“I really don’t want to have to do this, Detective,” she mumbled, as she followed Jack Ryder’s every move towards the house. “I am so sorry.”
Her eyes drifted across the street towards number 221. The bedroom where they would find the body was the third window to the left. The shooter’s heart was starting to pump rapidly now.
One mistake, one wrong move, and it would all be over. She couldn’t afford to miss. That’s what her teacher at the shooting range in Melbourne had told her over and over again, as she went there every Saturday and practiced her aim.
“If that burglar enters your house and you have him cornered, you only get one chance. You can’t miss.”
The shooter hadn’t missed one shot since that night at the movie theater in Boca Raton. Not one accident. It had been hell for her, knowing all those kids had been hit by bullets. She had realized she had no idea what she was doing. Everything else had been so well planned out. Covering it all up as a mass shooting was brilliant, she thought. It had been her own idea. Inviting the bastards to the same movie theater and getting rid of them all at once, then disappearing. It was the perfect plan. No one would think of her as the suspect. No one would know her motives for doing this before she let them know them. She was in control.
But, it hadn’t gone as she had planned…all those children that had been hit by stray bullets. It had haunted her for years afterwards. Luckily, none of them died. Only the ones she had wanted to die had died. In that way, it had been a success. But, she had to make sure it wouldn’t go wrong the next time around. She couldn’t afford it.
The second time, at the festival, everything had gone as planned. She had killed the two men she came for, and then slipped out easily before they managed to block the exits. And even if she hadn’t made it out in time? Well, who would look for a gorgeous blonde woman in the prime of her life?
No one.
Then there was the truck. She had been one step ahead of them all this time. She hated that the female officer had to get hurt, but it had to be done. She had to be punished.
“I’m so terribly sorry,” she whispered softly.
The killer cocked the gun and followed the two men as they ran up the driveway towards her house, then stopped, looking confused. The handsome one with curly hair pointed at the house across the street. They spoke for a second, then walked across the street.
The killer watched as the detective took out his gun and knocked on the door to the gray house.
“That’s it, my little children,” she mumbled. “Follow the trail of bread to find the house of candy. Follow the yellow brick road. See what awaits you on the other side of the rainbow.”
She sighed and prepared herself. She really hated that she had to do this. She really did.
Chapter Seventy
March 2015
I had been mistaken. We realized it as we walked up towards number 219 where, Mrs. Millman lived, that it was the wrong house. The only gray house on the street was number 221. I was confused as we made the realization standing in the driveway of Mrs. Millman’s house. I had been so certain it was her. I was so sure she was the one we were looking for, that she had killed her husband and maybe James West.
But I had been wrong.
Across the street from her house was the gray house with the big colored windows as Stanley Bradley had described it to us. It was the only one of its kind on this street. There was no doubt about it. It had to be it.
We walked up and I grabbed my gun right before I knocked on the door. There was no answer. I looked at Ron. He nodded. I grabbed the handle and realized the door was open. I walked inside with my gun first.
We had called for backup on our way, and I could hear sirens in the distance, but knew it would take a few minutes before they would be here. I wasn’t sure we had minutes if we were going to catch this killer and hopefully save this Roy that Stanley had spoken about.
It was all a very strange story and I didn’t like it.
“Hello?” I asked, as I opened the door.
“This is the sheriff,” Ron yelled. “Anyone home?”
I walked into the kitchen, but found it empty. Tupperware containers, stacked in towers, with freshly made food inside of them filled the counters. The stove was still hot. A pan with fried chicken was still simmering. It had been turned off recently.
“Someone’s expecting company,” Ron said, when he looked at all the food.
“Or maybe they’re staying over,” I said and nodded at the stairs. We walked up with our weapons in front of us, then reached a long hallway with many doors. I opened one door and found a bedroom. It was empty. Then I found another and opened that one as well. Empty too, but someone had been sleeping in there recently. I guessed it might be the owner of the house. It was a big room with views of the river. The bed was a king and the sheets silk. I went through it and into the bathroom that looked big enough to fit my entire living room.
“No one here either.”
“How many bedrooms does this place have?” Ron asked.
I walked to the next door, but found it locked. Ron and I exchanged one look before I kicked the door in and we walked inside. There was someone on the bed. The room stank. The air was confined and stuffy. Hardly any light came through the closed hurricane shutters.
“Police!” I yelled and walked up to the bed.
The person lying there didn’t move. I hurried towards him. I felt sick. He was lying in his own vomit that had run across his pillow. His eyes stared into the ceiling and his face was frozen in a tortured grimace. It had been a painful death.
“Roy?” Ron asked.
I nodded. “I think so.”
“I’ll go make sure the rest of the house is secure,” Ron said, and left while I looked at the body.
I touched his neck. It felt cold, the way dead people’s skin felt when the blood hadn’t circulated in it for a while. Livor mortis was starting to show on his skin. The blood had started to pool into the interstitial tissues of the body. It happened between twenty minutes to three hours after death occurred. It wasn’t much yet. My guess was he had been dead for about half an hour. My other guess was that his stomach had burst. There were no signs of trauma to his body anywhere. Except for his legs, which were hurt in the same way Stanley Bradley’s had been.
