Fade To Black

11

From all reports, Amber Torrington had been a snotty, mean-spirited teen, liked only by her parents, because they had to, and by her boyfriend, because she put out.

Maybe because she was only missing, not officially dead, those who knew her felt free to speak badly about her. Her so-called friends, her boss at the clothing shop, the security guard who’d heard her shouting at her boss from five stores away-they’d all sung a familiar refrain. Spoiled brat, vicious temper. Not generally liked.

Dean tucked each bit of information away as he accompanied the local police conducting interviews Sunday. Each confirmation of what she’d been like convinced him that Amber’s personality was significant to the investigation. The reason niggled at the back of his brain.

“Girl’s address says the family’s rich. Once again, he didn’t make any effort to grab somebody who wouldn’t be missed,” Mulrooney commented as they walked toward the mall security office. Stokes strode on the other side of him, carrying an evidence bag containing the spent.22 shell casings they’d found in the tree line skirting the upscale shopping mecca. She would take them back to D.C. for analysis. None of them had any doubt they’d prove to be from the same rifle as the third case, when the cameras had also been shot out.

“No, he didn’t,” Dean muttered. “Or to even pick up her phone, or move her car.”

“Either he was in a hurry, or he thought he was covered by shooting out the cameras and overhead lights.” Out of shape, Mulrooney huffed a little as the three of them strode through the quiet mall, which was pretty empty on this summer Sunday afternoon. Well, empty except for the media crews busily sniffing for any dirt and broadcasting the slightest unconfirmed detail to the world.

“He couldn’t count on having a lot of time for the guards to check out the department store alarm,” Dean said. The one the unsub had, undoubtedly, caused.

Jackie finished his thought. “Or even that they’d all go. One of them might very well have done his damn job and stayed behind.”

Funny how quickly the three of them had landed on the same page. They had fallen into an immediate rhythm on this, their first major case. Every idea was considered, its merits debated, all with professional respect it had taken years to earn in ViCAP. Blackstone’s CATs were already becoming a team, right down to Lily and Brandon, whose phones had to be growing out of their ears by now with all the phone calls they’d shared.

Mulrooney said, “If one had stayed behind, maybe he’d have noticed the feeds from the other end of the mall going out one by one and come to investigate before the unsub had time to subdue Amber.”

Possible. But the guy had worked fast. And he was an excellent shot.

Made him wonder if Stan Freed owned a rifle. Made him doubly wonder just what kind of weapons Warren Lee kept stockpiled out at his place.

“You notice how he picked a real piece of work this time?” Mulrooney asked.

“Uh-huh.” He’d definitely noticed. And suddenly the detail that had been nagging at the back of his brain clicked in. He stopped suddenly, right in the middle of the mall. “In the other cases, Jackie, you said the interviews on the previous victims all hinted that they were difficult.”

Jackie nodded. “Yeah. They were headstrong. Which I took to mean bitchy.”

Just like Amber. There was the connection. “We’ve been thinking they were different from Lisa only because of their financial and social situations, not their personalities.”

Mulrooney saw, too. “Meaning he must have known what each of them was like.”

Dean nodded. “Yes. But how would he know that about them?”

“Unless he’d been studying them.”

Bingo.

They knew that in another case a friend had come forward about a strange man watching the victim weeks before she’d disappeared. They’d already suspected he had to have picked out his victims in advance based on proximity and circumstance. Now they knew it was more than that.

He’d actually gotten to know them.

“He’s been inside this mall.” Dean started walking again, his gait quicker this time.

Mulrooney and Stokes matched his pace. “Probably even within the last few weeks,” Jackie said, “since he knew she’d be working Friday night.”

He’d followed Amber. Stalked her. He’d chosen her, made his plans, and then waited for the right moment, the right auction, to make her his next victim. He knew her schedule and her habits.

And he might very well be on a mall security tape from one of his previous visits.

“You think he believes he’s doing the world a favor by killing mean girls?” Mulrooney asked as they passed a cluster of giddy young shoppers.

