Dead Certain (23 page)

He opened the top drawer and searched under her underwear for the box in which she kept the pendant. Nothing.

He slammed the drawer shut.

Son of a bitch. Dolores, you son of a bitch.
He knocked a lamp off the end of the dresser.

He went back down the stairs, trying to put it all together. Had she been so crushed by Connie’s death that she just had to run away? Could that be it? But she would have said something, wouldn’t she?

Wouldn’t she?

Or was there something else . . . some other reason why she might want to leave without him knowing she was going?

Vinnie took a deep breath and picked up the tweed jacket. He stuck his hand into first one pocket, then the other. Nothing.

In total disbelief, he lowered himself onto the sofa cushion.

The little bitch had outsmarted him.

She’d
outsmarted
him.

Who’da thought it. Dumb little Dolores. Dumb, dull little Dolores. Somehow she’d figured it all out.

Even as his anger grew, so did a perverse sort of admiration for her. She’d outsmarted him.

He went up the steps to get his things. With no time to waste, he shoved his clothes, his shaving things, his toothbrush into his travel bag.

For all he knew, she was at the police station right that minute. There was no way of knowing how much time he had before cars came screaming down the street.

“Dolores, Dolores, why’d you do this, baby?” He shook his head as he hurried to the back door. “You know when I catch up with you, I’m gonna have to kill you. . . .”

CHAPTER
TWENTY-SEVEN

Sean stepped through the wide doors that opened into the small lobby of the Broeder Police Department and wondered for about the fiftieth time just what the builders had thought might someday be coming through that door that merited so large an opening into so small a room. Joyce was long gone, her place at the desk taken by the officer in charge that night. It was 9:35
P
.
M
., what should have been the end of a long day, and he’d just dropped Amanda off at Greer’s and seen her safely inside. There were two black and whites there, one out front, one parked in the back by the garage, keeping an eye on things from the rear of the property. His brother-in-law, newly returned from his trip, had found the whole thing oddly exciting.

To each his own. Personally, Sean couldn’t wait till this whole thing was over and instead of playing bodyguard to Amanda Crosby, he could think about getting close to her in other ways. These days, it just never did seem to be the appropriate time or place to do much more than watch her back and focus on catching the son of a bitch who’d turned their lives upside down.

“Oh, Chief. I just tried to phone you,” Kevin Reilly, the duty officer, called to him. “You have a visitor. Said it’s really important that she speak with you right away.”

Sean closed his eyes.
Honest to God, Ramona, I don’t have time for this. . . .

“Later. See if you can get Chief Benson over at the Carleton P.D. on the line.”

Sean leaned over the counter and took the phone when Reilly handed it to him.

“They’re giving you his voice mail,” Reilly told him. “They said he checks it every fifteen minutes or so at night.”

Sean waited for the prompt, then said, “Bob, Sean Mercer. I need you to pick up Dolores Hall, Connie Paschall’s partner in that hairdressing place. You need to talk to her about her boyfriend. Give me a call back on my cell and I’ll give you the details.”

Sean handed the phone back to Reilly, who looked up and said, “Chief, she’s here.”

“Who’s here?”

“Dolores Hall.”

“Jesus, Reilly, why didn’t you say so? Where is she?”

“The little room just across from your office.”

The conference room door stood open. Dolores Hall was seated in a chair facing the door, clutching a large gray cat in her arms.

They stared at each other for a moment, then Sean asked, “How are you feeling, Miss Hall?”

“Dolores. It’s Dolores.” Her voice was soft and shaky. “And I’m not feeling so good.”

“I know this week has been hard on you. Losing your partner . . .”

Her eyes welled up. “Connie was more than my business partner. She was my best friend. Maybe the best friend I ever had.”

“Funny you should stop in here today, Miss . . . Dolores. I just left a message for Chief Benson down there in Carleton to stop over and pay you a visit. I want to talk to you about Vince Giordano.”

“Who?”

“Vince Giordano. We know he’s been staying with you.”

“You mean Vinnie.” She frowned. “He said his name was Vinnie Daniels.”

“Close enough. Whatever he’s calling himself, it’s the same guy.”

He got up and went across the hall to his office and returned with a folder in his hands. He pulled out several pictures and handed the first one across the table to her.

“This was Vince Giordano on the day he was arrested for murder down in Lyndon.”

“Who’d he kill?” she asked, her face paling.

“His wife and his two sons.”

She went another shade whiter. “Why isn’t he in prison?”

