Mine's to Kill (3 page)

Autumn went home that night and prepared for her next day’s work before going to bed. This was going to be one tough assignment, not just the work and fitting in completely, but the part about uncovering a traitor—she wasn’t sure how she was going to do that because right now she wasn’t sure exactly who she could trust. York came with high recommendations so she wouldn’t watch him as closely as some of the others. She didn’t want to have to watch him at all because the recommendation that meant the most to her had come from somebody on the outside of the government game, but Candice had told her, “don’t trust anybody. Make them all politicians in your mind and you’ll remember to tread carefully.” She had to pay some attention to what the woman on the inside of this mess was telling her. Treading carefully didn’t make for the friendliest settings. She was used to the family feel of her old team and now, here she was, going in as the head of the family without completely trusting anybody on the team.

“Fun,” she mumbled as she closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep. Tomorrow was another day, one she needed to be well rested before attacking.

Chapter Three

Three Months Later

C
olt Grayson took a look at the officers trying to figure out how to communicate with him. He had been deaf since he was twenty-one so he knew by now that people just didn’t get the idea of communicating via a translator. Of course it would help if the translator was actually here by now.

God, he wished he hadn’t gone for that run in the park. He was working on a new painting, and had been the entire day. He was stuck. He had painted the same woman far too many times. Sure she had different hair, and he had tried to give her different facial features, but in the end she always seemed the same. She had big breasts, big hips, and a bigger waist. She was voluptuous, as some would call it. He always said she was more like the Marilyn Monroe shape meets Betty Boop in the boobs department. No matter how much he tweaked a little here and a little there she always seemed the same. He needed something else, somebody else. He needed a beautiful woman to inspire him. God knows he hadn’t had one of those come around in a while. Sure, a few women wanted him for his money. The art world could be generous at time and even though he was growing tired of his work, his benefactors had not. Each piece sold. They always sold for good money too. But he didn’t want just anybody hanging on to him because of his money, but cringing behind his back because he was deaf.

He wanted somebody who could understand him, have compassion, communicate with him, or at least try to. He wanted companionship, not sympathy. He was thirty-eight years old and while it took a lot for him to get used to never hearing a symphony again, or the birds chirping, people laughing—all the things hearing people took for granted each day—he had grown accustomed to the silence. He had learned to embrace his silent world and to work though the things he missed. Painting had helped him with that. In his art he didn’t need to hear to create beauty. In his art, he could let the picture be his ears, his connection to the sounds around him. He knew that didn’t make sense to most people, but it was what helped him heal, and move onward. He still had his voice. He knew how to talk. He knew how to read lips, he learned that when they invented the walkman, but he rarely used his voice to speak unless he was around people who knew he could do it. He had learned to temper his tone—his mother had helped him with that before she died. He still had the occasional slip where he would start speaking far too loudly, but those slips were very few and very far in between. He wished tonight it had been one of those times when his voice had stayed silent, or at least nearly silent.

He was jogging through the park when he slipped on somebody’s misplaced bike lock. He hadn’t even seen it because it was late evening in the early winter months and he was looking out, not down. He yelped, what he was sure was loudly because somebody had heard him. He saw the shimmer of light come from across the pond and he looked over. It wasn’t so dark in that area that he couldn’t see what was going on. What he saw was a man with his pants down past his butt and another man beneath him just the same. He figured they were just getting physically in touch with each other in the park. He thought how dumb that was given the fact that public sex was against the law and also that it wasn’t midnight. It was seven at the latest by the time he looped around toward the small pond and he was sure if he were out jogging somebody else could be too. Then he remembered there was an event downtown that was supposed to draw a crowd so the likelihood of anybody coming down to the park during the week when there was an event in the city was slim.

He thought it was just two men having sex until he realized the light that caught his attention was the hint of moon and park lighting reflecting off a long edged blade. Then he saw the blood, and he saw the man on top—his eyes connected with his and that’s when Colt knew he was in deep trouble here. By the time the man was pulling himself up and fixing his pants Colt was already on the run. He flagged down the first cop car he saw. Trying to get them to understand that he was deaf and not drunk was difficult, especially since he used his voice to try to tell them what he had seen. What felt like fifteen minutes later another car pulled up, two officers stood with him while two went to check out what he was trying to tell them about.

Now, he was sitting down at the station waiting on a translator and trying to give a description. He had stopped using his voice because it seemed to be unnerving them when he did it. He tried to tell them he could draw the killer but they seemed opposed to the idea so instead of picking up the paper and drawing what he saw he just sat there and waited. He tried to keep the memory in his mind. Even though he had a clear look at him, and he was an artist himself, there were some hazy details. There was a scar, he was certain of that, but now he couldn’t remember exactly what it looked like. Was it jagged like from a knife? Or was it from a rope? The scar was on one side of the man’s neck. That was odd too because it was cold as Hades out there and there was that man with just a hat on his head, a t-shirt on his upper body and his pants down beneath his butt. He found the t-shirt the oddity at the time because even runners put on at least a jacket in this weather.

Colt shook his head. He wanted to clear the image from his mind, but he couldn’t. There was no way he would ever forget that scene. If he had just stayed at home painting the same woman he always painted, or just doing nothing at all then he wouldn’t have seen a murder taking place right in front of him—not just a murder, but a rape and murder. The fact that the suits had come in told him this case might have something to do with the case he had been reading about when he did his twice weekly read through of the local paper. There was a serial killer on the hunt in their city, and maybe beyond the city too for all he knew. From the last article he read he knew the cops hadn’t caught the guy, or even gotten a description. They were going on a full nine months of murders now and there hadn’t been any breaks in the case—until now. Now, if he were reading body language correctly, they were planning to use him as a witness if they could. First they would have to catch the guy and then get him to trial, but Colt was sure he would be called upon for eye witness testimony.