“Lisa wasn’t a mean girl,” Jackie murmured. “She was a lost girl.”

A sad, abused lost girl whose father had died and whose mother might as well have, too, for all the care she took to protect her daughter.

“Right,” Mulrooney said. “She was pathetic. He was experimenting. Then on to the main events. The challenges: successful women, attractive women, family women.”

None of whom, apparently, had been nice women.

Reaching the mall office, they met up with the head of security, a guy named Baker, who’d been playing a game of cover-my-ass since the minute they’d arrived. With good reason.

He’d neglected to check out a surveillance camera covering the back of the mall, which had stopped working Friday around five. That camera might have revealed the unsub lurking near the Dumpsters, the loading dock, or the nearly hidden employees-only entrance of the store where Amber worked.

He’d left the video surveillance room unattended because of an alarm at one end of the mall, bringing his entire security team with him for what had turned out to be a broken glass door, shot through from a distance.

Finally, he hadn’t bothered to check out the car left overnight in the parking lot, despite all the other unusual activities in the mall that night. The asshole had decided some kids were playing pranks, shooting off a BB gun. Frigging moron. He deserved to be fired.

But for now, they needed his cooperation.

“How long do you keep the mall security tapes?” Dean asked the man the moment they strode into his office.

“They recycle every twenty-four hours.”

Damn.

Seeing Dean’s frustration, the man mumbled, “But there’s a backup. The files dump to a server that holds on to them for a week before automatically purging them.”

One week. Would the unsub have risked stalking his victim within a week of taking her?

Mulrooney had obviously had the same thought. Lowering his voice, he murmured, “The auction came up quicker than anybody expected.”

Meaning he might have moved up his schedule. Accelerating could have made him sloppy. Made him take risks. “And he knew she’d be working,” Dean muttered, figuring the store wouldn’t have made up the schedule more than two weeks in advance.

It was worth a shot.

“We need those backups,” he told the guard. “Right now.”

He showed up at her house late that night.

Stacey had just gone to bed when she heard a car pull into her driveway. Two possibilities immediately came to mind: Dean. Or the bastard who’d killed Lady. One had her wishing she’d worn something at least a little attractive to bed, rather than a long Redskins T-shirt and gym shorts. The other had her reaching for her nine-millimeter, which was right beside her, on her bedside table.

Grabbing it just in case, she shifted her bedroom window blinds to the side, trying to make out the vehicle. And she realized there was a third alternative.

“What are you doing here?” she asked her brother a minute later when she yanked open her front door.

Tim stared at her, surprised that she’d answered before he’d knocked, which told her he hadn’t been certain he was going to. Instead of answering her question, he mumbled, “You finally cut down those ugly bushes.”

“Come in,” she said, seeing a strange look in his eye, one she didn’t like. He’d worn that expression quite a lot in the first few months after he’d been released from the military. It was vacant. Haunted. Traumatized. “Please.”

“Sorry. I shouldn’t have come here.”

She took his arm, tugging him inside when it looked as though he might leave. At first worried he’d driven over here drunk, she grabbed his chin, studying his eyes, trying to smell anything on him.

He saw right through her. “I haven’t been drinking,” he muttered.

She believed him. Tim might have come home an angry stranger, but he had never tried to cover up his drinking. And he’d never been able to disguise his glassy-eyed, heavy-lidded reaction to too much alcohol. “Want some coffee?”

“It’s not too late?” he asked, following her into her small house.

“It’s not like I’ll sleep tonight, anyway.” Her head was too full for that. Full of Dean and what had happened the previous evening. Full of the case and questions about what was happening today.

She’d seen the news; it had only inspired more questions. The pictures of that pretty blond girl, however, would almost certainly inspire nightmares.

So, no, she wouldn’t be sleeping much tonight.

Not entirely trusting him not to leave if she let him out of her sight, she said, “Let’s go in the kitchen. I have junk food.”

A ghost of a laugh emerged from his mouth, though he made a visible effort not to smile. He’d had several surgeries, but the scar tissue on his face meant any attempt at a smile would result in only a lopsided sneer.

