Harlequin Intrigue April 2021--Box Set 2 of 2

by Carol Ericson

  “I first caught on to him in Delaware. I had reason to believe he’d kill, so I’ve been investigating him in my free time. Small stuff at first. I had a PI friend in New Castle run a background check then I cashed in a favor from the DA to put a tail on him.”

  Dylan prepared for the coming lecture from his superior. He’d been running an investigation behind his chief’s back, using his position as a marshal without jurisdiction. Any evidence he’d collected against Del Howe wouldn’t have stood up in court, but Dylan couldn’t let the bastard get away. Not again. “Highway Patrol reported he’d crossed into Oregon three days ago.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Her lips parted, homing his gaze to that full mouth he hadn’t been able to get out of his mind all these years. Remi turned away from him, a humorless laugh rising up her throat. Ice-blue eyes settled on him. “Why go to all this effort behind my back and not brief me on the details before he became the subject of a murder investigation? What did you suspect Del Howe was guilty of before he was killed?”

  “I wasn’t going to let him get to you, Sheriff.” In truth, past anger and guilt had driven him to this moment, but he wasn’t going to apologize for keeping her safe. No matter how much distance she’d physically and emotionally put between them.

  “Me? I’ve never met that man before in my life,” she said. “Why would he have reason to target me?”

  Dylan forced himself to keep the aggression out of his voice. “Because Del Howe is—was—the New Castle Killer.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Del Howe was the killer who’d gotten away.

  How was that possible? Remi stepped out of Dylan’s reach. She’d worked that case for a full year before the people had decided the town needed a new investigator on the case, and not once had a suspect fitting Del Howe’s name or description come across her desk. “We had solid suspects we looked into on that case. None of them Del Howe. How can you be sure the victim Gresham PD discovered this morning is the New Castle Killer?”

  “You mean apart from the fact the guy followed you here all the way from Delaware, had surveillance photos of you taped to the inside of his closet and was murdered with the same MO the New Castle Killer used?” Dark hair caught the dim lighting coming through the blinds. With his face partially in shadow, she didn’t have to see his expression to read how hard it was for Dylan to keep the lid on all that rage and guilt. He blamed himself for the deaths of those three young men, and, in a sense, he was right. If the former private investigator had taken the third victim’s concern for his safety seriously, Dylan probably could’ve gotten to him before the New Castle Killer had. They’d never found his remains, but evidence at the scene had confirmed Tad Marrow had been bound, cut and murdered by the killer they’d been trying to stop.

  Dylan unpocketed his phone, the light from the screen failing to chase back the haunted shadows etched into his features. He handed her the device and swiped through a series of photos dated over a year ago. “The buildings where all three victims lived in Delaware were inspected by the same man around the time of each of their deaths.”

  “Del Howe?” The signature was clear. How many times had she gone through those files only to end right back where she’d started: without motive or a viable suspect. Too many. That was why the people had forced her to step down as sheriff. She’d failed to protect her county. But where Remi had left the past behind after being removed from her position, Dylan had ignored the her orders to back down. He’d taken up the investigation himself, even after all this time, and made a solid connection between the victims they hadn’t been able to before. “You made the connection after we were banned from investigating the case, and you didn’t want to incriminate me if you were caught.”

  Of course he had. Because that was the kind of man Dylan Cove was, the kind to think about the consequences of his actions and how those same actions would affect everyone in his life. The kind to never give up, to complete his mission, to do whatever it took to solve the case. It was what had made him a great private investigator and one of the reasons she’d hired him to help her work the New Castle Killer case.

  It was his dedication to the job that had caught her attention and had led to the most passionate weeks of her life. Then it had all come to an abrupt halt.

  After the people had publicly called for her resignation, she hadn’t been able to face him, to bear the weight of her failure to protect her county. So she’d left. She’d taken a job with the US Marshals Service, worked to forget her previous life and risen up the ranks until she’d been assigned to head up the Oregon division. Ending their relationship—or whatever it’d been between them—had just been part of starting over.

  Until he’d walked into her office six months ago, asking her to help him make up for letting a killer slip through their fingers. He was a good marshal but an even better investigator, and she would need his help to prove she wasn’t the one who’d killed Del Howe.

  “You were starting over here. You had a good thing going. I didn’t want to be the one to screw that up.” Dylan followed her retreat, closing the small space between them, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood at attention. He’d always had that effect on her, always keeping her off-balance and grounded at the same time, and she didn’t know what to do about it other than to pretend he didn’t have this hold on her.

  Of all the people she’d kept at a professional distance, he’d blown past her guard, gotten under her skin, made her believe she could be more than the washed-up sheriff who’d let a killer get away. He slid his hands up her arms, hiking the cuffs of her sleeves higher, and studied the designs peeking out from underneath.

  Tattoos. Three names of the victims she hadn’t been able to help inked in block letters. Part of her. She’d had an appointment to have the names removed when she’d come to Oregon, but the need to remember her failure had been too strong.

  Smoothing his thumb along her inner wrist, Dylan brought that mesmerizing gray gaze to hers. “I know why you left, Remi. Hell, I don’t even blame you for not telling me before you took the job with USMS, but I knew it wasn’t over. Not for him.”

