Leslie Parrish - Fade To Black

That was a bad thing.

So why was she feeling so alive all of a sudden?

“Violent death,” she muttered as she took one last walk through the Freeds’ house late in the night. Such sudden, violent death would make anyone reassess what he was doing.

“I’m done here if you are,” the young crime scene tech said as he packed up his evidence kit. He looked around the room and shook his head. “Somebody’s going to have a hell of a mess to clean up.”

Stacey extended her hand and shook his. “Thanks for all your help.”

“Don’t mention it. Hope this works out the way it should.”

He’d been around for hours and had heard enough to understand the situation. These kinds of things were hard even for law enforcement to deal with. Because while every cop she knew was committed to stopping, and solving, crimes, they were also human. And anyone with an ounce of humanity could look at the barely cognizant, badly beaten Winnie Freed and know she wasn’t a cold-blooded murderer.

Desperately wanting to go home and shower, she checked her cell phone as she walked to the car. A blinking signal indicated a message. Dialing, she listened, figuring she’d hear Dean’s voice. Instead, she heard her father’s.

“Stacey, I heard about what happened and I know you’re busy, but…” His voice broke, and she’d swear she heard him sniffling. He’d probably been thinking about poor Winnie and her poor daughter. “I need you to come over as soon as you get this.”

She didn’t like the sound of that.

“And I think you should come alone.”

She definitely didn’t like the sound of that.

“I’ve been watching the tapes and I found something. Please just come.”

“God, what else?” she asked as she got in the car and drove. Had it really been just seven or eight hours since she’d left his place and come straight here, convinced she was about to find Winnie dead on her own floor?

Life. It was so precarious. So damned unpredictable. In big cities, big colleges, and here.

She shoved that realization away to deal with later.

When she arrived at her father’s house, she saw him waiting for her on the porch. He’d stepped out as soon as she’d pulled up, obviously having watched for her.

“Saw your headlights coming up the drive,” he called.

Stacey got out, tilting her head from side to side to stretch her aching neck. It was only after she’d reached the front steps and walked into the pool of light thrown off by the fixture by the door that she realized she had Stan’s blood on her uniform. Her father looked at it, blanched a little, then beckoned her in.

“What is it?”

He led her into the kitchen. The laptop still sat there. Beside it was a half-eaten plate of spaghetti. Next to that, a nearly empty glass of whiskey.

Dad very rarely drank. And never alone. Fear making her voice rise, she asked again, “What is going on?”

He didn’t say anything. Instead, he sat down, turned the computer so the screen faced her, and clicked the play button on the video player. “Watch.”

She watched. The scene was like many others she’d witnessed in the hours of surveillance footage. A steady stream of people made their way through the mall, a woman stopping for a hot pretzel in the lower corner of the frame, a couple peering into the window of a jewelry shop on the top.

Then he came into view.

“Oh, my God.”

“You see?”

She saw.

“It doesn’t mean anything. Just that he was there. You can’t think he…”

No. She didn’t. She couldn’t even begin to fathom that he’d had anything to do with the kidnapping and murder of that teenage salesclerk.

But her brother was on that tape. He had been in that mall, a few doors down from the store where the victim worked, only days before the last murder.

“Have you called him?”

Her father shook his head, though the agony in his eyes revealed just how much that had cost him. He loved his son. It must have taken every bit of willpower he had to remain the lawman and not the father.

“I need to call Dean.”

“No!”

“Dad, look, neither of us believes for one minute that Tim had anything to do with this. And I am sure we can prove it. There’s a lot you don’t know about the case. A whole lot. One short search of his apartment and they’ll see that he doesn’t even own a computer.” She hesitated. “Right?”

He shook his head. “Not while he lived here. And not as of the last time I visited him at his place a few weeks ago.” More proof that would help her brother. Because whoever the Reaper was, he had a whole lot of Internet knowledge and the time and equipment to use it. Her brother didn’t fit that description.

“What’s a computer got to do with anything?” her father asked.

“It doesn’t matter. The point is, he’s not techno-savvy. He’s not the man they’re looking for. But his being at that mall might mean something, and the FBI needs to know about it. Maybe someone sent him there.” She swallowed. “A friend. Maybe someone told him about this girl and asked him to look in on her. It could be just about anything, but we have to find out.”

Her father’s eyes filled. She’d only ever seen him really cry twice, once when telling Stacey how much she looked like her late mother, and when they’d first visited Tim at the vet hospital after he’d been shipped back from Iraq. Now he was crying again. “Please. Just wait. Give your brother a day to figure out what this means before you bring in the FBI.”

“You don’t understand,” she said as gently as she could, her own heart breaking as she realized what she had to do. “There’s a little boy’s life at stake. A child is going to die this weekend if this perpetrator isn’t found.”

He fell back into his chair, his gnarled hands rising to his face, wiping away his tears. “All right.”

Stacey took his hand in hers carefully, lovingly. “He didn’t do this. I have no doubt about it. Which makes it a lot easier for me to pick up that phone and call someone who is a very good agent. And a very good, decent man.”

Dad looked up, hope in his expression. “You trust him?”

She nodded. “I do. Completely.”

Maybe that was nuts, but it was true. She hadn’t known Dean long, but she had already opened herself up to him more than she’d ever opened up to another person in her life. And hadn’t regretted it for one moment.

“I’m going to make the call. Then you and I are going to back up and watch every second of every camera angle in that mall. There’s more to find. Now let’s try to find it.”

With Stacey unavailable, Dean had hooked back up with Stokes and Mulrooney, who’d been unable to reach Randy Covey. The late afternoon and evening had proved frustratingly futile. They had gone down the list of registered trucks, cross-referencing it with men who’d been at the club, any who had a violent history, any who’d known Lisa.

The list had still been too damned long.

Despite knowing Stacey didn’t want them to, they tried to see Warren Lee. They’d pulled up to the gate at the end of his long driveway and had been greeted by the man’s voice through a call box. He’d refused to let them enter. He’d refused to come out. They could do nothing more without a warrant, unless Stacey could talk the man into town, as she’d suggested.

By the end of the day, the frustration was wearing on all of them. He, Stokes, and Mulrooney shared that frustration equally and didn’t take it out on one another. There were no egos here; he saw no competition, like he’d sometimes experienced in other agencies. They were completely united in their desire to save some unknown child’s life.

Maybe they really were becoming a tight-knit team-something he hadn’t been sure would happen when he’d first met his new coworkers a month and a half ago and had realized just how different they all were.