by L. A. Witt
She pushed out a breath through her nose. “When?”
“As soon as this”—I nodded toward all the case files—“is resolved.”
“Great.” She pulled away from me. “Because we all know how fast serial killer cases get solved.”
I winced, sending up an A little help here? glance. “What do you want me to do?”
“Dad, you have a case. Go—”
“Erin.”
She faced me again, eyes narrow.
I sighed. “Just tell me what—”
“I’ve come by your place three times this week,” she blurted out. “After you’d left work.”
“You . . . what?”
She folded her arms and set her jaw. “I thought we could talk. You know, since you were off. But you weren’t there.”
I literally bit my tongue to keep from throwing back that I wasn’t on house arrest. It was stress and lack of sleep talking, and she didn’t deserve that. No, I didn’t have to answer to my kids when it came to my whereabouts, but I’d already dropped a bomb on her recently. Could I really hold it against her if she was frustrated when she couldn’t find me?
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I . . .”
“Of course you are. You always are.” The hostility faded, though, and her shoulders sagged. “Dad, I’ve been in town for a month. We work in the same building. But I’ve barely seen you. I heard from the rumor mill that you have—” Her teeth snapped together. “And when I drop by to just, you know, say hi or something, you’re never there. I just . . .” She exhaled as she ran a hand through her hair. “I miss you. And I guess I thought being here, I’d see you once in a while. Especially because now I’m kind of afraid there’s more you’re not telling me.”
I avoided her eyes. Shit, what could I say? How many times had I told all three of my adult kids they could stop in anytime? And now that she was in the same city, she’d done exactly that and come up empty.
On top of that, they all knew well that I’d had a few rough years following the divorce. My coworkers hadn’t been the first to suspect I had a drug habit, and that was before I’d even started taking pills on a regular basis.
“Just give me something, Dad,” she said, barely whispering.
I rubbed the back of my neck. “All right. You really want to know where I’ve been in the evenings?”
She nodded.
Heart racing, I took a deep breath and steeled myself. “I’ve been staying with someone.”
Her features twitched slightly. “I kind of guessed that. So do I get to meet her, or . . .?”
“Uh, well . . .” I cleared my throat. “Maybe once all this is settled”—I gestured at the case files—“you can meet . . .” I swallowed, “him.”
Erin’s eyes widened. “Huh?”
“I have . . .” I fought the urge to fidget nervously. “I have a boyfriend.”
She blinked a few times. “So you’re gay now.”
“Bi. I’ve always dated men and women.”
“Oh.”
I braced, not sure what to expect.
Finally, she muffled a cough. “I, uh, guess we really have some catching up to do.”
“Yeah, we do.” I touched her arm. “I promise, we’ll talk more. I’m not trying to keep all this from you kids. It’s just . . . not easy to talk about.”
She nodded slowly. “Just let me know when you have time.”
“I will.”
“Okay.” She picked up the stack of papers and the list I’d written. “I guess I should get to work on this.”
“Yeah. Thanks. You’ll be in—”
“The office next to Mark’s.”
“Right. Okay.”
She met my gaze and then, without a word, left the conference room.
Alone, I leaned against the table and rubbed my eyes. That had gone better than I’d expected. I’d always dreaded coming out to my kids. Things were different than they’d been when I was in my twenties, but the idea of telling them had always scared the hell out of me.
And now she knew.
I dropped my hand and exhaled. Darren and I had made a little progress in our case today. We’d stolen a tiny moment to reconnect. And my daughter knew I had a boyfriend.
This day had definitely not been a boring one.
I couldn’t remember ever working a case where I had known the identity of the criminal and not been able to arrest them. Admittedly, I hadn’t been a detective very long, but even back when I was a beat cop, things had never been this frustrating. Either you knew who was responsible and brought them in—the abusive husband, the mom getting high in her car with her baby in the backseat, the drug dealer running from you as soon as you showed up—or it was a mystery to be solved. There had been a few times where a victim had refused to press charges against their abuser, and those had left me burning with a secondhand resentment that it had taken years for me to learn to shake off. For the most part, though? Things had been pretty clear.
