“You really up for anything I want to do?” he asked.
“Yes!” I said loudly, really getting into the idea of a plate of hot wings and an ice-cold beer.
“Well, if it’s anything, I want to take you to the shooting range so you can try out your new gun.”
Feck. I’d walked right into that one.
“Hello?” he said when I didn’t reply.
“I’m here,” I said, trying to find a way out of the giant hole I’d just dug for myself. Finally, though, I figured that an hour at the shooting range with my sweetheart on his day off really wasn’t so terrible. Especially if we could do the wings and beer afterward. “Okay, cowboy, I’m in.”
“Wait…,” he said. “You are?”
That made me laugh. “Yes, you big goober. I should be home in about fifteen minutes, and I’ll change and we’ll go to the range.” But just then my phone’s appointment reminder went off and I turned the display toward me. “Aw, crap!” I said loudly.
“What?”
“Cat had my phone and she answered it when the vet called with a reminder that Eggy and Tuttle are due for their shots. My oh-so-helpful sister scheduled them both for today, and I totally forgot!”
“When’s the appointment?”
“In twenty minutes.” I’d never make it home in time to grab them and get them to the vet.
“Good thing I’m off today,” Dutch said, already whistling for the pooches.
“You don’t mind taking them?”
“Not at all,” he said. “But when we get back, we’re going to that range, Edgar. You’re learning to shoot that gun today.”
“I promise,” I vowed.
Before he hung up, Dutch informed me that he’d had a call from his buddy the detective downtown. “They found King’s body late last night.”
I knew she was dead, but to hear Dutch confirm it made me catch my breath. “That bastard,” I said.
“Looks like you were right on the Taser too, Edgar. They found small burn marks all over King’s body, and the preliminary report from the coroner is that she was hog-tied and buried facedown alive.”
“Smothered,” I whispered into the phone. “That’s how Kendra was killed too.”
“You’re probably right, although with Kendra the moist ground did a number on her remains.”
I scrunched up my face in distaste. How were guys able to talk so freely about the graphic details?
“There was one interesting fact that the coroner was able to get from Kendra’s body, though.”
“What was that?”
“She was pregnant.”
I nearly drove my car onto the shoulder. “No way!”
“Way.”
“Whose kid is it?” If Kendra was having an affair and she got pregnant, then it likely wasn’t Tristan’s because he’d admitted they hadn’t been intimate for months.
“We won’t know that answer for several weeks, if not months, Abs. You know how slow the labs are.”
“It’s the killer’s baby,” I said, knowing it with absolute certainty. “And it’s why he was so angry at her. He murdered her because he found out she was pregnant.”
“You’re assuming quite a bit, aren’t you, sweetheart?”
Dutch. Ever the voice of reason. Even when it was crazy wrong. “Trust me on this, cowboy. I’m right.” Then I switched topics. “Were they able to recover any forensic details at the burial sites?”
“Not much,” he said. “The best they have so far is a man’s footprint—size eleven.”
“So he’s tall.”
“Most likely around six feet,” Dutch said.
That fit Tristan, and from what I remembered of Dr. Snyder, him too—but not Russ, who was by my recollection only about five-nine. Then another person entered my mind, and I considered Chase Colquitt, who was also at least five-eleven. But what motive would he have to kill Kendra? And did he have any connection to Donna King?
“You there?” Dutch asked, and I realized I’d been quiet for a few moments.
“Yeah, I’m here,” I said. “Anyway, I don’t want to make you and the pups late. I’ll head home and change and you can pick me up as soon as you’re done.”
“It’s a date,” he replied in that oh-so-sexy baritone he has. I smiled as I hung up the phone. God, I loved that man.
I thought about what Dutch had learned from his detective buddy the whole rest of the way home, and coming into a house that was still and quiet seemed to cement the melancholy mood of the morning. It unsettled me to walk into a familiar place with no other heartbeat than mine. After I’d changed out of my sweats into jeans and a light cotton shirt, I came downstairs and saw the box with my gun in it on the coffee table. “Subtle,” I said, heading to the kitchen for a Coke.