It broke her heart whenever she looked at him. His left profile was perfect, about as handsome as any man could possibly be. His right wasn’t.

She was the younger sibling, but was well used to being in charge. Taking his arm, she pulled him with her, then sat him down at her small table. Grabbing boxes of cookies and bags of chips, comfort food she generally tried to avoid but had really needed lately, she dumped them in front of him, then made coffee.

He twisted apart his cookie and ate the icing, just like he had when they were kids. Simple pleasures. How he must have missed them all those years.

“What’s going on?” she asked as she sat down across from him.

“I heard about the dog,” he said.

She waited, wondering how much he’d heard. She hoped her neighbors hadn’t gossiped all over town.

“Dad’s pretty broken up.”

She nodded, glad he didn’t know the rest. Tim might not be his old self, but her protective older brother still existed inside that scarred shell. He’d be just as furious and worried as their father if he knew the truth. “I know. Did he call you?”

“Yeah. I went out to see him this afternoon. Helped him plant some flowers on the grave. He wanted sunflowers; I guess Lady used to love to dig in them.”

Her heart twisted, and Stacey made a mental note to plead with her neighbors to keep the questions she’d asked today to themselves. “I’m glad you were there for him, Tim.”

Being needed by someone else was probably the best thing that could happen to her brother right now. It might keep him from dwelling too much on all the things that had gone wrong in his own life. “So,” she asked, “did you come here tonight to talk about Dad’s dog?”

He hesitated, then admitted, “I’m not doing so great.”

No kidding. She didn’t say it, hearing an unexpected vulnerability in his voice. “You didn’t get your job back.”

Shaking his head, he mumbled something, then cleared his throat and tried again. “No. And I won’t be getting it back.”

His defiant expression told her more than she wanted to know about Tim’s involvement with some missing cash at his employer’s used-car dealership. To think he could be reduced to stealing. It stunned her.

“It was fifty bucks and a couple of unauthorized joyrides in some vehicles from the lot,” he said flatly, reading her reaction. “I paid it back. He said he won’t press charges. But I’m unemployed.”

Her upstanding marine brother, a petty thief. God.

Forcing the law-abiding-sheriff part of herself away, she tried to transition into his little sister. “You’ll get another job.”

“I don’t give a damn about a job.”

“You obviously need money,” she said, her tone pointed.

He ignored the sarcasm. “I’m working with Randy a little.”

“Oh, great. Is he opening a beer-testing business?” When he stiffened and scooted his chair back as if to rise, Stacey reached for his arm. “I’m sorry.”

He stayed seated. Barely. “I’ve just been riding along on a couple of his runs. No biggie-I give him a hand loading and unloading.”

Stacey wanted to know the rest, sensing he had more to say, especially given the way his voice had trailed off. Knowing better than to push him, she made light of it. “Come on, you’re telling me Randy does anything more than back that semi up to the loading dock and watch the store employees roll out the big flat-screens?”

“Maybe I just go along for company; his kid isn’t interested anymore,” he admitted, still studying the stupid cookie as if it held the meaning of life. His tone turning bitter, he added, “I don’t really need the bucks. You think Uncle Sam isn’t compensating me?”

“So why did you take the fifty?”

He shrugged, at a loss. “I don’t know. Boredom. Stupidity.”

Anger. Tim had seemed to want to pick fights with everyone lately.

“Maybe I just want people to look at me instead of shifting their eyes.”

And that was probably the truest thing he’d said so far.

“People look at you.”

“Yeah, the circus freak.”

“That’s an exaggeration. You have beautiful eyes.”

“Miraculously.”

“Good features. Not exactly the stud you used to think you were, but there’s nothing wrong with you, Tim, other than a few lines that people who know and love you don’t even see anymore.”

“And the people who don’t know and love me?”

“Screw them.”

Another of those sad laughs. “You always did tell it like it is.”