Not this time. Brian McIntosh was our guy. I knew it in my gut, the kind of intuition that I’d laughed about whenever Vic had mentioned it, until I’d started to feel it myself. Brian had killed close to twenty people, stalking them and murdering them to fit them into the box of his twisted fantasies. He was worse than the people Andreas and I had gone after before, even worse than Trent, because Trent was an opportunistic killer and a son of a bitch for sure, but he hadn’t hunted down innocent people with no connection to him other than shopping at the wrong grocery store.
But we couldn’t bring Brian in without evidence. Receipts and a gut feeling didn’t amount to an actual case, so now it was time to find the smoking gun. Andreas already had Erin going through Reginald’s transaction log, so I decided to look closer at the files for each victim and see if any of them other than Mary Jones had had something traumatic happen in their lives before they were actually killed. Andreas was looking up information on Brian himself, and judging from his occasional curses, he wasn’t coming up with much.
“No luck?” I asked after he pushed his tablet away in disgust. We’d taken to doing all our work in the conference room, instead of back at our desks. We had computers out there, but we also had a dozen angry glares, a chorus of mutterings, and no less than two people per hour going out of their way to fuck with us. Seriously, someone had broken the wheels off my chair and then glued them back in place, just enough that the chair was upright. I almost fell on my ass yesterday when I tried to sit in it, and the pair of guys in the desks closest to ours—Ross and Schneidmiller, the assholes—had started laughing.
Great guys.
I couldn’t go to the chief and report the harassment. That would just lead to more of it, done more sneakily. Neither Andreas nor I needed that shit right now, especially not while Erin was here. People didn’t seem to be giving her a hard time, and I wanted to keep it that way. Hence, working in the conference room.
Andreas rubbed the bridge of his nose. The fluorescent lighting wasn’t easy on the eyes, and I knew from the way he winced that he’d be working on a headache by the end of the day. “Nothing yet,” he groused. “I can’t find anything on Brian McIntosh in the system, and according to his employment history, he’s been working at Reginald’s for the past five years. He lives in a basement apartment a mile from the store, he’s always on time with his rent, he’s a quiet and helpful tenant. No roommates. He doesn’t have a vehicle registered in his name. Before Reginald’s, he either didn’t live here or he was called something else.”
“No car, huh?” I looked back through some of my files.
“Not that he officially owns. Why?”
“I’ve been checking to see if anyone reported something strange to the police before they died. Anything out of the ordinary. One of the victims in her fifties did, a week before she was killed. Martha Humboldt.” I pulled her file to the top. “She made a report to police after she noticed an unfamiliar Lincoln Town Car driving down her street multiple times per day, for three days in a row. M
artha worked out of her house, she was around enough for it to seem odd to her. Nothing ever came of her report, though.”
Andreas shifted over to my side. “No license plate number?”
“Nope. Just a dark-brown or black Lincoln Town Car.”
“Huh.” He looked back in his own notes. “McIntosh doesn’t have a car registered to him, but he does have a driver’s license. How far away did Martha Humboldt live from his apartment?”
I looked over at the map. “About five miles. She’s one of the farthest from the city center.”
“And she was killed in her house, right?”
“Right.” Her house was number 487 on Poplar Street. She’d been the only one of the shooting victims to be killed in her own home. Apparently one four in the address was enough to satisfy Brian’s sick compulsion for consistency.
“Any more police reports from the victims?”
“No more that mention cars.” At least, I didn’t think so. I’d made a list; I fished it out of the pile, then breathed a sigh of relief when I saw that I’d remembered correctly. “Two more made reports, though. Another was a guy in the same group as Martha, apparently complaining about neighborhood kids driving nails into his tires. He had to take the bus because he couldn’t afford replacements. He died along that route two days later.”
