Ruthless (23 page)

The second of two offices and the larger warehouse fronted by the much smaller retail space were clear. The blare of sirens sounded closer as she returned to the office where the old man had ended his life. A .38 lay on the floor next to his chair where it had fallen after he’d fired that single shot. Blood and brain matter had sprayed over the wall and blinds of the window behind his desk.

“Maybe Coleman was onto something,” Jess said to herself. Behind her Mitchell gagged.

She whipped around to order him out of the room but he was already rushing away, hand over his mouth, jaws bulging.

Once backup was on the scene and the area was secured, Jess escorted the younger Atkins to the picnic table at the rear of the building. She sent the officer around to see about his partner Mitchell. There were official vehicles everywhere. Evidence techs had arrived. Someone from the coroner’s office was en route. It was a cluster.

“Mr. Atkins, I’m going to have Detective Wells here read you your rights.”

He blinked as if he wasn’t sure what was happening. He’d figured out his father was dead before Jess could relay the bad news.

“It’s standard procedure,” she assured him. “We don’t want to violate your rights in any way.”

He nodded and then listened as Lori recited those rights.

When he indicated that he understood, Jess asked, “Would you like an attorney, sir?”

“No. I don’t need one.”

Jess sat down on the opposite side of the timeworn picnic table. “Sir, we came here this morning to talk to your father about—”

“I know why you’re here,” he said, defeat in his voice. “That’s why he did this. He knew why you were here, too.” Atkins shook his head. “It shouldn’t have ended this way. I told him we’d get a good lawyer, but I guess he figured there was no point.”

Surprise and anticipation sending her heart into a faster rhythm, Jess looked to Lori, who appeared just as startled as she was. “Sir, why do you believe we’re here?”

“He made a mistake,” Atkins fairly shouted. “He was a good man.” His voice fell with the last.

More of that heady anticipation pounded in Jess’s veins. She couldn’t put words in his mouth but she needed him to get to the point. “What kind of mistake did he make, Mr. Atkins?”

“It was a long time ago. Thirty years…”

Her heart all but stopped beating. Jesus Christ… could BPD have overlooked this lead all those years ago and missed the Man in the Moon? Not that she could fault anyone—hell, she’d overlooked it, too, until Gina Coleman brought it up. The distance these guys were working from the actual crime scenes had made them irrelevant.

“He underwired that whole subdivision.” Atkins dropped his head. “It was the only way to keep costs down. He and his brothers were just starting out and they were desperate. My father never did anything like that again. I swear.” He stared at Jess, his eyes pleading with her to believe
him. “It was his one mistake in a lifetime of hard work. He had no idea that everything would turn around right after that and business would take off. But it was too late to fix what was done and no one was ever the wiser. Then the fire happened.”

“Fire?” Jess prompted. Clearly he wasn’t talking about missing children.

“Two months ago there was a fire in that subdivision. An elderly couple died. Dad got the call yesterday that our company and the work he did there was being investigated.”

“You feel he believed we were here to arrest him?” Oh hell. This had nothing to do with her case.

“What else would he think?” He dropped his head into his hands and started to sob. “I should’ve seen this coming.”

Jess didn’t bother questioning him further. The dead man inside wasn’t involved with the Man in the Moon case. She left the younger Mr. Atkins be and joined Lori a few feet away. “Contact someone for him, please. Wife, someone.”

“Will do.” Lori reached for her cell.

Jess needed to walk off some of this frustration. She should have eaten this morning; she felt weak and shaky. The dead, no matter their condition, rarely did that to her. Maybe she’d go around and sit for a minute in the Mustang.

The puker, Mitchell, was in the BPD cruiser, head down in shame. Poor guy.

Her cell clanged. Probably Dan checking to see if she was okay. Sure hadn’t taken long for him to hear about this. One of the uniforms had likely reported to him immediately.

Not Dan.
Harper.

If he was calling to tell her about Corlew he was a little late.

“What’s up?”

“Ma’am, I just got a call from dispatch. We have a missing child, eight-year-old female. Cook and I are en route to the residence now.”

The bottom dropped out of her stomach and she swayed. “Where?” Just uttering that solitary word seemed to shred her throat as if she’d swallowed glass.

Harper provided a Hoover address.

“We’re on our way, Sergeant.” She dropped her phone in her bag and turned to the officer waiting near the cruiser and Mitchell. “Officer Woodson, let Detective Wells know we have a call.” He stared at Jess as if he didn’t understand. “We have to go. Tell her I’m waiting in the car.”

He nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

She watched him rush around the corner of the building. To be that young again. God, she felt old today.

A horn blew and she jumped. She surveyed the street. No traffic on the street. She scanned the official vehicles gathered in front of the crime scene. Who had blown the horn? Confused, she checked both directions again, then assessed the parking lot across the four-lane street.

A single vehicle sat there. The man inside waved at her.

“What the…?”

Black.
Infiniti.

“Son of a bitch.” Fury whipped through Jess.

She withdrew her weapon where he could see it and started walking his way. At the last second she remembered to check the street to her left for traffic. Clear.

The driver with his dark hair and sunglasses just sat there, revving the engine, daring her to either shoot or to get in his face and demand answers.

