Slightly disappointed, Alyssa realized she hadn’t eaten in a while either. But watching Caleb untangle himself from the sheets, she pondered the importance of eating versus the desire to keep the deputy naked.
“How about I go make us some food?” he asked, picking up his jeans and shimmying back into them. His shirt remained off. She wasn’t about to complain.
“You won’t hear me arguing,” she said. “Especially if by food you also mean coffee?”
The cup she’d gotten from Cassie in the early morning hours hadn’t dented her exhaustion. Even the sleep she’d just woken from hadn’t relieved her of the desire to lie back down.
Caleb laughed again.
“Not only do I have coffee,” he said, his smile slightly blurred. “But I have some of the best you’ll ever taste. Thanks to my old chief, it’s straight from Portland.”
Alyssa felt her stomach drop.
She tried to keep her expression from going down with it.
“Great,” she exclaimed, attempting to recover and be convincing. “Sounds great!” Trying to pretend that the mention of Portland alone hadn’t thrust her back into a reality she didn’t want to be a part of at all. One where Caleb was only a temporary resident in Carpenter. “I’m going to go freshen up and then take Sergeant out to stretch,” she added when Caleb seemed to have stalled beside the bed.
If he was going to say something, Alyssa didn’t give him the chance. Without asking, she wrapped the sheet around herself, grabbed her bag and hurried into the bathroom. Once the door was closed she immediately went to turn on the shower. It muffled any sounds that were outside the room.
Alyssa waited to see if the deputy would come for her like he had before. To try to comfort the part of her that was hurt by the idea that he would leave her, eventually. But he never did. So she did as she said and freshened up, changed into jeans and a shirt, and tried to see the poetry of having at least known what being with the deputy was like. Even if it might never happen again.
It took a little time, but she felt she was starting to convince herself that it was fine in her book when she got up to the mirror to brush out her hair. She took a towel and tried to un-fog a circle of space so she could see her reflection. It was an action she was used to handling when it came to her glasses and the often humid weather of Alabama. Something so natural to her that she often did it on autopilot whether she was at home or out and about.
Alyssa froze midwipe.
An idea grew louder in her head. It was attached to a memory. One she hadn’t thought was important.
Until now.
* * *
CALEB LOOKED AT the plate across the counter from his own. It was small and chipped and a part of a set he’d had for years... Yet somehow that plate looked different now.
Holding eggs, bacon and toast, it was a sight that he hadn’t expected to make him contemplate his life. But that was what he was doing. Because he knew it wasn’t the plate that had changed all of a sudden. It was who the plate was meant for that had cracked his plan for an ideal future.
He saw the plate.
He saw the woman meant to eat off it.
Caleb exhaled above his coffee.
Yet another small detail that had changed the way he thought.
He replayed Alyssa’s reaction to when he’d mentioned Portland. Even in the smallest way. The way her face had fallen for a second as she, no doubt, was reminded that he was going to leave. He didn’t know what bothered him more after seeing that. Hurting her with the truth of going back or the idea of going back itself.
A series of memories reminded him of a night he never wished to relive again. A darkness he hoped to keep buried for life. His hands fisted.
He knew it wasn’t that easy.
If he stayed he’d have to tell Alyssa what had happened. He’d have to show her he wasn’t the man she thought she knew. But if he left?
She’d never know.
Blue eyes, soft skin, hair that smelled like citrus.
Caleb opened his hands back up.
If he left, he’d be leaving behind every part of the woman he’d gotten to know in the last week. The strength and humor and compassion. The quiet contemplation, the way her brow creased in worry and the blushes that colored her cheeks that he seemed to have a skill to incite.
The way her skin felt against his. Their bodies moving together and against each other at the same time. The soft moans. The eventual release.
He might have been uncertain about a lot of things in life, but Caleb knew, without a doubt, that if he left he’d never find another woman like Alyssa Garner again.
And he wouldn’t want to.
Footsteps made him turn around. Alyssa was dressed again and also wearing a look that worried him.
“What’s wrong?”
Alyssa’s eyebrows were drawn together, her forehead creased in thought, but her expression was hard. And oddly energetic.
“Stand here,” she hurried, grabbing his hand and pulling him to the middle of the room. “I want to try something.”
Caleb obeyed and watched as she took her glasses off. Without explanation, Alyssa moved a few steps backward and then walked forward again. She bumped into his shoulder but kept on walking past him. Curious, he turned his head to look at her. She stopped a foot away from him, brows drawn even tighter together.
She squinted.
“Alyssa?” he prodded. “What’s wrong?”
For a moment she didn’t speak.
And then she said something that changed everything. “I think I have met Norman before. He was there, Caleb.”
He turned to face her head-on.
“There?” he asked, already hoping for information that could help them close the case once and for all.
Alyssa gave one, decisive nod. As if she was confirming her hunch with herself before letting him in on it.
“He was at the bank,” she said. “The day of the robbery, Norman was there.”
Chapter Twenty
“Just tell them what you told me.”
