Cold Fear (8 page)

He quietly laughed at himself. So much for not being his type. Attractive and temporary were
exactly
his type. But he had work to do. No need to complicate things here.

He scanned the photographs, looking for more clues about the two sisters. Tucked in almost as an afterthought at the back of the mantel was a photograph of the mother and a dark-haired man in wedding garb.

“That’s my dad.” Kit had come silently back into the room and watched him cautiously. She’d pulled on another pair of gray sweats and a fleece lined hoodie. “He died before I was born.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

She shrugged. “I never knew him so it’s not a big deal.” Which probably wasn’t true. “Mom died last May. Izzy left the Army to look after me.”

“It’s tough losing both parents when you’re so young.” He knew from experience. “You’re lucky to have your sister looking out for you.”

The girl shrugged as if it was no big deal. Her sister had given up what was presumably a successful career to take care of her, but the teen took it as her right. She had no idea how fortunate she was.

“I’m ready if you still want to go for that walk.” Impatience leaked into her tone.

He raised his brows, but she didn’t seem to notice. He bet the good doctor would have preferred another tour of duty to raising a seventeen-year-old. Respect for the woman went up another notch.

Kit headed for the French doors without bothering with a leash or a key. She let the dog out and then went outside onto the deck, leaving the place wide open.

“You might want to start locking up around here,” he suggested, trying to keep his own tone mild.

Her eyes popped wide as they swung to his. “You don’t think the killer is still around, do you?”

No one ever wanted to believe a killer was a member of their community, or someone they knew. Stranger danger was a lot easier to live with and in reality accounted for a very small proportion of murder cases. “Until the cops have him in custody I’d err on the side of caution.”

She still didn’t bother to lock the door. At his pointed look she pulled a face. “Izzy’s just next door.” Then she headed down the wooden steps.

He frowned. “So the killer gets to attack her first?”

The girl gave a rude laugh. “The guy would be an idiot to go after Izzy. She’d kick his ass.”

Was she really that dumb, or this callous? “I’m sure Jesse Tyson felt the same way.”

Her lower jaw dropped at his words and then her mouth worked soundlessly for a moment. Frazer waved her ahead, trying to mask his impatience. The dog ran on, sniffing the grass. The tide was way out and birds poked and prodded the sand for worms with their sharp thin beaks as dusk began to settle.

“What can you tell me about last night?” he asked.

Kit’s gaze went beyond him to the beach house.

Frazer glanced over his shoulder, but no one was visible. He frowned. “I’m only interested in finding the person who killed Helena. I’m not going to tell your sister anything you confide.” He remembered his time at high school. All he’d cared about was getting the best grades and not getting kicked out so he could get a scholarship to go to college. Nothing else had mattered.

Somehow he didn’t think that was Kit’s version of high school.

“What do you want to know?” The girl huffed and strode away from the cottage. With the tide out they could walk around to the next beach without getting their feet wet.

“You told your sister you were staying at Helena’s house last night?” he pressed. He’d had an easier time interviewing psychopaths.

The girl nodded and finally started talking. “Helena wanted to go to Franky Cirencester’s party. Jesse had asked her out—which was huge for Helena because she’s been crushing on him for months.” She covered her face with her hands and started crying. “I can’t believe what happened. I keep expecting her to call me and tell me about her date. It’s like something out of a horror movie.”

Except Helena wouldn’t stand up at the end of the scene. She’d never take another breath. She was dead. No acting. No retakes.

“This was their first date?”

She nodded.

“Jesse is popular in high school?”

Kit nodded again.

“Helena wasn’t?” His use of the past tense brought more tears.

“Please, God, let this be an awful mistake.” She gulped and started to hyperventilate.

Her pain made his stomach twist. A small part of him knew he should comfort her, but that wasn’t the way he operated. Distance was his thing. For good reason. It helped him see the whole picture. “Put your cupped hands over your mouth and try to breathe slowly,” he instructed. If her sister collapsed, Isadora Campbell would probably string him up by his balls.

Kit got herself back under control with a few slow deep breaths. “Helena wasn’t one of the popular kids. She was smart and pretty and too damn nice to be one of the bitchfest crowd.”

