SAY YOU LOVE ME (Eva Rae Thomas Mystery Book 4)

by Willow Rose

  “… a good guy with a gun. Yes, I hear that a lot around here lately,” I said. “Have you confirmed that she was, in fact, murdered before Adam Clarke went to the school with his gun?”

  “We haven’t gotten the exact time of death yet, but we’re pretty convinced she was, yes. Preliminary examination suggests she was killed the night before, but as I said, we need to wait for the ME to know for certain.”

  I wrote on my notepad to contact the ME office and get that as soon as possible. It would take a few days. If she had been killed before Adam went to the school, then she had been dead for more than a week, and the general rule was that the sooner after death occurs that the body is examined, the more accurate the estimate will be. There was no telling how long she had been in that dumpster since it was emptied once a week, and when she was found, it was the same day the renovation company did their rounds, I had read. She could have been in there for a week in the blazing heat, and that would speed up the decomposing of the body, making it harder to determine precisely. But in this case, it was vital to get it as accurately as possible. If she was killed later than 11:47 a.m. on October 1st, then it couldn’t have been my brother since at that time he was lying on the floor of the cafeteria at his school, gunshot wound to his chest. It was as simple as that.

  “And the cause of death?” I asked. “Do you have that yet?”

  “We don’t know that yet either. Still waiting for the autopsy to come through. Should be in in a couple of days, a week maybe.”

  “Any bruises? Any blunt-force trauma?” I asked.

  “She was bruised up all right. He had his way with her before she died, the sick bastard. Removed all of her nails. Used some kind of tool to beat her up, which we haven’t determined yet. Listen, I have work to do …”

  “I’m almost done; I just need to ask you about something else,” I said and looked at my notes that I had made the night before while researching the case and running through what did and what didn’t make sense so far.

  McMillen clicked his tongue. Sydney was waiting outside in the hallway, and he gave her a dirty look that made my skin crawl.

  “Of course, you do,” he said.

  “There is something that has been bothering me. I spent the night researching this, and I keep coming back to the same thing.”

  “Of course, you did,” he said, clicking his tongue again, then leaning back in his chair, placing a black shoe on top of his desk.

  “In the days after she disappeared, the media printed the transcripts of several nine-one-one emergency calls coming from Allyson. According to them, she called from inside her kidnapper’s house. Three times, she called and told the dispatch that she was in trouble and pleaded with them to send police to help her. This is one of the things that bothers me; there are several, actually. But first of all, she didn’t know where she was; she didn’t know the address. If I understand it correctly, Adam Clarke and Allyson Woodland had been dating for a year. Wouldn’t she know his address?”

  He shrugged. “He could have taken her somewhere else, an abandoned house somewhere out of town. We have a lot of those on the island. One of the summer cabins by the beach, maybe. Besides, he was wearing a ski mask, she also said, so maybe she didn’t know it was him.”

  “But he took her there in his blue car, she said. Adam is fifteen; he doesn’t have a car or even a license.”

  “He could have stolen a car. Lots of fifteen-year-olds can still drive, even without a license.”

  I paused, then looked up at detective McMillen. “She kept calling him a man. When she talked about who was coming for her, she specifically referred to him as a man. Not a boy.”

  He shrugged. “A fifteen-year-old is a man in my book, especially if he decides to kill. Then, you are no longer a child. Not where I come from.”

  “But don’t you think she would have at least used his name?” I asked and gave him a look of distrust. This wasn’t adding up. In my experience, if there were too many things that needed explaining or didn’t make sense, there was something you were missing.

  “When they asked her who was coming for her?” I asked, getting agitated. This guy didn’t seem to care at all about the things I pointed out. “Wouldn’t she have said it was her boyfriend or called him by his name?”

  McMillen looked at his watch, then sighed while rubbing his face. “He was wearing a mask.”

  “Still, if it was her boyfriend, she’d have known; don’t you think? There are other ways of recognizing people than by their face. She would have known his hands, his stature, his eyes.”

  “Listen. I don’t have time for this.”

  I rose to my feet. “It’ll only be a minute. I have one final question. Let me ask you this, then I’ll get out of your hair,” I said. “According to the nine-one-one transcripts, you — the sheriff’s office — sent out a patrol car to find her, to the address that she told dispatch on the phone. But no one ever showed up, did they? You can hear that the dispatch is frustrated and anxious because the car hasn’t shown up yet when she calls the third time. The call ends when someone else is on the line, and Allyson is screaming in the background. What happened?”

  “That’s none of your business, lady.”

  “You sent it to the wrong address, didn’t you? You messed up, and now you don’t want the public to know. You missed your opportunity to save Allyson because you sent them to the wrong darn house. Am I right? What went wrong? Did dispatch hear it wrong? Did the deputies? Did you find the right house eventually and then it was too late? Did you trace the phone Allyson called from?”

  McMillen stood to his feet. He was leaning on his knuckles on the desk, his nostrils were flaring, and he was speaking through gritted teeth.

