Particles of Murder (A Shadow of Death Romantic Suspense Series Book 1) (17 page)

* * *

A
ndre said
that he would call me as soon as his network of people could either trace Alex’s phone or he contacted somebody to help him with something illegal—a passport, murder, a distraction for the police. John returned to his house while I’m back in my apartment, dwelling on a thousand unnecessary thoughts.

I should call the police.

But what if Alex isn’t the killer?

Then why would he run away from me?

I should be kinder to Andre.

But he took my trust and crushed it without flinching.

I should be kinder to John.

But he’s still a suspect and he takes people’s lives to turn them into stories.

My thoughts are becoming so jumbled. John recommended I write things down. He said it would help the hurt—I wonder if it will help the confusion, too. I decide that I need to write down the jumbled thoughts, but as soon as I sit down at my recliner, grab a pen and pad of paper, the thoughts all scatter. There’s nothing in my head.

I need to start at the beginning.

“Trust me.”

Those were the words the man used when he took my sister. I remember his lips forming the words—the way his lips pinched together at the beginning of the sentence and snapped together at the end. His mouth was a trap—I fell for the trick, but it was my sister who was ensnared.

For some reason, she left behind the plastic pearl bracelet she always wore.

My mother came out of the house a few minutes later. She had thought my sister and I had been playing hide and seek and I had simply given up. As soon as I told her the truth, she became hysterical. Her anxiety was so high that I remember it felt like it was rattling in my bones. I still feel her anxiety today. She kept bombarding me with questions, but I didn’t have any answers. I hadn’t been paying attention when the man talked to me, and all I could tell her was that he had brown hair and a square-ish face. Her confusion, pain, and fear seemed to cloud my memory and, twenty years later, I still can’t remember much of that man’s face.

This is when I tell you about a daring rescue—SWAT teams rushing into some man’s house, one of them finding my sister locked in a room and cradling her against his chest, the man crying as he’s arrested and sentenced to life in prison, and, me, twenty years later, pursuing a career in criminal justice in honor of those brave people who found my sister.

But that’s not what happened.

Nearly everyone in town and some people from neighboring towns searched for my sister. Houses were searched, woods were combed, all kinds of dogs put their noses to the ground and scrambled to find her. The first few days, there was an energy in the air that demanded that the universe give my sister back to my parents. By the end of the week, that demand turned to a plea. In the second week, grief began to seep into everyone and many people in town returned to their lives. I didn’t recognize it at the time, but I know now that there were unsaid words by them: she’s gone. There’s no way somebody kidnapped her and she’s still alive. I was certain everyone blamed me, no matter how many people told me it wasn’t my fault. I kept my little brother’s hand in my grasp at all times. I lost Sonia, but I wasn’t going to lose Liam.

By the third week, the police were dodging my parents’ phone calls. They told them that they were investigating, but there had been other cases we knew they were focusing on because it was all over the news. On the twentieth day since my sister disappeared, one of the detectives told my parents that the case would remain open, but they could no longer use all their resources finding a girl they hadn’t been able to find for three weeks.

My sister’s body was found a week later. She had been dead for about four days. She had been killed—smothered to death—three days after the police officially gave up on finding her.

That’s why I went into criminal justice and why I pick apart details to find every little fact. I can’t just accept death and move on. I can’t pretend that lives aren’t dangling by a thin string and a second could be the difference between whether a victim lives or dies.

I set my pen down and close my eyes, relaxing against the recliner. It’s been a long day, but as soon as Andre calls, I’ll need to be ready to go to wherever Alex is. I’ll need to be ready, but right now I need to sleep.

* * *

M
y cell phone
rings so loudly that it wakes me up. I scramble to get it, my vision too blurry to even see the number as I answer.

“Hello?” I mumble.

“Is this Mira Solano?” a timid woman’s voice asks.

“Yes…” I say. “I’m really not interested in buying anything, so—”

“I’m calling from Tuskmirth Hospital,” she says. “There’s been…there’s been an incident.”

I sit up, rubbing my eyes. “Is it John Zimmer?”

“Um, no,” she says. “Look, I’m really sorry, but we don’t know what happened. A neighbor saw the door wide open and they walked right in—”

“What neighbor?” I ask. “Who’s at the hospital?”

“He had you as his emergency contact on his phone,” she says. “His name was Andre Fortier.”

It feels like oxygen is no longer reaching my lungs. “Was?”

“His heart was barely beating when they put him in the ambulance. There was nothing…we tried everything,” she says. “We’re only supposed to call the next of kin, but Mr. Fortier didn’t seem to have any, so I searched through his phone and you were listed as an emergency contact. I had to inform somebody. You did know him, right?”

“Y-yes,” I say, finally taking in a breath. “I knew him. You said he was in an apartment, but his apartment is here in the city. Why was he taken to Tuskmirth Hospital?”

“He was found in an apartment here,” she says. “I’m sorry. I assumed it was his apartment. I don’t know. I’m sorry. I truly am. The police may know more.”

“Thank you,” I murmur. How am I going to go to the police when Detective Stolz is mad at me for not only getting involved with this Tuskmirth College case, but the Blackman case? Andre was her informant. “Thank you so much for calling me. I know you aren’t supposed to, but I’m really…it was the right thing to do.”

