Linda Crowder - Jake and Emma 02 - Main Street Murder (14 page)

In the hallway outside, they heard the elevator chime indicating the car had arrived on Kristy’s floor.  Kristy shook herself and sprang to the door, bolting it shut.  Jake moved the ladies behind him and looked out the peep hole which had a direct view of the elevator.  The doors slid open, then closed again.

Jake turned back toward the women, who were looking at him anxiously.  “There was no one there,” he said.  “Whoever it was must have pushed the third floor and sent the elevator up empty.”

He strode quickly across the room, followed by the three women, and looked down toward the building’s entrance.  A tall man in a baseball cap stood looking up at them.  He raised his arm and pointed his finger at the window as if shooting a gun.  Kristy screamed and fainted. 

Jake pulled out his cell phone and called the police while Emma and Cheri attended to Kristy.  He watched the man stroll leisurely across the street and disappear down a cross street that led to the City’s parking garage.  Jake explained the situation to the dispatcher and was assured an officer was on the way.

He hung up the phone and knelt beside Emma, who had helped Kristy sit up.  He helped her get Kristy off the floor and onto a chair while Cheri went to the kitchen for a glass of water.  Kristy drank it in a daze.

When the police arrived, Detective Joyner followed the uniformed officer into the apartment.  Kristy was still pale but her face had lost that frightening gray tone.  Her eyes still looked haunted as Detective Joyner knelt in front of Kristy’s chair and gently placed a hand on her arm.  “What is it, Ms. Castle?” he asked.  “Who was he?”

“It was Sam,” she said, her voice still harboring a tinge of panic.

“Are you sure?” asked Joyner, frowning.  He’d checked the record himself when he verified her story.  He had read a photocopy of Sam Runyan’s death certificate.

“I know,” she said, looking into his eyes.  Joyner’s heart twisted at the sight of pure terror in those eyes.  “I thought he was dead.  I went to his viewing.  I saw his body.”

Kristy started shaking again and Emma put her arm around Kristy’s shoulder and rocked gently.  Kristy Castle, ever a rock, always the strongest person in the room, started to cry.  She buried her face in Emma’s shoulder and sobbed. 

Joyner and Jake stepped back and Joyner called over the uniformed officer.  “Radio it in,” he told the man.  “Put out a BOLO on Sam Runyan, the picture and description are on my desk.  Then I want you to come back and stand guard in front of this door.  I’ll send reinforcements when I can.”

“Yes sir,” said the officer, who quickly left to speak with the police dispatcher.

Joyner turned to Jake.  “I read that man’s death certificate,” he told him.  “The state of Tennessee thinks he’s dead.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Matt.”  Jake gestured to where Kristy still sat, her tears subsiding now but her distress evident.  “Whoever it was, he certainly frightened Kristy.”

“It was the man I heard at the parade,” said Emma.  She’d left Kristy in Cheri’s hands and joined the two men.  They looked at her now in surprise.  “I recognized his voice on the intercom.”

Joyner looked dubious but Jake sided with Emma.  “You know, now that you mention it Emma, I did think he looked familiar.”  They walked to the window and looked down at where the man had been.  “The camera angle is different, of course,” observed Jake, “but the height is about right.  He did resemble the man in the picture you showed us.”

“It was him,” said Emma firmly.

“I wonder if he’s the same guy who Kristy said had been leaning on her buzzer in the middle of the night, remember, Matt?” Jake asked.  Joyner did remember her saying that when they’d gone to question her after the murder of Officer Rutledge.

“What’s he doing here?” Emma asked.  They looked at Kristy, who had stopped crying and was following their conversation. 

“How did he find me?” asked Kristy.

“And why isn’t he dead?” asked Cheri.  No one knew the answers.

17

The autopsy results for Ann Rutledge were on Joyner’s desk when he got to his office the next morning.  None of them had felt comfortable leaving Kristy alone with her seemingly un-dead ex-husband on the loose.  Since none of them could agree who should stay with her, they’d all stayed.  All-nighters were part of the job for a cop, even in a sleepy town like Casper, so Joyner had been up and gone before any of the rest had awakened. 

He read through the report hoping for answers but not finding any.  The coroner ruled death by a blow from a blunt object and speculated the object would have been heavy, metal and square.  No surprise there either, since that description fit most tire irons, a weapon that would be on hand for any would-be murderer with a car.

He brought out a legal pad and started doodling, something he’d learned to do in college when he wanted to spur a little creative thinking.  Kristy Castle had been on the scene, in her car and was the last person to have seen Ann Rutledge alive. 

She could have lured Ann outside by taking advantage of the cat fight, then grabbed the tire iron out of her vehicle and attacked her with it.  It would have taken almost no time.  She could have done it and still had time to be at Just Gas at the time her gas purchase had been recorded.

Except that Kristy had no motive to harm Cheri.  If Ann Rutledge and not Cheri had been the intended victim, he knew of no motive she could have to want to kill her either.

