Authors: Alexa Grace
"Oh, no. It can't be," Carly said sadly.
"What do you think? Crime victims are only people we don't know?"
"C'mon Brody. You know what I meant," said Carly. "I was thinking about Gabe. I saw him here earlier, and even from a distance, I could tell he was upset. Is he the one who found the body?"
"Later. Can't talk here."
Carly quickly replaced the plastic tarp and backed away, as Coroner Bryan Pittman arrived with two of his assistants. "How many of you are trampling all over my crime scene?"
"Not even one. Wouldn't think of it, buddy," said Brody. "You know you've been saying that for years, and not once has a member of my staff compromised a crime scene."
"Just keeping people on their toes. That's all." Bryan hid a wicked grin. He and Brody had been best friends for years, and there was nothing better Bryan liked to do than give the sheriff a hard time. It distracted him from the unpleasantness of crime scenes.
Slipping on a pair of latex gloves, Bryan moved close to the body, pulled up the plastic sheeting, and examined the plastic bag on the victim's head. "I don't think suffocation is a stretch here." He paused when no one laughed. "A little coroner humor." Grinning as the others grimaced and shook their heads, he slowly inched his way around the body.
Bryan then looked back at Brody. "This is a secondary crime scene. This isn't where the murder occurred. I won't know until the autopsy if she was raped and/or tortured prior to death. Our killer is fearless, stupid, or unfamiliar with this area, considering the time it took to pose the body. There are drunks ambling through this alley from the bar all hours of the night."
"Interesting." Carly focused her attention on the only thing the victim was wearing. "Check out her shoe. It looks like a vintage brocade-covered high heel, the kind girls wore to the prom back in the day. It's at least two sizes too big for her."
"You're right," Bryan responded. "It doesn't look like it belongs to her. I'll send it to the State Police Crime Lab in Indy for trace evidence and DNA testing."
Thoughtfully, Brody rubbed his chin. "If the shoe doesn't belong to the victim, who does it belong to?"
Next to him, Cameron stopped writing in his notepad. "If this isn't the first kill, the shoe could lead us to another victim."
"Please don't let this be another serial killer in this county. Please," Brody groaned.
Cameron pulled Brody aside. "I saw Gabe here earlier. Where did he go?"
"I told him to wait for me in my office, but he insisted on Mollie's."
"Is he waiting for you as a brother, or a suspect?"
Brody shot Cameron a glare. "What are you getting at?"
"Conflict of interest. You can't, and no one from your team can interview Gabe about this. He's the sheriff's brother." Cameron paused for a second, and then added, "Right now, Gabe needs his family. We need to get an outside investigator who doesn't know our family to talk to interview Gabe."
"I overheard Blake Stone telling Carly that he just hired a new detective. I'll call Sheriff Brennan to see if we can borrow him."
"Seriously? People know how close you are to Tim Brennan and Blake Stone, which leaves us wide open for accusations of conflict of interest. In fact, there isn't another sheriff in this state that you don't know. We need to go to another agency entirely."
"I'll call Dan Walters with the Indiana State Police. But I hate to turn over a crime that happened in our county to another agency." Brody ran his fingers through his hair, wet from the rain.
"I don't think we have to. The state police could send one of their detectives to interview Gabe, and maybe they could even expedite the DNA processing of the shoe placed on the victim. We could share the case, work alongside them. We can avoid the potential allegation of a conflict, and still maintain our involvement."
Brody nodded and fished his cell phone out of his pocket to call Dan Walters.
<><><>
On Covington Avenue, a white utility van crawled past the alleyway next to the Morel Bar and Grill so its occupants could rubber-neck the activities in the alley. Inside the van, dressed in white painter's coveralls and caps, Evan and Devan watched as the body they'd left hours before was loaded into the coroner's van.
"And so the game begins," Devan’s mouth pressed into a smirk as he rolled down his window. "There's no one behind us, so stop the van."
Braking, Evan peered down the alley. "I don't see Gabe Chase."
"Neither do I, but there's the sheriff. He doesn't look very pleased, does he?"
Evan laughed and took his foot off the brake. "I predict he'll become less and less pleased as the game progresses."
<><><>
As soon as Gabe sat down in a booth at Mollie's Cafe, he realized what a mistake it was to choose her restaurant to wait for his brothers. Across the room, Mollie Adams honed in on him like a heat-seeking missile. She shot across the restaurant and slid into the seat across from him.
"Not a good time, Mollie," said Gabe, as his waitress poured a cup of coffee. "Just leave the pot," he told her, then glanced at Mollie, wishing she would leave him alone.
