Stratagem

by Robin Caroll

  “You know that’s not what happened.” The back of Grayson’s neck went hot, much like it always did whenever the subject came up. He would never forget his involvement in the matter of the twelve-year-old boy who took his own life. It didn’t matter that the boy hadn’t been Grayson’s own patient, that he’d only been filling in for his friend who was on his honeymoon. It only mattered that the young man had taken his own life the night after a therapy session with Grayson. The guilt nearly killed him then. The memory tightened around his heart right now.

  “Whatever. A kid offed himself, and you felt guilty. You’d have gotten over it, but no, Saint Grayson had to take a stand and quit his job.” Colton waved the gun toward Grayson’s head. “That made Anna Belle furious, you know.”

  Grayson remembered all too well how angry Anna Belle had been. Furious was quite the understatement. She hadn’t spoken to Grayson for days, and when she finally did, it was to tell him to go back to the practice and get his job back. She told him that losing patients was something he had to expect in the medical field and to think otherwise was just plain delusional. It was the first time in their marriage that he had refused her, and as a result, it changed the dynamics of their relationship forever.

  “She knew, just like I know, that only someone who is used to their privilege can afford to throw away such opportunities.” Colton nodded at Pam, cowering behind Grayson. “Come on, Pammy. Did you know that about golden boy here? I’ve read your file—you know what I’m talking about. You know what it’s like to actually have to work for what you’ve got.”

  “Yeah, I do know, Colton. That’s why I don’t understand what you’re doing. You’ve worked hard to build up Game’s On You. Both you and Grayson. The company is doing well, and we’ve had a steady flow of business.”

  Colton waved the gun at her again. Grayson twisted to push her behind him. “Yeah, I’ve worked hard to build up the company. I’m the one out there drumming up business. I’m the one out there bringing us clients. Mr. Perfect here just does the design work.”

  Keep him talking. “Colton, we both work hard—that’s why the business is successful.”

  He snorted. “You wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for me and Anna Belle. You’d still be working with the New Orleans Police Department.” Colton wiped his forehead with the arm of his sleeve. “Isn’t that a kick in the head? You worked for the people who are trying to lock you up. Although, maybe you were more vital to them than they’d realized since they seem to be taking forever to make the arrest.”

  Anna Belle had certainly hated his working for the police, had from the minute he’d told her. But under their new relationship dynamic, he listened to her concerns, then had to make his own decision. None were made lightly. He’d spent much time in prayer before leaving the practice, before going to work for the police, and before going into business with Colton.

  “What happened, Colton? We’ve built this company from the ground up. We’ve—”

  “No! I’ve built this company.” Colton’s eyes still had the newness of crazy shimmering in the flashes of lightning. “You had the perfect wife to attend to.” He laughed that creepy laugh again. “But Mr. Perfect couldn’t do that right, now could you? She went out and had an affair with a middle-class, wormy little fellow. Bet that made you feel really emasculated, huh? Her cheating on you with ole Timbo.”

  Grayson balled his hands into fists in his lap. He wouldn’t rise up in anger, which is probably what Colton wanted. That Anna Belle had cheated on him had devastated him. It didn’t matter who she’d cheated with, just that she’d cheated.

  “Why are you doing this?” Pam asked.

  “For money of course. You wouldn’t understand, Grayson, but, Pammy, I would expect you to get it. You see, I haven’t been quite as lucky as I might have made it seem. I’ve been losing. A lot. And now I owe some very insistent people a lot of money.”

  “Why, Colton?” Grayson shook his head. “If you had come to me, we could’ve worked something out.”

  Lightning flashed, highlighting the lunacy in Colton’s eyes. “Come to you? Like a beggar needing a handout? Oh, no siree, Bob. No way. I don’t need to ask your permission.” He straightened, but the gun wobbled. “I had to take matters into my own hands. Take care of myself, just like always.”