He crossed out Kristy’s name and wrote “Kayla Hutchinson” on the line below it.  Kayla would have had a motive to kill Cheri because she knew Cheri could identify her.  She was still seething about being fired, so killing Cheri would have had a personal motive as well.  If she had gone to Cheri’s house to confront her, she could have killed Ann, taking advantage of the fact that the policewoman had escorted Kristy to her car.

Kayla would have had to drive from the bar where she worked so she would have had access to a tire iron.  If she’d done it on her lunch break, she would have had just enough time to drive to Cheri’s home, attack Ann Rutledge, do a cursory search for Cheri before fleeing at the sound of the sirens.  She could have made it back to the restaurant before her lunch was over.

He pulled his notebook out of his desk and thumbed through it until he reached the pages which held his notes of the interviews he’d done with Kayla’s boss, co-workers and a couple of patrons.  He crossed Kayla’s name off the list.  She’d taken her lunch sitting at a table with a couple of friends, in plain sight.  She hadn’t left the bar from the start of her shift to the end.

Joyner stared at the legal pad.  “Ann?” he wrote.  What if Ann Rutledge had been the intended victim all along and her killer only rattled the doorknob to frighten Cheri and divert suspicion? 

That was a thought, but Ann’s parents had been adamant.  There was no one in Ann’s life who would have done something like that.  He hadn’t been able to find even a whiff of Ann having trouble with her fiancé. Police always have enemies but Ann had not been part of any particularly acrimonious arrests.  Certainly not the kind that would drive a perp to track her down and murder her out of revenge.

He sat staring at the wall, lost in thought, for he didn’t know how long.  Then a thought came to him with sudden clarity.  He didn’t have all of puzzle pieces but he had enough to recognize the picture.  He made a short phone call then unlocked the drawer where he kept his service revolver when he was in the office. 

Clipping the holster on his belt, Joyner made a stop at the equipment locker and another one at the desk of the Patrol Supervisor before heading out.  He had a plan and if he was right, he might just catch a killer today.

Emma looked uncertain.  “Are you sure you want me to go?” she asked Kristy.  “I don’t need to and I don’t like the thought of you being here alone with Sam Runyan out there somewhere.”

“I’m fine, Emma,” Kristy assured her.  She opened the drawer to show Emma the 9mm she always kept there when she was at work.  “I’ve dealt with him before.  By now, he’s probably figured out that the police are looking for him.  He’ll lay low until he decides it’s safe, then he’ll come crawling out of the woodwork like the cockroach that he is.  When he does, I’ll be ready.”

Emma hesitated.  “You really don’t think he’ll do anything for awhile?”

“I’ve known him a long time.  I know how he thinks.  Trust me, he’s hiding out.”

“All right,” said Emma reluctantly.  “But I’m leaving my phone on.  You call me if you need anything at all.  I’m only five minutes away.”

“Don’t worry, Emma.  Go to your Rotary meeting and try not to think about it.  Believe me, fear is no way to live.”  Emma finally left and Kristy locked the office door behind her.  She wasn’t as sure of what Sam would do as she’d made Emma believe.  After all, he’d obviously found a way to fake his own death and that was something she never saw coming.

Sitting at her desk, she cast her mind back to that day at the funeral home.  She’d seen Sam’s body in his coffin.  Surely it had to be him.  He hadn’t looked pale, but no one ever did at a funeral since mortuaries used heavy make up as they prepared bodies for viewing. 

Had he been laying there in the coffin, alive the whole time?  What if he’d opened his eyes while she stood looking down at him.  Kristy shuddered and tried not to think about it, but she couldn’t help picturing the horror she would have felt if he’d reached up out of the coffin and tried to pull her in.

She heard a soft noise at the door and her hand dropped beneath the desk.  She felt for the panic alarm Joyner had given her and held it as she watched the door slowly open.

“You should know better than to think you could keep me out with a locked door, Melissa.”  It was Sam, alive and evil as ever.  Kristy pushed the button and held it down, just to be sure the signal had gone out.

“You should know I liked you better when you were dead,” she told him, letting the alarm slide noiselessly to the floor and pushing it under the drawer.

Sam laughed.  Kristy’s spine tingled at the memory of that laugh.  She knew that some men turned violent when they were angry, venting their frustrations on wives or girlfriends, claiming to be out of control.  They controlled their anger just fine in front of other men.

That had never been Sam.  Sam enjoyed inflicting pain.  Kristy had learned that lesson early and well.  She knew by the tone of his laugh that he was planning to inflict pain on her.  She reached unobtrusively for the drawer that held her gun.

“Looking for something?” Sam asked, pulling his own gun from his pocket.  “I know you keep a gun in there, Melissa.”

“The name’s Kristy,” she said, hiding her surprise.  How did he know about the gun?  “Kristy Castle.”