“Because he was convicted on tainted evidence, and his attorney got him off.” Sean handed her the pictures that were taken at Connie’s funeral. “And here he is, among the mourners at your friend’s funeral.”

Dolores sat and stared. She looked up at Sean with red-rimmed eyes and said softly, “I found her ring.”

“Excuse me?”

“I found her ring. In the pocket of his jacket. The jacket he wore the night she was killed.” Her voice was flat, without emotion.

“Where is the ring now?”

She took it off her hand and placed it on the table.

“Are you sure, absolutely sure, that this was her ring?” Sean made no move to touch it.

She picked it up and turned it so that the inside of the band was facing him. “Those are her initials.”

“You know that this ties him to her murder.”

Dolores nodded, her jaw set with resolution even as her eyes were filled with fear.

“Dolores, why are you bringing this to me, in Broeder, instead of to Chief Benson in Carleton?”

“Because I was afraid he’d find me if I stayed there. I wanted to get away from Carleton so that he wouldn’t find me. Besides, the newspaper said you were looking for this”—she started to rummage in her purse—“and that if anyone knew anything about it, to contact you right away.”

She removed a piece of newspaper folded small, then held up a small box and handed it to him. Sean opened it, and his heart all but stopped beating.

The pendant from Marian’s shop.

“Where did you get this?”

“He—Vinnie—gave it to me.” She made a face as she spread open the newspaper article. “He said it had belonged to his grandmother.”

“When? When did he give this to you?”

“About a week ago. On a Friday night.”

Sean glanced at the calendar on the wall. That would have taken them back to the night after Marian had been killed.

“It’s not exactly like the one in the paper, but it’s real close, don’t you think?” Dolores appeared to study the pendant as if she hadn’t seen it before, then covered her face with her hands.

Sean got up and went to her, sat down in the chair next to hers. “You are incredibly brave to come here, Dolores.”

“He killed her. He killed her because he knew that she saw this”—she stabbed at the newspaper with an angry finger—“and he knew that sooner or later, she’d show me. He killed her because of me. I let this . . . this . . . animal into my life, and he killed my best friend. It’s my fault she’s dead.”

“Dolores, it’s Vince’s fault that she’s dead, not yours, you understand me? He killed her. He and he alone is responsible for her death, not you. You had no way of knowing who or what he was. Do you understand?”

She nodded but her eyes would not meet his.

“Where is he now, Dolores?”

She shook her head. “I’m not sure. He was at my house, but I don’t know if he’s still there. I’m guessing he’s not going to hang around too long, after he figures out what I’ve done.”

“What did you do?”

“He thought I was going to pick up Chinese for dinner.” She smiled, a faint touch of pride tugging at her lips. “I already had stuff in the car ’cause I’d found the ring and, damn it, he was not going to get away with that.”

The smile faded. “No way could I let him get away with that. So I packed the car and was just ready to leave when he came home from work, and I told him I was going to pick up some takeout while he was in the shower.” She clutched the cat tighter. “God, I was so scared. I’m still so scared.”

“You are one really smart woman.” Sean shook his head in true admiration. “Brave and smart. I’ll bet it made him crazy when he realized that you’d outsmarted him.”

“You think so?”

“I know so. This is one smart, smart killer, Dolores. And you outfoxed him.” He shook his head in amazement. “You should be really proud of yourself.”

“I’ll be proud of myself when you catch him and I go into court and testify about how he took me to dinner that night—that night he killed Connie—at a restaurant right there in the shopping center where the Cut N Curl is. About how he pretended to get sick from the mussels so he could make believe he was in the men’s room throwing up while he was really down at my shop putting a bullet through the head of my best friend.”

“You can help me find him. You can help me bring him to trial, to put him back in prison.”

“I will do whatever it takes.” Even through tears, Dolores was pure steel. “He killed Connie. He didn’t have to kill her.”

“Let’s talk about where he might have gone. You said he worked. You know where?”

“He said he owned his own construction company.”

“Know what it’s called?”

“Daniels Construction. But I don’t know where they were working.”

“That’s okay. We can check to see if he’s applied for any work permits lately. Know if he had any friends in the area, anyone he socialized with? Did he mention the name of anyone who worked for him?”

“No. He never mentioned no one.”

“What is he driving, Dolores? What kind of car?”

“Lincoln town car. Black. Not real new. I don’t remember the plate number.”

“That’s all right. We can get that. Now, how about Archer Lowell? Did you ever hear him mention the name Archer Lowell?”

“No.”

“How about Channing? Curtis Channing?”

She shook her head. “Sorry. I’m sorry. . . .”

