Carved in Darkness (38 page)

Tom hesitated, looked down at Carson then back at him. He nodded.

“Good.” He looked back down at the man under his boot. “Got a corkscrew in that kitchen?”

“Yeah. Got a few.”

He smiled. “Fabulous. Go get ’em.” He stepped harder on Carson’s shoulder. “I’m also gonna need an ice pick, a paring knife, and something that’ll separate joints.”

“Got a cleaver,” Tom said.

Michael smiled down at the man beneath his boot. “That’ll work.”

Carson started to jerk around like he was in the middle of a full-blown seizure. “No, no—don’t. I’m telling you the truth. I didn’t kill Frankie, I swear to God,” he said, frantically bouncing a look of sheer terror between him and Tom. “I loved Melissa. I couldn’t have hurt her. I’d have died for her.”

Michael looked down and didn’t like what he saw. A man telling the truth.

“Where’s Sabrina?”

“Okay … okay.” Carson swallowed hard. “Last I saw, she was hauling ass out of the parking lot at Charlie’s. I called her this morning to ask her if she wanted to sit in on Lucy’s autopsy. We hadn’t been there five minutes before she got a call and left,” he said, shaking his head. “Haven’t seen or heard from her since, I swear.”

“That was a call from her partner, telling her the car that dumped her murder victim in San Francisco was a match to one owned by Pete Conners,” he said.

“Pete Conners?”

“Yeah. Wade told her this morning he wrote Pete a ticket, driving a car that
—
surprise, surprise—matches the car involved in Billy Bauer’s murder.” He shook his head. “Only trouble is, no one’s seen or heard from Pete Conners in nearly twenty years.”

“That can’t be right.” Carson said, dividing a confused look between him and Tom. “Are you sure?”

Something cold rattled down his spine. He used his boot to put pressure on Carson’s wound. “What do you mean?”

Carson yelped. “Conners is dead. Melissa killed him. He tried to rape her—she nearly took his head off with a bat. Afterward she showed up at the station, looking for Billy, freaking out. He took care of everything, covered it all up.”

“Who told you that?”

“Billy—Billy did. Right before Wade and I helped him bury the body.”

SEVENTY
-
SEVEN

“
H
OLD TIGHT MISS,
I
’M
coming,” he said, circling his way around the front of the car. The sound of his work boots made a scuffling sound as he hurried through the dirt. Sabrina could hear him testing doors, could feel the jerk of him pulling on the handles. “Doors are locked. I have to break the window,” he said.

Seconds later she heard the shattering of glass. A moment later the trunk popped open, the blinding light of day reaching through the crack to stab her eyes. A wave of nausea, brought on by the light, hit her but passed quickly.

The trunk opened, revealing the shape of her savior, his features thrown into deep shadows by the sun that sat high in the sky behind him. “Inspector Vaughn?” he said incredulously, staring down at her for a moment as if he couldn’t quite grasp what he was seeing.

“Last time I checked,” she said, her hands shielding her narrowed eyes. She pulled herself into a sitting position, the sudden movement causing the dregs of the narcotics she’d been hit with to take a drunken spin through her system. She swung her legs over the edge of the trunk despite the roll of her gut and closed her eyes for a moment. Something slipped through the tape around her wrists, cutting her free. “Thanks. Where are we?” she said, pulling the rest of the tape off and dropped it into the trunk.

Looking around, she noted the dense line of trees that hemmed them in on three sides. A rundown cabin stood at her back. He’d left her in the trunk, not expecting her system to fight off the effects of the drugs so quickly.

But he’d be back.

“Not sure really. Private land, looks like someone’s hunting cabin. Did you see who put you in the trunk?” he said, his face taking a wary cast as he scanned the trees and cabin for potential threats.

“Pete Conners … I think. What’re you doing here?” she said, scoping the area for clues as to where she was and who’d brought her here.

