Last Chance (Emma Last FBI Mystery Series Book 4), page 18
If I can figure out what set her off, we might just shed some light on our unsub too. That kind of rage doesn’t come easy, so it was connected to something or someone about Leonardo’s Pies. But maybe it was connected to something predating that particular business.
When had Mrs. Middle Finger died? How far back? Emma closed her eyes for a moment, mentally shutting out the ghost’s anger and focusing on her clothes. Nothing special came to mind, and mom jeans were mom jeans, but they hadn’t really been popular until at least the eighties, right? And the woman had a cheap charm bracelet on. Hadn’t those had a resurgence in the nineties?
Refocused on the task at hand, Emma turned on her laptop with a working theory that the woman had been killed somewhere between two and three decades ago. Not much earlier, not much later. The building Leonardo’s Pies sat in was ancient, but that timeframe narrowed things down considerably.
And it makes that burger joint it survived to become all the more likely a source for her ire, no matter how many restaurants predated it.
Searching the address showed a long history of restaurants that had called the space home, many of them offering American fare like burgers and patty melts. The one immediately predating Leonardo’s had been there through most of Emma’s estimated timeframe, according to county records.
Emma focused in, pulling up a recent feature article on the history of Dellington’s restaurants. Scanning down to Leonardo’s Pies, she started reading just under her breath. “Prior to being made into a pizzeria just about a decade ago, the space housed R&A’s Diner for eight years. R&A’s was a beloved burger joint opened by Allen Alexander, who died tragically in…”
Emma’s eyes bugged as her fist slammed into the table beside her laptop.
“Boom!”
Leo skidded to a stop nearby, an o of horror springing to his face, making Emma realize her unfortunate phrasing. Before she could apologize, Mia and Sloane appeared from different directions to stare with just as much accusation.
“Uh, sorry. Poor choice of word. But look what I found.”
Without any more fanfare she turned her laptop to her colleagues and spoke as they caught up with her. “The pizzeria used to be a diner, and its owner died ten years ago at the age of forty-eight in a faulty gas line explosion. Killed while asleep in bed.”
Sloan leaned in closer, wrapping her long locks in one hand to keep them out of her and Mia’s faces both as she read beyond where Emma had stopped. “The home he shared with his daughter, Ruth Alexander, was destroyed in the fire. Ruth survived only because she was closing up the burger joint that she helped her father run in downtown Dellington.”
Emma traded satisfied grins with Mia. “R&A’s Grill. Ruth and Allen’s Grill.”
Leo had already begun searching on his iPad, and he plopped it down on the table in the center of their small group, pointing to a picture of a man and a teenage girl standing in front of a storefront. A large Opening Day sign hung behind them. “Lookie here. This is the announcement for the grill’s opening. You see what I see?”
“Oh, hell, yes.” Emma clicked on the image, enlarging it needlessly. Beside the two restaurateurs sat an old station wagon, midnight blue and gleaming in the sun. The license plate wasn’t visible because of the angle, but there was no mistaking the similarity to the video when it came to shape and color.
No way does one small-town diner end up being the center of this many coincidences. We have our perpetrator.
“I’ll tell Jacinda. You guys keep digging.” Mia pushed herself up from the table, already calling for the SSA.
Sloan moved in the opposite direction. “I’ll fill the sheriff in and see if he remembers these two.”
Emma pulled out the seat beside her for Leo. “Shall we ‘keep digging’?”
With him searching for articles beside her, the information came fast and furious. Emma managed to hunt down Allen’s obituary just as Leo homed in on the daughter.
She read fast, offering the highlights. “‘Allen was preceded in death by his late wife, Karen Alexander, who was also a native of the area and died of a sudden heart attack in 2005, prior to the opening of R&A’s Grill.’”
“Daughter moved to Oregon almost immediately after her dad died,” Leo hummed to himself, scanning forward, “presumably to start over. That’s a long way from West Virginia, but she could have come back since then.” He froze.
“What?”