Caleb’s hand touched the top of hers with reassurance. No one else in the conference room at the sheriff’s department could see the contact beneath the table. But it helped steady her all the same.
Alyssa straightened her back and cleared her throat. “Before the robbery took place, when I was first going into the bank, my glasses fogged up.” As if the sheriff and captain needed help understanding the information, she motioned to her glasses. “It was raining and so humid I knew it was pointless to try to wipe them off until I was inside. So I took them off and held them at my side so no one would see me looking clumsily around while I waited for the fog to disappear. I was so focused on trying to look like I wasn’t blind that before I put them back on I ran into a man in the lobby. He was leaving, but we hit each other hard enough that we both turned to look at one another.” This time she took her glasses off and returned her gaze to the two men on the other side of the table. “You two are blurs right now. Even if you pointed a gun to my head, without having seen you before with my glasses on, I couldn’t for the life of me describe what you look like. Other than with descriptions like tall, brown hair and wearing a suit, I wouldn’t be able to recognize you later either.”
Alyssa put her glasses back on just in time to watch Sheriff Reed catch on.
“And you think it was Norman that you ran into,” he guessed. “In the bank.”
Alyssa nodded.
“It would explain why Dupree came into the room she was being held in and broke her glasses,” Caleb interjected. “He was trying to prove to Norman that even though she might have looked at him, she didn’t really see him. Which is in line with the conversation between him and Norman she heard.”
The captain was already standing.
“I have a copy of the security footage from the bank in my office,” he said to the sheriff. “I’ll go see if I can find this man.”
Sheriff Reed nodded but didn’t split his attention. He kept it right on Alyssa.
“If it is the same man, that still doesn’t fill in all the blanks,” he said. “So let’s say Norman did bump into you at the bank and it was the first time you two met... What he said to you when you were at that house sounds like he’s in love with you. And he seems to be under the impression that you are in love with him too. Or at least in the same reality together. Now, I’m not one to discount the notion of love at first sight, believe you me—I was knocked on my backside when I first saw my wife—but what Norman seems to be feeling might be something a great deal more dangerous.”
“Obsession,” Caleb jumped in.
The sheriff nodded, grave.
“Obsession, especially within the walls of an unstable mind, can be even more dangerous than someone who is just mad at the world or, as Norman told you, out for revenge,” Sheriff Reed said. He put his hands together in a show of binding two objects. “But put those two together?”
He whistled and shook his head.
Alyssa cleared her throat. While she’d given the two men in the room with her a breakdown of everything both Dupree and Norman had said to and in front of her, she had sidestepped one particular statement. In hindsight she realized it was to try to keep the then-angry Caleb from getting even more angry. Now, though, it felt pertinent.
“Norman said Dupree helped prove we were meant to be together,” she began, already feeling uncomfortable. “I don’t think he became obsessed with me until he realized I survived.”
Caleb squeezed her hand. Whether it was meant to calm her or protect her she didn’t know.
“Okay, so let’s say you bump into Norman, make eye contact—which starts this crazy notion you two should be together—and then you get...well, you know.”
“Hospitalized,” Caleb offered. In a different situation Alyssa might have thought it was cute how both men were trying to sidestep the gritty facts of that day for her benefit.
“Yeah, so you get hospitalized and Norman realizes that you’ve survived,” the sheriff continued. “In his mind that means you two are meant for each other, creating an obsession that he adds into his plans for, as he said it, his revenge.”
“That would explain why Dupree seemed so mad,” she added. “Maybe it’s affecting their partnership.”
“Which in itself is another set of questions we don’t have answers for,” Caleb pointed out. “If Norman was at the bank, then why didn’t he help rob it? For that matter, why did he go in at all beforehand and without a mask?”
“And why is he blowing people up?” Alyssa tacked on.
“And what revenge is he talking about?” the sheriff asked. “His partners being killed and caught?”
“That’s a lot of questions, but I think I can at least answer one for you.”
In unison the three of them turned to Captain Jones in the doorway.
“I found the man who bumped into you on the tape. It’s Norman,” he confirmed. “From your descriptions of him now, he appears to be more cleanly cut from the footage, but it’s him. Glasses and everything.”
Alyssa didn’t know if that should have made her happy, but in a small way it did. Better to know what was going on than be in the dark any longer.
“But—” the captain started. What small amount of happiness had cropped up within Alyssa disappeared. Apparently she wasn’t the only one. Caleb let go of her hand.
“We may have another problem,” Jones finished.
Without saying a word, they followed the man back to his office and crowded around him as he sat in front of his computer. Alyssa sucked in a breath.
It wasn’t that she saw herself on the monitor, frozen in time right in front of an also-paused Norman, that caught her off guard.
“We had no idea what was about to happen,” she whispered. An old pain ached within her. This time Caleb didn’t hide his attempt to make her feel better. He put his hand on the small of her back. The pressure was comforting. She took a deep breath.
“But that’s him, right?” the captain asked to make sure.
It was Caleb who nodded. “That’s him.”