"After what I did, I doubt a good time will ever come for one of the Chase brothers to want to talk to me," Mollie said, swallowing the tears forming at the back of her throat. "I need your help, Gabe."
"What do you need
my
help with?"
"I need for you to talk to Cameron for me."
"Mollie, there is no way in hell I am going to talk to Cameron for you. You chose to smother Brody with kisses in his hospital bed after his surgery. What in the hell were you thinking? You knew Brody was in a relationship with Carly. Most importantly, you knew how Cameron felt about you."
"I'm guilty. I know. I don't know what came over me. When I heard Brody had been shot, I rushed to the hospital. My original intent was to find Cameron and wait for word about Brody's condition. But when I asked at the nurses' station, they said Brody was in recovery and I could visit with him for a minute."
"And the rest is history. I already lived this experience; I don't need to relive it, Mollie."
"Please ask Cameron to talk to me and give me another chance."
"Not going to happen."
"Why not?"
"
You
chose to tell Cam for months that he was the one you were in love with — not Brody. You chose to molest Brody in the hospital. I mean, the guy was still under anesthesia. What were you thinking?"
"I can't explain what I did. I have no clue what came over me. I've been over Brody for years."
"You couldn't have hurt Cam more if you'd stabbed him in the chest. He's been in love with you for years. He thought you loved him, too," Gabe said. "If he ever forgives you, that's his decision. I'm not intervening on your behalf."
Wiping tears from her cheek, Mollie went back to the kitchen.
Gabe's cell vibrated on the table. The call was from Kaitlyn, the very last person on earth he wanted to talk to right now. What would he tell her? He'd just found a body in an alley that looked an awful lot like her sister. Bryan hadn't made an official identification of the body yet. Gabe ignored her call and prayed she was nowhere near the crime scene.
Brody was right. If the body was Abby's, he'd be considered a person of interest — the last thing a private investigator building a business wants to be. A sickening sense of guilt washed over him. How could he be concerned about his business when a young woman just lost her life in such a violent way?
Gabe ran his fingers through his thick hair and thought about the email and how it had come from Abby's laptop. Brody needed to get possession of her laptop and have the crime scene technician team examine it for prints and DNA. The email was signed "Gamers," which meant there was more than one of them. They'd written they'd left a "surprise" behind the bar specifically for him. Were the Gamers people he knew, or people who knew him? If the body was Abby's, did they target her to get back at him for some reason? Or was it his brother, Brody, they had the beef with? If the killers thought of this as a game to test the sheriff's detectives, this would not be the only victim unless they caught them quickly.
Gabe was so engrossed in his thoughts, he didn't notice that Brody had entered the restaurant until he sat down at his booth. Within seconds, Mollie was hovering over them with a pot of hot coffee. Once she warmed up Gabe's brew, she poured coffee into a mug for Brody.
"Are you having breakfast, Brody? We've got fresh cinnamon buns this morning."
"No thanks, Mollie. Just the coffee."
Brody waited until Mollie headed back to the kitchen, then leaned across the table. "Talk to me. Start from the beginning."
Gabe explained how he'd learned Abby was missing and that he was looking for her.
"Why didn't you or Cam discuss this with me?" Brody interrupted, obviously annoyed his brothers left him out.
"There was nothing you could do. She was missing from Tippecanoe County, out of your jurisdiction."
"Besides being the sheriff, I'm your brother. A woman you dated goes missing. You don't think I'd be interested in that?"
"I'm sorry, Brody. Everything was moving so fast. All I knew was that I had to find her." He paused, remembering the email the killers had sent him. "You have to get Abby's laptop from her apartment. I traced it back to its IP address, and the email I showed you from the killers is from her laptop."
"How do you know where Abby's laptop is? I thought you two broke up?"
"It was there when I searched her apartment."
"When was this?"
"The day I found out she was missing, and talked to the West Lafayette police."
"They gave you permission to search Abby Reece's apartment?"
"She'd given me a key, and I wanted to see if there was anything in her apartment that would tell me where she was."
"In other words, you compromised what could have been the crime scene and illegally searched a missing person's apartment. What were you thinking, Gabe?"
A tone sounded and Gabe looked down to read a text from Kaitlyn. She was waiting for him at his office. That's all he needed. What in the hell was he supposed to say to her?
Slapping a twenty dollar bill on the table, Gabe said, "I have to go."
"We're not through talking, Gabe," Brody insisted.
"Kaitlyn is waiting for me at my office."