“Hey, it’s okay. We’ll find him. One way or another, we’re going to find him.”

“I just hope he doesn’t find me first.”

“He’s not going to. We’ll keep you safe, I promise you. For as long as it takes.” Sean took one of Dolores’s hands and said, “I know how frightened you must be, and I realize this is hard for you. . . .”

She looked up at him, one eyebrow raised. “Hard for me? He killed my best friend. I’ll watch that bastard burn in hell and I will smile the whole time. Just what about this do you think is hard for me?”

Sean pulled out his wallet and took out the card with Evan Crosby’s number on it. He punched in the numbers and when Evan picked up, he said, “I think you’re going to want to head on back to Broeder. I have a surprise for you. And tell Anne Marie we’re going to need her people a little sooner than we’d expected.”

CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT

“She just waltzed away from him”—Anne Marie shook her head in disbelief—“and waltzed herself right on in here. Incredible that she would do that. Do you have any idea how rare this is?”

She closed the door behind the departing Dolores, who, along with Cujo, would be housed in a motel in the company of Officer Dana Burke until the FBI could send an agent to protect her.

“She is one very scared and very angry woman,” Sean told her, “but I think it’s the anger that gave her the strength she needed to do what she had to do. She wants to see him burn in hell.”

“Don’t we all?” Evan said. “Any thoughts on how you’re going to find him?”

“So far, there’s no sign of him. His car was found abandoned in a parking lot behind a bar in Carleton about an hour ago. The police down there have searched the room he was renting, but of course he hasn’t been there. They’re getting ready to put him on the wires, put out an APB—”

“Don’t,” Anne Marie said.

“Don’t what?” asked Sean.

“Don’t put out the APB, not yet.”

“Why not?”

“Because if he thinks everyone in creation is looking for him, he’ll run, and it could take years to find him. Amanda will have to be looking over her shoulder every day of her life until we find him, or he finds her.”

“And Mara, too,” Evan noted.

“Once he’s done what he thinks is his duty—killing Amanda—he’ll most likely turn on my sister soon enough, yes. We need to outsmart him. Make him relax, make him think we’re focused someplace else.”

“Fine, but we have to get him now.” Sean ran a hand through his hair, wondering how they were going to do that. “If he’s ditched the car, he must still be in the area. He hasn’t had time to go too far. My guess is that he’s hiding out someplace close between Carleton and here.”

“Then we’re going to have to smoke him out.” Anne Marie stated the obvious.

“Use the girlfriend, maybe?” Sean wondered aloud.

“He doesn’t care about her.” Anne Marie shook her head. “There’s only one thing that will keep him around. Only one thing that he wants. Only one thing he’ll come out of hiding to get.”

“No.” Evan and Sean both shook their heads simultaneously. “No.”

“Sorry, guys.” Anne Marie looked from Evan to Sean, then back again. “If you want him, you’re going to have to put out the only bait that has a chance to draw him in.”

“No. You are not going to use Amanda. I won’t have it,” Sean said. “We’ll have to come up with something else.”

“I’m with him,” Evan told her.

“Then accept the fact that you will not get him. It’s as simple as that.” Anne Marie stood up. “When you decide you want him badly enough, you’ll know what to do.”

Sean rose to answer a sharp rap on the door. He opened it to find a tall, leggy woman with a mane of black hair that spread over her shoulders and ice blue eyes set in a gorgeous face.

“Sean Mercer?” She flashed white teeth. “I’m Miranda Cahill. Annie invited me to your party.”

Anne Marie grinned. “Sean, I mentioned Special Agent Cahill earlier. She and Vince Giordano are acquainted.”

“Livia Bach and I were in the neighborhood,” Miranda explained as she took a seat across from Sean. “We flipped a coin to see who went where. Livvy won the toss so she’s been sent to guard-dog your witness.” She flashed a megawatt smile. “You lucky blokes got me. Good to see you again, Evan.”

Annie tossed the photos from Connie Paschall’s funeral onto the table. “See anyone you know?” she asked Miranda.

Miranda flipped through the stack. “Ha! My main man, Vince G.” She shook her head slowly as she studied the pictures. “What happened to those fiery red locks of yours, Vince? And those glasses, my, my. But even those new tortoiseshell frames can’t hide those cold dead eyes. . . .”

She looked through the other photos of Derek, Marian, and Connie.

“This all his work?” Miranda folded the photos together, as neatly as a deck of cards.

Sean nodded. “We believe it is.”

“All right, then.” She handed the stack to Sean. “What’s the plan?”

