The Watcher (The Bigler County Romantic Thriller Series)

by Jo Robertson

  She made her way outside to sit in the chilly interior of her car while she waited for the heater to warm it. The purchase of her spiffy yellow convertible, so useful in sunny southern Cal, seemed foolish here, where she hadn’t yet lowered the top.

  The early morning sky was overcast westward toward the ocean, and the sun hadn’t yet risen from behind the Sierra Nevadas when she pulled into the empty court-house parking lot. The sergeant on duty gave her a cursory greeting, but otherwise the empty corridors lay in eerie silence. Kate’s footsteps echoed on the polished floor as she passed deserted rooms that swung off the long hallway. The custodians had already finished their cleaning and left. Only a few others were in the building at this early hour.

  Turning on the light switches, she crossed the squad room to start the coffee brewing for the work ahead. She was determined to search until she found what she was looking for, even if it took all day, and she’d need to fortify her caffeine addiction.

  By six forty-five Kate was ready to admit that she was looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. It was hopeless to presume that reading through endless pages of the murder book would jog her memory. She glanced at the clock. The task force would come in first, type up their interview reports, and post an abbreviated version of their findings on the large dry erase board in the incident room.

  Initially, Kate had entertained the idea that Marconi’s absence was a puzzle piece in the case, but the Sheriff’s email message put that conjecture to rest. Apparently his being gone had nothing to do with the murders in Bigler County and everything to do with the man’s selfishness in taking personal vacation days. Marconi was an odd duck, ostensibly lackadaisical and apathetic, but sharp enough to gain the popular vote. Kate suspected his good-old-boy routine was an act.

  Nonetheless, it seemed odd to her that the Sheriff of a small town would disappear without notifying his lieutenant, especially on the heels of the disappearances and subsequent murders of two young girls in his community. Young girls from prominent families.

  Early on she’d hoped Marconi was following a separate lead of his own, but now she wasn’t sure he was ambitious or astute enough. That elusive idea jiggled in her brain again.

  Something about Marconi.

  Shaking her head in exasperation, Kate mused over the idea that coincidence was a strange thing that happened more often than police thought and less often than the general public believed. She meandered to the coffee machine to refill her cup for the second time. Or was it the third? She’d lost track.

  To her left Marconi’s office door stood ajar. Slater had officially assumed most of the Sheriff’s responsibilities, but everyone knew that it was the Lieutenant who’d carried the real load of running the department for several years now. Kate didn’t particularly like Sheriff Marconi. He was the stereotypical transplanted redneck, “clampers” they were called around here. He was definitely old school in his attitude toward women and modern forensics, but she knew he played by the rules and wasn’t one for breaking protocol.

  As she returned to her cubbyhole of a room, she paused to glance into Marconi’s office. The lights were off, but she could see files and scraps of paper scattered over the desk as if the Sheriff had left in a hurry without tidying up.

  Odd, she thought.

  She checked the time. Nearly seven. Soon the other officers would report for duty and Slater would arrive. By then it would be too late for her to take a look around Marconi’s office. Was she justified in committing a gross breach of privacy?

  Going with instinct, she hesitated only an instant.

  The first thing Kate noticed was how out-of-character the Sheriff’s office was. She’d never seen it in such disarray. The few times she’d been in this room, she’d observed the careful way Marconi stacked his file folders in the “in box,” and his outgoing mail to be metered in the “out box.” She remembered thinking that for all his slovenly work habits and lazy speech, he was strangely tidy at work, even to the point of stacking papers and envelopes, pencils and pens, so they all pointed in the same direction.

  Marconi was a strange paradox.

  But the last time he’d been in the precinct, the last time anyone had seen him, he’d left his workplace in a mess, almost as though he hadn’t been leaving the office, but was taking a break from which he intended to return shortly.

  Almost like he’d hurried away on unplanned, but urgent business that overrode his usual sense of order. Not at all like he’d left on an extended vacation.

