Deathtrap (Broslin Creek)

by Dana Marton

  She opened the door. “I’m so glad you came. Can you make them go away?”

  His expression was closed, his mouth tight. “I can get them to move off your property. But they’ll be snapping pictures of me at your house, adding to the whole damn story, making this into something it isn’t.”

  Like maybe a relationship, she thought. He wouldn’t want that. Disappointment bit into her.

  “Why?” He stood in the middle of her kitchen, towering over her. He held his body stiff, his eyes cold as he asked, “Do you need money this badly?”

  She stared at him as she caught on to the implication. The fact that he could imagine her selling the story told her everything she needed to know about what was between them: nothing. She’d fancied herself falling in love for a second there, but the truth was, she didn’t really know him. The Bing she thought she knew wouldn’t accuse her of something like this.

  And if he thought this little of her, then he’d obviously never even come close to loving her.

  Misery and disappointment filled her, seeping into her bones. Deep breath. Wonderful things… Oh, to hell with it. She felt as if someone had stabbed a butcher knife into her chest and sliced her open. She hurt.

  She folded her arms and met his gaze square on. “I was upset, and I went to my transplant support group. It’s supposed to be one hundred percent confidential, but evidently somebody couldn’t resist. They’ll be kicked out, but it’s not going to undo anything. It is what it is.”

  He kept his sharp gaze on her, searching her face. Then he drew a deep breath and ran his fingers through his hair in a frustrated gesture. “Did you really remember the gun? Was that why you told me to move the damn bush?”

  “I don’t have that kind of memories. I swear. Just that weird feeling that I’d been in your house before.” She bit her lip. How could she ever explain?

  “Jesus, Sophie.” He sounded tired to the bone suddenly.

  She held herself together, held back the emotions that threatened to knock her down. “This isn’t exactly a thrill ride for me either.”

  He glanced toward the front, then back at her. “No. I don’t imagine it is.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I should have known you wouldn’t go to the papers. I don’t know where my brain is.”

  She nodded, accepting the apology. They were both still whacked out by the identity of the donor. “Coffee?”

  “I can’t. This…” He gestured toward her chest. “It’s not something I can get over.”

  Meaning he couldn’t accept her the way she was.

  She swallowed hard. “So in your eyes, I’ll be forever stained by the organ I received, forever connected to a murderer. This is exactly what I’m thinking too. You know that, right? How much do the body memories change who I am? If some of my thoughts come from the donated organ, then part of me is a killer.” She bit her lip. “I don’t know if I can live with that thought. So I need people in my life who don’t think that about me.”

  He stood there, saying nothing.

  She nodded. “I want you to leave. And I don’t want you to come back. I don’t want to see you again.”

  His jaw stiffened. For a moment, it looked like he might say something, but then he just turned on his heels and left her.

  * * *

  Bing drove out to the crime scene in the woods where Kristine Haynes had been killed, conflicting emotions battling inside him. He couldn’t come to terms with the way things were. It killed him. So he did his best to push Sophie out of his mind and focus on solving the Haynes case.

  The car had been removed. So had the flags and police tape. The area had been fully processed. Whatever they needed from here had been catalogued long ago and taken to various labs.

  Broslin Creek rushed on behind the trees. The grass that had been trampled by his team now stood straight again. Nature was reclaiming the clearing.

  Bing stood alone in the middle, nobody in sight. Someone might bring their dog out here for a walk now and then. Or some young couple might come here for privacy, like the teenagers who’d found the victim. But it wasn’t the kind of place people frequented, which could explain why the body hadn’t been found for five full days.

  Kristine Haynes must have known the spot. Nobody would come here following GPS directions. You couldn’t exactly type in “clearing in the woods by the creek.” Someone had shown her this place. Or maybe she’d necked here as a teen and remembered it from her high school dates. Maybe she’d been the one to suggest it to her lover.