Anne Marie brought Miranda up to date on the theories that had been tossed around and the discussion they’d been having on where to go from here.

“
Strangers on a Train,
eh?” Miranda sat back in her chair and ran the concept through her mind. “I can see that. And actually, it’s the only thing that makes any sense. It would explain why Channing went after the judge and Vince’s mother-in-law, why he was trying so hard to get to Mara. And then we have Vince going after people who had pissed off Lowell. So do we have three players, not two? Channing, Giordano, and Lowell?”

“It looks that way, doesn’t it? But we haven’t been able to figure out when and where they would have been alone together to have worked this out,” Sean pointed out.

“Maybe we never will. I think the important thing right now is getting our hands on Vince.” Miranda glanced at Evan. “Before he gets his hands on your sister. And guys, I hate to say it, but Annie is right on. The only way you are going to get this creep to crawl out from the rock he’s hiding under is if he thinks he’s going to get Amanda.”

“I don’t like this.” Sean shook his head. “I don’t like the idea of putting Amanda in harm’s way.”

Miranda studied his face, knew there was more there than a cop being worried about a potential victim.

She put her hand on Sean’s arm. “We can do this in a way that appears that we’re putting her out there, but of course she won’t be alone for a minute.”

“Won’t he figure that out?” Evan asked the obvious.

“Not if we do this right,” she told him.

“Maybe Amanda should be part of this conversation, then,” Sean suggested. “If we’re going to be using her as bait, she should at least have a say in this.”

“I agree. Can we get her over here?” Anne Marie asked.

“I am not happy about this,” Evan muttered.

“Neither am I.” Sean’s fingers played with a corner of the folder. “But I have to reluctantly agree with Anne Marie and Miranda. Unless we can come up with another way to get him to come to us, I don’t think we have a choice. We’re either going to get him now, or he’s going to slip between our fingers. As much as I don’t like the thought of him coming near Amanda, I like even less the thought of her living with that threat of him in the back of her mind. If we come up with a plan that’s doable, and Amanda agrees to it, I say we go with it.”

“Okay, then. We all agree.” Miranda looked around the table. “Any ideas on exactly how we’re going to do this?”

“How about this?” Sean was the first to speak up. “We get Bob Benson—he’s the chief down in Carleton—to make a big deal out of having a suspect in the Connie Paschall murder. But he’ll refer to him as Vinnie Daniels, not Vince Giordano, and say that he’s a suspect in Derek England’s murder as well, since the same gun was used. He’d expect us to figure that out. Anyone who watches enough cop shows on TV knows that bullets can be matched through a national database. We’ll have a police sketch done, maybe one that only looks vaguely like him, so that maybe he feels a little more confident. We’ll say he’s been traced to another area—”

“Say the FBI has tracked him to New York or some damned place,” Miranda suggested. “He’ll expect us to be in on this.”

“Won’t he wonder why we don’t know who he really is? He has to know there are fingerprints on file that will match with prints from his room and from Dolores’s house,” Anne Marie said.

“I think he’s going to wait to see if that connection is made, and when it isn’t, he’s going to think that proves he’s smarter than some small-town police department,” Sean told them.

“He’s not that stupid.” Evan shook his head.

Anne Marie smiled. “But I think he is that arrogant.”

“You might be right about that, Anne Marie.” Sean sat back in his seat. “I handled my first homicide investigation when I was in West Virginia. A chimney sweep had murdered and robbed several of his customers. A veteran detective told me to give him a few days and we’d find him walking down a main street in broad daylight, because he really fancied himself to be so much smarter than the police that he thought they’d never catch him even if he was right under their nose.”

“And of course he was picked up on a main street in broad daylight?” Evan asked.

“Sunday afternoon, strolling along through the town park. He was totally shocked when he was taken down.”

“So maybe Giordano will believe that we’re too stupid to figure out that he and Vinnie Daniels are the same person. Or at the very least that we haven’t figured it out yet. I’m sure he thinks that eventually someone will make the connection,” Miranda said.

“So we have to move fast, as fast as we think he’s going to move.” Sean contemplated the options. “How about this? We let Amanda move back into the house. Make it look as if she’s alone . . .”

“But of course she won’t be.” Miranda nodded.

“Right. Now, he’s been looking for her. He knows she hasn’t been around. So it follows that he’s going to be watching her house, waiting for her to come back. So we’ll put her car right out there in the drive, we’ll turn a lot of lights on. We’ll have her coming and going in and out of the house . . .”

“So that if he is watching, he’s going to be seeing a lot of her. He’ll see her moving about the house at night. He won’t be able to resist going for her,” Anne Marie noted thoughtfully.