The coffee was ready. Getting up, she fixed them each a cup, keeping her back to Tim so he wouldn’t see the way her hands shook. She’d cried herself out last night, yet still suspected she had a tear or two left for her brother, who suddenly seemed so lost, so beaten. He’d been stateside for two and a half years, the first six months of it in a VA hospital, the rest here in Hope Valley. Yet this was the first time he’d reached out to her emotionally. The first time he’d admitted he was floundering, rather than just angrily demanding that everyone make way for him and give him whatever he wanted.

There was no way she was going to blow it.

“Angie asks about you all the time.” Angie, a friend of Stacey’s, owned the new Internet café. She’d been Tim’s high school girlfriend, and he’d broken her heart when he joined the marines. Stacey sensed that the attractive divorcée still cared. But it was a little sticky; she’d been dating Randy a year ago, until Mama Covey had ruined things. Talk about best friends sharing and sharing alike.

“She pities me,” Tim snapped.

“No, she doesn’t.”

“I don’t want to talk about her.”

Meaning he did still care. She knew it.

Forcing herself to let it go, she carried the coffee over. “So. If you don’t need romantic advice, and don’t need a job for money, what’s the trouble?”

His head jerked. “Trouble?”

“Something landed you on my doorstep at eleven o’clock on a Sunday night. What can I do to help?”

“Help. You’ll just help, no matter what?”

“Yes, I will,” she murmured, wondering what, exactly, he’d gotten mixed up in. God, she hoped Randy hadn’t involved her brother in any shady dealings that she wouldn’t be able to help him with. Because she loved her brother, but she couldn’t close her eyes if he were breaking the law.

“There’s nothing wrong.” He rubbed both hands over his face, visibly tired, but maybe covering his eyes so she wouldn’t see the emotion in them. He seemed truly shocked that she’d offered her help so readily. Did he really think she would have refused him?

Maybe. She certainly hadn’t been sympathetic the other morning. Then again, he hadn’t exactly been contrite and vulnerable, either.

“I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have come. I just knew that if I stayed home, Randy would show up and I’d go out and do something stupid.”

Something stupid with Randy. Well, alert the media. “He’s trouble.”

“He’s my best friend.”

“I know that.”

“Look,” Tim said, getting defensive, “I’ve known him all my life. We’ve been there for each other. Since his dad died, and our mom.”

They seldom talked about their mother, primarily because Stacey had no memory of her. “I know. You think I don’t remember him talking about how great it would be if Dad married Randy’s mom and you two became brothers?”

Tim had just sipped his coffee, but he quickly spewed it back out into his cup. This time, a real smile appeared. It emphasized his scars. It also emphasized the beautiful color of his eyes. And broke her heart a little. “Jeez, I was petrified it might happen.”

“Me, too! I thought you were all for it.”

“You kidding? She’s a barracuda. If a man could will himself to have a heart attack, I’d think Mr. Covey did just to get away from her.”

“Lucky guy,” she said with a laugh. Laughing. With her brother. How rare was that?

“Randy’s had it tough,” Tim insisted. “We’re there for each other, thick and thin. Right and wrong.”

That right and wrong part really stuck in her head. “Tim, I know there’s something you’re not telling me.”

“You asking as the sheriff?” he snapped.

“No. I’m asking as your sister. Someone who loves you.”

His green eyes locked with hers, and for a moment, she thought he was going to open up. She braced herself to listen without reacting, knowing he was really worried about whatever was going on.

But he hedged, repeating, under his breath, “He’s always been there for me.”

“I know. But right now, he’s not the kind of person you need to have ‘there’ for you. He’s not helping you, and he could be hurting.”

Tim’s coffee sloshed over his cup as he lowered it to the table. Her brother was actually shaking.

“Tim, please, tell me what it is. Are you… Have you been taking something?”

He rose abruptly. “I’m not on drugs.”

“I know Randy used to do them.”

“Years ago,” he snapped. “He’s not anymore. End of story.”

“I’m sorry.” Stacey reached for him. “Please don’t go.”

He hesitated, then ducked away from her hand, as if he didn’t want to be touched. But the anger left him and he quietly murmured, “You have to go to work tomorrow, keeping Hope Valley safe from the evils of the world. I’ve kept you up late enough.”