“She’s got a bunch of photography credits. Maybe she’s a full-time freelance photographer.”
Emma’s heart sped up. This is it. “She’d know how flammable nitrate is. She’d have freedom to travel.” She shifted back to the date of the obituary. “This month marks the ten-year anniversary of Allen Alexander’s death. I’ll bet you a thousand dollars she came back to visit.”
“No bet.”
Sloan had reappeared behind them as they’d spoken. “So we have someone who knows the damage a gas leak explosion can cause, access to the means to make an explosion like that happen, and someone who might be resentful of successful diner owners. I’ll start hunting down Ruth’s contacts in Oregon so we can find out where she is for sure.”
As she opened her own laptop across from them at the conference table, Emma went back to searching for anything she could find on the Alexander family. And then she came across a photo taken when the whole family had still been alive.
Well, what do you know? I’ve seen that face close-up and personal.
Glaring at her from inside the family photo, which had been published in honor of Karen Alexander’s death, there sat none other than Emma’s Dellington ghost—Mrs. Middle Finger herself. The woman wasn’t flipping anyone off in this picture, but her image was unmistakable. Same hair color and eye shape, with a mean set to her lips that could be discerned even through a forced smile.
Just holding back from celebrating the identification, Emma began searching records on the mother while her colleagues looked into the daughter. Having died eight years before Allen, the woman had made a habit of being an albatross around his and their daughter’s necks.
Her record detailed multiple claims of domestic abuse, all of which had been dropped within hours or days of being filed. Pictures of bruises and even burns littered her file and filled the screen in front of Emma. She bit her tongue in an effort to quiet curses.
Emma popped back to the family photo to check what she’d seen. There, just above the daughter’s wrist…a telltale bruise that could’ve come from the grip of a hand, hard and punishing.
Her teeth ran against her tongue, ticking at the anger boiling up in her throat. How a mother like hers, a good one, could’ve been stolen from her, leaving Emma without a single memory. Yet Ruth had had to endure a terrible mother for all those years, scarring her forever. The world really was unconscionable.
She went back to the legal record she’d found, scanning through hospital visits commemorated by way of police record.
How a mother could do any of this to her husband, let alone an innocent daughter…
Back up there, Emma girl. Not so innocent anymore, maybe.
Sloan strode back up to the table and offered a self-satisfied grin. “I just got off the phone with Ruth’s next-door neighbor in Oregon, who happens to be house-sitting while Ruth is away. She left to come back to West Virginia last Friday, February third.”
“Which means,” Leo picked up the thread, gesturing to the dates on the whiteboard, “that she was in the area when both the Williamses and the Freeses went missing.”
Emma tilted her screen toward Leo and Sloan. “This is the work of the matriarch of the family. These marks? They’re on her husband and daughter. We have an early life of abuse setting up the adult who Ruth eventually became.”
“Shit.” Leo hissed out a breath. “That would make for one messed-up kid.”
As Sloan paced a short distance away, Emma focused back on the computer before them. “All these dropped charges…she either convinced them she’d change every time, or they lost the courage to stand up to her.”
Leo tapped the dates he’d been listing out in his notes. “And when she died, they opened up R&A’s Grill almost immediately. It must’ve been a haven for the father and daughter after all those years of abuse.”
Well, that’s one way to piss off a dead woman, I guess. She gets dead, and they get happy.
“He bought the place with his widow’s life insurance money.” Sheriff Gruntle sidled up behind them, frowning at the images remaining on Emma’s computer. “I remember my dad and every other lawman in the county knew what a mean bitch Karen Alexander was. You can’t be a good sheriff in an area like this without knowing which folks are bad behind closed doors, and my dad was a damn good sheriff. But he couldn’t do nothing about that woman when her family wouldn’t stand up to her.”
Emma flashed back to the scowling woman who’d greeted her outside Leonardo’s Pies. “She must’ve been rolling over in her grave, seeing them flourish all of a sudden, benefiting from her death.” Her stomach churned, thinking of the ghost peering in on her own abused daughter and widower, scowling through the front window as the two of them finally found some happiness.