  A trail of sensation burned up her arms, but as much as she wanted to lean into it, to remember what it’d felt like to drown the nightmares that had followed her from Delaware, there was a killer outside these walls. Waiting.

  Remi shrugged out of his reach. “I can think of any number of people who’d have motive to want the New Castle Killer dead, but they would’ve had to know who he really was. They would’ve had to connect the elevator inspections to the victims’ abduction dates, same as you. Did you tell anyone about Del Howe? About who he really was?”

  “No. Like I said, I didn’t want any part of my personal investigation to come back on you or anyone else in the division.” He spread his fingers wide at his sides, a glimmer of disappointment in his eyes.

  Or was that her imagination?

  “We never released the details of how the New Castle Killer tortured and killed his victims to the media during the investigation, but that didn’t stop some of them from leaking. Whoever came for Del Howe had intimate knowledge of the crime and knew where to find him.” She had to think this through. Because despite the theory that Del Howe had been in all three buildings around the same time each victim disappeared, it wasn’t proof the man in the cabin had been the New Castle Killer. The only way to get that would be to dig back into the files. Her stomach revolted. “I believe you when you say you didn’t kill him, but I need to know if there is anything else you’re keeping from me.”

  Tension flared across his shoulders and up through the tendons in Dylan’s neck. A hint of hesitation chased back the disappointment that with her next breath had vanished. Another trick of the shadows? “I’ve told you everything. I got rid of my vehicle’s tracks when I headed back down the mountain after searching the cabin two days ago, but there’s still a chan
ce CSU can place me inside. DA Madison Gray will be able to confirm my call to ask for her help, and the cabin’s owners can tell you I had their permission to search the premises.”

  “I’ll call Madison and the homeowners to confirm in order to eliminate you as a suspect, but you’ll need to give your statement and an alibi for the timeframe Del Howe was murdered.” Hands on her hips, she scanned the movements of the officers on the other side of the window. An itch climbed up her spine. No matter how much she wanted to forget her years on the force, there was a part of her that’d missed it. A strong exhale escaped up her throat. “Gresham PD has jurisdiction over this case. Once we have signed statements from the DA and the cabin’s owners, you’ll turn everything you have on Del Howe over to Captain Paulson and let them do their jobs. Understood?” Remi maneuvered around him and headed for the office door.

  “You can’t keep running, Remi.” His voice penetrated through the slight ringing in her ears and notched her blood pressure higher. His heavy footsteps closed in on her from behind and forced her hand to tighten around the doorknob. “We’re the ones who made this mess. We’re the ones who let the New Castle Killer slip away. Don’t you think we owe it to his victims to see this through? That we share just as much of the responsibility to keep his sickness from spreading?”

  The empty space she let her mind retreat into when the past caught up threatened to swallow her whole. Her pulse ticked at the base of her throat as images of the crime scenes surfaced.

  “Del Howe had photos of me taped all over the inside of his closet, Dylan. That, in and of itself, gives me motive for wanting to confront him from the captain’s point of view. Sergeant Nguyen as much as accused me of somehow finding out I was being stalked and killing the man myself while I was in that conference room, and you’re telling me Del Howe is the killer that ended my career. The only way I was able to leave that room not in cuffs was to give him an alibi at the time of Del Howe’s death.”

  She turned toward him, her hand slipping from the doorknob. “And you admitted to being at that cabin two days before the victim was found dead by those hikers. If forensics turns up any evidence that you were there, Gresham PD will arrest you. You know as well as I do we won’t be allowed anywhere near this case as long as we’re considered suspects.”

  Dylan crossed the small office, and her body instantly heated. “Who said anything about working this case officially?”

  Her breath hitched. He wanted to continue his unofficial investigation of Del Howe. “You’re asking your chief deputy to turn a blind eye?”

  “I’m asking you to trust me like you did in Delaware, Sheriff.” His voice dropped into dangerous territory, eliciting a vibration deep in her belly. In the six months Dylan Cove had worked in her division, not once had he asked her for a favor or used their past against her. He’d respected her need to leave the nightmares behind and let her move on with her life. Until now. “Let me do this. Let me prove Del Howe was the New Castle Killer. Let me give his victims’ families the answers they’ve been waiting for and keep another killer from getting away with murder. Please.”

  Her heart jerked in her chest. He’d made a mistake on the New Castle Killer case. This was his attempt to make up for it. Remi directed her gaze out the cutout window of the office door and located Captain Paulson exiting the conference room with the same crime scene photos he’d slid across the table toward her a few minutes before. She recognized Paulson for the man he was: proud, self-serving, controlling. Even if she cleared her and Dylan as suspects, he wouldn’t let two US marshals near his investigation unless forced, but arrogance had no place in a case like this. If the killer who’d caught up to Del Howe was willing to bleed a victim to death for revenge, there was no telling how far he’d go the next time. “We’re going to need some help.”

  * * *

  THE OREGON DISTRICT office of the United States Marshals Service buzzed with printers and ringing phones from the other side of the conference room glass, but Dylan only had attention for the men and women positioned around the table. He pressed his elbows into the reflective oak surface.