He brushed his fingers through his brownish blond hair. It was more brown than blond, but he never had anybody complain about the color—not that he would care. He was just fine with the mess of hair on his head. He had waves meets curls, meets a hint of straight hair that a few of his ex-girlfriends seemed to love to run their fingers through. He didn’t wear it long and shaggy, but he didn’t wear it cut super low either. He kept the sides cut shorter than the top, but not even the top was so long that it hung in his face. His lifestyle didn’t really lend itself to long hair. He liked to run and he liked to climb and whenever he did a free climb the last thing he needed was for strands of hair to fall in his eyes while he was fifty feet above bottom. Besides, having his hair fall in his eyes would cover up one of his noted features—the pale blue-green that everybody seemed to get fixated with. He would have laughed at the thoughts his mind was taking but he knew thoughts about the superficial were running wild in his mind because he was scared, not just at what he saw, but what the controlled chaos around him meant. The suits were here and to him that meant his life was about to get a lot more complicated.

The interpreter finally showed up. He could have drawn the guy while waiting on the interpreter to show. His name was Frank Dillinger, or at least that’s what he said. Colt hadn’t heard of him and he was fairly sure he had heard of a large majority of the interpreters in the area. Then again, he had never worked with any who worked for the police helping deaf witnesses describe a crime. By the end of two hours, when it was too late to even think about having a meal or anything else normal before bed, the Feds were finally getting to the point.

“You’ll testify at the trial when we catch this guy,” Agent Catskill said. Colt’s eyes narrowed as he stared at the man. He didn’t even ask; he just assumed. Sure, Colt knew he wouldn’t have a choice whenever it came to trail but a little respect wouldn’t hurt the aging, balding, agent. Okay, maybe he couldn’t pinpoint the man’s age. He was losing his hair in the top leaving a light coat of blond to cover the sides and back of his head, but that had happened to younger men. He had a beer gut that had happened to younger men too, but the aging lines made him look late forties in Colt’s opinion. Whatever the man’s age he could at least be respectful.

“And of course you’ll go into the protection program so we can keep you safe.”

Like hell he would! He was not leaving his home. He was not abandoning his life. He made sure they knew that too. His hands started flying in a barrage of signs. His signs were angry and large enough to let them know he would not let them dictate his life. He was deaf, not stupid. He knew his legal rights, probably better than they did.

His interpreter tried to keep up, but Colt knew when he was angry he was like a speed signer, very few people could keep up with that. It was fine by him so long as they got the point that he was not going into their stupid program.

“Am I free to go now?” He signed.

“Um…okay, sure, but the program would be for your protection. This guy is a serial murderer.”

“You don’t care about me. You care about your case. I said no. You want protection, park your crap car down the street,” he signed furiously. “I’m not some disabled puppet you can control.” He had experienced more than his share of people who tried to rip him off or control him just because he was deaf. He wouldn’t allow it again. The trusting man that he used to be left the moment he realized being deaf was something the unscrupulous saw as a doorway to swindler heaven.

He pulled his keys out his pocket and started to leave until one of the detectives told him an officer would take him home for safety reasons. He didn’t understand why until he found out the media was in front of the precinct because they caught wind that there was a witness this time. Great, that was all he needed. He tried to avoid the media circus of clowns even when he was doing an art show. He certainly didn’t want to deal with them now.

Colt took the ride in the unmarked blue Sedan as requested. He even let the officer into his studio apartment so he could be sure it was secure. Colt had his doubts on their over protective nature. The guy didn’t even know who he was. Sure, he had seen him, but unless this killer was a purveyor of the arts there was no way he would know exactly who Colt was and he wouldn’t be able to find out where he lived.

When Colt bought the studio apartment building with the store included downstairs he had a distinct vision of what he would do with the place. The building had sat empty for nearly four years so he got a great deal. The original idea was to turn the upper area into his home and the lower into his studio, but after he settled in at his new home he realized he wanted to paint with a view so he took a portion of the studio and turned it into an area to paint. The downstairs just became an empty free space that he still didn’t know what he planned to do with it. Right now he would house supplies, like paints and canvases. He had learned how to do his own frames so he had wood and tools down there too. Everything was neatly done, but there was still a great portion of the downstairs that needed something done to it. He had put up shutters up and downstairs in order to have privacy when he wanted it. He loved the place. He loved the peacefulness of his surroundings, and the view of the lake area wasn’t so bad either. Come late winter that lake would be framed with trees covered in snow and he always found something relaxing in that.

When the officer had finished his walk through Colt took a hot shower and went straight to bed. He had hoped to just sleep, but the images of that night kept flickering through his mind like a horror movie he just couldn’t turn off. He thought about the victim. He thought about the man he saw lying on the ground and he shuddered at the thought of what he must have suffered. Colt wouldn’t wish that kind of death on anybody.

Since he couldn’t sleep he got up and turned on the news, making sure the captions were turned on. He didn’t watch the television often because he was too busy. The morning paper, whenever he went down to the local small general store, was enough news for a lifetime. His sister had bought him that television the last time she came back to the States to visit him and she had raved about the features, with the new design in closed captioning being the best. “I wish I had thought of it,” she had said. “I would be super rich.”

Lena was doing just fine on her own, he would say. She had moved to Italy and was working at one of the major fashion houses. He couldn’t imagine what else she needed financially with the paycheck she took home. She had a loving husband and a solid career. She always seemed happy and for that he was thankful. She was his older sister by four years yet she always seemed to try to act like his mother—no, she had picked that trait up when he went deaf. If he didn’t love her so much he would be angry with her for smothering him every time she came to visit, but he couldn’t be angry with her. He could only shake his head and laugh at her for being so over protective, yet still the best big sister a man could have.