Cross Fire, page 14
I gripped my phone tightly between both hands as I stared at him. My heartbeat slowed gradually, and the flood of fear his sudden presence had unleashed drained away. He wasn’t Collin. Collin couldn’t attack me in a police station.
Safe. I’m safe.
Sam stepped into the small room with deliberate slowness as he watched me. He didn’t say anything as he followed the edge of the room to the coffeepot, but he was clearly trying to work out the reason behind my extreme reaction to him.
“Why . . .” I glanced at the clock on the wall, noting the afternoon hour, and tried to wipe all traces of fear from my voice. “Why are you here? Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”
He poured coffee into a mug. “I don’t sleep fourteen hours a day, Holly. This is my morning. And I’m here to talk to Marx about something.” He tipped the mug to his lips as he turned around, then paused. “You didn’t make this, did you?”
If I weren’t concentrating on not freaking out, I would’ve scowled at the indirect insult. But all I could manage was a slow blink.
He took a tentative sip, braced for battery acid, and swallowed with a grunt of approval. “Guess not.” His dark eyes studied me while he sipped his coffee. “Why do you look like you’re gonna faint?”
“I don’t look like I’m gonna faint.”
“You do. You’re paler than water, and you’re jumpier than usual, which I didn’t think was possible.”
My eyes fell to the phone clasped between my hands. I kept expecting it to ring or alert me to another message, but it remained silent. “It’s possible to block a phone number, right?”
“Usually. Depends on the carrier and sometimes the type of phone.”
I wouldn’t be able to figure it out. I hadn’t even been able to figure out how to change my ringtone when Jace had switched it to some screaming, obnoxious voice. Technology was a challenge.
“Would you . . .”
He held out his hand before I even finished the question. I strode forward and plopped my phone into his hand. “Which number?” he asked, scrolling through the screen.
“The recent one.”
A faint line formed between his eyebrows, and his eyes flickered to my face. “They called four times in two minutes, and sent a text.” It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t offer a response. “Doughnuts,” he read aloud, and then his gaze slid to the box of doughnuts on the table.
He set down his coffee and strode past me to the window where he’d found me standing when he came in. He pushed apart the blinds and peered down into the parking lot. “Holly, are these calls and texts from Collin?” His tone sounded disinterested, but he looked at me expectantly when I didn’t answer. When I nodded mutely, he said, “You should tell Marx.”
“He has enough on his mind right now without me adding to it.”
“That doesn’t matter. You need to tell him.” He punched a few more buttons on my flip phone. “Is this a pay-as-you-go device?” At my nod, he said, “I’m not sure you can block a number on one of these. It’s not a service all pay-as-you-go carriers offer, but you’ll need to call them and find out.”
“I was hoping there was a magic button.”
A brief smile crossed his lips. “Unfortunately, no. Your best option is to call and ask about blocking the number, and if they can't, memorize the number he’s calling from or add it to your contact list so it comes up under his name and you know not to answer.” He handed my phone back to me. “Even then, he can call from a different number you won’t recognize. I know when an unknown number calls, you’re probably tempted to answer just to see who it is, but don’t. More than likely it’s him.”
His words sparked an idea in my mind, and I murmured, “Unknown number.” Shannon. I started out of the room, then realized I’d forgotten something, and stopped. I looked back at Sam and gestured with my phone. “Thanks . . . for trying.”
“Sure.”
I squeezed my phone tightly in my hand to keep my fingers from shaking as I walked back into the squad room.
“I’ve known Shannon almost as long as I’ve known you,” Captain McNera was saying as I approached. “She’s a smart woman. If she had any indication that someone was in her house, she would’ve gotten out.”
“I know she’s a smart woman, Matt. She’s a lawyer, and she was always light-years smarter than me. But I need more than that before I’ll be certain she’s okay. I need to find her.”
Captain McNera clapped him on the back and said reassuringly, “You will, Rick. We will. Shannon’s my friend too.”
Marx was sitting on the edge of his desk with his arms folded when I stopped in front of him. He lifted his gaze from the floor to my face, and his eyebrows drew together with concern.
“What’s the matter, Holly?”
“Can we talk?” I asked, trying to keep my voice level despite my lingering anxiety.
I glanced at Captain McNera, who was regarding me with interest. When he caught my gaze, he offered me a small smile and announced, “I’ll be in my office if you need me.”
“Thanks, Matt,” Marx replied automatically, and tipped his head toward the chair the captain vacated.
I perched on the edge of it. “It’s about Shannon.”
Marx sighed. “Now isn’t the time to ask me about how much I love her or why I still haven’t taken off my ring, Holly.”
“But I—”
“I’m not in the mood for personal questions.”
Anger bubbled up inside of me. I was so tired of people interrupting me because they either assumed they knew what I had to say or they didn’t care. “Do you think you can listen to me without interrupting for two minutes?” I snapped impatiently.
Marx blinked in surprise and then said, “Okay. I’m listenin’.”
“What if Shannon isn’t missing? Maybe she just left,” I began. When Marx opened his mouth to say something, I glared at him and he clamped it shut again. I pulled Shannon’s calendar from my bag and set it on his desk. “This is her calendar.”