Knowing it was useless and that he’d shut himself down for now, she rose to her feet as well. “Safe from the evils of the world, huh? Guess you haven’t been following the local news.”

“Oh, hell, I totally forgot. I heard about Lisa. That’s rough.”

“Her mother certainly thinks so.”

Tim flushed. “Dick told you I was in the bar the night she disappeared.”

“Yes, he did.”

“Thanks for not calling me out all big, bad sheriff sister in front of everyone.”

“I intended to stop by and see you tomorrow. Randy, too.”

“He’ll tell you the same thing I did. Lisa was drunk, like everybody else in the place.”

“Did you talk to her?”

He shook his head, sneering now, for real. “Are you kidding? She couldn’t even look me in the face. Oh, she never said anything; she might have been a little cock-tease, but she wasn’t mean.”

Stacey zoned in on the most surprising part of his statement, ignoring the self-pity in her brother’s voice. “A cock-tease? I thought when she was using she gave it away left, right, and center.”

“Maybe to a rich guy on the left, a well-hung guy on the right, and a drug-connected one in the center. Not with average dudes like Randy or ugly ones like me.”

She rolled her eyes at the self-slam, too used to them to even argue with him about it anymore. Instead, she focused on this new aspect of Lisa’s personality. Had the young woman had simply turned down the wrong man one too many times and drawn the Reaper’s ire?

“How late did you and Randy stay?”

“I was there until closing. He left a little before that. I think he got antsy when your deputy came and hauled his brother out. I guess the punk used to run around with Seth or something, and Randy wanted to make sure his kid wasn’t trying to score beer, too.”

“You saw Mitch show up to get Mike?”

He nodded. “Oh, yeah. He grabbed Lisa and tried to get her to leave with them. Got ugly for a minute. Shame he didn’t convince her; things might have ended up a lot differently.”

Yes, they might have. They probably would have, in fact. Mitch was a good guy; he’d been trying to help Lisa Zimmerman; she felt sure of it.

But that surety still didn’t erase the tiny hint of suspicion about why Mitch hadn’t come clean about his relationship with the troubled young victim.

“Thanks. I appreciate the help.”

Though she wanted Tim to stay and tell her the real reason he’d come over tonight, she didn’t press her luck. This was the first time he’d reached out to her, and she wanted him to come back. She wanted him to want to come back. And hopefully, the next time he did, he’d be ready to reveal a little more.

Despite that, as she walked him to the door and kissed him good-bye on his poor, scarred cheek, she murmured, “You could go see the doctor down at the VA again.”

He tensed.

“I’m not criticizing. Not judging. Just making the suggestion. If you can’t talk to me or to Dad, maybe you could talk to him.”

Tim stared down at her, saying nothing. But she knew him well enough to know he’d at least consider it, because she hadn’t ordered, hadn’t browbeaten him. She’d simply made a suggestion. It was the only way to deal with the man lately.

After her brother had left, Stacey locked the door behind him and returned to the kitchen. She’d barely touched her coffee, but it didn’t matter. Caffeine couldn’t jazz her up any more than she already was.

Too bad Dean wasn’t here. Though, of course, it was better that he hadn’t been when Tim showed up. Her brother would never have stayed. But now, facing the long night, she’d like the company. Her mind swam with details about the case, things she’d learned, things she’d speculated. Tidbits that seemed important, though why they should be remained just out of mental reach.

It was almost one o’clock. She needed to try to get some sleep. Still, she couldn’t help eyeing the phone as she cleaned the kitchen.

As if by magic, it rang.

She grabbed it, laughing and about to ask him if he’d read her mind. “Dean?”

Silence.

“Hello?”

That ominous nothingness stretched on for several seconds. Unease made her throat tighten. Images of Lisa, memories of the vicious surprise someone had left on her porch, filled the recesses of her imagination. “Who the hell is this?”

No answer at first, then one single word.

“Bitch.”

The call disconnected.