by B. J Daniels
“Have you given any more thought to taking her to the original scene of the crime?” Laura asked. “Like you said, if the killings are a manifestation of that earlier trauma, then maybe in the place it happened, she would remember the killer.”
* * *
LAURA WISHED THERE was some way to stop Rourke from making the worst mistake of his life. But she feared he’d already made it. He’d set the wheels in motion and now there was no way to stop the outcome, as if it had long ago been written in the stars.
“Of course, there is no way to know what reliving that trauma might do to her,” Laura said as she had before. “If you can talk her into going up there with you, the truth might come out. But it might not end the way you want it to.”
“She isn’t the killer, Laura. But she knows who is.”
“Once she coughs that up, you can get back to Seattle, where you belong.” The silence told her more than she wanted to know. “You didn’t say how the date went.”
“It was fine.”
Laura smiled to herself. She would imagine Carson’s murder had put a damper on it. “I’m sure you’ve asked yourself this, but how is it that Callie turns up at the murder scenes if she and this alleged killer aren’t in it together?”
“I know this sounds crazy, but she has some psychic connection to the killer.”
“They’re both psychic? This is what she told you?”
“No, I’ve seen it for myself. She has second sight.”
Laura tried not to laugh. “If that were true, then wouldn’t she have known who you were the first time she met you?”
“She says she can’t read me.”
“That’s handy.”
“I know you’re skeptical.”
“Why aren’t you?”
She heard a change in Rourke’s breathing and knew he was no longer alone.
“Well, I’m glad your interview went well,” he said. “You’ll have to let me know what you hear from them.”
“Yes, and you’ll have to let me know what happens in Westfield, if you decide to go.”
“I think it’s the only option now,” Rourke said.
“Really? Well, good luck, then. I assume you’ll want to go right away.”
“Today,” he said, as if he’d just made up his mind.
“Oh, I meant to ask—what did you hear from your P.I.?”
“Nothing yet. I’ve been calling him. It goes straight to voice mail. You take care of yourself.” He was trying to get her off the line. “I’ll call you soon.”
“I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other soon, once you finish up this case and get back to Seattle,” she amended.
“Right.” He didn’t sound happy about the prospect. If she’d had any doubt about how far his relationship had gone with Callie, she didn’t anymore.
Tears burned her eyes. “I’d say be careful, but I’m afraid it is too late for that. Goodbye, Rourke.” Just as she’d feared, he was going to die.
* * *
“NETTIE!” CHARLOTTE WESTFALL ABRAHAMS exclaimed as she opened the door. “I thought I might be seeing you again, and here you are.”
“You remember me?” The last time she’d been there, Charlotte was so out of it that she’d thought the woman suffered from dementia, even though the two of them were close in age. Now, though...
“Please, come in,” Charlotte said. “Best wishes are in order for your recent nuptials, I believe,” she continued, ushering her into the house. “I always hoped you and the sheriff would get together.”
Nettie couldn’t help but stare. This Charlotte was so different from the last one. This one wasn’t all made up to look like a silent-movie star. “I...I...”
“Nettie Benton Curry at a loss for words.” The woman laughed. “Why don’t I make us both a drink and we can talk about Beartooth?”
“You know why I’m here?” Nettie asked, unable to get over one surprise after another. Even the house looked different. The huge painting of Charlotte from that short time she’d spent in Hollywood was gone. The house no longer looked like a movie set. “I’m confused.”
“I can see that, but I find it hard to believe. Nettie, I thought if anyone was onto me, it would be you.” She laughed again as she went to the bar and made them each a drink. “And everyone said I couldn’t act.”
“You mean all that before was—”
“Just a little fun to get back at my brother. He’s the one who talked me into letting that awful Pam Chandler stay with me. You know she stole my money?”
“Yes, but if you were only playacting—”
“I wasn’t worried. I knew I would get every cent back, and I did, thanks to your husband.” She handed Nettie her drink and lifted hers. “To more fun times.” They clinked the fine crystal, and Nettie took a drink.
“It’s just lemonade!”
“Nettie, dear, it is way too early in the morning to be drinking, especially when we have much to discuss about bringing Beartooth back to its glory days.”
“I was beginning to think you were perfectly sane until you said that,” Nettie commented as she took the chair Charlotte offered her.
The woman smiled broadly. She really had been beautiful and now had a regal elegance about her. “I have the money, and I wanted to do something good for that community. You’ll see. More young people are moving back to the ranches. Beartooth can survive as long as it has the store. So, are you willing to come back to work there, possibly part-time? I’m sure your husband isn’t planning to retire just yet. What do you say, Nettie?”
For the second time that day, she was speechless.
“I knew you’d figure out who was behind the restoration, and I was hoping it was soon because I want you to help me make that store even better. Well? Are you in?”
* * *
CALLIE CAME OUT of the bathroom wearing nothing but a towel. “Is everything all right?” she asked as he pocketed his cell phone.