“You took it from the crime scene?” he asked in disbelief, keeping his voice low.
I hesitated for a moment before saying, “I plead the amendment that says I don’t have to answer that.”
Marx tried not to smile as he clarified, “The fifth.”
“Yeah, that one. Hey!” I protested when he pulled a napkin from his drawer and used it to pluck the calendar from my hands.
“You can’t touch evidence, Holly.”
I wiggled my fingers. “But I already touched it, so can I just—”
“No.”
I puffed out an irritated breath and dropped my hands into my lap. “Then could you turn it to February, please?”
He didn’t look thrilled, but he used the napkin to flip the calendar month. “Happy?”
“Yes. So back to my point. Shannon kept a very strict schedule. The calendar is blank for the past three days, which means whatever happened to her probably happened three days ago. If they took her then, why wait until today to call you? And if they took her today, where was she when we got there? Because they were still there.”
And then there were the dead flowers that any woman would’ve thrown away days ago had she been home to do so. Which brought me to my next point.
“I think they came to take her today, but she wasn’t home. I think she left a few days ago. There were no suitcases in her closet, and I assume a woman with her means probably has some nice luggage, so she probably went on a trip. And when they realized they couldn’t take her, they did the next best thing to scare you—they destroyed the home you shared with her.”
“There are a lot of holes in your theory, Holly. The first of which is, you’re basin’ your entire theory on a calendar. Second, if she left of her own accord, why isn’t she answerin’ her phone?”
I looked down at my phone as I tried to think of a gentle way to tell him. “Because maybe . . . she saw your caller ID and is deliberately choosing not to answer.”
I chanced a look at his face, but it was carefully blank. If she was just ducking his calls, then she was safe, but that would also mean the woman he loved was deliberately avoiding him.
I offered him my phone. “Maybe she’ll answer an unknown number.”
He took it silently and flipped it open. It took him a moment to decide to dial the number and send it through. I watched his face as he held the phone to his ear and waited. I knew the moment she answered, because I glimpsed the relief and heartache in his eyes before he closed them.
13
Marx rolled his sleeve down over the thin white bandage wrapped around his upper arm as he listened to Sam.
“The condition Collin has is called CIP—Congenital Insensitivity to Pain. It’s an incredibly rare condition and not a lot is known about it. But apparently life expectancy isn’t the greatest. Someone with this condition could have internal bleeding and feel nothing, an infected wound and not even know it if they didn’t see it or smell it. They’re not expected to make it to adulthood.”
“He’s thirty-two,” Marx said. “So unfortunately, he made it.”
“Yeah. This condition paired with a violent psychotic personality,” Sam began. “Well, I can't say I'm surprised he hurts people. I am surprised he hasn't killed anyone though.”
“That we know of,” Marx said. “What about a criminal record? Is there anythin’ he has been caught for?”
“Other than one disorderly conduct citation where he had a verbal disagreement with a cop when he was eighteen, he has no criminal record. Not even a sealed juvi record.”
I could’ve told them they weren’t going to find any criminal history for Collin. He was too intelligent to get caught.
“What kind of disorderly conduct?” Marx asked.
“A cop pulled him over for rolling through a stop sign.” He paused before adding, “The cop was black.”
Marx snorted. “And Collin’s a racist. He probably couldn’t help but make some kind of offensive racial remark. Too bad the cop didn’t shoot him.”
Sam dropped a file on the desk. “This was all I could find on him. And it’s just basics like school records, travel history, traffic violations, financials. Thanks to some interesting maneuvering in the stock market, he’s not lacking for money. That’s probably why he’s able to follow Holly across the country without needing to work. But the guy’s clean.”
Marx grimaced as he picked up the file and flipped it open. “The man tortured children, Sam. He’s far from clean.”
“I just mean that legally speaking, he could walk into this room right now and we couldn’t touch him. There’s no evidence that he’s done anything illegal.”
Marx’s jaw clenched in anger, and he slapped the file on the desk. “How does a man who does the things he does manage to avoid consequences?”
“Because he covers his tracks really well, or because the kids he hurt are afraid to confront him,” Sam said.
They were absolutely afraid to confront Collin. So was I.
“I realize that, Sam. It was a rhetorical question.”
“Oh.” Sam folded his arms over his broad chest. “He hasn’t done anything in New York that we can arrest him for. At least nothing that’s been connected to him.”
Marx rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, I won’t just sit here and wait for him to come after Holly again.”
“I can talk to Sully, see if he can dig deeper than I could, but without a warrant, we’re gonna hit a brick wall.”
Marx sighed. “Okay. Let’s see how far he can get before that wall comes up. Any idea where he’s stayin’ yet?”
Sam shook his head. “The guy’s a ghost, but our contacts on the street know to call if they see him.”
“What about the break-in at Holly’s apartment? Did the lab find any evidence?”
“I checked in with them about an hour ago. There were no usable prints on the note left in the box, even though we all know Collin wrote it, and all of the prints on the box are too small to be Collin’s. They’re likely Holly’s. And they couldn’t tell anything from the few glass shards they recovered. I checked around, but no one saw anything.”