  Keep him talking. “Why kill Anna Belle? Why not just kill me? Would’ve been easier, I’d think.” Grayson never in a million years thought he’d be having such a conversation. Never with Colton. It was insanity.

  “What would be the fun in that?” Colton let out that laugh of his again.

  “Are you high?” Pam blurted out.

  Colton narrowed his eyes, the smile disappearing. “No, Pammy, I’m not high. I’m stone-cold sober, as a matter of fact.” He pointed the gun at her. “Here’s something I’ve wanted to know for some time now. I know Saint Grayson here would never have cheated on his wife, even though she was cheating on him, but tell me, since that divorce came through, have you and ole Grayboy here been doing the nasty?”

  “Don’t be crude, Colton.” Grayson shifted on the love seat, trying to push Pam farther behind him. Keep. Him. Talking. “So why kill Anna Belle and not me?”

  Colton focused back on Grayson. “Because if you were killed, I could be a suspect. I mean, I’m your business partner, and since your divorce, I’d be the one to gain the most financially. I did consider it, gave it a lot of thought. I even fantasized about what it would feel like to stab you.” He shrugged. “Or shoot you. Whatever. But in the end, I knew I’d have a tougher time getting away with it, and time’s not really on my side right now.”

  The panicked look was back.

  No, he had to distract him. Had to keep Colton talking about Anna Belle, him, anything but the gun in his hand. “It was pretty smart to lace her energy drink with cherry juice.”

  Colton smiled, the tension in his posture easing. “Oh, you have no idea the planning I put into this. You thought creating the game was intensive? That was nothing compared to what all I had to do.”

  “How’s that?” Grayson made sure to keep his voice more conversational than confrontational.

  “An old friend of mine is a bowling buddy of one of the board members at Deets. When I realized I was going to have to get my hands on the business, and decided the easiest and most efficient way would be to get rid of Anna Belle, then I needed to figure out a way to do it so you would be the natural suspect.”

  Grayson swallowed the bile burning the back of his throat as he nodded.

  “I called up my old friend and asked him to put in a good word for me to the board. Then I made it a point to send flyers over to Deets. Sent one to every board member too, but not to their home. That would be too obvious. I sent them to places I knew they’d see them: their work, their dentist office because they happened to have an appointment the day I did—things like that.” He smiled. “I am a sociologist, and a pretty good one. I knew the markers to throw out to get that call. I have to admit, though, I got worried when a week went by and nothing happened. I had to set up a loan as a backup plan, but then Tim finally called.”

  Oh, he had planned. He always touted Grayson as the master game creator. The attention to detail and planning he was showing could prove otherwise.

  “Once they called, I knew I could sell them on the deal, and I did. Then I had to sell you.” Colton’s stare hit Grayson hard. “It was actually easier than I’d expected. For a minute, I thought maybe you would really help me out and kill her yourself. That would’ve been too easy though. Didn’t you ever wonder how she found out about that hunting lease that caused her to come over and leave her five-finger signature on your cheek?” Colton laughed.

  Cackled was actually a better description. “You can’t imagine what a turn-on that was, man. She smacked the snot out of you in front of everyone. That couldn’t have turned out better if I’d written the script myself.” He paused. “Well, actually, it could’ve if you had hit her back. Talk abou
t some great motive for the detectives to play with there.”

  Keep him talking. “So once you had me hooked and I created the game for you…”

  “It was almost too easy. When those records came over, I about did handsprings. She had an abortion? Man, I knew right then and there that anybody who knew you would know that was primo motivation to kill her in a fit of rage. It was perfect. And her addiction to energy drinks? Her allergy to cherry juice? It was almost too easy.”

  “How did you get the cherry juice in her energy drinks without being seen on video?” Pam blurted out.

