Spiraled (Callahan & McLane Book 3) (15 page)

21

He’d been following her for forty-eight hours and knew her name was Ava.

The woman had first appeared on his radar as the police swarmed around Justin Yoder’s car in the quiet subdivision close to the mall. He’d been surprised it’d taken them that long to find it. He’d thought the neighbors in that senior living neighborhood would quickly report a strange vehicle. Maybe people were more tolerant than he. A few times he’d left the spot from where he’d watched the car to make food and coffee runs, expecting to return and have missed the show. But the police had finally turned up. He’d watched as the patrol unit pulled up behind the car parked on the street. One officer had stayed in the car, running the plates he assumed, while the other peered in the windows.

He’d seen the cops’ body language change as they realized what they’d found. Movements were faster, chins jerked up, and a sense of urgency appeared in their actions in stark contrast to the measured caution of their arrival. More units had arrived within minutes.

But it’d been the investigators out of uniform who had caught his attention. When they’d arrived, the other police had deferred to them immediately. Two men and a woman. The two men had explored the car, careful of what they’d touched. As she should, the woman had stayed back a bit, almost trying to appear inconspicuous, but he’d noticed that both men kept speaking to her and pointing out aspects of the car. She clearly carried some authority and the thought made his skin crawl.

He’d watched her every move—something about her seeming very familiar.

She had a tendency to tuck her hair behind her ear and crack her knuckles, and it’d driven him crazy that he couldn’t see her eye color at this distance.

After they’d all looked in the trunk of Justin’s car, she’d turned, giving him a direct view of her face through his binoculars.

He did know her.

Ava had been at the Rivertown Mall. He’d offered to help her with the bleeding girl.

Her eyes had been dark blue.

Relief had swept through him as he realized she was with the police because she was a witness. The men were simply being polite in their deference to her; she wasn’t in law enforcement.

But something compelled him to follow her, and his misconception had lasted less than a day. Witnesses didn’t continually go in and out of the police command center. After he’d seen her enter and leave many times, he started to wonder. She didn’t carry a gun or wear a badge, but she moved and conversed like someone in charge. An inappropriate role for her. He’d called a friend to check the plates on her car and discovered it belonged to the federal government.

“Can you be more specific?” he’d asked his friend as a loud buzz started in his brain at the phrase
federal government
.

“I’d guess the car belongs to the Justice Department or the FBI,” his friend had answered.

“How do you know?” he whispered.

His friend had paused. “Experience.”

He’d offered to help a federal agent that day at the mall? A female federal agent?

Anger shot through him, cranking up the static in his head. She’d refused him. At the moment he hadn’t cared, he’d wanted to put as much distance as possible between him and the crime. But when he’d seen the two women on the ground, he’d known it’d look odd to anyone later viewing the video if he didn’t offer to help.

Did she think she was so powerful that she didn’t need help from a man?

Arrogant bitch.

Through his surveillance he’d learned Ava lived with a man, clearly one of the investigators on the case. He appeared to be a strong alpha type.
How does he put up with her pretentiousness?

The woman was attractive and probably a good fuck if she left her badge out of the bed. He figured she probably knew where to toe the line if her relationship with the man was successful. But he hadn’t seen wedding rings. The relationship was probably new.
How long before she destroys it? Or he gets tired of her true nature?

Women shouldn’t carry a badge. Any sort of badge. Common sense. Females weren’t meant to order men around; it went against nature. Everyone knew women were made to nurture and serve.

He’d followed her to the Rivertown Mall earlier this morning and seen her pause as she stared at the ground where the young female had lain bleeding. Then her head had gone up, and she’d marched in an arrogant manner toward the men’s room, the other investigator trailing in her wake.

She needed to be taken down a notch.

They’d come out of the men’s room and ordered it closed to the public. A security guard had been stationed outside after they’d left and had directed all users to another restroom. He’d gone close enough to hear the guard tell a shopper the police were still recovering evidence in the restroom.

Did they find the clothes?

He’d followed Ava and the other investigator back to the community center and then he’d returned to the mall. He’d bought a hot dog and drink and picked a bench in the shade, pretending to read a book as he kept an eye on the guard at the bathroom.

He’d tried to retrieve the clothing a few times but people were always in the men’s room. He had to get the clothes out. Today.