“And that must be the look he was talking about,” the sheriff jumped in. He pointed to the screen. Alyssa tried to focus on it and not the dam that kept her memories at bay starting to crack.
“You can see my glasses in my hand,” she said after a tiny head shake to help get her back into a more stable mind-set. Past Alyssa was a good two feet away from Past Norman. “If I’d only left them on instead of worrying about how I looked, I would never have bumped into him in the first place. And y’all wouldn’t be in harm’s way because of me.”
“Don’t blame yourself for the crazy in others,” Sheriff Reed said. “Plus, I don’t think his obsession for you is what made him start making bombs and using them. It also doesn’t explain what his connection with Dupree is.”
Captain Jones held up his index finger. “I have a theory.”
The captain hit a few keys on the keyboard until the security footage rewound. Alyssa watched her past self, as well as Norman, leave the bank in reverse until he hit Play.
“You see this is when Norman enters,” he said, letting his finger trail the man on the screen. “He doesn’t hesitate or break his stride as he goes to talk to one of the tellers. He has a plan.”
“That’s Larissa,” Alyssa realized. A lump started to form in her throat as she watched Norman and Larissa talk. The teller was smiling wide, polite. Alyssa tried to ignore the sorrow while pointing out the teller to Caleb. “She didn’t survive the robbery.”
No one said anything for a moment. Alyssa took the time to say a silent prayer for the woman and those she left behind.
“Okay, so what’s the theory?” Sheriff Reed finally asked.
There was no denying that a new thread of anger had woven itself into the fabric of the room. Caleb’s hand was still on the small of her back, but the gentle nature had taken on more of an edge. The other two had shoulders lined with tension.
Captain Jones rewound the tape and pointed to Norman. Or, rather, the briefcase in his hand.
“You see this?” Jones asked. “He walks in with it.” He fast-forwarded the footage and hit Pause again. It was right before Alyssa had bumped into him. “But now...”
Alyssa watched as Past Norman left Larissa’s line and headed to the hallway that led to the bathroom. The captain moved the footage along until Norman reappeared in the lobby.
Without his briefcase.
“So he left the case in the bathroom,” Caleb said. “And I’m guessing he doesn’t go back for it?”
Captain Jones shook his head. He’d let the security footage continue to play. Alyssa watched as another bank-goer caught Norman’s eye and started a conversation with the man. It wasn’t a long conversation but seemed pleasant if their easy smiles were any indication of the mood.
Currently, Alyssa’s own mood was nose-diving.
“That’s Carl,” she said, cutting off whatever Captain Jones was about to say. “He’s talking to Carl Redford.” Alyssa’s gut turned cold.
“Carl also didn’t make it,” Sheriff Reed explained to, she assumed, Caleb. The deputy opened his mouth to say something, but Alyssa cut him off.
“Does he talk to anyone else before leaving?” she asked, heartbeat speeding up.
The captain fast-forwarded the footage again in answer. He stopped it when Alyssa showed up on the screen. “Just you.”
Caleb’s hand dropped from her back. They shared a look.
“The only three people Norman talked to were shot by Dupree during the robbery,” he said, voice steel. �
��That can’t be a coincidence.”
“I knew it wasn’t an accident that he shot Larissa and Carl,” Alyssa agreed.
“He could have been acting under orders from Norman to take out anyone who might be able to remember him inside the bank,” Caleb added.
Sheriff Reed cursed beneath his breath.
“But why go through all that trouble when we can just look at the security footage?” Alyssa asked. “Why walk into the bank without a mask on at all?” None of what they were finding was making complete sense. They were only getting pieces that weren’t quite fitting together.
“It was such a cut-and-dry case that we didn’t pore over the security footage with the same attention to detail we would have if the robbers hadn’t been caught,” the sheriff admitted. “Dupree claimed leadership for the crew and took responsibility for creating the plan to rob the bank and executing it. We had no reason to suspect there was another party to contend with.” He motioned to the monitor with an angry enthusiasm. “Norman might as well have been invisible.”
“But his briefcase isn’t,” Caleb interjected. “Maybe if we can find out where it went, we can—”
“We can figure out why he was there in the first place,” Sheriff Reed continued.
Caleb nodded.
“Am I the only one who thinks the bank robbery might not have been a normal bank robbery?” Alyssa couldn’t help asking. Norman just didn’t fit into the situation. It didn’t make sense.
“Whatever is going on, we’ll get to the bottom of it,” the sheriff assured her. He patted Jones’s shoulder once. “Can you keep going through the footage? Now that we have a new perspective, maybe there’s more we missed originally.”
“Sure thing.” Captain Jones rewound the footage again. This time Alyssa didn’t want to watch. It all made her stomach turn.
“As much as I want to dig into this, I need to focus on the present,” Sheriff Reed continued, walking them out. “I’m going to go back to heading up the search for Dupree and Norman. I’ll be damned if I’m going to let the two of them run wild in my town.”
The Deputy's Witness Page 16