While I was waiting for Dutch to get back, I called Candice to see how she was feeling and was surprised when she answered sounding so much like her old self. “Hey,” she said. “I hear you’ve been playing nursemaid and labor advocate.”
I grinned. “Guilty as charged. How’re you doing?”
“Much better, but Brice hasn’t done anything but sleep since he got home last night. Thanks for that, by the way.”
“My pleasure,” I then filled her in on the latest development in the Kendra Moreno case, telling her about Donna King and how they’d found Taser marks all over her body. “I’m sure that’s what I felt when I was at the Morenos’ on the steps by the front door. I think he used the stun gun to take her down and incapacitate her.”
“That’d be the way to do it,” Candice said. “A stun gun to the lower back sends an electrical impulse right into your spinal cord. It’ll drop you and leave you paralyzed for a while.”
“Yeah, well, hopefully the police will be able to work their way through King’s list of recent clients and see who didn’t have an alibi for last night.” I then told her about Kendra’s pregnancy.
“You know what, Abs?” Candice suddenly said.
“What?”
“Do you remember how you said that you suspected this killer had done this type of thing before?”
“Yeah, but we already looked into that and came up empty.”
“Not necessarily,” she said. “Maybe we didn’t plug in the right variables. We didn’t know at the time that a Taser was used. I wonder if we look into crimes where someone used a Taser to rape or murder women if we’ll come up with anything.”
“That’d take waking up your fiancé,” I said.
Candice exhaled loudly. “Poor Brice,” she said. “Well, he’s had fifteen hours of sleep. He needs to wake up for some breakfast sometime.”
“Are you in any shape to cook?”
“Toast,” she said. “Toast and coffee.”
I laughed. “Okay, Cassidy, good luck with that, and call me if you get anything or if you need us to bring you guys some sustenance other than toast and coffee. Dutch and I are headed to the gun range in a few, so if I don’t answer it’s because I’m dodging bullets.”
It was Candice’s turn to laugh, and she wished me—and Dutch—luck before hanging up.
While I waited for my fiancé to get home, I leafed through all the notes I’d made while listening to the interviews we’d already conducted. What bugged me was that either my lie detector was off or everyone we’d talked to was telling the truth, because except for a few lies that we’d already exposed, no one’s interview triggered my liar, liar, pants on fire…
While I was pondering all that, my radar gave a ping of warning. “Uh-oh,” I said, picking up my head and looking toward the door. “Cat,” I muttered. My sister was on her way over, and I couldn’t leave because Dutch would kill me if I stuck him with her on his first day off in ages.
I texted Dutch and asked how much longer he was going to be, just as my radar gave another warning ping. He replied that he’d just wrapped it up with the vet and he was on his way back home with the pooches. I knew it’d take him fifteen minutes or so, and I became anxious because I didn
’t know if he’d make it in time to beat my sister to the door. I didn’t tell him that she was on her way; I just told him to hurry.
While I waited, I tried to concentrate on the Moreno case, but I was too jittery. “Focus!” I said to myself, picking up my notes again. There wasn’t anything I could do about my sister; if she beat Dutch here, I’d just have to deal with her. My radar gave another urgent ping, and I snapped, “Yes, yes! I know, okay?!”
With irritation, I shuffled through the notes, trying to get back on track. What had I been focusing on before the warning bell had gone off about Cat? Oh, yeah, the fact that everybody we interviewed seemed to be telling the truth. That could be because we hadn’t spoken to the killer yet, but something told me that we had interviewed him. “But who’s lying?” I asked aloud, looking back through my notes one last time…And then I had it. “Holy shit!” I gasped. (Swearing doesn’t count when you’ve just cracked the case.) I wondered how on earth I’d missed it before. With shaking hands, I grabbed my cell and called Candice. “Come on, come on!” I urged as her cell rang and rang. But finally, she answered just as my doorbell rang.