“Of course,” she says. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you,” I repeat. “Have a good day.”

“You too,” she murmurs.

I hang up. A second later, my phone begins to ring again. I glance at it. It’s Detective Stolz. If she’s calling to yell at me because she knows I got Andre involved with this case, I’m going to have to find her and hit her.

“Hello?” I answer, the word coming out like a wisp.

“I’m guessing from the tone of your voice that you’ve heard,” she says. “I’m sorry.”

I pause. “Really? You’re sorry? I thought you would have been angry about me involving other people into cases I’m not supposed to be involved in.”

“Well, we can’t be sure that’s why he died since—as far as we know—nobody saw him die,” she says. “But it does seem that way. But look, I know you think I’m a cold hard bitch, but I’m just trying to do what’s best for everyone. And I know you had some real, genuine…you loved Andre, in your weird, rule-breaking way. I understand that and I respect that. I just wanted to tell you and to give you my condolences.”

I sit up, the drive to know what happened taking over. “Where was he killed?”

“Well, this apartment was rented out by a Mr. Alex Shirokov,” she says. “Who is a student at Tuskmirth College.”

“Yes,” I say. “I’ve met him and we both suspected him. Andre must have figured out where he went and went after him alone. Wait, Alex lived in the frat house. Why would he have his own apartment?”

“It looks like Mr. Shirokov had a girlfriend who came here too,” she says. “So, maybe he didn’t want to be around his buddies while he was romancing her. Or maybe this is where he concocted evil plans. I don’t know, but from the way this apartment looks, it was a place for sex. The bed has silk red sheets and the drapes are dark red.”

“You need to find Alex.”

“Mira, sweetie, I know you’re really motivated to get this guy now, but I know how to do my job,” she says.

“Apparently not,” I snap. “Because I started looking into this guy before he killed someone in his apartment and you haven’t found jack shit. By the way, the victims have been poisoned with a version of aconite and Alex happens to know his chemistry.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” she asks.

“Because you wouldn’t have listened to me! You never do!”

“I would have listened to your information and had it checked out for a murder case,” she says. “Jesus Christ, Mira. If we had known this earlier, we could have tracked him down faster than Andre did. We could have gotten to him and none of this would have happened.”

“Are you blaming me for Andre’s death?”

“No,” she says. “No. Absolutely not—it’s only the murderer’s fault. I’m just saying that you need to try to be a team player.”

“Considering I don’t have a job, I don’t need to do anything.” I hang up. As I’m ready to chuck my phone, I notice there’s a text that I hadn’t seen before since my screen had only ever shown that people were calling me. I don’t recognize the number. I open up the text.

3
47-879-7006
: We need to talk.

347-879-7006: I’m not the killer.

347-879-7006: I might know who is, but I need to know if I can trust you.

I
t has to be Alex
. Nobody else would be insisting they’re not the killer like this.

M
e
: You can trust me.

3
47-879-7006
: Your case may be compromised. You’re the only one I trust.

347-879-7006: I could see how much you cared about the victims.

347-879-7006: Come see me at Freewren Park. It’s a public place, nobody can get hurt.

T
hree of the
victims have died in public places, but this may be my one chance to catch Alex and bring him in. If he’s telling the truth and he’s not the killer, it will still be good to coax him to the police station.

Besides, I have some questions about why Andre died in Alex’s apartment, and I won’t be able to get anything out of him if the police are around.

Who needs to be a team player when everyone around me is always dying?

* * *

I
open
up my notebook again, because the feel of my pen moving across the page is about the only thing that can keep me grounded. Andre, Andre. His name is spoken with every beat of my heart.

I begin to write.

The Blackman case.

Tom Blackman had his fingers in every profitable street on the Bronx. The Blackman family and their organization mostly sold drugs all over the city, but they were willing to commit any crime as long as they were paid well for it. There were plenty of headlines concerning the “Blackman Black Market” and the little faith people had in the police was quickly dwindling. He had no problem getting his hands dirty, but any time the police could get a witness, they backed down or disappeared. It was nightmare case after nightmare case until one of their more prominent drug dealers was caught on camera beating an undercover cop. That drug dealer was Andre Fortier.

While Andre was striking a deal with the police to find concrete evidence against Tom Blackman in exchange for forgetting that they had footage of him attacking a policeman, I was showing him how luminol could be used to find blood on any possible weapons, explaining how rifled barrels leave striation marks on bullets, and anything else I could think of to keep him close to me. I knew his history, I knew he was bad news—I’m not even the type to fall for bad boys—but he always seemed genuinely interested in everything I said and when he looked at me, I felt like someone was truly seeing me for the first time. I thought it was love. I was twenty-three when we first met, and hopelessly naive.

One night as I was leaving a crime scene, I was attacked by this guy who seemed to be trying to rape me. Andre came by and saved me. I had to stop him from beating that man, too, and the man ran away. I would later find out that this whole scenario was concocted by Andre to get me to trust him, and it worked. Any doubts I had about falling for him quickly began to disappear. I was terribly stupid, but also terribly hungry for love.