“I was talking to a friend of mine. Laura Fuller, my former partner at the Seattle P.D.”
“Is something wrong?”
He met her gaze, not sure how to broach the subject of Westfield. It was a long shot. Worse, he wasn’t sure how Callie would react. Not just to the idea. But to reliving the initial trauma. “She’s worried about me.”
“Really?”
“She’s afraid I’m falling for you.”
“Are you?”
He smiled. “You can’t tell? I need to talk to you about Westfield. I think we should go there.”
All the color suddenly drained from Callie’s face. Rourke thought for a moment that she was going to faint. He rushed to her, taking her in his arms.
Her dark eyes were wide with alarm. She shook her head, tears spilling down her cheeks.
“You felt something.” He hated that it sounded like an accusation.
She cried harder.
“Callie, tell me. You have to tell me.”
“I...I...did see something.”
He knew she meant she’d seen it psychically. Was she suddenly able to “read” him? And if so, what had caused that to happen? He knew how skeptical Laura would have been. Suddenly, she can read you? Really, Rourke, are you that gullible?
“It’s all right,” he said, hating that he, too, was doubting her psychic ability right now.
“It was you. I had this sudden flash. You were bound on a bed.” She covered her face with her hands. “What if the person you’re after is me?”
He grabbed her and pulled her to him. “It’s not, Callie. I know it’s not you.” He could feel her trembling, feel her terror. He felt a shudder of his own.
“What if I’m going to kill you?” she said between sobs as she tried to push him away.
“I don’t believe that.
I will never believe that.”
She pushed harder at his chest with the palms of her hands, breaking his hold on her. “You need to get away from me. Get as far away from me as you can.”
He met her dark gaze. “I’m not going anywhere without you.” Handy that now she wants nothing to do with you. Laura’s voice in his head. You mention going to Westfield, and she decides she is bad for you.
Ignoring his owns doubts, he pushed ahead. “You are somehow the key to these murders because you saw the killer. I believe it is the same killer from when you were five. I need to know everything about Westfield that you remember.”
He stepped to her and took her ice-cold hands in his. Tears welled in her eyes as he led her back over to the couch. “You probably know more about my life than I do.”
As he sat her down, he said, “I know your mother died there. What I don’t know, but I believe you do, is whether or not your mother killed the man who was murdered there.”
Callie recoiled at his words. “My mother? No, of course not.”
“But you were in the room when it happened, weren’t you?” He waited, afraid.
Her eyes seemed to lose focus. She seemed so small, so vulnerable. She couldn’t kill anyone, he kept telling himself.
“Tell me.”
Her gaze slowly focused again on him. “I was there. I was told that I saw everything, but I don’t remember.” She looked into his eyes. “I’ve tried to remember. It was dark in the room. I could smell the blood. I could hear...things.” She shuddered. “There was a figure by the bed, but when I try to remember, the person is...faceless.”
He didn’t need Laura to tell him that the reason Callie couldn’t remember could very well be because the killer was her mother. Or at the very least, someone she knew.
“It’s the first time I remember knowing something. I suppose that is what made me go to the man’s room that night. I was called there, just as I was the other murders.”
Rourke nodded, but he was thinking that she could have followed her mother to that room that night just as easily.
“You took the name Westfield. Did you not know your mother’s last name?”
She shook her head. “She said it wasn’t hers anymore. That she wasn’t that person. She wanted nothing to do with her family, and apparently they wanted nothing to do with her.”
“She gave you her name, Caligrace?”
“She said she wanted me to have something of hers.” Her voice broke. “I think she knew she was never going to leave that place.”
Was it possible her mother also had the sight? “Callie, the murders are connected to that murder at Westfield Manor. It’s the only thing that makes sense. We have to go there.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CALLIE FELT A sliver of ice work its way up her spine at his suggestion.
“Have you been back to Westfield Manor since you were five?” Rourke asked.
“No.”
“The place is abandoned, but if there is some chance that it jogs your memory...” He stopped to look at her. “Are you afraid to go back?”
Terrified. “I’m afraid of what I might...discover there.”
“I’ll be with you.”
She smiled. “Not your best plan. What if I realize that I’m the real killer?”
“You won’t.”
“I hope you’re right.”
He looked at her with such caring in his expression. He wanted so badly to believe that she was innocent. Or was this more about solving his case? She didn’t need to remind herself that he’d lied to her about who he was, why he was in Beartooth and why he was so interested in her.
“You saw the killer last night as you were going to Carson’s,” he said. “You passed her as she was leaving. If you really think she ‘called’ you there...”
Callie nodded. Was he trying to save her? Or his case? She wanted to be angry with him for deceiving her. But it was too late for that. She cared too much about him. That was why she was afraid for him. What if he was wrong about her? What if she saw the vision of him on the bed because she was the one who’d tied him up there?