  “Pammy, Pammy, Pammy … once I found out what brand she drank, I bought two and filled them half with cherry juice. I had switched my two out with two she had brought on Thursday morning during breakfast when I made a trip to the restroom. Deets people were in the dining room eating, and our crew was eating as well. I came in the control room to check on our crew, being the courteous boss of course, and turned off the camera. In minutes I made the switcheroo. The only glitch was she’d taken her purse to breakfast with her, so I would have to come back. No biggie because I knew I’d have plenty of opportunities. I came back to the control room to let the crew know what time to be finished and was able to just turn the camera on again. Simple. You think you’re the only one who can manipulate a video file?”

  It was actually more clever of Colton than Grayson would have initially given him credit for. “The ball marker?”

  Colton grinned, and Grayson could catch a glimmer of his friend. Then the crazy returned to Colton’s eyes. “Genius, right? I knew yours was here in the office, so I planted mine in Anna Belle’s room when I switched the energy drinks. I intended to take yours as mine so yours would be missing, but then I realized they hadn’t found it.”

  “How could you be sure Anna Belle wouldn’t have seen it? She would have recognized it.”

  Colton shook his head but relaxed his hand holding the gun down onto the couch. “She would’ve recognized it as yours, not mine, which would have worked just as well in my favor, especially if she told anyone. But I didn’t have to worry. As I’d figured, she never noticed.” He frowned at Grayson. “That was some winner you were married to there, buddy. So self-centered that she didn’t bother with anything that didn’t affect her personally. You should probably thank me for putting everyone who knew her out of their misery.” He snorted. “Maybe she should’ve paid better attention.”

  Keep him talking. Keep him talking. He remembered the call to Anna Belle’s phone from the office. “Did you call Anna Belle on Tuesday afternoon?”

  “Found out about that, did you?” Colton nodded. “I knew I needed to have some sort of paper trail that would lead back to you just before you left town, so I called her. Told her that I just wanted to tell her how sorry I was it didn’t work out between you two. She tried to get off the phone really quick, but I needed the call to last more than a minute or two, so I told her that I thought you were dating someone.”

  Colton laughed as he let his gaze shoot between Grayson and Pam. “Guess who I led her to believe it was?” He waved the gun at Pam. “You, Pammy. Oh, her reaction was rich. She said if you wanted to play around with little girls, far be it from her to care.” He laughed again. “But you could tell it bothered her. Bothered her but good. So I knew she still cared at least a little for you, Grayson. Which made this even better. If I played my cards right, she’d think you were responsible.”

  “So how did you know when she would drink one of the energy drinks you put in her room?”

  “That’s part of the beauty of my plan. I wouldn’t know exactly, so I would genuinely be shocked when she had her allergic reaction. It would look good on video, and everyone would later tell the police how shocked I was and worried and how I went to the hospital to see how she was. I had a part to play, and I was going to play it.” He crossed his legs at the ankles. “I will admit that I’d hoped she would’ve drank one of my drinks early that morning, but it worked out just as well as it did.” He smiled at Grayson. “You losing your phone on Thursday morning was a godsend.”

  “What did you do with her EpiPens?” Grayson had to know. The police said the one was in her purse, untouched and untampered with. The one in her toiletry bag had been returned to her suitcase after Laure retrieved it from the house.

  “So very simple. Remember those missing minutes on the video?” Colton shook his head. “I forgot to turn off the cameras before I went in there. I needed to just take the EpiPens out of her room. Just three to five minutes.”

  “Eighteen minutes are missing,” Pam said.

  Colton nodded and jabbed the gun in the air at her. “You are a smart one, Pammy. And when I realized I’d forgotten and would have to delete some of the footage, I knew that you, on behalf of Superboy here, or the police, would find time missing. I thought perhaps if I deleted more than I needed, it would look like something more was hidden, and I wouldn’t be suspect, because if it’d been me, I would’ve known to just turn off the camera, duh.” He laughed, the sardonic sound in cadence with the clap of thunder that shook the windows of the building.

