by Sharon Sala
“Dinner is going to be late,” Hershel muttered as he kicked the sack of takeout aside and threw her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.
Patty Goss was finally leaving, but she wasn’t going to make it home.
He got her into his van, yanked the electrodes from the Taser out of her neck and calmly strangled her. Then he drove out of D.C. with her body hidden beneath a pile of painters’ drop cloths. He also had a stepladder, some empty paint cans and some used paintbrushes he had pulled out of a Dumpster as part of his cover, should he ever be stopped by the cops.
The rain was really coming down by the time he reached his chosen dump site. It was far away from the city limits, along the banks of the Potomac River.
He wasn’t a big man, but he was strong. Still, it was with no small effort that he dragged her body through the mud and grass, then rolled her into the water. Then he stayed, standing in the downpour and watching until she sank from view.
By the time he got back to his apartment, the rain was a deluge. He got out on the run and hurried up the steps as fast as his aching knees would take him, thankful for the covered overhang as he fumbled with his keys.
Once inside, he shed his wet things at the door and proceeded to turn on lights as he went through the apartment, unaware that his landlady was standing at her bedroom window, watching him in the dark.
Lucy Taft didn’t trust a businessman who carried large amounts of cash and chose to stay in a secluded garage apartment rather than a posh and accommodating hotel. She didn’t know what he was up to, but she didn’t want to become complicit by ignorance.
* * *
After two frantic hours of no contact with his wife, Patty’s husband called the D.C. police and asked them to do a welfare check at her place of business. They found her car in the back parking lot, her purse and umbrella near the back door, and what was left of the food scattered and rain soaked, but no Patty. The only security cameras were in the front of the store, so there was no way to know exactly what had happened. The next day, her picture and the story of her disappearance were on the local news.
* * *
Cameron saw it and felt bad for the husband, thinking how he would have felt if it had been Laura.
* * *
Lucy Taft read about the abduction in the paper and made a mental note to remind Mildred to make sure the security system in her house was in proper working order.
* * *
Hershel saw the broadcast. The first clue was out there; now the rest was up to them. He was satisfied with the way things were going and began the planning of clue number two.
* * *
Two days later the badly battered body of a woman was pulled out of the Potomac. From the Taser marks and the strangulation bruises around her neck, it was obvious she’d been murdered. Despite the damage to her face, she was positively identified as Patty Goss by her hysterical husband, who recognized her flying-monkey tattoo.
Now the missing person case was handed off to Homicide, and to make the cops’ job a little harder, Patty had no known enemies and a husband with an airtight alibi.
* * *
Hershel was watching TV and having toaster waffles and scrambled eggs when the floater in the Potomac made the news. He turned up the volume and then added extra syrup to his waffles. The authorities were talking about her job, her family and how long she’d worked at the boutique. His eyes narrowed as he took another bite. The game was on.
* * *
Cameron was propped up in bed reading the morning paper and happily anticipating the breakfast in bed Laura was making when he found out about the missing woman whose body had turned up in the river. He thought briefly about the similarity to the way the Stormchaser’s victims turned up and wondered if Tate knew, but for the moment he put his curiosity on the back burner. He could smell bacon and fresh coffee. Beyond that, breakfast was supposed to be a surprise.
He paused before turning the page, and not for the first time examined the bedroom décor. It pleased him to see the tiny pieces of Laura’s life still hanging on the walls and sitting tucked away on the shelves among her books. He knew she had lived here all her life, sleeping in this very room throughout her childhood, her teenage years with all the drama, then coming back to visit during college, and finally moving home to care for her elderly parents after they became too old to live alone.
He was sure the decorations and colors had changed throughout the years, but her spirit had not. The loving energy within the walls of this house was powerful. He knew because he felt it every day.
Being the only child of an older couple, he’d never really known that kind of life. His father’s job as a research chemist for an oil company had them moving often, so he had no personal ties to any particular city. Both his parents had died in an accident when he was in college, and he had been without family ever since.
And now he had Laura. In just over a month they would be married, and with the words I do he would be gaining a wife and a sister. Becoming part of the Stormchaser team had also turned his partners into the brothers he’d never had. It had taken him a while, but in a roundabout way, he had family again.
The blast from a passing car horn ended his musing as he glanced back down at the paper. A few moments later, he heard footsteps coming down the hall and looked up just as Laura walked in with a cup of coffee.
“Breakfast needs about ten more minutes, but I didn’t want you to have to wait for this,” she said.
Cameron grinned. “This breakfast-in-bed thing could really become a habit. Am I to assume this will be a regular Saturday routine?”
She arched an eyebrow. “You are not to assume anything of the sort.”
She set his coffee on the nightstand at his elbow and blew him a kiss.
“I love you most,” he said as she went out the door.