His eyes narrowed. Was that self-reproach in her tone? “What about you? You part of the popular crew?”

Her eyes flashed and she snorted out a bitter laugh. “Am I a bitch, do you mean?” She nodded. “Yep, I can be. Helena was the nicest thing about me.” Shadows haunted the depths of her eyes. “I think that’s why Jesse asked her out. She’s the sweetest person I know. Is Jesse going to be okay?” Her voice hitched with concern. Kit seemed less of a bitch and more of a thoughtless teen.

“He’s alive, probably due to your sister’s expertise.” The young man hadn’t regained consciousness yet, but it was early days. He’d suffered severe head trauma. Brain damage was a possibility. They wouldn’t know anything until the kid woke up and opened his mouth. “You went to the party. What happened there?”

She crossed her arms and looked away from him. “The place was packed. We all hung out for a while. Danced. Ate—everyone was supposed to bring something.” She glowered at her feet. “Then they started playing some dumb games.” She looked angry. “I got pissed off and went to the hotel pool.”

“What time?”

“Just after midnight.”

While Frazer and her sister had been at work, trying to save the world. He didn’t want to see mirrors in his and Isadora’s personalities, but they were impossible to miss.

“You went swimming alone?”

She pressed her lips together and shook her head. Tears refilled her eyes.

Impatience lit through him. “Who were you with?”

She rubbed her hands up and down her arms. “A guy.”

He waited.

“He’s new to the school. Name is Damien Ridgeway. I, um, went swimming with him.”

Frazer didn’t ask if clothing was optional. She wasn’t his sister. “Did you see Helena leave with Jesse?”

Kit nodded. “She came and asked if I wanted to come with them to the beach. I laughed at her.” Her eyes were blotchy and swollen as she dabbed them with a wet tissue. “That was the last time I saw her. I laughed at her and gave her a look like she was stupid. No way would Jesse want me tagging along with the two of them.” She caught the sleeve of his jacket. “If I’d gone with her she’d still be alive, wouldn’t she? No one would’ve attacked three people.”

“It’s unlikely someone would have confronted three individuals unless they were carrying a weapon. But murder isn’t an exact science so it’s possible he’d have killed you, too.”

A shudder wracked her body. “She was such a good person.” She stood in front of him, looking up from under her bangs with fierce blue eyes. “Was she raped?”

He held her gaze. “We don’t know for sure and anything I say now is spoken in confidence. This isn’t schoolroom gossip.” It was a risk to speculate but he’d worked enough cases to know he was probably right. He needed Kit Campbell to trust him because he needed to know what was going on in every level of Helena’s life, and that included high school. “She was probably raped.” Frazer had to catch Kit as her knees buckled. Her pain and anguish rang out on the thin breeze. Barney rushed over to see what was wrong, but Kit quieted and her screams turned to sobs and she clung to him, tears soaking into his shirt.

“It’s not fair. It’s not fucking
fair
! Helena was saving herself for someone special, and he stole that from her!” She slammed the bottom of her fist against his chest. “He stole it like he had the right.”

He held onto her elbows, trying to steady her and wishing he’d given Randall this assignment. Teen drama was not his thing, although maybe he was being a little unsympathetic. She’d just lost her best friend. “She was a virgin?”

“I don’t even know if she’d kissed anyone properly.” Her eyes were so red they looked like they were bleeding. “She was the nicest person I ever knew. How can I live knowing what happened to her?”

She threw herself into his embrace, and Frazer found himself wrapping an arm around the girl to keep upright. He swallowed tightly. There’d been a time when he’d wondered how he could go on living when his parents had died, but he’d found his vocation. It was up to Kit to find hers. He looked toward the cottage and there was Isadora Campbell watching them from the deck of the cottage with an unreadable expression on her face.

He had no personal experience with siblings but understood the dynamics from a psychological perspective. Older siblings tended to be more responsible than younger ones. They were caretakers, not risk-takers.

Kit finally pushed away from him, and he happily let her go.

“Did anyone else leave the party around the same time as Helena and Jesse?” he asked.