Marx sighed irritably. “So even when we do find him, we have nothin’ to arrest him for.”
“Have we given any thought to an order of protection? Holly can request a family court order of protection against him if she feels threatened. Maybe you can talk to Shannon.”
I cocked my head. “What does Shannon have to do with Collin?”
“She’s the district attorney for the county,” Marx explained. Pain shadowed his eyes when he spoke about his wife, but he blinked it away. “I’ll talk to her and see if she thinks we have a case, but since Collin hasn’t done anythin’ the court might consider a viable threat, we might have a harder time gettin’ a protection order.”
“He called on her birthday and clearly indicated that he was watching her,” Sam said. “He showed up outside her apartment, and he called her five times today and sent her a text that also suggested he was watching.”
“He what?” Marx demanded, his attention snapping to me. “And I’m just hearin’ about this now?”
I couldn’t tell if the anger in his voice was directed toward Collin for calling or toward me for keeping it from him. I skewered Sam with a glare, but he just arched an eyebrow at me that silently communicated, “I told you to tell him.”
“When did he call?” Marx asked.
“Once in the closet at Shannon’s house and then while you were talking to Captain McNera,” I said. “But I only answered once.”
His voice sounded tightly controlled as he asked, “What did he say? Did he threaten you?”
I shifted my feet. I wasn’t about to share what he had said; it made me feel weak, and I didn’t want them to see me that way.
He looked at Sam.
Sam shrugged. “I came in after the phone calls. I just know she was scared.”
“Holly,” Marx pressed impatiently. “Now isn’t the time for secrets. Tell me what he said.”
“No! I don’t wanna talk about it and that’s my decision. You can’t push me into another one.” I turned and walked quickly toward the bathroom.
I slammed my hands into the door and slipped into the quiet space where neither of them could follow. Dropping back against the wall, I closed my eyes and let out a weary sigh. I didn’t understand why God was letting this happen. Why did He allow this man to keep finding me and hurting me?
“Why won’t You just make him stop?” I pleaded, opening my eyes and staring up toward heaven.
Even as I asked the question, I knew the answer. God worked through other people, and if Collin was going to be stopped, it would be because God lead human hands to do it. Unfortunately, He didn’t just drop giant balls of burning hail on people who deserved it anymore.
Maybe Marx and Sam were the human hands meant to protect me. I had met Marx for a reason, and I had trusted him even when I knew better than to trust a man. God wanted him in my life, even if I had initially resisted.
Lord, I wish I understood Your plans. You said You have plans to prosper us and not to harm us, and I just wanna understand.
I sighed and pushed away from the wall, walking to the sink to run cool water over my wrists. It was one of the many small coping skills my therapist had taught me; it helped to cool the body and ease my nerves.
When I felt calm enough to leave the bathroom, I found Sam and Marx conferring around a mobile whiteboard. Circled at the top of the board was the word Overseer. Other bubbles branched out, trickling down the board, including Rafe “Teardrop” Malone and, at the lowest level, three names I didn’t recognize.
“So how many victims so far?” Sam asked, perching on the edge of a desk.
Marx drew a number in the corner of the board and circled it, then said aloud, “Eight.”
Eight? The last I heard there had only been three. The number was growing quickly. Marx glanced at the notebook in his hand and then proceeded to write the names of the victims beneath the number in his hideously illegible script.
“What are their conditions?”
“Five dead, one on life support, one soon to be released from the hospital, and one went home,” Marx explained, denoting their conditions with single letters next to their names: D, H, and R. D for deceased, H for hospital, R . . . I wasn’t sure about that one. Released, maybe?
“So how do we know the drug that’s killing these kids is coming from the same source?”
Marx capped his marker and stepped back to look at the board. There was too little information on it. “Because the heroin is contaminated with fentanyl. Fentanyl, as you know, is cheap when locally made, and because it’s eighty to a hundred times more potent than morphine, it makes for a faster, more euphoric high when mixed with heroin.”
“So, in other words, the users are getting more bang for their buck, but it’s costing the suppliers less to make it,” Sam supposed. “Smart, except for the part where it’s killing their consumers.”
“I somehow doubt they care about the little people.” Marx tapped the marker against his palm in agitation as he tried to piece together a puzzle that was missing ninety percent of its pieces.
“Probably not. But I’m sure the kids who sold to their friends at school care that they’re dead.” He gestured to the three unfamiliar names at the bottom of the list. Ah, the secondary dealers: the ones who bought from the drug dealer and then distributed to their friends. “I assume you interviewed them already. What did they have to say?”
“None of them are talkin’. They’re afraid if they divulge the name of their supplier they’ll end up dead.”
“Well, it’s a good possibility.” Sam folded his arms and frowned at the whiteboard. “So where do we go from here?”
“Accordin’ to Tear’s record, he has former gang affiliations, but I didn’t see anythin’ recent. It’s likely whatever gang he’s involved with is behind the drug distribution.”
“It’s not a gang,” I said from across the room, drawing their attention.
I tucked my cold fingers into the back pockets of my jeans and crossed the room to join them. I scooted onto the vacant desk across from Sam and waited, but neither of them asked about the phone calls again.