  Kate’s intuition kicked into overdrive. If the Sheriff hadn’t gone on vacation, where was he? What had happened to him? And what the hell did his absence have, if anything, to do with her case?

  #

  Slater’s mouth and eyes felt as though someone had dropped wet cement in them. Yet, he couldn’t remember when he’d slept so soundly. In spite of the dark clouds hovering from the west and the certainty that they were headed for a storm by this afternoon, he felt like the weight of a thousand worlds had been lifted from his shoulders. He felt an urgency to see Kate, to look at her and know everything would be all right between them. Last night she’d said she needed to think about their situation, but he’d seen the look of betrayal in her eyes. Was his deceit unforgiveable?

  In the bathroom he showered, shaved, brushed his teeth, and then fortified himself with a large mug of coffee. After dressing he drove to Kate’s apartment, but she’d left already. He turned onto Eureka Lane and headed for the courthouse.

  Before he reached the end of the street, he passed a gray van parked at the curb, its muffler drifting smoke into the brisk morning air. The vehicle seemed vaguely familiar, but Slater was in a hurry to see Kate again and brushed the thought aside.

  #

  The watcher had dozed in his van for a few minutes, trying to catch up on the sleep he’d missed from sitting outside the woman’s apartment all night. He knew he couldn’t use the same ploy as the last time, pretending to solicit funds for the local school, but he wanted to scout for an unopened window or door that would be easy to jimmy. There was always a way to get into a first-floor apartment.

  When K. Myers left her apartment before daylight, he’d been tempted to snatch her then, but he hadn’t counted on the man in the truck returning. He didn’t even try to go inside the apartment when he glimpsed the dark giant swerve his vehicle through the parking lot.

  Smith got another good look at the man. It’d be much harder to get the woman with the dark giant in the way.

  #

  Kate stared at the list which she’d found lying in Marconi’s “in box,” the final list Brad Escobar had made of residents moving into the county in the last twelve months. It ran nearly six pages. A small influx for the county in a twelve-month period. The Sheriff’s copy was lying at the bottom of his “in box.” The list was unmarked and Kate couldn’t tell if the he’d already looked at it, or put it aside and forgotten it.

  Sitting in the ample chair, Kate riffled through the scraps of paper on his desk blotter, being careful to replace everything exactly as she found it. The silence of the squad room unnerved her and added to her guilt.

  After perusing the stacks of papers in both boxes and flipping through the papers and file folders on his desk, she’d found nothing that seemed significant or caught her attention. She removed the pink message slips from the pointed holder that stabbed through the center of each sheet. There were nearly fifty messages. She began to sift through them one at a time.

  Near the bottom of the pile Kate found a slip that piqued her interest: call attorney re: probate of will. She recognized the cramped handwriting of John Sanderson, who must’ve been on duty that day. The message was dated Monday, July 21, this year.

  A will usually meant family and a death.

  Kate wondered what relatives Marconi had around here. She hadn’t been in Placer Hills long, but she understood that he had no family in the area and lived alone, his only companion an old German shepherd. His ranch house sat
on several acres of land in the southeastern part of the county.

  Looking around surreptitiously, Kate removed the message from the stack and stuck it in her jacket pocket. Then she flipped through the appointment calendar, beginning with July 1.

  On July 24, a Thursday, Marconi had written in his sprawling scrawl: 4:30, Shawn Fraley, will. She found nothing more until she reached August 4, a Monday. The Sheriff had penciled a notation: contact the boy.

  Who was the boy, Kate wondered, and what if anything, did it mean? Suddenly she felt like a real snoop. Which she was, she thought. Who was she to pry into Marconi’s personal business? Was she making mountains out of molehills as her mother always claimed?

  Driven by gut instinct, she kept looking.

  She almost missed the next notes, tiny penciled notations at the edge of the date’s square box, written almost as though Marconi hadn’t really tried to conceal them, but wasn’t eager to have anyone know his business either. The August 11 note read: call boy again!!! The series of exclamation points pierced the page. Were they expressions of irritation, anger, or urgency?