  “I don’t need you to come here and tell me how to do my work. It doesn’t matter that you used to be FBI. We have a way of doing things down here, and we’re sticking to it. Besides, don’t you think I know who you really are, and why you are really here? The boy is your brother, isn’t he? Adam Clarke is your little brother. That’s what I heard around the island. That’s why I agreed to talk to you in the first place because I felt sorry for you and your family, but now I’m done. Please, leave my office; the door is right behind you. Please make sure it hits you on the way out. Thank you.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  E.T. looked at the redhead as she got into the car and took off. He grabbed his knife, then peeled an apple while opening his laptop and starting a search. He found thousands of articles about her that he skimmed through. He saw titles of books she had written about serial killer profiling and read through articles about the many killers she had caught while working for the FBI, based on her excellent skills as a profiler. After that, he settled on a YouTube video telling the story of her merits when taking down the domestic terrorist, the Iron Fist, responsible for three nerve gas attacks in Miami. He watched her as she spoke at a press conference, being all humble and saying that it wasn’t all her doing, but also the great help she had received from Miami Dade Police and the support from the FBI.

  Next, the speaker returned and spoke about how Eva Rae Thomas’s own daughter had been among the kidnapped girls that were used in the attacks and how the woman, the former FBI-profiler, refused to give up in her relentless search for her, finally rescuing her from the claws of the terrorists and saving hundreds of lives in a hotel downtown, stopping a planned attack.

  “A true hero, huh?” he mumbled to himself. “Coming all the way up here? For me? Now, what do ya know?”

  E.T. watched a little more, then moved the cursor to speed it up, then watched the end, where you’d see Eva Rae Thomas reunited with her family. He stopped the video there. He looked closer at the three children, then at the man they said was her boyfriend, and also a detective. He placed a finger on the man’s head and tried to wipe him away.

  “A nice little family you have there, Eva Rae,” he said as he closed the lid and took a bite of the peeled apple, slurping the juices as he ate
and finished it. “Nothing more beautiful than a family, am I right? I guess since you’re here anyway, you and I might as well have some fun; shouldn’t we?”

  With a deep sigh, E.T. turned on the camera on his phone. While recording it live for the broadcast, he rolled up the sleeve of his shirt, then lowered the knife and placed it on his skin. He closed his eyes and pressed down, carving four letters into the skin, while blood dripped onto his pants below.

  Without pain, there would be no pleasure. In all pain, there is a purpose.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “The cafeteria is still closed off, but the rest of the school is back to normal.”

  It was Mrs. Green, the principal at Fernandina Beach High School who showed me around. Sydney and I drove directly there after the sheriff’s office. I had filled Sydney in on what Detective McMillen had told me and how I was beginning to get that nagging feeling inside my stomach that something was definitely off.

  “So, you’re saying our dad might be right?” she had asked in the car.

  “I’m not sure I’d ever go that far,” I said, “but I’ll admit that something smells fishy.”

  That was why I had decided to go to the school. I needed to see for myself where Adam had shown up with the gun and started shooting. When reading the articles and watching the news broadcasts about it, I always came back to the same thing … the fact that no one was killed or even injured during the shooting. Not one single bullet hit a person. To the media, that was a miracle, and of course, due to the SRO-officer who reacted quickly. It was even used in the gun debate nationwide when discussing whether or not it was a good idea to allow the carrying of concealed weapons on school grounds. But to me, it was a mystery. If Adam fired an assault rifle into a crowd of people, how come not even a single bullet at least grazed someone?

  Again, it made no sense, miracle or not.

  “This door leads to the cafeteria,” the principal said. She was a short woman, wearing black pants and a school team shirt. “We’ve kept it locked since it happened for the police investigation. We’ve served lunch in the media room instead, and the kids have been eating in the gymnasium or the courtyard. Many of them haven’t returned yet, and we’re cutting them some slack. Lots of traumatized kids have found it hard to return to the school at all. Can’t blame them. It was quite a scare. But classes had to resume at some point, right? And lots of the kids find comfort in a return to the familiarity and controllability of their day. We’ve had therapists in the library for anyone who needed to cry or who was overwhelmed by uncontrollable fear.”

  I had told the principal a lie. I had said I was an FBI agent, and that I was looking into the case. I figured I might as well since there was no way I’d get access to the school or the students otherwise. I’d get in a lot of trouble if someone found out, but I was hoping they wouldn’t. The principal had then told me that she really wished it wasn’t true — that Adam was innocent.

  “He is such a sweet kid. Always takes care of everyone. Especially those that are needy, the ones no one else will talk to, like the Asperger’s kids and the autistic kids, who often end up sitting alone. He is known to hang out with them too. He has a heart for the needy. That’s why it came as a big surprise that he’d do anything like this. It’s quite shocking, really. Just shows you that it could be anyone these days.”

  I didn’t agree. A school shooter usually had a profile, and from what I had seen so far, Adam Clarke didn’t match any of it.

  “Do you know of any students who were close friends with Adam? I’d like to ask them a few questions as well,” I asked.

  “I’ll ask around,” she said. “But, as I said, many kids are heavily traumatized and don’t want to talk about it.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “No one will force them.”

