Mayes, Casey - A Deadly Row

“Why me, though? I thought we were friends.”

He looked sincerely regretful. “You’re collateral damage, Savannah. I have to blind your husband with rage, and killing you will do just the trick. I’m hoping he kills Grady for me.”

“Your plan was to bring the mayor down? Why?”

“He endorsed Davis, not me.” Steve’s voice was growing agitated, and that was a good thing. I had to distract him somehow until help arrived. The only problem was, how would anyone know that I was in trouble, until it was too late? My cell phone was in a thousand pieces, and the house phone was too far away.

But I still had a radio.

If I could get Steve to brag about his brilliance, I might be able to summon help on it.

“It was clever casting suspicion on Grady, I’ll give you that. But what reason would he have to want me dead?”

“You were about to expose him,” Steve said. “In the scenario I’ll suggest as motive, it will appear that you held on to some evidence you found at his house the day you and your husband were there.” Steve reached into his pocket, and for just a second, he took his eyes off me.

I casually put my hand in my pocket, hoping he wouldn’t notice.

He must have seen something in my eyes, because Steve lashed out and struck me with his clenched fist, exhibiting a swiftness that startled me, driving the air out of my lungs. As I fell to the carpet, I struggled to catch my breath and signal Garrett.

At least he hadn’t used the blade in his other hand.

Not yet, anyway.

I didn’t know if I made it or not. Steve reached into my pocket and pulled out the radio before I could try again.

He was angry, until he looked at it a little closer. “I don’t know what you thought you were doing, but you turned it off. Thanks for saving me the trouble.”

He smashed it as well, taking glee seeing it strike the wall and shatter.

“No one’s going to save you,” he said as he stood over me.

The knife shifted in his hand, and I realized I was about to die. I had to do something to stall him. My breath was starting to come back, but when I spoke, my voice was still muffled. “How are you going to frame Grady? You might as well tell me. No one else is ever going to know.”

It was clear that Steve felt he had all of the power, and he seemed to draw strength from it. “I was about to show you, so I don’t see what it could hurt now. It’s not like you’re going to be able to tell anyone.”

He pulled something out of his pocket, and I knew what it was in an instant. It was Cindy Glass’s cow necklace, the one Barton had been so desperate to find.

“That won’t do any good.”

“It’s just one more piece of the puzzle, Savannah. I’ve got other little trinkets, and Grady’s watch is one of them.”

Grady had mentioned that it was missing when all of this started, but none of us had suspected at the time that it was going to be used to frame him for murder.

“That’s pretty clever,” I said. “You killed Cindy to put suspicion on Grady, and then after the public fight between Grady and Hank, you had a perfect opening. But I don’t understand something.”

The knife hesitated, and I started breathing again.

“What’s that? Quit stalling. You’re not making this any easier on yourself.”

“Why not get rid of Davis, so you can take his job?”

“My job, you mean,” he said viciously, and the knife shot out and caught my shoulder. It wasn’t a deep cut, but it still crippled me. I felt a searing stab of pain, what I was afraid was going to be the first of many.

“Your job,” I corrected, holding my free hand to the wound. I had never experienced that level of pain before.

“It wasn’t Davis’s fault. He’s a good cop, but he shouldn’t be chief. I never blamed him for going after the job. Grady is the one who ruined it for me, so he’s going to pay.”

“Were you the one who followed me to Hickory?” I asked, stalling for time.

“You caught that? I’ve got to say, I underestimated you, Savannah. Following you was rash of me, but you got my curiosity going. I nearly ran you off the road when I had the chance, but it didn’t match my puzzle.”

“That’s the last question, isn’t it? Why did you choose a puzzle to taunt the police with?”

Steve laughed. “I knew Davis would be in over his head, and that they’d bring your husband in. Zach has to pay for recommending Davis and not me. If neither of them could figure out what I’d done, they both could be discredited, and I might be chief after all. Wouldn’t that be something?”

“But you thought you were too smart for me.” I had a desperate idea, but there wasn’t any choice. If I did nothing, I knew that I was about to die.

I took a deep breath, and then said, “There’s a flaw in your puzzle; you know that, don’t you?”

“What are you talking about? The S squared? It works out, if you’re clever enough to see it. 19 times 19 equals 361. 3 plus 6 plus 1 equals 10, and 1 plus 0 equals 1. The last block is filled in with a one.”

“The math doesn’t work out,” I said. It wasn’t true; I could see the answer clearly in my mind, and I realized that while Steve was a killer, he wasn’t stupid.

“You’re wrong,” he said.

“Check it. My notepad is over there.”

I pointed to the window, and he moved toward it, forgetting all about me for the moment.

It was the chance I needed.

I drove myself upward, ignoring the screaming pain in my shoulder. I never thought for a split second to try to disarm him. He was a cop, trained in self-defense, and besides that, he had a knife.

Fight or flight quickly came down to flight.

I hit the door running, threw it open, and ran as fast as I could. Behind me, I could hear him scream in some kind of demented anger, and I knew that if he caught me, the cat-and-mouse game he’d been playing with me was going to be over.

The elevator was out of the question, so I raced for the stairway. If I tried to go downstairs, he’d have the advantage, being able to jump on me from above.

There was nowhere to go but up.

I raced up the stairs, and as I cleared the next landing, I felt something knick the back of my jeans. He’d taken a chance and lunged out at me, and only the luck of timing had saved me from having my calf split wide open.

I lost a good pair of jeans, but I could cope with that if I lived though this.

The next floor was Barton’s, but I knew his door would be locked. That left the roof. He’d shown me his garden up there, and I prayed the door was unlocked, as he’d promised it would be.

If it was dead-bolted, I was a goner.

It swung open, but I knew I wasn’t in the clear yet. I made it out onto the roof, and I put my weight against the door to keep Steve from following me. I thought I had him for a second, but the door locked with a key on both sides, and I wasn’t strong enough to hold it, especially with my weakened shoulder. Blood had run down my arm in my efforts to escape, and when it hit my hand, it made everything I touched too slippery to grasp well.

I looked around at Barton’s sparse garden, searching for some way to defend myself.

The only thing I could find was a handheld garden weeder with three tines protruding from it. It was metal, and it was sharp, but it was also less than nine inches long. If I was going to use it, I was going to have to get within a foot of a serial killer.

As weapons went, it wasn’t much, but it was all I had.

Steve came through the door like a prowling cat, the knife held out as if it were seeking my heart.

“You’re going to pay for that,” he snarled. When he saw the meager weapon in my hand, Steve actually laughed. “Do you think that’s going to do you any good?”