Mia had come around the corner from the break room just in time to hear the end of the conversation, and she held up her phone with a small smirk that appeared an awful lot like triumph to Emma’s way of thinking. “Jacinda’s calling back Denae and Vance so we can all head out. The property for the house that Allen Alexander lived in is still in the family’s name. It was transferred to Ruth’s name following Allen’s death, and she never sold the estate. The house wasn’t rebuilt, but there’s four acres of land in her name.”
Leo was already typing on his phone. “I’ll get us whatever’s available via satellite imagery.”
Emma shut her laptop without bothering to power the device down, shoving herself to her feet. “You ask me, Ruth got triggered when she came back, and now she’s blowing up pictures of happiness that remind her of everything she lost when her father died. The woman was traumatized from her loss, and that pressure’s been building all these years, on top of the abuse her mom put her through.”
As she slipped on her coat, Mia frowned, speaking as Jacinda entered with her own coat slung over one arm. “Maybe we haven’t found any bodies because we’ve gotten Ruth wrong. She started out a victim, and now she’s a totally messed-up adult, but she’s not actually a killer. Maybe our kidnappees are still alive.”
Though Emma wanted to believe her friend, she wasn’t sure she could. Two of their victims had been missing for more than three days. The likelihood of them being found alive was slim, with the odds dropping every hour they remained missing, and the whole team knew it. But Leo shook his head before Emma found the words to offer up a clearer reality.
“I hope you’re right, Mia.” Leo traded frowns with Sloan, knowing from her flat expression that she didn’t feel nearly as optimistic as their colleague. “The problem is, even if Ruth didn’t start out as a killer, she might’ve become one out of necessity. There’s a certain recklessness if she’s setting off bombs.”
Mia licked her lips as Emma gripped her shoulder, coat already buttoned tight. “Either way, we need to find Ruth ASAP. And now we have an address.”
Phone in hand, Jacinda came around the corner with her coat already buttoned, the sheriff on her heels. “That station wagon’s proof enough for now. I’m working on a warrant and getting a SWAT, EOD, and hostage rescue teams scrambled since we have hostages and explosives potentially in play.”
Translation—Jacinda doesn’t want us all to go boom.
30
With Mia behind the wheel, Emma leaned sideways in the passenger seat to give Sloan a better view of her iPad and the satellite footage just sent through. They’d nearly reverted to the beginning of the case, team-wise. She and Sloan and Mia rode in one Expedition. Leo, Jacinda, Denae, and Vance piled into the other. Jacinda had radioed to confirm the nearest bomb squad was three counties away and making good time. Everyone should rendezvous at the same time.
Emma only hoped that the symmetry boded well for their case coming to an end.
Even though the snow had started again and snowflakes burst against the glass almost immediately. Irritated, she pressed the windshield wipers button for Mia, who kept her hands on the wheel.
“We have two sheds,” Jacinda’s voice crackled through the radio, conferencing all of them together, “and a sizable camper, which may or may not still be there since this imagery isn’t up to the minute. There’s also an old root cellar attached to the ruins of the original family home, and that looks relatively intact from the outside. Or, at least, we have to assume it could be intact. Ruth Alexander could be holing up in any of those locations.”
Sloan frowned at the images. “I still don’t understand why she’d be driving around an old station wagon instead of her rental.”
“More room for bodies.” Emma’s comment sat in the air, sending both of Sloan’s eyebrows skyward. She might have said that a touch too casually. “Sorry. Um, nostalgia?”
Seconds later, Denae’s voice sounded through the radio. “Well, either way, we have no sign of the rental car we found in her name or the wagon. Not giving up, though. Both of those sheds are big enough for a vehicle.”
Nodding needlessly in acknowledgment, Emma squinted at the satellite imagery. The sheds both sat at the eastern edge of the property, along a drive that wound through a stand of pine trees and emerged before the first shed. Both were simple structures with corrugated siding and steeply pitched roofs. The camper was positioned across from the smaller shed, on the other side of the drive.