To make sure he couldn’t leave.
Ron came back and told me we were clear. There was another room next to this where someone had been staying, but it was also empty. Ron called for a second ambulance and asked where the hell that back up was, while I opened the shutters to let in the light. I walked back to the bed and looked around, wondering if this was the way Daniel Millman had died, if he had been kept here right across the street from his own home, tortured by being force-fed till his stomach burst. I wondered who would be this sick in their mind, this twisted and brutal, and then I wondered why.
As I threw around a glare that ended at the window, I thought I saw something. Ron was still on the phone, and as he walked towards the window, my eye caught a small yellow spark coming from the window across the street. Before I could react, before I could scream at Ron to get down, the window splintered, and like the snap of a finger, Ron fell to the ground.
Chapter Seventy-One
March 2015
“Officer down. Officer down!”
I screamed into the radio as I grabbed Ron in my arms. He had been hit in the shoulder and it was bleeding heavily. I tried to stop it by pressing my hand on it, then ripped some of the sheets from the bed into pieces and held them against the bleeding. Seconds later, the room was filled with paramedics, and I could let go of him.
I ran outside and towards number 219, where Mrs. Millman lived, where the shots had come from.
I had been right all along!
I kicked the door in and stormed into the hallway.
“Where are you?” I yelled like a mad man. I was a mad man. I was so angry, on the brink of exploding in anger. “Show yourself!”
&
nbsp; That was when I heard an engine start. It coughed once or twice, then roared loudly.
The river!
Why hadn’t I thought of it before? I ran through the living room out into the back, then passed the pool area, and ended up at the dock. In the distance, I watched as the speedboat disappeared. The sun was setting over the mainland and I wouldn’t be able to keep track of it for long. I had to think fast. I couldn’t let her get away with this. I couldn’t let her disappear.
I looked around, then spotted a jet ski at the neighboring dock. I made a quick decision, as the sirens wailed in the street on the other side of the house. I ran across the yard, climbed the fence, and hoped they didn’t have a dog or an alarm system. I jumped onto the Jet Ski and then realized I didn’t have the key. I spotted a shed in the back, ran to it and opened it. On the wall inside was a small cupboard with three sets of keys hanging on it.
“Remind me to give these people a theft-precaution course,” I mumbled, as I picked the one with Jet Ski written on it.
I jumped on the Jet Ski, put in the key and pushed away from the dock before I turned the engine on. Growing up in Florida, I knew the routine. The ski roared to life and I darted into the river in pursuit of the speedboat. I caught up on it pretty fast. I sped up and reached the back lower side of the speedboat, then realized I had no idea what I should do next.
“Police! Stop the boat!” I screamed through the wind, but the noise from the two engines drowned it out. “Mrs. Millman, stop the boat!”
I came up on the side and managed to yell the words through the noise, and she must have heard something, because the woman driving the boat turned her head and looked at me.
It wasn’t Mrs. Millman.
It was a woman I had never seen before. The realization dazzled me, just enough to let down my guard for one second, one crucial second. Just enough for her to make her move. She pulled the wheel and maneuvered the boat in front of my jet ski and bumped into it. There was a loud crash and I was thrown into the air. Next thing I knew, I fell into the water, the deep dark water.
As I resurfaced, spluttering and splashing, I spotted the woman and the speedboat disappearing as darkness surrounded her as the sun finally set on the horizon.
Chapter Seventy-Two
March 2015
I couldn’t believe I had lost her. The next morning, as I sat in the office and stared at my screen, I felt like such an idiot. It was like I couldn’t get anything right lately. Ron and Beth were both in the hospital. Ron was doing better, they said. He had only been shot in the shoulder and would need a few weeks to recover, but he was going to be fine. Beth was another story. She was still unconscious and they didn’t know if she was going to make it. I worried about her children. They were still with her neighbor, but I had a feeling they couldn’t stay there for much longer. I had asked Richard to try and find Beth’s relatives, a grandmother, something, anyone who could take care of the kids until she came back. If she came back. The thought made me sad. She had to get better. I couldn’t bear losing another partner.
I had let Travis Goodman go, since I no longer believed he was our man. I had no idea how it was all connected yet, but had a feeling I was really close to figuring it all out.
Close, but no cigar, like my dad always used to say.
The kids had all gone back to school this morning and it felt good to have something go back to normal when everything else was chaotic. I hadn’t spoken to Shannon since Sunday morning. The media was still occupying our condominium and I felt bad for her. I had spoken on the phone with her before I went to bed Sunday night and had told her everything. She had sounded tired and sad. It wasn’t strange, since she was in a dire situation, now that they had found the body but no gun. I feared all hell could break loose any moment now. It was really bad for her.