“Got a call from a trooper on the BOLO we put out on Lucy’s car. Said he saw it taking a rural turn-off on I-80. I was in the area, so I told him I’d come check it out.” He looked down. “This is it. This is Lucy’s car.”

She wasn’t surprised. It was probably under the tarp in Kelly’s garage. She looked at him. “Wait, we’re in Texas?” she said. His eyes narrowed on her face, a wary kind of concern crawled along his features.

“What the hell is going on here, Inspector?” he said, his eyes darting around the clearing.

“We need to get out of here,
now.
” She pushed herself away from the car. The sudden movement was like a blow to the back of her knees, and they buckled slightly. She threw out a hand to steady herself and he caught it, holding her up.

“You don’t look so good. Do you need some water? Here—” He reached past her and into the trunk to pull out the water. “Drink this. You look like you could use it.” He tried to press the bottle in to her hand.

She pushed it away. “No, I’m not drinking that. He drugged it.”

“What?” He looked down at the container in his hand. “How do you know?”

“I just do … look, I don’t need water. I need a cell phone, a gun, and a ride into town.” She stood with care, bracing her hand on the rear fender of the car to steady herself.

“The battery on my cell is dead, and this is the only piece I carry,” he said, dropping his hand to the butt of a 9mm. “But I can give you a lift back to town. You want to check the cabin for a phone before we head out?” He moved toward the squat log structure even before she answered, leaving her little choice but to follow him.

He walked a few steps ahead of her, his gait sure and confident, his hand resting on the butt of his gun, the holster snap thumbed open to ensure an easy draw in case they ran into trouble. Another gust of wind swept through the clearing, kicked up dust, blew it into her eyes.

She stopped in her tracks. “Shit.” She reached up to shield her face from the assault. After years of wearing them, it took her only a second to realize, as she was rubbing her eyes, that there was no synthetic slide of plastic against her eyes. Her colored contacts were gone.

He had seen her. Stood no more than a few feet from her. Looked into her eyes while he talked to her. He was a cop. A trained observer. He had to have noticed the sudden color change—but he’d said nothing, displayed no reaction whatsoever. Her heart stalled in her chest, her hands dropped away from her face, her discomfort forgotten.

“Wade.”

She said his name quietly, but it was enough to stall his stride. He turned to look at her and she felt the rolling nausea that’d been plaguing her swell inside her gut, but this feeling had nothing to do with the drugs. This had everything to do with the way he looked at her. Head cocked in a predatory tilt, a slight half-smile lifting the corner of his mouth.

She could see just how easily he’d fooled them all.

He closed his eyes for a moment, dragged a deep breath into his lungs, and let it out on a sigh.

“Finally.”

SEVENTY
-
EIGHT

M
ICHAEL LOOKED UP AT
Tom. “Go get Ben—the kid. Go get the kid.” Tom took off for the back.

Carson had lost a lot of blood. A Band-Aid and a lollipop wasn’t gonna cut it. “Did you and Wade go to Caddo?” he said.

Carson hesitated, looked like he was going to hold on to the lie. Michael shook his head, applied pressure with his foot. “Lying? Not a good idea right now. Did you and Wade go to Caddo?”

Carson groaned and shook his head. “I went but not Wade. He’s got a side-piece in Shreveport. He sees her every few weeks or so.”

“What’s up?”

He looked up to see Ben coming at him. “I need a field dressing.”

“So much for playing nice,” he said and hurried back into the kitchen.

Michael lifted his foot to check the wound. The towel was completely saturated. He reapplied pressure. “Where’s Wade now?”

“Out on an early call—trespassing. He was still gone when I got back to the station. He radioed in, told Zeke he caught a call from a trooper that said he spotted Lucy’s car on I-80, so he was going to check it out.”

He stopped, thought about what was logical. If Wade had Sabrina, he’d need somewhere to keep her. Somewhere secluded. “Wade has a place—somewhere he goes to be alone. Where is it?”