Behind the camper was a clear patch of ground stretching approximately twenty or twenty-five yards to the west, where it terminated at the root cellar access and the ruins of the old house. The cellar access looked to be a concrete staircase that descended to a pair of doors. Thankfully the satellite images were taken before the latest snowstorm swept through.
“That cellar is probably where she’s hiding. Under cover, secure.” She zoomed in until the square entrance was little more than a blur. “I can’t even tell if the doors are caved in at all, but the cellar could have survived even if the house blew.”
Sloan hmmed under her breath before speaking up for the team. “We’re on her home turf, so we should be thinking about her M.O. Nitrate film base becomes unstable as it decomposes and is a massive fire risk. If she has that much on hand, I can only guess about where she acquired it. It’s not for sale anywhere these days. As for where it might be, underground storage is probably the safest option.”
Though Emma wanted to avoid going anywhere the threat of booby traps existed, that wouldn’t help them stop Ruth from hurting anyone else. Or save the people she’d kidnapped, assuming they were still alive.
It’s good to want things, Emma girl. Builds character. Now go do your job.
“If she’s anywhere on this property, she’s either somewhere she feels safe or actively building another bomb.”
Sloan tilted her head to the side, pausing. “What if those are the same place?”
“After that storm, and with two father-daughter pairs held hostage…I think Ruth wants to be safe and not hurt anyone else. She’s an adult child of abuse and unresolved trauma. I’d say she’s either in the cellar or the camper.”
“Agreed.” Jacinda went quiet for a second, and then more footage came to Emma’s iPad. “We’ll enter from that gravel road, closer to the sheds. We’ll stop in the tree line and walk in. To make it simple, we’ll split up teams by SUV. Emma, Mia, and Sloan, you take the small shed and the camper. The rest of us will take the larger shed and then the root cellar. If initial targets are clear, head to the others.”
“Sheriff Gruntle, the bomb specialists, HRT, and the state police are on their way,” Vance added. “We have plenty of backup, and Ruth is just one person. We’ll get her.”
Sloan frowned. “Just remember she’s one person who may have explosives in her possession that are primed. Our backup is miles away, so we proceed with caution and back off rather than engage if it comes to it.”
The statement was so simple, it sat like lead in Emma’s stomach. She could talk a killer down and hold her own when it came to a fight or keeping a steady hand on a gun. Strong nerves and a silver tongue didn’t exactly help defuse a bomb, though.
And it wasn’t just their lives in danger. Four innocent victims could be in the blast zone as well.
If they’re even alive.
Mia swung the wheel right, following the lead SUV onto a rough gravel road that was still slushy with just-melting snow. The wheels crunched as she slowed.
Emma tucked her iPad away. “Hey, don’t kill us.”
“You’re one to talk.”
Smirking, Emma examined the property through the windshield, stretching her neck to peer past thick stands of evergreens.
If ever there was a place to build bombs in the woods, this would be it.
A horrible reverb sounded through the radio. The noise scratched at Emma’s eardrums, causing her to swerve on the icy road.
“What happened?” Mia’s concerned voice joined the cacophony of voices on their radio channel.
Jacinda was talking to someone, but Emma couldn’t hear details. The reception was terrible.
Then a distinctive click resounded as one party called, “Over and out.”
Jacinda’s voice broke through the sudden quiet. “The bomb squad and HRT’s truck just slid off the road. The weather’s apparently ten times worse farther north and headed this way.” Emma heard the low-level tension in her boss’s voice and understood what was behind it.
The SSA had to make a tough decision. She could call the whole mission off for the moment, let the weather pass by, and regroup with everyone—their team, the SWAT units, and the local LEOs—in place in a few hours. This choice assumed the weather would clear up fast. If, however, the storm lasted as long as the previous one, their hostages would be alone with a very unstable, unpredictable Ruth for hours.