  “You’re all here because I need your help.” Remi distributed manila file folders to each participant. Files that contained her old notes and crime scene photos of the Delaware scenes and the background information tied to all three of the New Castle Killer’s victims. Tony Rasmussen, Brett Smith and Tad Marrow. “A body was recently discovered in a cabin a quarter mile outside of Gresham’s city limits. The victim had been bound to a chair with rope, presumably sedated and cut more than a hundred times over every inch of his body until he bled out.

  “Deputy Cove and I believe it has something to do with a case we worked together back in Delaware of a serial killer who murdered three victims in the same manner. We never caught the New Castle Killer nor were we able to identify him before we were taken off the investigation.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time a serial has crossed state lines.” Deputy US Marshal Finnick Reed opened the file folder and skimmed through the crime scene reports. Of the five marshals that worked out of this office, Reed had acquired more experience with serials than anyone on the team after the most notorious killer in Chicago—The Carver—had followed Reed’s witness to Oregon. Only now, the psychopath was under six feet of dirt and Reed and his witness were on their way to matrimony.

  “You’re right. There’s just one problem with that assumption.” Remi pressed the remote in her hand and brought the projector connected to her laptop to life. A large image of Del Howe, after he’d been killed, took up most of the wall at the head of the conference room, a photo she’d taken with her own phone. “We believe the victim discovered by hikers this morning was the New Castle Killer.”

  A low whistle broke through the silence. Deputy Jonah Watson hiked himself closer to the edge of the table and waded through the stack of photos from the scene. The former FBI hazardous devices technician studied the file in front of him, trained to take the smallest piece of evidence and compile a theory on how it got there. But this case was bigger than any of them. Hell, it was bigger than the former Portland district attorney who’d targeted the mother of Watson’s son so he could prosecute the Rip City Bomber case himself, but Madison Gray had survived. And won the votes to become the next DA. “Someone killed your serial killer.”

  “In order for that to happen, the killer would’ve had to have known the identity of the New Castle Killer and hunted him down.” Hinges protested as Beckett Foster, the deputy US Marshal responsible for over half of the fugitive recoveries in the state of Oregon alone, leaned back in his chair. “From the evidence in these files, it looks like neither you nor anyone who worked the case back east was able to get a positive ID on the killer. There was even a theory the murders weren’t connected because the last two victims had never been recovered. Says here all you had was one body and three crime scenes with a lot of blood left behind. What makes you think Del Howe is the New Castle Killer?”

  Dylan nodded to Remi, who hit the projector button to switch to the next slide. “All three victims lived in apartment buildings with elevators. All three elevators were inspected by Del Howe within a month of each victim disappearing.” A still frame of Del Howe filled the projector screen, the footage taken from a camera angled high above the suspect’s head. “I called in a favor and had this this footage pulled from the elevator camera in the second victim’s building last week. It’s dated eight days before Brett Smith went missing.”

  Remi clicked to the next slide. “This is from Tony Rasmussen’s building three weeks before the first victim disappeared. And this one—” she landed on the last slide “—is from Tad Marrow’s building three days before his roommate called police. All show Del Howe in and around the locations where the New Castle Killer’s victims were killed and drained of blood.”

  “Why do serials always go for the blade, huh?” Reed asked.

  The chief se
t the remote on the conference table and weighed both palms against the glossy surface. A haunted exhaustion had thinned the skin and accentuated the dark circles under her eyes, and Dylan clenched his teeth to keep himself from reaching out for her. Remi wouldn’t appreciate it. Especially not in a room full of the men she supervised. “We believe someone made the same connection Deputy Cove did then followed Del Howe here to get their revenge.”

  “You said only the first victim, Tony Rasmussen, was recovered. Police found little else but pools of blood at the other two.” Finn Reed domed one hand on the conference table surface. “His Delaware driver’s license puts him at five-nine and one hundred and seventy pounds, and this footage only shows Howe carrying a tool bag to do his inspections. How did he get two grown men out of the building on his own?”

  “We don’t know.” Dylan twisted in his chair, facing the other three deputies at the opposite end of the table. “What we need to focus on is the fact that someone figured out who he was and killed him with what looks like the same MO as he murdered his victims—and they might not be finished.”

  “His moniker is the New Castle Killer.” Jonah Watson raised his gaze to Remi’s. “He killed all three victims in Delaware. What the hell was he doing here, and why are we the ones looking into a homicide? Murder falls under police jurisdiction, even if you were the original investigator on the case.”

  “You’re right. Marshals have no jurisdiction in a homicide, but it’s more complicated than me trying to solve the case that lost me my job as New Castle’s sheriff.” Remi pulled back her shoulders, and Dylan acknowledged the same tension flooding down his spine. She’d kept her past to herself, kept the truth from the marshals under her purview, but she couldn’t ignore it any longer. Neither of them could. “Gresham PD called me this morning once they recognized similarities of this scene to the New Castle murders and asked me to walk the scene. Not only had Del Howe been killed in the same manner as the three victims of the New Castle Killer, but there’s evidence that shows Del Howe had been surveilling me for quite some time.”