“How long do you think it’ll take before he makes his move?” Evan asked.

“If he’s watching her? No more than seventy-two hours,” Anne Marie stated. “Maybe he’ll only watch that first day, see what’s going on. He’s going to want to make sure no one is there with her and that the surveillance has been terminated. Miranda, you’re going to have to be way under the radar, and Sean, we’ll have to figure out how to get you in and out without being seen. Amanda’s going to have to make it obvious that she’s gone back to her old routine. My guess is he’ll come after her on the third night. Definitely no later than the fourth,” Anne Marie said.

“You’re the expert on behavior,” Evan said. “I hope he behaves the way you think he will.”

“He will. This guy has a huge ego. He’s going to believe that he has beaten you because he just
knows
he’s smarter than you are. He’s going to believe that you are convinced that he’s left town, because that is what your common criminal would do. But a smart guy like Vince, well, he’s not going to do what the average guy would do, which is to continue to lay low. Uh-uh. He won’t be able to resist going after her in her own home. That’s going to appeal to him big-time. Like all the surveillance hasn’t meant a damned thing—he can do what he wants with her. With the spotlight supposedly off him, he’ll think he’s outsmarted you again.”

“Maybe we should let him see her move back in, but have a clear police presence around for a day or two,” Miranda suggested. “You know, a cruiser in the driveway twenty-four/seven for the first thirty-six hours or so.”

“To frustrate him.” Annie nodded. “I like it. We flaunt her, make him itchy to get her.”

“Then we pull the cars and the obvious surveillance . . .”

“And once he thinks no one is watching her anymore, he’s not going to be able to wait any longer. He’ll think she’s a sitting duck.”

“Except this little ducky will have a few surprises under its little wing.” Miranda grinned.

Annie rolled her eyes and laughed.

“When do we start?” Sean asked, not in the mood for jokes.

“No time like the present,” Miranda told him. “We start first thing in the morning.”

“You know, I just thought of something.” Anne Marie’s eyebrows knit together. “If Channing’s victims were all people who had pissed off Giordano, and Giordano’s victims have all had some connection to Lowell . . .”

She seemed to wrestle with a thought for a moment, before asking, “Doesn’t it follow that once he’s out of prison, Lowell is going to be going after someone connected to Curt Channing?”

The thought surged around them like a sudden gust of wind. Finally, Sean stacked his papers and stood up. “One step at a time. Let’s get Vince Giordano first, then we’ll worry about what Archer Lowell might be up to.”

At two the following afternoon, Chief Robert Benson called a press conference, at which time he announced that they had identified one Vinnie Daniels as the killer of Connie Paschall. Further, he continued, the bullet used to kill Paschall was fired from the same gun used in the shooting of a Broeder antiques dealer. He displayed a hastily sketched drawing of the dark-haired Vinnie Daniels, then mentioned that the FBI had already tracked Daniels into upstate New York. It was believed that the suspect was heading toward Canada.

Vince laughed out loud and turned up the volume on the television in the living room of the late Derek England. He wasn’t sure where Derek’s friend Clark was, but it hardly mattered. Vince wasn’t worried about him. He knew he could take him blindfolded and with one arm tied behind his back. He knew it could be risky, coming back to Broeder so soon, but he couldn’t think of anyplace else to go. When he left for good, he didn’t want to leave any unfinished business behind him, and that meant Amanda Crosby.

Damn, but it would annoy the hell out of him if he wasn’t able to finish his task, as he now thought of it. Curtis had left a loose thread—he hadn’t managed to take out Mara Douglas—but that was okay. Vince didn’t hold it against Curtis, didn’t see it as a failure on Curt’s part. After all, he had rid the world of Vince’s pain in the ass ex-mother-in-law and that bitch judge, hadn’t he? Curtis had done just fine, and Vince would get Mara himself, sooner or later. He wasn’t in any big hurry.

But he did want to take care of this last bit of business. He would do so with pleasure.

This one wasn’t going to be a quickie with the old gun to the head. And it wasn’t going to be a quick slash and slice, either.

He was going to savor his date with Amanda. She was young and beautiful and would put up one hell of a fight.

He liked a little fight in his women.

All along, he’d figured his best bet was taking her in her own home. He’d studied the house, knew how to get in and out without being seen, knew which of the stairs squeaked and how many steps there were between the top of the stairs and her bed. He’d had that all figured out. He knew just what he wanted to do to Amanda, and all along, he’d been determined to do it in her own bed.