan slowed his vehicle and hit the button to roll down his window. “Hey. How ya’ doing?”
When the Shadows Come Page 9