The guard kept stretching his back and shifting his feet. The sun beat directly on his dark-blue uniform and he wiped his forehead several times.

Go get a drink.

The guard checked his watch. Fewer and fewer men were deflected from using the restroom as the heat chased people indoors to the stores.

He sucked hard on his straw, making the last drops of soda slurp in the cup. Across the mall aisle, the guard looked his way. He focused on his book. The guard glanced at his watch, looked around, and walked away from his post.

He waited until the guard had turned the corner before tossing his cup in the garbage. He jogged to the restroom, yanking open the door, welcoming the air conditioning. He strode to the back of the bathroom and hopped up on the last sink and lifted the large tile in the ceiling.

Empty.

His heart sped up and sweat pooled under his arms. He checked another ceiling tile, hearing his pulse pound in his ears, knowing the clothes hadn’t moved of their own accord.

Still empty.

He hopped off the sink, leaned his weight on his palms on the sides of the sink and stared in the mirror, ignoring his scars. Why had he waited?

Maybe the police don’t know what they have.

Maybe the janitor removed the clothes not knowing what they were.

Maybe
 . . .

He’d left the clothing at the Troutdale scene, too.

“God damn it!” he roared at his reflection. Angry reddened eyes stared back at him, and he wiped the spit off his lips.

He’d been overconfident.

There’s no link to you. Nothing. They have some clothes. That’s it.

He slammed his forehead against the mirror. Pain ripped through his skull as cracks shot across the mirror. But the pain softened the sounds pounding in his ears. Blood welled and trickled down his forehead, and he angrily brushed it with his fingers.

It was that female. Ava. She found the clothes.
He knew it in his gut.

22

“How can someone convince three young men to go along with plans like these?” Mason asked the group of investigators at the community center, knowing no one had an answer. His question was rhetorical.

Ava and Zander’s discovery in the Rivertown Mall’s bathroom had stunned all the investigators. A quick search of the Troutdale park bathroom had revealed an identical stash of clothing in the restroom’s ceiling. But the bathroom at the Eugene park had an open ceiling. No clothing had been found.

Standing next to him, Ray hadn’t stopped shaking his head since he heard the news. “Could he have shoved them in his backpack and walked out?” asked Ray. “Just like at Rivertown Mall, the reports from the Eugene shooting say that a male had run out shouting that the shooter had shot himself—but this witness never came forward. Is there a description of this witness anywhere? Was he wearing a backpack or carrying a bag?”

“Again it was convenient that the last guy out of the restroom never stayed at the scene to give a statement to police,” muttered Mason. “He takes full advantage of the panic and terror to blend in.”

“I want to review all the Eugene witness statements again,” said Sergeant Shaver. “I want special attention paid to the reports where someone saw anyone go in or out of the restrooms. I want these people interviewed again.”

“We’ve got him on camera at the Rivertown Mall,” Mason pointed out. “Let’s get some stills made of his image and circulate those.”

“I don’t know,” said Zander. He sat down at one of the computers at the center and started tapping. “My recollection of that particular guy is that we never get a good shot of his face.”

“There has to be at least one good angle.” Mason crossed his fingers as the detectives and agents crowded behind Zander’s chair. The discovery of the clothing had given the investigation a shot of energy. He’d watched over and over as each person had digested the news and then reacted in confusion and awe as their minds followed the same thought process.

The killer isn’t dead.

Possibly three innocent young men are dead.

Is there one mastermind behind all three shootings?

How did he get these men to participate?

“How could we have missed this?” asked Ray, waiting for Zander to cue up the videos from Rivertown. “Was it the same shooter every time? With a victim waiting in the restroom? How did he convince them to wait for him to come kill them?”

“Don’t jump to conclusions,” said Zander. “Let’s find some proof that our dead shooters didn’t do the shooting first.”

“I want to find the guy from Rivertown,” stated Mason. The third witness from Rivertown had walked right up to Ava and talked to her.
Cocky son of a bitch
. . .
offering to help them out.
Knowing that she’d been that close to the shooter was making the back of his neck sweat. It was like finding out that the cookies the nice old lady next door had brought you were laced with arsenic.

It’s already happened. She’s fine. Get over it.

He glanced across the room to where she was deep in discussion with another FBI agent. Looking closer, he realized it was more of an argument. Ava was shaking her head, her back ramrod-straight, with her left hand clenched in a fist.