“I don’t remember.” Her voice was bleak now. “I stayed in the pool. I drank more beer and made out with Damien.
That’s
what I did while my best friend was being raped and murdered at Parson’s Point.” She wiped the cuffs of her hoodie over her blotchy face.

“Where did you go afterwards?”

Her pupils widened. “What do you mean?”

“You told your sister you were staying at Helena’s home. She told her parents she was staying here. Where did you go? What did you do?”

“I came home.” She folded her arms and refused to meet his gaze. “I’m cold. I want to go back now.”

Frazer stared at her for a long moment. She was hiding something. Over the years, after thousands of investigations coming across his desk, sometimes it was the weirdest fact or fluke that solved a case. Good police work involved asking the questions no one wanted to answer. Frazer understood the need for secrecy and discretion—and that’s why he always looked in the shadows. Deciding not to shine a light there yet, he nodded and they started walking back to the cottage. Barney followed.

“Do you know anyone who might have wanted to hurt Helena or Jesse?”

She shook her head. “No. Never. Helena was below everyone’s radar and everyone loved Jesse…” Then her mouth went wide. “Except Jesse’s ex-girlfriend. I saw what she wrote about him online last night when he posted a picture of him and Helena at the party. She called Helena a whore.” Tears filled her eyes. “I want to punch her in the face for that.” She turned toward him. “You don’t think she had anything to do with this, do you?”

Because of the bracelet factor, together with the rape and the fact two victims had been handled at the same time, Frazer doubted a jealous teenager had committed last night’s murder. “I’m not willing to rule out anything at this stage.” Except Ferris Denker who sat in his cell waiting for execution. “We’ll follow all leads, but if the girl was involved
I’ll
be the one to make sure she’s held responsible. No punching anyone in the face, okay?” Not that he hadn’t done far worse in the pursuit of justice.

She nodded reluctantly, then her eyes cut to his. “Promise me you’ll find out who did this.”

He glanced up at Isadora as she watched them from the deck, and thought of the innocent young woman who’d had her future stolen from her. He didn’t make promises he couldn’t keep. “I’ll do everything in my power to catch the person who did this, Kit. But you have to promise to tell me everything you know, and anything that you hear from your schoolmates. You don’t need to tell anyone you’re talking to me, but I want to know all the rumor and gossip. Deal?”

He held her gaze until she reluctantly nodded. “Deal.”

Chapter Six

T
HE LIGHTS HE’D
strung around the window blinked as he sat back with his beer and a bag of chips to watch the evening news. “First homicide of the year,” was the opening title of the piece. That made him sit up a little straighter in his chair. He hadn’t thought of that, but he supposed it was one for the record books.

The reporter was one of those pert blondes with narrow bright red lips and nonexistent tits who thought she was something special. She wasn’t. They showed a shot in the background of the Outer Banks but it was a picture of Cape Hatteras, not the Lighthouse on Crane Island.

What the fuck? They couldn’t even be bothered to send a news team down to get fresh footage? They’d just recycled old film from reporting on the storm the day before.

Unknown assailant. One victim dead. Another miraculously surviving.
Blah
. His lips twisted. That jock asshole should be dead. He’d pounded the fucker hard enough to pancake his brains, but obviously not hard enough.

He smirked. He’d taken what the boy had wanted, and it had been magnificent. The kid couldn’t identify him; he hadn’t had a fucking clue. He’d probably wake up a vegetable, drinking food through a straw. That would distract the chief and local cops who were all a bunch of fucking morons anyway. He sipped his beer. Would the FBI be any smarter?
Nah
. He knew how to cover his tracks, and he’d been getting away with it for longer than most of them had been on the job.

He relived the moment when the moon had come out and he’d stared deep into Helena’s eyes. It had sent a sharp thrill through him when she’d recognized him. The memory made his cock swell. It had felt good for someone to finally know what he was and how he had fooled them all.

Cops were conducting a wider search tomorrow. He rolled his eyes. About damn time. What did they need, an engraved invitation? Someone was in for an ugly surprise. A few someones, come to think about it.