  The principal smiled with a sad sigh. “Okay, then. I’ll be right back.”

  The principal disappeared down the hallway. As in most Florida schools, the hallways were outside, only covered by a roof to keep the kids from getting wet when it poured during the rainy months from May to October. Even the lockers were outdoors.

  I grabbed the door to the cafeteria and pushed it open. The light was turned off in there, and it smelled like day-old chicken nuggets. I turned on my flashlight that I had brought from my car, then walked in, Sydney coming up behind me.

  I lifted the flashlight to shine it across the room and walked closer. I looked at the long tables and benches. I could tell the police’s crime scene techs had been there, by the dust and signs with evidence numbers. I shone the flashlight toward the back wall, then to the wall to the right of me. Then to the left.

  “Huh,” I said.

  “What?” Sydney asked. “What are we looking for?”

  “According to the eyewitness accounts, Adam came in through the doors where we just entered. He stood for a few seconds as the door closed, then lifted his assault rifle and began to shoot, right?”

  “Yes. That’s right.”

  “So, he would have been standing right where you are — give or take a little.”

  “Probably,” she said. “What are you getting at?”

  “The kids were all sitting here, on the benches, eating when it happened.”

  “Yes?”

  “So, if he shot at them, there would be bullet holes behind them on the walls, wouldn’t there?”

  Sydney looked where the beam of my flashlight landed on the white walls behind me.

  “But there aren’t,” she said. “Not a single hole.”

  “Nope. The walls are as clean as if they had just been painted.”

  Sydney wrinkled her forehead. Most people would look ugly when doing that, but not Sydney. She was always so annoyingly cute to look at, while I always looked like I had just woken up with my unruly, impossible-to-control hair and pale, freckled skin.

  “So, what happened do you think?”

  I shone the light across the room, letting the beam slide across the walls. “Beats me. But it almost looks like no shots were fired at all, doesn’t it?”

  “Yet all eyewitnesses say there were.”

  “You’re right,” I said, then lifted my flashlight upward and to the right until I reached an area of the wall almost underneath the ceiling as far away from the seating area as possible.

  “There you go,” I said. “That’s where all the bullet holes are.”

  “That’s odd,” Sydney said.

  “It sure is,” I said and took a picture of it.

  “Why would he shoot in that direction all the way up there?” she asked. “It makes no sense.”

  “I know. It’s a mystery,” I said and took more pictures, then lowered my phone. “It’s almost as if he was trying to avoid hitting anyone, isn’t it?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  THEN:

  “My husband? W-what … I don’t understand. Where is this coming from?”

  Marlene looked at the two men in front of her. Her heart was beginning to race in her chest as the seriousness of the situation dawned on her.

  It had to be a misunderstanding; didn’t it?

  “Have you observed any extraordinary behavior from your son recently?” the one to the right, Rivers asked.

  “Extraordinary, what do you mean? He’s seven years old. His behavior changes all the time.”

  “Let’s just say in school then.”

  Marlene bit her lip. “Listen, I know he has been causing some trouble, but I hardly think …”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  She exhaled, already getting tired of this.

  “Well, I got a couple of calls this week from his teacher about his behavior,” she said. “But it wasn’t anything really …”

  “What did she say?”

  “She asked me to come and meet with her.”

  “Did you go?”

  “Yes, of course,” Marlene said. “I wouldn’t ignore a request like that. What mother would?”

  “Some mothers do,” the one
to the left, Waltman said.

  “Well, I don’t. I went and I had a meeting with her, and that’s it.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “She told me that my son had been yelling at her in class. That she had asked him to do his project, something about Henry Flagler, I don’t know, but then he had responded that he wouldn’t do it, and then he had left the class without saying anything about where he went. It really was no big deal.”

  “It says here that he uttered several disrespectful words to the teacher and any adult who tried to get him to go back to class. He seemed aggressive, and they were frightened of him.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t know why they’d feel that. Jack is the sweetest of kids.”

  “There was also a teacher who talked to you privately, wasn’t there? Rivers said. His round face with a narrow set of eyes lingered on her. Marlene felt deep resentment toward them both. She felt so trapped.

  “She took you aside when you came to pick up your son a few days later, right?”

  Marlene sighed. What was this about? Her son using profanities in school? Hardly a crime the last time she checked.

  “Yes, she said my son had said some disrespectful things to her during music class, using profane language, and that his behavior needed to change if she was to keep him in her class. I told this teacher that we were working on it with his homeroom teacher and that it was being taken care of.”

  “But then she said something else; didn’t she?”

  “Listen, if you already know all this, why do I have to repeat it?” Marlene said, raising her voice. “It’s all in your papers there; isn’t it? You already talked to the teachers yourselves, so why am I here?”

  “Because we want to hear it from you as well,” Waltman said. “Please, continue. What else did she tell you?”

  Marlene sighed again and closed her eyes for a second. Her hands were beginning to get clammy, and she wiped them on her jeans. She still wondered about that chicken and whether or not it would go bad on the counter or if the dog had eaten it. What would she feed her family is she couldn’t make the chicken?