“Shit. And the other one?”
“Katie Lewis. She’s the one Paula found.” God, had it only been yesterday morning that Paula had woken us up with the bad news? “She noticed a shadowy figure around her car early in the morning. She shouted and the person ran off, but it happened one more time.” I glanced over at the map again. “Katie Lewis lived half a mile from Brian.”
“Walking distance.”
“Yeah.” Andreas looked thoughtful. “What are you thinking?”
“McIntosh lives in the basement of a house that belongs to an older woman, Luanne Garcia. His apartment has a separate entrance and everything, but according to her, he does work for her around the place when she needs help. Fetches her groceries, changes lightbulbs, that sort of thing. He also drives her places on occasion.”
“Oh yeah?” When had Andreas talked to Brian’s landlady? Had he mentioned it to me already? I pushed down the thread of panic that swelled in my throat. “What kind of car does she have?”
“I don’t know, but I’d like to find out.”
“Should we go see her in person?”
Andreas grimaced. “Going to her house would be risky. I told her I was conducting a safety survey of the neighborhood, which is why she got so chatty. I heard about everything from Brian to bingo, but I don’t know if I’d get the same effect in person, and we don’t want her telling McIntosh that cops have come around asking questions.”
A memory of my own grandmother popped into my head. She’d died when I was ten, but every week for as long as I’d known her, she’d gone to the senior center every week to play—
“Bingo.”
“What?”
“Did she say where she plays bingo?”
“Uh, yeah.” He checked his notes. “The local community center.”
“What community center is closest to her house?”
A little digging revealed a combination youth center/gym/senior center less than a mile from Mrs. Garcia’s house. Better yet, Senior Bingo was on their schedule for today, in a little under an hour.
“Perfect.” I grinned at Andreas. “How are you at playing the cards?”
He stared at me like I’d lost my mind. “Bingo’s not like poker; there’s no skill involved. You get a number, you see if you’ve got it on your card.”
“Have you ever watched little old ladies play bingo? Especially when there’s pennies or candy involved? They don’t play a single card. I’ve seen people in their nineties cover entire tables with cards that they play simultaneously, and they are cutthroat about defending their territory. It’s brutal.”
“Brutal.”
“Watching my grandmother cuss out a woman for bumping into her table with her walker and shaking her cards? Yeah, brutal. I thought they were going to start clawing each other’s eyes out.”
Andreas shook his head. “You had the weirdest fucking childhood.”
“Hey, someone had to go with Gram to keep her from falling. She gave me all the candy she won, so it was a win-win.” I stood up and carefully stretched my hands above my head. My back cracked, and I groaned with satisfaction.
I was more satisfied by the way Andreas tracked how my shirt rode up my waist, his face focused in a way that screamed, Get a room! Fuck, I wanted a room. I wanted to have the time to get a fucking room. “Wanna go crash a bingo tournament with me?”
After a moment, he shook his head. “I’m going to make some calls, try to set up family interviews for tomorrow.”
I was disappointed, but I wasn’t going to show it. “You’re just jealous of seeing my legendary charm in action.”
“Oh, yeah.” Andreas rolled his eyes, but he was smiling. “I’m so jealous of your ability to charm old women into chatting with you, when they would literally chat with anyone who approached them or called them up. She had me on the phone for over an hour yesterday, Darren. I couldn’t escape.”
“Poor guy. You’re right. Stay here where you’re safe.” I held my hands out for my car keys. He passed them over without complaint.
“Remember to pick me up when you’re done.”
“Bingo ends at five, I’ll be back right after. We can get Thai.”
“You don’t like Thai.”
I batted my eyelashes dramatically. “You do.”
“So bad at charm,” Andreas said, but his smile was a grin now, so I was officially awesome. “So bad.”
“Envy is an ugly emotion, don’t give in to it,” I advised him as I walked out.