“Brice is calling in the search on any perps with Tasers,” she said. “Can I call you back in two minutes?”
“No!” I told her, glaring angrily at the front door. Cat and her stupid timing! The doorbell rang again, and I impatiently got up to open it. I’d give her a piece of my mind the moment after I told Candice my news. “I know who did it!” I said, trying to juggle my cane and the cell and the door at the same time. “Hang on, though,” I added as I pulled it open. I’d been so sure that the alarm pinging in my head was to warn me about my sister that I hadn’t even considered that the alarm might be for someone else altogether, and as the person standing on my doorstep was revealed, I realized my horrible mistake.
“Abby?” Candice said. “You there?”
Kendra Moreno’s killer grinned wickedly at me as I stared at him, my mouth agape and frightened down to my toes. “Hey there,” he said casually, his eyes peeking out from under a Texas A&M ball cap. “Funny catching you here all alone, huh?”
“Abby?” I heard Candice say, more urgently this time.
I began to tremble and felt my knees grow weak. I dropped the phone and took a step back, unable to speak or scream or plead.
The friendly smile vanished, and out from behind the killer’s back appeared a long thin rod ending in a forked prong. I shrieked and whirled around, but my hips gave out and I went crashing to the floor.
In the next instant I felt the most god-awful hot sting of an electrical current pulsing up and down my spine. It hurt so much and was so consuming that I couldn’t even breathe. I just felt my whole body seize, and the torturous sensation seemed to go on and on.
Finally the current subsided and I was left to weakly draw in oxygen but otherwise lie there completely helpless. In the background I heard the faint sound of Candice’s shouts through the phone. Garrett Velkune picked up the cell with a gloved hand and chucked it so hard, it hit the wall, smashing into a thousand pieces.
“So you little bitches figured it out, huh?” he said, leaning down to pull my head up by the hair. “I got a visit from a newbie detective this morning. The runt said he heard that some psychic lady was working the case, and she had a hunch that Donna had been murdered by one of her clients. He said the psychic had told him right where to find Donna’s body, along with another woman who’d been missing for a couple of weeks now. He saw my name on Donna’s client roster, and he also saw an invitation to my wedding stuck to her fridge. He said he’d already spoken to one of the wedding guests—turns out I was a half hour late to the big event, and he wondered what I’d been doing that’d made me so late to my own wedding.”
I tried to scream…to move…to kick…to do anything, but my body refused to cooperate. I was rocked by spasms that left me utterly helpless and completely vulnerable.
“I knew you and your girlfriend were close to the truth,” he hissed, slamming my head down violently into the floor and splitting my lip in the process. “I just needed a little more time to convince my wife to move with me out of the country someplace with no extradition. There’re plenty of cozy little islands you can set yourself up on, you know,” he said, picking my head up again to glare angrily into my eyes.
Tears leaked down my cheeks and my ears rang with the pain of the head slam. “Puh…puh…puh…,” I stuttered. It was the only sound I could make. I couldn’t even get the word “please” out. Not that it mattered. Garrett was way beyond mercy at that point.
With a look of disgust, he pushed my head away and stood up. “You couldn’t just let the police go with Tristan, could you?” he snapped, kicking me hard in the leg. I felt nothing, and that terrified me. “Do you know how hard I worked to win Seely over?” he said next. “I love my wife, okay? And before I got married, I wanted one last little fling with no strings attached, and who better to have a fling with than a woman who’s about to leave her husband?”
Kendra. He’d had an affair with Kendra. I could see it all in the ether around him, how he’d seduced her and slept with her and thought nothing of it until she’d shown up in his office the morning of his wedding and told him that she was pregnant. And he hadn’t lied to us in the interviews. He’d been totally honest. The last time he’d seen Kendra, she had been terrified and afraid for her life. And she’d been equally terrified about leaving her son, and her home, and having no one realize what’d happened to her. Velkune could state all those facts clearly because he’d been there, listening to Kendra plead for her life. A plea he’d ignored.