  Maybe, when the weather was good, she’d met her lover in the woods, and when it was cold, they went to the motel. In town, there was a bigger risk that they would be seen. Coming here would have been safer.

  Except it hadn’t been safe at all for her. She’d been killed here.

  He ran down the list of things Kristine and Stacy had in common. They both worked for the same company. The odd logo of the staircase with the door. He added one more thing, something he’d refused to acknowledge until now. But until he pinpointed Greg Bruckner’s motivation, he had to put this on the table.

  Possibly both women were cheating on their husbands. Possibly both killed by their lovers. That pen and that folder with the logo could have pointed at the same man. Except Greg Bruckner had been dead for the past two years, so he couldn’t have seduced and murdered Kristine Haynes.

  Yet every instinct Bing had said that the two murders were somehow connected. He began walking around the clearing in expanding circles, looking, thinking, still unable to put his finger on what it was that he wasn’t seeing. When a call came in from Leila, he picked it up.

  “Hey, Captain. Search warrant came in for Greg Bruckner’s apartment.”

  “Thanks.” He cast one last look at the woods that gave him no answers, then hurried back to his car to drive over to the apartment building, hoping that at last he’d find some missing puzzle pieces.

  As long as he was out this way, however, he did make a small detour. He took the long way by the reservoir to check on Jack and Ashley’s place. He’d promised them he’d keep an eye on the farmhouse while they were off on their Disney trip.

  Everything seemed quiet and okay. He usually swung by every time he had business out this way.

  Thinking of Jack and Ashley made him think of love and redemption and letting go. Which made him think of Sophie. She was as much a victim in this as anyone. So, fine, he could admit that. But he couldn’t pretend that everything was as it had been before the truth had come out.

  He turned up the police scanner so it would drown out his conflicting thoughts and listened to the usual chatter as he drove. The ride wasn’t long, at least. He was pulling up in front of Creek Corner in thirty minutes.

  The forty-unit building was the biggest apartment complex in Broslin. He held a ten-percent claim, all he could afford when the opportunity had been presented to him. The investment had done well. It paid him enough to buy a few more properties and taught him enough to run them profitably.

  “I had three other people in the apartment since that guy,” Charlie, the super, scratched his bald head when asked about Bruckner. “You ain’t gonna find anything there.”

  He’d been a livestock manager on Bing’s grandfather’s farm years and years ago but aged out of it. Had some melanoma on his nose that’d been taken care of, but he was supposed to spend more time inside than out. Bing had gotten him the job here.

  “I need to look anyway,” he told the man.

  “It’s empty now. We can go right on up. I just painted it. Should’ve seen the mess the last guy left. Nudie posters glued to the wall. Had a hell of a time scraping them off. I was elbow deep in titties for days.” He winked as he led Bing up to the second floor, then used his master key to open the door in question.

  The smell of fresh paint filled the air. All that white gave some light to the apartment, which faced north and looked pretty gloomy otherwise. Bing walked around the scarred floors, old hardwood, testing the boards for a possib
le hiding place. He squatted to examine a few suspicious spots but didn’t find anything. Same in the closets. If Greg Bruckner had left hidden secrets behind, they weren’t here.

  He turned back to Charlie. “Did he have any frequent visitors?”

  “It was a long time ago. And I don’t spy on my tenants either.”

  “I wasn’t suggesting you did.”

  The man squinted. “Saw some friend of his a couple of times. The other guy was a little older. Had some gray.”

  “You think you could remember enough for a police sketch?”

  Charlie shook his head. “Nah, can’t bring up his face. It’s been two years. Sorry. Memory ain’t what it used to be.”

  It’d been a long shot, anyway. “What happened to his belongings?”

  “Management company said to sell his furniture to cover the last month of rent.”

  “Nothing left?”

  “Any personal effects would have been boxed up and put in the basement in case next of kin came for it.”

  “Did they?”

  “I don’t think so. I think I’d remember that.”

  “Let’s check out the basement, then.” Bing walked by him and out into the hallway.