My phone rang once while I drove to the center. I checked, just in case it was Andreas or my mom. Nope. Unfamiliar number, which meant they could leave a message.
I asked at the front desk about bingo, and was directed down a hall to a basketball court filled with folding tables. Up at the front was an older man wearing a cowboy hat, officiating over a tumbler full of numbered balls like he was the president. There had to be two dozen people in there, and I didn’t have a description of Luanne Garcia. I’d have to ask around.
God forbid I interrupt bingo, though. I listened to the whirr of the tumbler as the man spun it, ceremoniously plucked up the ball it discharged, and intoned, “B-12. B-one-two.”
“‘Love shack,’” one of the ladies snickered to her friends. “‘Love shack!’”
“Shut up, Margie, that’s not the way the song goes and you know it.”
“Don’t tell me to shut up, you old hag!”
Oh yeah. Just like I remembered. I waited through the next few numbers for a winner to emerge.
“G-49. G-four-nine.”
“Bingo!”
Half the room groaned. “That’s the third time today, Luanne!”
“You play too many cards!”
“You’re in cahoots with Bill!”
“Aw, pipe down, Doris.” A woman in a navy dress pressed to her feet and, very slowly, walked to the front of the room. “I’ll take the Baby Ruth bar, Bill.”
“Sure thing, Luanne.” He handed it over, and she smiled triumphantly.
Well, Luanne’s day was looking up and so was mine. After she made it back to her table, I circled around the back of the room and pulled up a chair. “Do you mind if I sit here?” I asked quietly.
She looked at me doubtfully behind thick glasses. Her hair was a carefully styled pile of wispy white curls, and her hat had an actual flower on it. In front of her were seven bingo cards taking up every spare inch of the tabletop. “You’re not here to play, are you?”
“Oh no,” I promised. “I’m checking this place out for my gram. She just moved to this part of the city, and she was thinking about coming here, but it’s not so easy for her to get around these days, so.” I shrugged.
“Hmm. Well, I suppose that’s all right.” She let me sit, and we made small talk between the number calls. She asked about my gram and I asked about her, carefully, and by the end of the tournament, Luanne had won another candy bar and I found out she had diabetes and couldn’t even eat them. “But none of these other people should be eating them either,” she said primly as she stood and pointed. I fetched her walker from the side of the room. “I’m saving them from themselves.”
“What do you do with the candy, then?” I asked as we started to shuffle toward the door.
“Oh, I give them to my renter. He’s a nice boy, doesn’t ask for much, and he’s so helpful. I think he appreciates the gesture.”
“I’m sure he does.” Time to push a little. “Is he going to come and get you? Or do you have your own car?”
“I have my own,” she said proudly. “It was my husband’s, but he died almost twenty years ago, so I’ve used it ever since. I can’t drive it anymore, with the glaucoma, but it still gets used.”
“Wow,” I marveled. “What kind of car lasts twenty years?”
“It’s a Lincoln, and it’s only got thirty thousand miles on it! My daughter calls it a funeral car, but what does she know? Black is always fashionable.”
“True.” Okay then. Suspicion confirmed. “I guess I should let you go, Luanne. Thank you for sharing your table with me.”
“Come back anytime, and bring your gram with you! I’ll even let her use one of my cards.”
“That’s very generous, thank you.” I shook her hand, then walked out into the parking lot. I didn’t leave yet, though, just waited in case I saw—
A black Lincoln Town Car, driving up to the roundabout in front of the center. The driver put it in park, and then—yep, that was Brian McIntosh. He walked into the building and came out a minute later with Mrs. Garcia beside him, chattering brightly as they made their way to the car. He helped her sit down, folded up her walker and put it in the backseat, and then got in himself. I took a picture of the license plate as it went by, just in case it was useful later, then got into my own car, feeling pretty accomplished, all things considered. It wasn’t a strong correlation, but every little bit helped at this point, and it would be something we could use in the family interviews tomorrow.