I had gotten myself a coffee and sat at my desk, staring at the many files and papers, Richard had placed there. They were all profiles of the victims in the shooting cases. I stared at them without reading them, wondering about Stanley Bradley and the statement I had taken from him the night before. He had explained, in detail, how this woman had stuffed food into his mouth and threatened to kill his granddaughter if he didn’t do as he was told. He had also told me something that had been very interesting.
There had been more than one.
He had seen the other one in the kitchen as he had escaped. She was the one who had been cooking the food, while the other was feeding the victims. Stanley had also spent the night at the hospital and I had planned to send over a sketcher to have a drawing made of these two women. I was certain they were still out there in this area. Mrs. Millman had disappeared from the face of the earth and I had a sent her picture to the media in the hope she would show up. I had no idea if she was a part of all this or not, but the shots had been fired from her house, so she had to know something.
I looked at the papers, thinking it was so hard dealing with two cases at the same time. I kept getting them mixed up. I took out the file on the four victims from Boca Raton. Their children had all gone to the same school…that was the connection. Then, I picked up Phillip Hagerty’s file and went through it. Phillip Hagerty had two children. They both went to Roosevelt like mine did. Then there was Joe Harrison. His daughter went to a private school in Nashville.
No, she didn’t.
I frowned, then looked at it again. The information was wrong. It was old. Angela hadn’t been at the school in Nashville for the past month. She had changed schools. She went to Roosevelt like most kids in our area did.
Theodore Roosevelt Elementary School.
“Oh, my God,” I said.
Richard looked up from his screen. “What?”
“The killer, our female shooter, works at the school. Of course she does. She is a teacher. All we need to do is to find someone who recently transferred to Roosevelt from Klein’s in Boca. That’s it Richard! That’s the connection.”
“I’m on it.”
Chapter Seventy-Three
March 2015
“I got a name,” Richard said and got off the phone.
I lit up. Finally, we were getting somewhere. Richard approached my desk.
“Natalie Monahan. In 2010, she transferred from Klein’s to Roosevelt,” he said. “But she isn’t a teacher. She’s a school psychologist. And get this. I ran her name, she owns a house. She owns the house on Lansing Island, where Stanley Bradley and Roy Miller were being kept.”
“You’re kidding me, right? So, the two cases are connected?” I was blown away by this. I mean, the thought had somehow crossed my mind, especially when I found out the suspects were females in both cases, but I just didn’t quite see how it was all fitting together. Who was doing what here? And why?
“The school said she didn’t check in this morning and that they haven’t heard from her, but I found her on Facebook,” Richard said.
I walked to him and looked over his shoulder. I looked at the picture. She looked like the woman I had seen on the boat.
“That’s her,” I said. “She shot Ron. She was on the boat I followed. Print that picture and let’s have it out everywhere.” Richard was scrolling through her pictures when, suddenly, it dawned on me. “Stop there,” I said. “Right there.”
Richard stopped at the picture I had seen and made it big so I could see better. Four women standing in each other’s arms, smiling, on a boat. The picture was from an older date. I looked down and saw the description.
TBT. MY SISTERS AND ME. THIS WAS TAKEN IN 2000. TRIP TO MIAMI ON A FRIEND’S BOAT. WERE WE EVER THIS YOUNG? LOVE YOU ALL FOREVER.
I pointed at one of the women. “That one right there. That’s Mrs. Millman.”
Richard looked closer.
“Take away fifteen years,” I said, thinking of the picture we had sent out to the media of Mrs. Millman, with her neat dyed blonde hair. In this old picture, she was a brunette…gorgeous and without the bitterness that life had somehow given her later on. Even her eyes were
smiling. It was so far from the sedated emotionless woman I had met with at her home.
“So, Mrs. Sarah Millman and Natalie Monahan are sisters?” Richard asked.
“Correct, Detective,” I said with a grin. I was feeling uplifted all of a sudden. I hadn’t fit the pieces completely yet, but we were getting there. We were on to something.
Richard printed a series of pictures and got busy putting together something we could give to the media. Meanwhile, I went back to my desk. I called the school in Boca Raton and asked them if they had kept the old files for students who visited the school psychologist in 2009. To my surprise, they had. They had them online and could send them to me. I told them the last names of the children I wanted, then waited half an hour before I received the email. I was quite surprised at the school’s efficiency down there. I went down to Roosevelt and asked for the files of some of their children as well. It was a hunch, but I sensed I had to follow it. As I got back, I opened the files and went through them, one by one. All were written by the mysterious Natalie Monahan. It didn’t take me long to find the connection between all of them. I made two phone calls to clear something up, then put the phone down as the picture became clearer and clearer to me. I didn’t get to tell Richard before the phone rang and I had Weasel from Cocoa Beach on the other end.
“We found your woman,” she said.
“Sarah Millman? Where?”
“She was speeding on 520 when Officer Hall pulled her over. He took her in. Recognized her right away.”
“I’ll be right down,” I said and slammed the phone down.
“Good news?” Richard asked.
“Yes. Excellent news. Finally.”
Chapter Seventy-Four