  Charlie was a tad slower than back in the good old days, but they did make it down into a dingy basement eventually, down to the broken washers and dryers and piles of other general garbage. Bing made a mental note to send someone to clean that up.

  Dilapidated shelving stood against the cement-block wall in the back, holding an assortment of ratty boxes, some water damaged. He walked back there and peered at the permanent-marker scribbles on them, long minutes passing before he found the one he was looking for. Bruckner, Apt. 206.

  He pulled the box off the shelf. “I’m going to take this.”

  “Be my guest.” Charlie turned to shuffle back upstairs. “I doubt anyone will show up for the stuff at this stage.” He stopped to catch his breath at the landing. “How’s your father doing these days?”

  “Same.”

  “Didn’t take after his old man. Your grandfather was one of the old guard. You can be right proud of him.”

  “I am.” He wished he was still alive. Maybe between the two of them, they could have talked his father back onto the straight and narrow.

  “You ain’t doing bad yourself.” Charlie gave a nod of approval. “Your grandpa would be proud of you. You take care now, you hear?”

  Bing’s throat tightened for a second. He wished he could live up to his grandfather’s memory. And for a moment, he wondered what Gramps would say about the current mess he was in. Okay, he didn’t have to wonder. Gramps had always said, “Do the right thing, kid.”

  It’d been easier back then, when the “right thing” had been simple, like sharing his candy with his brother or finishing his chores around the farm. He pushed those memories away and shook hands with Charlie, then carried the box to his car.

  He didn’t open it until he was back in his office, the door closed behind him. He pulled on a pair of latex gloves before he touched anything.

  No laptop or tablet or cell phone. Charlie had probably sold everything that was valuable. It was in all the contracts. If someone’s lease terminated with a negative balance, after ninety days anything of value they left behind would be sold to settle their bill.

  Bing took out a wall plaque with a plastic fish on it and set it aside. He stilled as he saw what had been hiding under it. A single earring of blue art glass.

  He picked it up, his jaw muscles tightening until they hurt.

  Oh hell, Stacy.

  She’d gotten the earrings maybe three months before she’d died. A friend of hers was doing jewelry home shows at people’s houses, and Stacy hosted one. She had received the earrings as her hostess gift.

  He’d cleared out for the night. A houseful of squealing women wasn’t his idea of fun. He remembered the earrings because she’d made such a big show of them the next day. And then she lost one a few weeks later.

  At Greg Bruckner’s apartment.

  She hadn’t been raped before she’d been killed. She’d simply been with her lover.

  He dropped the earring into an evidence bag as if it’d burned his fingers, then searched the rest of the box, carefully holding his anger and disappointment in check. He was at work, investigating a murder case here. He needed to be able to set aside the personal angle and focus impartially on any possible evidence.

  He tried that for several long minutes. Then he gave up and swore like a farmhand. His hands clenched into tight fists. He wanted Bruckner alive so he could beat the murderous bastard’s face in. For a moment, he was just a wronged husband and not a cop. Then he slowly relaxed his hands, one and then the other. He filled his lungs. He couldn’t make the anger go away, but he could control it.

  He would control it.

  He lifted out a plastic spaceship alarm clock, an old high school yearbook, and various garbage. Since the rest of the box held nothing promising—tattered comic books and the like—he dropped into his chair and opened the yearbook. He searched for anything familiar as he scanned the dozens of signatures on the pages. Those would have been Bruckner’s friends. Maybe there was a link there. But he couldn’t read half the scribbles.

  A knock on the door interrupted him; then Leila stuck her head in. “Clerk at the Sunoco Station on Brandywine Circle caught a guy who was going to drive away without paying. Want to bring him in? Everyone else is out.”

  He set the book down and pushed to his feet. “I’ll take care of it.”

  Collecting the man from the gas station, then booking him took close to an hour. Then he had to go back out on a domestic violence case. After that, a fatal accident on the on-ramp to Rt. 1 ate up the rest of his day.