“That little bitch wanted to ruin everything!” he growled. “She waltzes into my office on my wedding day and announces that she’s pregnant and she’s leaving her husband. She wants me to know she’s going to file for child support. She says the kid is mine, and she wants me to be a part of its life. She then tells me that she wants me to leave Seely for her! Like I’d ever leave my angel Seely for a whore like that! I knew what she was up to too. If I went through with the wedding I could tell she was going to tell my wife about the kid! Seely would have left me in a hot second!”
Garrett was so angry that he kicked me in the thigh again. I knew the blow was bad, but I still felt nothing. I was close to losing it until I realized I could wiggle my fingers. Dutch was on his way home, and if I could keep Garrett talking, maybe, just maybe, Dutch could get here before it was too late.
Garrett grabbed me by the back of my shirt, lifting my torso completely off the ground. I could see the cattle prod in his right hand and I prayed like I’ve never prayed before that he wouldn’t use it on me again. “Donna was one of Seely’s bridesmaids. I knew she’d be at the church all morning helping Seely get ready, and she’s got all those woods behind her house to hide a body in. I broke into her garage, borrowed her shovel, and buried that bitch. Then all I had to do was drive Kendra’s car around the back side of the lake and let it slip into the water.
“The whole thing would’ve gone off without a hitch too if I hadn’t left the cattle prod at Donna’s. When I went back to get it, Donna was there. She came back for a steamer because Seely’s dress was wrinkled or some bullshit. She saw me coming out of the woods, dirty, sweaty, carrying the cow prod, and with a fair amount of blood on my shirt. I knew right then that the only way to keep her from talking was to retain her on the spot as my attorney and hope she kept her mouth shut—but she obviously didn’t, because she came to see you, didn’t she?”
I realized that Velkune had put all my little hypotheticals together, and he’d known that Donna had come to me. That’s why he’d killed her. I’d been the one to seal her fate, and that was an awful thing to realize.
I sucked in a ragged breath and closed my eyes. I had to think, and I couldn’t do that with the horrible feelings of guilt, fear, and pain all threatening to overwhelm me.
Garrett shook me hard, forcing me to open my eyes and look at him. “I had it all worked out to
o,” he said. “On our honeymoon I talked Seely into moving overseas, but she wanted to come back home for the holidays, and I knew she’d get suspicious if I pushed too hard, so when we got back, I drafted up that motion for Kendra’s divorce the second I could. I figured that’d throw the suspicion permanently onto Tristan, but then you and your bitch of a partner had to keep picking away at things, didn’t you?” He snarled viciously at me, shaking me one last time before dropping me again. My body landed with a hard thud on the floor. Garrett then stepped over my still-twitching form. He headed toward the kitchen. “Where’re your keys?” he demanded.
I wiggled my fingers and managed to move my hand.
“Keys!” he shouted from the kitchen.
I closed my eyes, and more tears leaked down my cheeks. Candice would send help, but once Garrett found my keys, we’d be out of here in less than a minute. And although it felt like a lifetime, really only about two minutes had passed since Velkune had come into the house. Candice would’ve called me back before calling the police. Their response time was good, but was it two minutes good?
I heard footsteps approach and I opened my eyes just in time to duck my chin as he kicked me in the back. That one I felt because it just about knocked all the air out of my lungs. “KEYS!”
Somehow I managed to whisper, “Up…,” and point with one shaking finger toward the stairs. Garrett swore and tore up the steps. My keys weren’t up there, however; they were in my purse resting on a hook in the front hall closet. I knew that Garrett would do a quick cursory search of the upstairs looking for my keys, and when he didn’t find them, he’d come downstairs and kill me. I also knew why he’d picked me over Candice. Candice lived in a crowded high-rise condo, and Garrett would never catch her alone and isolated. But I was a different story. He could lie in wait on a day like today and easily catch me alone. If he killed me, it would devastate her. Two birds, one stone.