“You better!” she yelled back, and kept on walking.
It made him laugh. Her sass was part of why he loved her, but it was also part of the personality that had helped keep her alive, a fact he no longer took for granted.
He took a sip of the coffee and sighed. One sugar, no cream and nearly hot enough to melt the taste buds off his tongue. Perfect, just like her.
He set the coffee aside and went back to the story on the dead Reston woman. He frowned as he continued to read. They’d found her in the river, obviously a murder victim, which didn’t surprise him, considering what had been reported about her disappearance. Taser marks on the back of her neck. Autopsy pending.
His frown deepened, and the hair stood up on the back of his neck. In the grand scheme of murders, the use of a Taser wasn’t that unusual, but it had been the Stormchaser’s favorite method of disabling his victims.
He kept reading the article, part of which echoed what the newscaster had mentioned on the news last night, before the discovery of the body. The husband’s alibi was rock solid, and robbery was not a motive. Now that the body had been found, something useful might turn up in the autopsy. For the time being, the FBI would simply follow the case’s progression without intervening in police procedure. He wondered if Tate had heard anything more from the Louisiana agents. It was too early to call, but on impulse, he sent a text.
Have you seen news? Missing Reston woman found floating in Potomac w/ Taser marks on her neck. Heard anything from Louisiana?
The mere act of sending it lessened the knot in his gut. He took another drink of coffee and turned to the sports page to see which college football games were being televised, but his conscience was bugging him. He had yet to mention anything to Laura about their concern, but he would have to say something soon, just in case.
Then she walked in carrying a tray heaped with steaming-hot food and drove every other thought from his mind. She was wearing a pink bibbed apron and nothing else. The smile on her face said it a
ll. She’d surprised him, all right.
“Even though breakfast doesn’t come with dessert, I made an exception. However, you can’t have it until you’ve eaten your meal,” she said primly.
He smiled, threw the paper aside and patted the bed beside him.
“Then put that tray down and grab a fork. Either you help me eat, or some of this is going to waste.”
She stifled a giggle as she set the tray down in front of him, and when he reached out to stroke the thrust of her breast beneath the bib, she slapped his hand lightly.
“Not yet, Mr. Man,” she said, and made a point of sliding onto the bed sideways, so there were no sneak peeks of her bare backside.
He groaned. “Have mercy, Laura Jean. How do you expect me to eat with you sitting there like that?”
She handed him a fork. “Why...just like everyone else, lover boy. One bite at a time.” She waved her hand over the tray. “Does it look good?”
“It looks amazing,” he said softly.
She pointed at the food. “I meant the food.”
“Dessert is my favorite.”
She smiled, got up, removed the tray from the bed and untied her apron, letting it fall to the floor at her feet.
“Are you serious?” he asked.
“We’ll nuke the eggs later,” she drawled as she climbed back into bed.
Eight
Tate was in the shower when Nola tapped on the door. He leaned out with a smile on his face, about to invite her in, when she put a finger to her lips and held up his cell phone.
“It’s Agent Delroy from Louisiana,” she said, handing him a towel.
He went from play to business as he turned off the water, grabbing a towel as he stepped out.
“This is Benton.”
“Good morning, Agent Benton. Sorry to call so early, but I wanted to fill you in before we left on a new case.”
“I appreciate it. What did you learn?”
“That a lot of roses were sold on August thirty-first,” Delroy said drily. “Over three hundred dozen in more than one hundred and fifty area florists, and that doesn’t include the floral departments in supermarkets.”
Tate groaned inwardly. “Really? That many?”
“Yes,” Delroy said. “That many. We showed pictures of Hershel Inman’s DMV photo, as well as an artist’s rendering of what he might look like after his potential injuries if he survived, and not one person recognized him.”
Tate sighed. “We learned early on he was a master of disguise. I should have known it wouldn’t be that simple. Did you get any kind of a lead on the card?”
“No. Unfortunately the same design was in nearly every shop.”
“Were they able to get DNA or a print off it?”
“There were so many prints on the card it was impossible, and the same went for DNA. Lord knows how many people handled it before someone chose it for Louise Inman’s roses.”
Tate sighed. “Thank you for your hard work. We had to try.”
“More than happy to do what I could.”
“Good luck on the case you just caught,” Tate added.
“Thank you,” Delroy said, and disconnected.
Tate ended the call and finished drying off. It wasn’t until he picked up the phone to take it back to the bedroom that he noticed he’d missed a text from Cameron. He read it and laid the phone aside without responding. There was nothing to say. Everything in him accepted the possibility that it could be Inman, but the contact phone they had used with him for so long had been deactivated, and without a way for Inman to taunt them, there was no easy way to verify that he was still alive—which Tate was afraid he was. He hoped he was wrong about that. God in heaven, he hoped he was wrong.