Sam leaned menacingly against her desk, one hip perched next to her inbox.  “You can call yourself anything you want, Melissa, and you can bleach that beautiful red hair of yours but you’ll always be my Melissa.”

Kristy pushed her chair back, increasing the distance between them.  “Why aren’t you dead?” she asked.

Sam laughed again.  “Sorry to disappoint you, darlin’,” he drawled.

“You faked your death just to draw me out of hiding?” Kristy asked.

“Hell no,” Sam snorted.  “That was just a happy accident.  Oh my mama just roared when she saw your name in that guest book at the funeral home.”

“Sorry she missed me, huh?” asked Kristy skeptically.

“Don’t be so cynical,” Sam told her.  “Mama always liked you.”

“So why did you fake your death?  How did you fake your death?  You sure as hell looked dead to me.”

“Heavy make-up and low lighting,” said Sam, leaning over the desk conspiratorially.  “Plus the fact that nobody much cared enough to give me a good look in there.  Kinda hurt you didn’t notice it though.”

“I was too giddy at the thought of you being dead,” said Kristy.  Damn, she thought.  How long does it take the police to get here when you push a panic button?

Sam laughed again.  “My daddy got the idea.  He took out one of those life insurance policies on me - the kind that pays big if you die in an accident.  Then all we  had to do was push that old wreck of a truck I had off Boebecker Hill and get the coroner to sign off on accidental death.”

Kristy shook her head.  “I should have known it was too good to be true,” she said.  “I heard your daddy was dead too.  I suppose that was a fake?”

“Oh no,” said Sam.  “We lost Daddy a couple of years after that.  Mama’s living on his half of the insurance money.”

“Lovely,” said Kristy.  “Sam, why are you here?”

“To kill you, of course,” he said, as if murder were an everyday occurrence.  “I always promised I would.  I paid someone to do it for me, but he couldn’t get the job done so here I am.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Kristy.  “How did you even know where I was?  I signed my old name in that guest book.”

“You sure did.  After Daddy died and I couldn’t use his police connections to search for you, it’s like you just dropped off the planet.”

“Then how did you find me?”

“That guy I paid to kill you - I had already paid him to track you down and sure enough, he found you.  I don’t know how he did it, but he sent me your picture as proof.  He wouldn’t tell me where you were so I had to pay him again to have you killed.”

“But it didn’t work?” asked Kristy.  She had to keep him talking.

“Nah.  I got a call from this guy - calls himself ‘The Boss’ - the guy he sent to kill you got cold feet so he’d had to get rid of him,” Sam laughed again.  “I told him just keep the money and tell me where you were.  He sent me directions to Casper and had me meet up with one of his men.  We went to a parade and there you were, big as bold.”

“The Solstice Parade,” said Kristy.  So he was indeed one of the two men Emma had overheard. 

“I went to the rodeo that night, keeping my eye on you, waiting for the perfect time.” He stared at Kristy, looking her up and down slowly until she looked away.  “It has been a long time, Melissa.  Too long.”

“You were at the rodeo,” Kristy prompted.

“When I saw you come out of that ladies room all covered in blood, it occurred to me that it might be more fun to frame you for murder than to kill you myself.  After all,” he reasoned, “I can only kill you one time and then the fun’s over.  Frame you for murder and I can enjoy that forever.”

“So you followed me to Cheri’s house that night?” Kristy asked.

“I got a call from The Boss telling me you’d be there.  I don’t know how he knew, but I’ve never been one to look a gift horse in the mouth. I got there before of you and parked up the road a piece.  I didn’t want to make noise that might attract attention,” he said, looking at his gun, “so I grabbed the tire iron out of my car.”

“Oh my God,” said Kristy.  “You waited for me to leave then you killed Ann Rutledge.”

Sam laughed and Kristy balled her hands into fists to keep from jumping up at him.  How could she have ever loved this monster?  “I knew they’d think it was you seeing as you were the last one with her.  When I saw them bring you out of your apartment in handcuffs, I tell you, that was the best day ever.”

“They know I didn’t kill her,” said Kristy.  “As soon as Cheri remembered who attacked her at the Solstice, any motive I might have had to kill Officer Rutledge vanished.”

Sam looked disappointed, then brightened.  “Yeah, that was a disappointment, but any day you kill a cop is a good day.”

“Your own father was a cop!” said Kristy incredulously.

“That is entirely beside the point, Melissa.”

“Oh my God,” said Kristy.  She stood up and started for the door.  “What did I ever see in you?  Get out of here!”

Sam stopped laughing.  His eyes became slits and as he stood, he towered over Kristy, intimidating even without the gun.  “You forget I came here to kill you,” he said menacingly.

Kristy pulled the door open and turned to him, “You won’t do it here, the whole world will hear you.  Get out,” she said again.

Sam raise his gun and fired, hitting Kristy in the chest.  The force of the bullet spun her around and threw her against the wall beside the door, which was pushed closed from the force.  “Nobody talks to me like that,” Sam said.