  Night had fallen before everything had been squared away and all his paperwork was turned in. He picked up the yearbook on his desk to take it home with him.

  He drove by Sophie’s house. Light streamed through her windows. No cruiser stood in front of the curb.

  The vandalism and break-in at her house wouldn’t have merited surveillance in the first place. Budgets weren’t set up for that kind of thing anymore. But even if she’d been hurt and there’d been good reason to believe the perpetrator would return, standard procedure was three days of protection.

  He’d given her that and beyond. He couldn’t do more without questions being asked, especially since he’d been publicly connected to her now through the stupid newspapers. He did any more and the next article would be about how the captain of the Broslin police force abused his authority for the benefit of women he dated.

  Yet he couldn’t leave. He pulled up to the curb. He was reaching to turn off the engine, prepared to spend the night in his cruiser’s front seat, when he caught a shadow moving behind her row of boxwood bushes.

  He flipped on the floodlight, then the siren for a second. He grabbed for his gun as he jumped out. “Freeze!”

  The shadow stopped.

  He took the safety off his gun. “Put your hands in the air and step into the light where I can see you.”

  But what he saw next wasn’t what he’d expected. He swore under his breath as an old geezer shuffled forward, gripping a handsaw as he blinked at Bing anxiously.

  “Don’t shoot. I live here.”

  “I know for a fact you don’t.”

  “I live across the road.”

  “What were you doing in the bushes?” Bing demanded just as the front door opened.

  Sophie stuck her head out. “What is it? Lester, are you okay?” She stretched her neck to peer at the man. “Why do you have a saw?” Then her eyes went wide. “Lester?”

  Bing felt a headache coming on. “Do you know this man?”

  “He’s my neighbor.” Peaches barked wildly from behind her, nearly drowning out her words.

  He put the safety back and holstered his weapon. “Inside. Everybody.” He walked up to Lester and took his elbow to help him in. “I’d appreciate it
if you could put Peaches out back,” he told Sophie, who shot a betrayed look at Lester, but then turned to do as Bing had asked her.

  “You can’t arrest me without my lawyer present,” the geezer protested, yanking his arm away.

  That wasn’t at all true, but it didn’t matter. “I’m not arresting you. Yet. But you’re going to answer some questions.”

  They went in, and he let Sophie lead Lester to the couch.

  “What were you doing in Miss Curtis’s yard?” Bing asked once the man was sitting, still gripping the saw.

  Peaches was barking by the back door. He looked like he would dearly like to chew the pants off Lester. Sophie stayed standing, her arms folded, her mouth pressed into a narrow line.

  “I was out for a walk,” the old man said with a good dose of indignation.

  “With a saw?” Bing shook his head. “What were you doing in Miss Curtis’s bushes?”

  “Took a wrong turn. I’m old. I get confused sometimes. Sue me for it.”

  “I didn’t have the easiest day,” Bing said evenly. “Fact is, I ran out of patience about three hours back. Either you tell me what I want to know, or I’ll take you in and book you for destruction of private property.”

  Lester went a little white around the gills.

  Bing shot him his I-mean-business look. “I’m guessing you’ve been sabotaging Miss Curtis’s landscaping. You’ve been sneaking around her windows. You broke into her house and caused damage.”

  “What damage?” Lester protested. “She can do laundry, can’t she?” He stuck his saggy chin out. “And I didn’t break in. I had a key,” he added smugly.

  Bing rubbed his temple. “Why do you have a key?”

  “Ellie May was my sweetheart. She gave me the key herself. And then her greedy stupid kids stuck her in a home so they could sell her house. I want to bring her out for a weekend to visit, but I don’t want her to have to see her house like this, changed inside and out. It’d break her heart. I’ve just waiting for the dizziness in my head to clear a little. Going for groceries is okay. But I didn’t want to drive all the way to Philly like this.”