“What? No—no. You think Wade killed … no. No way.” Carson shook his head, tried to sit up.

“Think about it.” He felt the pieces fall into place, could actually hear them click together. “You told Sabrina that you found Melissa in Yuma. Who did you tell?” he said, and Carson started to shake his head again. “Look, no way you kept that to yourself. That’s something you’d tell a best friend. Something you’d tell her brother.”

Carson went still—his face pale as much from blood loss as it was from the blow the truth dealt him. “Oh God … ”

“Who told you Melissa was missing? How’d you find out?”

“I … Wade. I was back at college in California. He called, told me she was missing … Lucy’d come to his dad and told him she hadn’t called in weeks.” Carson blinked slowly, his words began to slur and drift.

Where the fuck was Ben?

Carson opened his eyes. “I came home for Christmas break—that was when they found her … I never went back. I stayed here … for her.”

Just then, Ben brushed past him with a stack of clean towels and roll of plastic wrap. He uncuffed Carson and used his tactical knife to cut his shirt off at the shoulder. Ben examined the wound, looked up at him. “He needs a hospital. This’ll slow it down, but he’s in pretty bad shape.”

“I know—just do what you can.”

Ben padded his shoulder with the towels and used the plastic wrap to bind them tightly to the wound. Finished, he clapped Carson on his wounded shoulder. “How’s that feel, Mayberry?”

“Fuck you.” Carson looked up at him. “Is it her? Is she Melissa? Please, just tell me … ”

“Yes.” He had to force the word out and had a hard time looking Carson in the eye when he did it. He could feel Tom behind him, knew he’d heard. “Yes, it’s her.”

Carson closed his eyes. He’d thought he finally passed out, but then he opened them, looked up at him. “A hunting cabin—used to be his dad’s. Billy used to take us there when we were kids … fifty miles north of here. If he has her, that’s where he took her.”

SEVENTY
-
NINE

S
ABRINA’S EYES DARTED AROUND,
looking for an exit. There was none. She looked at the cabin behind him, knew without a doubt that if he managed to get her into it, she would never get out. The 9mm on Wade’s hip promised that her chances of running for it were slim.

“Look at me, Melissa,” he said, and suddenly it was a voice she recognized, one that haunted her nightmares. “Look. At. Me,” he said again. He lifted his gun from its holster, pointing the muzzle downward, but the implication was clear. She looked up, found his face, unable to comprehend what she was seeing—stubbornly refused to believe it. It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be him—not him.

Anyone but him.

“You’re my—” She gagged on the last word. It snagged on her tongue and refused to leave her mouth.

“Brother,” he said with a shrug. “That’s what makes us perfect for each other.”

She needed time to think—would need to stall him for it. “My mother?”

He laughed. “I’d been a regular of hers since I was fifteen. Pretty sure she enjoyed the irony of it all.”

“You killed her.”

He cocked his head to the side and winced. “She no longer served a purpose—so, yeah.”

“And our—Billy … ”

“Well, now—ol’ daddy-o didn’t leave me much choice. He caught me with a Waffle House waitress from Texarkana in my trunk.” His smile broadened. “But you … you killed Pete all by yourself.”

That night was a blur, one she tried not to think of. “He’s really dead? Kelly said—”

“Kelly said and did whatever I told her to. A bit of misdirection to keep you guessing. Couldn’t have you figuring it out before I was ready. Pete’s been dead since you pulled a Barry Bonds and cracked his egg with that bat of yours. Jed, Dad, and me, we buried him in these woods—was supposed to bury the bat too, but I kept it. I’m sentimental that way.”

“You used it to kill Sanford.” She thought of Sanford—his crushed face, covered in blood.
Time.
She needed more time.

He shook his head. “No. I’m pretty sure it was all the stabbing that killed him.” He took another step closer, but not close enough for her to go on the attack without catching a bullet for her trouble. Her gaze drifted to the gun in his hand.