“You’re pretty cocky sitting all the way over there, aren’t you?”

He grinned, pointed his forefinger at her and pretended to shoot.

Outrage blasted her again. “Mother fu—”

A horn blew. The wind from a passing panel truck almost knocked her off her feet.

She stumbled back. Another horn blasted… this one behind her.

“Shit.” She dragged in a breath and blinked. She turned her attention back to the parking lot and the Infiniti was gone.

Standing there in the middle of the traffic that seemed to have come out of nowhere, Jess struggled to catch her breath. What the hell had she been thinking? The guy had baited her and she’d been so fixated on getting to him that she’d almost gotten herself killed.

Carefully checking all lanes before moving, she hurried across the street and into the lot where he’d been parked.

He was long gone.

“How in the world?” He’d disappeared in scarcely more than a blink.

The alley. Beyond the hardware store on this side of the street was an alley just like the one behind the Atkins Electric shop. He’d escaped that way.

Jess turned around to see Lori waiting on the other side of the street.

Oh hell. “This is not going to go well.”

Paying extra close attention this time, Jess crossed the street once more.

She couldn’t recall having seen Lori angry—at least not at her. At the moment she looked beyond furious.

“That truck almost hit you,” she bellowed. “What the hell were you doing?”

“He was there.” Jess exhaled a big breath. “The guy who left the flowers. The one who took a bead on me that day on the exit ramp. It was him. He’s following me. Taunting me.”

“Let’s go. Harper’s waiting.” Lori stormed over to her Mustang but not before giving the poor guy Jess had sent to get her the evil eye and warning, “See what happens when you take your eyes off her?”

Feeling like a total idiot, Jess climbed into the Mustang.

“I was wrong to go off half-cocked like that,” she admitted. She had no explanation, at least not one she wanted to own, for why her brain had gone completely AWOL. “I got angry and then I got stupid.”

“You did,” Lori agreed as she pointed the Mustang toward Hoover.

Silence lingered, and whether it was the idea of her irrational behavior or the reality that Lori had witnessed it, Jess suddenly wanted to cry. The guy in the Infiniti had accomplished exactly what he’d set out to do. What Spears had told him to do. She’d fallen for his baiting hook, line, and sinker. With no regard for her safety or anyone else’s. Her hand went to her belly. God, she felt so stupid and frustrated and tired.

“Just don’t do it again.” Lori sent her a look that promised there would be serious consequences if she did.

Jess blinked at the ridiculous tears stinging her eyes. “Yes, ma’am.”

In a few days, when this case was solved and her period had shown up, they would have a woman-to-woman talk about why she’d allowed her emotions to get the better of her back there.

First things first, though. She had to find the monster who’d taken yet another little girl. The harvest moon was still weeks away. He’d upped his timeline.

That was never a good sign.

110 Boxwood Drive, Hoover, 10:00 a.m.

T
he neighborhood was an old one, with the houses a little farther apart than the newer, more compact ones builders pushed these days. The woods and a ravine at the rear of the properties separated the homes from the interstate. The constant hum of traffic, all hours of the day and night, was one Jess suspected she would never get used to.

City life came with noise, but there was noise and there was
noise
. Interstate traffic was
noise
.

She sat on the sofa in the modest living room and waited for the mother, Tammy Higginbotham, to compose herself. She’d insisted she was ready to talk to Jess, but then she’d fallen apart as soon as the first question was posed.

This was the part Jess hated most, but she needed to get all she could before shock set in and stole the devastated mother’s ability to recall the little details that might make all the difference. When Tammy lifted her tear-stained face
to Jess and cleared her throat, she attempted a response. “I kissed her good night about eight thirty.” She made a keening sound that sliced right through Jess’s heart. “Her daddy had already read her a bedtime story.” She tried to smile but failed. “We do that every night.”

The husband, Norris, hugged his wife closer.

“Janey has never walked in her sleep or sneaked outside to play after the two of you went to bed?” Kids did that sometimes. Jess and Lil used to do it all the time—the sneaking-out part. It was a miracle either one of them survived childhood.

Norris shook his head, his own face red and puffy from the tears he’d shed. “Not Janey. No sleepwalking. Not that we ever knew about, anyway. She’s afraid of the dark. Going outside alone at night? No way.”

“That’s why she wanted a puppy,” Tammy said. “She doesn’t like sleeping alone. Since her sister died she’s been really terrified of the dark.”

That was another part of this tragic story that tore at Jess’s emotions. This couple had lost an older daughter to cancer just last year. How were they supposed to cope with this, too? If the Man in the Moon had taken their daughter, the chances of finding her were slim to none. No parent should have to go through the loss of a child once, let alone
twice
. Jess steeled her determination. She would find this child, by God.

“Would Janey have opened her window to a stranger?”

“Oh no.” The mother’s tone and expression were adamant. “We talked about stranger danger often. Janey knows better.”

“You’re certain all the windows in your home were down and
locked
last night?” She’d asked this already
and gotten an affirmative, but the window in the child’s room was unlocked and in the raised position. Someone had opened it.

The father nodded firmly. “We haven’t opened the windows since May. Too hot not to run the central air day and night.”