  August 15 simply read: take boy up to N.H. She would’ve rushed right over the note except for Marconi’s cryptic reference to “the boy” throughout his appointment book. He could be referring to any male person between three and forty, given Marconi’s age, but why didn’t he simply write down the name? Was he hiding something?

  There wasn’t another note until the end of September. In the Friday, September 19, square was written: talk to boy about M. Who was “M”?

  On a sheet of lined paper ripped from the back of her murder book, Kate carefully wrote down the July and August dates, with their respective days of the week and the approximate times she guessed Marconi had intended to complete the task he’d noted. She added the name of Shawn Fraley and simply “the boy,” and then tucked the half-folded sheet in her pocket with the pink message slip.

  Returning to her desk, she removed the tri-county area phone directory from her bottom drawer. It included Sacramento, Bigler, and El Dorado Counties. Kate looked under Attorneys Guide in the yellow pages. Half-way through the listings she found the name Shawn Fraley, attorney-at-law, along with the claim to specialize in living trusts and wills, probate, will contests, and estate planning. A small photo showed a middle-aged balding man with what was evidently meant to be a kindly, but serious expression on his face.

  A downtown Sacramento number and address were listed.

  Kate closed the directory and stared across the room at the tall windows where the first streams of overcast daylight filtered through the trees. Who was “the boy,” and what did the reference to him on the calendar mean? What had Marconi seen a lawyer about? Who was M. and what relationship did he or she have to the boy? What did N.H. stand for?

  And what the hell did any of this have to do with the murders of Jennifer Johnston and Alison Mathews?

  Should she proceed along a line of investigation spurred only by a gut feeling? If so, she realized she had no idea where to begin. Fraley would certainly claim attorney-client privilege, but she might be able to elicit useful information from him anyway.

  She debated asking Slater’s help, but she wasn’t ready to face him yet, less eager to reveal that she’d been snooping around Marconi’s office. Slater might know about M. and N.H, maybe even the boy. And he might know the right questions to ask the attorney.

  On the other hand, if this information turned out to be irrelevant, then what she’d done by searching the Sheriff’s office was highly unethical, perhaps illegal.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  With a thrill of satisfaction, Smith thought of his uncle’s body, in the basement since Monday night, over forty-eight hours now. A messy sight, and the odor was starting to be a problem. He admitted he’d been nervous at times about this latest enterprise, but overall the results had been far more gratifying than he expected.

  Yesterday he’d driven northeast over the California border and purchased several bags of lime at a nursery on the Nevada side of Bigler County. Then he’d taken a little road trip to an isolated area along Highway One, the Pacific Coast Highway that ran the coastal length of the state. There he used his stunner on one of the coastal deer that roamed at will in the area, and stowed the stunned animal in the back of his van. Chloroform kept it under for the trip back to New Haven.

  Today, he wanted to relax a little and celebrate the successful execution of his plan. He giggled and reached for a beer in the compact refrigerator. Soon, however, he must complete the arduous but important task of eliminating the final remains of Uncle Mark. The utility sink drain would prove very useful.

  Reflecting on Mark’s demise, Smith slouched on the sofa in the main room. His uncle hadn’t been any braver than all the girls who’d passed through his nephew’s life. Smith had now gotten rid of the only person who could connect him to the deaths of two girls in this area, and he’d dumped the vehicle where it couldn’t be traced back to him. His tracks were well covered. Best of all, his uncle got what he deserved. Smith laughed aloud, his voice high-pitched in the large room. Mark obviously hadn’t heard that curiosity kills the cat.

  He gazed at the frosty bottle of beer in his hand. He wondered if his uncle had been smart enough to appreciate the irony of Smith drinking the beer that his uncle had insisted on having when he visited on Monday. Probably not.

  The beer had been Uncle Mark’s undoing, so to speak.

  Smith didn’t think anyone would come snooping around the ramshackle old house, but as a precaution he would scrub the basement’s cement floor with a strong chlorine solution and use a blow torch to dry the area. Heat destroyed trace elements. Following that, he’d painted the concrete with a white, glossy, oil-based paint.