She looked into his handsome face, wondering when it was that she’d fallen for him. The night at the lake when she’d pulled the gun on him? How foolish, she thought. She didn’t know this man any more than he knew her. Hadn’t she known getting close to him could be dangerous?
“Do you trust me?” he asked, as if he was the one who could see her thoughts.
She looked into his eyes. “Yes.” For that reason, he had to know everything.
“I kept going last night after I saw her come out of the road into Carson’s cabin. The front door was wide open.”
“You didn’t go in?” It sounded like a plea more than a question.
“I couldn’t stop myself. I told myself that she wanted me to see. But did she want me to see because she’d killed him or because I’d been there earlier and—”
“You’re talking crazy,” Rourke said, reaching for her.
She stepped back, determined to get this out. “When I stepped in, I realized something. I’d been to the cabin before.”
He groaned. “Tell me you didn’t touch anything.”
She shook her head.
“Had you been there before? Or had you seen it because of your second sight?” She could hear the hope in his voice. He didn’t want to believe that she’d had anything to do with Carson Grant before he’d come to town.
“I don’t know.” Callie felt her voice break. “Everything was familiar. I saw the small kitchen, the missing knife, the drawer where he kept the duct tape—”
Rourke grabbed her and pulled her to him. “It’s your second sight. She’s making you see these things. She wants you to believe you’re the killer.”
“It’s working.”
* * *
“ROURKE KINCAID?”
“Yes?” he said warily as he turned away from Callie and walked into another room to take the call. The man on the other end of the line sounded like a cop. A cop with bad news. His first thought was Laura. Had something happened to her? The moment he thought it, he’d expected such a call. He braced himself for the worst, waiting for the cop to tell him that Laura had committed suicide. That he would expect such a thing meant he’d been thinking it for some time.
“This is Officer Alex Knauber with the Billings Police Department. Do you know a man by the name of Edwin Sharp?”
He frowned, thrown off balance. “Yes, he’s a private investigator in my employ.”
“I’m trying to reach his next of kin.”
“Next of kin?”
“I’m afraid I have some bad news. Mr. Sharp was found dead in his hotel room.”
“Dead?” His mind raced. “What was it, a heart attack?”
“I really can’t say. It appears he drowned in the hotel bathtub.”
“Drowned?” Rourke felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. “There isn’t any chance that he was murdered, is there?”
“Why would you ask that?”
Rourke had spoken without thinking. “The case he was working on for me... It involves a serial killer.”
“This serial killer—”
“Kills with a knife, so I’m sure it is probably just what it appears.” He felt sick about Edwin. The man was older but seemed to be in the prime of his life. “I’m sorry. I don’t know about next of kin, but if there is anything I can do...” Rourke had a thought. “I do have a question. Was a notebook found in his hotel room? Edwin had called me yesterday to say he had found out something in the case he was working on for me.”
“No notebook was found.”
“Not in his car either? Edwin was old school. He took everything down in a spiral stenographer notebook. He wouldn’t have
let it out of his sight.”
“I’m afraid no notebook was found. We got your name and number from his cell phone.”
Rourke felt sick. “Officer Knauber, I’d suggest you treat Edwin Sharp’s death as a homicide, then.”
“What’s happened?” Callie asked as he walked back into the room.
“The private investigator I hired,” Rourke said. “He’s been looking for Gladys McCormick’s daughters, and now he’s dead and the information he’d obtained is missing.”
“You think someone killed him?”
“If his notebook doesn’t turn up, then, yes, I do.”
She stared at him wide-eyed. “Was he—”
“He allegedly drowned in a hotel bathtub.” Rourke moved to the window, all his instincts telling him they needed to get out of Beartooth. Now. “Edwin is dead and so is Carson. If it is the same killer, then she had a busy night.”
“You still believe it’s a woman?”
He nodded. “Edwin said he’d found one of Gladys McCormick’s daughters. When he’d left me the message, he’d sounded...upset. The daughter must have realized how close he was to the truth. I had no idea what I was getting the man into. If I had— Come on. We’re getting out of here now.”
“But what about the sheriff? I told him I would come in and talk to him this afternoon.”
“I’ll call him once we are far enough away he can’t stop us.” He hustled her out to the SUV and threw the suitcases she’d packed earlier in the backseat.
“You can’t blame yourself,” she said as he slid behind the wheel. “This is what the private investigator did for a living, right? His job was dangerous. He knew that.”
What she was saying was true, but he still felt responsible. He’d dragged them all into this. He had to get to the bottom of the murders before someone else died. Before the killer came for Callie.
Rourke scrubbed a hand over his face as he drove out of town and headed north. All of this seemed to begin with Callie and Westfield Manor. He hated to think how it would end.
“There’s something you should know,” Callie said in the seat next to him. “I’ve got another one of my headaches.” She shot him a look. “The killer kind.”