  Distract him from Pam. “How did you get the pen back in her purse and toiletry bag? Neither were missing, not from her makeup bag in her purse, nor in her toiletry case.”

  Colton tapped his skull. “I’m smart, remember? After the ambulance left and the Deets crew began to dissipate, I instructed our crew to break it down and leave. I knew there wasn’t a camera in the room, so I just slipped the pen inside as we were all in and out of there before I left to go to the hospital.”

  He stared at Grayson, his eyes cold and cruel. “Want to know what’s really insane? I had her Epi in my pocket while I called 911. While Tim performed CPR. All I had to do was take it out and inject it in her thigh.”

  Pam’s hand went to his shoulder and squeezed.

  “You can’t imagine what having that power feels like. Knowing I could save her if I wanted to, or that I could do nothing and just let her die. It’s such a rush. Exhilarating.”

  Sickening.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  “Commander Ellender said we’re good for overtime.” Danielle stood at the corner of their desks.

  Brandon nodded. “Guess what else I found out?” He tapped his pen against his Field Notes notebook.

  She sat on the top of the filing cabinet. “What’s that?”

  “Guess who bought a gun last week?”

  “Colton York?”

  “You got it.” He turned to read the notes he’d made. “He bought a Smith & Wesson HMR model 647, .17 caliber.”

  “Seventeen? You mean twenty-two?”

  He shook his head. “No, a seventeen.”

  “I’ve never shot one.”

  “Me either, but from what the gun seller said and the information I pulled from our team, the thing with this caliber is that the bullet’s trajectory is very flat. That’s why it’s so popular right now. It’s easy to be accurate. However, its design also means that the second it encounters an obstacle, that flat trajectory goes haywire. So it’s accurate, but it’s also prone to deflect if you miss your target.”

  “And he just bought this last week?”

  Brandon nodded. “Picked it up a week ago Monday.”

  “Like maybe he was planning to need a gun soon? Like in case some cherry juice didn’t work?”

  “Or he was caught being somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be, doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing.”

  The phone on Danielle’s desk rang. She leaned backward to grab it. “Witz.”

  Brandon pulled his search engine back up and stared at the Smith & Wesson. Sa-weet revolver. The only odd thing was this revolver had an internal locking device with a key receptacle above the thumb piece for the cylinder latch that Brandon considered could be a serious liability in the event that the gun was needed in a hurry.

  “Yeah. I hear you.” Danielle had stood and moved back to her desk, scribbling as she listened. “This i
s great. Yeah.”

  Brandon glanced back at the computer screen. Another nice thing about the Smith & Wesson was its price tag: easily less than a grand. Used or through one of the many gun brokers, five or six hundred.

  “Thanks. Just what we needed.” Danielle plopped the phone back in its cradle. “That was Kara.”

  “Oh?” Brandon automatically reached for his pen.

  “They found the missing time from the video Game’s On You took at the Esplanade Avenue house.” She clicked on her computer keyboard.

  “And?”

  “I’ll give you three guesses who it shows going into Anna Belle’s room, then right back out, and the first two don’t count.”

  Brandon snapped his fingers and pointed at his partner. “Colton York.”

  She nodded. “And here are the missing minutes now.”

  Brandon jumped up and went around to look over her shoulder.

  Danielle pressed PLAY. The screen flickered, then Colton crept up the stairs. He looked over his shoulder toward the stairs he’d just come up, then walked past Anna Belle’s door and stopped. He looked over his shoulder again to the stairs. Paused. Then unlocked her door, looked over his shoulder to the stairs, then down the hall, before ducking into her room and shutting the door.

  The screen went dark, then popped back into action as Colton stuck his head out the door. The time stamp showed only three minutes and twenty-nine seconds had passed since he’d entered the room. Colton looked right, then left, and then he stepped out into the hallway, pulling Anna Belle’s door closed behind him. He straightened, then made a straight line to the stairs. The video ended.