  After the paint dried, he’d slaughter the deer, smear the blood over the cement floor and sink, and hose down the entire bunker. A good cover-up to obliterate the human evidence.

  Just in case.

  He had no interest in the meat from the deer. All his young life he’d been forced to eat the venison his grandfather killed. The greasy residue on the roof of his mouth after eating venison steak made him nauseous. If the deer had been running and working up a sweat when it died, the strong gamey taste of the blood running through the muscle was worse. He hadn’t dared throw up in his grandparents’ presence, so he’d forced the meat down, nearly gagging on the sickening flavor.

  Grandfather didn’t like the meat himself all that much, but he was too tight-fisted to buy beef or chicken from the market. Smith suspected his grandfather liked the rigor of the chase and the thrill of the hunt more than eating the flesh from the kill.

  He sighed, satisfied that he’d thought of everything. After the hubbub died down, he’d want to hunt again, but he’d be forced to have his fun somewhere away from the house, outside the state, and use this place for recuperation. He wouldn’t give up his safe haven.

  And who knew? Sheriffs and deputies, district attorneys and judges, all came and went. He was a patient man and could outwait them all. Hunt elsewhere for a while and spend the interim periods here in New Haven. Reliving his experiences. Using his journals and pretties to re-create the ritual.

  He could never permanently abandon his sanctuary.

  #

  Every team had reported in and left, and the precinct was as quiet as it’d been when Kate had come in earlier this morning. The desk sergeant idly thumbed through a hunting magazine. Before Slater arrived, Kate made a quick call to the law office of Shawn Fraley. The phone rang four times before a recorded message kicked in.

  A perky voice informed Kate the office would be closed until Thursday, November 13. Who the hell took off early in November, Kate wondered? But apparently the law office of Attorney Shawn Fraley was taking a vacation.

  Slater arrived just as Kate finished the phone call. He stared at her for a moment, his expression measured. Trying to gauge her emotions, she thought.

  “Are we going to be okay?”
he finally asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you want us to be okay?” he countered.

  “I don’t know,” she repeated.

  Moving into her office and scooting a chair close to her desk, he said, “I deceived you and I feel bad about that. I want you to be able to trust me.”

  A flush of guilt washed over her. If Slater’s omission about Julie and Max was like a lie, then she was the liar this time. Slater had a right to know her suspicions about Marconi even if they didn’t amount to anything. The purloined information weighted down her jacket pocket. Seeing the sincerity in his warm gray eyes, she squirmed, knowing she should tell him what she’d found in Marconi’s office.

  She sighed heavily. She didn’t have time to work on a relationship snag right now. Maybe she’d have done the same thing as Slater if she’d been in his place. She didn’t know. Maybe not telling him about Marconi’s notes was also a kind of betrayal, certainly a deception.

  “We can’t deal with this right now.” Kate said. “After the case, we’ll talk.”

  She saw the heavy disappointment in his calm gray eyes, even though he didn’t say anything. She had to focus on the killer, she told herself. That had to be her priority. She’d deal with the rest later.

  Another twinge of guilt ran through her. She should tell him about Marconi, but she knew she wasn’t going to. She’d wrestle with her conscience later. At the moment, she’d check it out on her own. Then she’d tell Slater.

  It would probably amount to nothing anyway.

  She ignored her uneasiness.

  #

  Later that morning Slater, Kate, and Bauer studied the case board where the other detectives had jotted abbreviated summaries of their findings. Having found copies of the completed interview reports on his desk, Slater divided them in thirds, assigning a stack to each of them.

  Brucker and Randall had done the knock and talks with the neighbors of Jennifer Johnston and Alison Mathews, but nothing significant had turned up. It was as if the entire neighborhood, hidden behind their gated community of multi-million-dollar homes, was deaf and blind. Harrison and Peterson had completed additional follow-ups with the Johnston family, Morris and Pitt with the Mathews.