* * *
Megan Oliver was twenty-seven and had been working as a court reporter for the past six years in and around D.C. When the weather was nice, as it had been for the past two days, she ate lunch outside so she could chat with her boyfriend on the phone.
She didn’t pay attention to the people around her and was unaware of the man sitting nearby and listening to every word she said. She didn’t see him when she walked to her car every evening or know that he followed her home.
Hershel already knew from overhearing her phone conversations that she took night classes in D.C., and that she had a business-law class tonight. He’d also heard her comment that she planned on slipping out early.
That was all the opening he needed. When she left her apartment later to go to class, he followed her. She wouldn’t see him until it was too late.
* * *
Business law was boring, and when Megan’s three-hour class took a break about an hour and a half in, she went to the bathroom and didn’t go back. She had to be in court early in the morning and needed to get some sleep. The morning drive from Reston to D.C. was always hectic, and if the past two days were any example, court would last all day. She would be glad when this trial was over. The testimony was gruesome, the evidence was grisly and it was giving her nightmares.
She glanced over her shoulder as she hurried down the hall and then out of the building. The wind was rising. She glanced up at the sky. It was overcast. It would probably rain again before morning. She clutched her iPad and water bottle up against her chest as she hurried across the parking lot.
About halfway there she realized three of the pole lights were out and frowned. That was odd. Someone needed to take care of that. At the same time, she heard a noise beneath the car she was passing, then screamed when a yellow tomcat darted out and ran past her, yowling and hissing its discontent.
“Dear Lord, no lights, crazy cats. What next?”
She lengthened her stride, trying to find her dark car in an even darker lot. She could remember the row, but not how far down, and without the pole lights, she couldn’t spot it easily. She aimed the remote on her key ring and started pressing it, then kept pressing and clicking until suddenly a set of car lights came on.
“Bingo,” she muttered, and lengthened her stride.
She was almost there when she saw something dark on the hood and hoped to God it wasn’t another crazy cat.
She was all the way past the bumper before she realized there was a bouquet of flowers, wrapped in tissue paper, lying on the hood.
Her first thought was that her boyfriend had done this, and then she remembered he was out of town. The next thing that occurred to her was that the guy who sat behind her in business law was finally through flirting and making a move.
“So what have we here?” she said lightly as she reached across the hood to pick up the flowers.
* * *
Hershel had followed Megan to class and then parked in the back of the lot, waiting for traffic to clear out. Once activity slowed down, he pulled out of his parking space and began cruising until he’d located her car again. Then he drove back through the lot, stopping three different times to shoot out security lights with a pellet gun before parking back behind her car. He jumped out quickly, laid a bouquet of flowers on the hood and then went back to his van and settled down to wait.
An hour passed with more people arriving and a few of them leaving, but none of them were Megan Oliver. It was well on the way into hour two when he saw movement at the front of the building again. He could tell it was a woman with short dark hair like Megan Oliver’s, but from this distance he didn’t know if it was her.
He rolled down the window to listen for footsteps. A couple of minutes later he heard someone coming down the row, and when a tomcat
suddenly squalled and hissed, he heard a woman scream.
That was when he made his move. He slipped out of the van and ducked down to wait.
He watched her hesitate in the spotlight of her headlights, then saw the smile break across her face as she saw the flowers. When she turned sideways to reach across the hood, he stood up and fired the Taser.
Her body flailed as the electrodes hit her cheek. She fell forward onto the hood of the car, her body jerking as her brain exploded. Some of the flowers fell under her, the rest beneath their feet. From a distance, had anyone see them, it would have looked like a couple locked in an embrace as he pulled her up from the hood. But then he quickly ducked down and began dragging her backward to his van. He opened the doors and rolled her up and into the back, then climbed in and hit the lock button.
She was twitching and jerking, and he could hear a faint moan as she kept trying to scream. He got down on his knees, wrapped a length of rope around her neck and proceeded to strangle her. When it was done, he yanked the electrodes out of her face, pulled the drop cloths over her body and drove off into the night.
Halfway to the river, the first drops of rain began to fall, but he kept on driving, going back to the same distant dump site he’d used before. He needed the body to be found, but not immediately. She needed to stew in the Potomac for a while before being swept downstream toward the city. It was better to draw out the tension of her disappearance, let everyone worry like he’d worried—let everyone wonder where she was like he’d wondered about Louise’s body when it had slipped into the floodwaters after Hurricane Katrina. Fair was fair.
He was tired by the time he got back to his apartment, and he still had to negotiate those damn steps. His back was hurting. It felt as if he might have pulled a muscle. He would be glad when this was all over so he could get back to Lake Chapala. Everything in his life there was on one floor.