Uh-oh.
Is she getting her marching orders?

She’d been flying under the radar in the investigation, getting a lot of leeway from Sergeant Shaver since she was a witness. But officially she was on vacation. Looked like word had gotten back to the office. He glanced at Zander to see if he’d noticed, but Zander had found the video he wanted and a familiar view of the Rivertown Mall filled two screens.

Zander sped it up to where the third witness burst out of the bathroom. His cap was pulled low, covering shaggy hair, the brim hiding his eyes and a large portion of his face from the camera view. Mason leaned closer.

“That asshole. Look.” Mason pointed at the screen. “He knew exactly what he was doing. He keeps his head tipped down the entire time. Doesn’t matter which angle you switch to. The damned cameras are too high. How about shots of him leaving the area? He has to be caught from a few more angles as he leaves.”

“We’ll have to go through all that footage again,” said Zander. “We weren’t focused on those sections.”

“There should be footage of Justin Yoder heading into the bathroom,” Ray pointed out. “If that’s not him with the mask and gun heading into the bathroom, then he had to walk in at some point. He wasn’t teleported.”

“Fuck me,” said Shaver. “We didn’t review the hours of video before the shootings, did we?”

“We went back a little ways,” said Zander. “Probably not far enough. I know I’ve seen the clips with Walter Borrego and Steve Jordan with his son heading into the bathroom. We need to back up further. No telling how early Justin Yoder went in—if that’s what really happened.”

Mason bit his lip. His instinct told him that was exactly what’d happened. Yoder and their mystery witness had been working together. The witness did the shooting while Yoder waited in the bathroom.

But had Yoder known his job was to be a dead body and take the blame for the shootings?

Or had he expected a different role?

“What was Yoder thinking?” Mason asked. Several of the investigators nodded; they’d wondered the same thing.

“I’ll guess this didn’t play out as he assumed,” said Zander. “He probably expected to join in the shooting.”

“One weapon,” Ray pointed out.

“But he was dressed to shoot,” countered Zander.

“Dressed for stealth,” clarified Mason. “He might have been told something completely different from what went down. Perhaps he expected to participate in a robbery or some sort of weird fantasy game.”

“He stayed silent in the back of the bathroom while the shooter confronted Borrego and Jordan. He was aware of what was happening,” argued Ray.

“This is making my head hurt,” said Mason. “Let’s examine more views of Yoder and our witness before we follow any theories.”

“I need to make a statement to the press,” said Sergeant Shaver. “Do we let them know we might be looking for another guy?”

“Hell no,” said Mason. “Right now he doesn’t know we’re looking for him. Why give him a heads-up?”

“But it might stop another shooting,” said Ava.

She’d silently appeared beside Mason. He studied her face. Stress showed in the new tiny veins that reddened the whites of her eyes. She cracked a knuckle, and he noticed her nails were bitten to the quick.
When did that happen?
An image of a wineglass in her hand from two nights ago popped into his brain; her nails had been trimmed short but not
. . .
gnawed on.

“How many of these shootings could one person engineer?” asked Ray.

“We don’t know that we’re looking for one person. Could be a group. Perhaps this is much larger than we realize,” added Zander.

The group looked at one another, and Mason felt the stress level rise. Everyone was already exhausted and now the appearance of stashed clothing had opened up a dozen other questions about mass shooting incidents in which they’d believed the organizer was dead.

“I wouldn’t say anything about these leads to the press,” Mason said slowly. “If our brains are spinning in a million directions now, the press will make it worse. We’ll have every armchair detective coming out of the woodwork with theories.”

“I’ll keep it quiet for now,” said Shaver, making eye contact with each person. “But I need answers. Today. I want to see the video of Yoder entering that bathroom and every shot we have of the third witness after the shooting. He went somewhere. Figure out where. And the Eugene witness statements need to be reviewed and new interviews set up.”

Everyone nodded.

“We’ve called these three young men murderers, and now it looks like they might be victims.” Shaver shook his head. “If we’ve done injustice to their families, I want it cleared ASAP.”

“This doesn’t put them in the clear,” said Zander. “It’s placed a big question mark above their heads.”

“I want it figured out.
Soon
. And the next shooting prevented.”

Ava winced, and from the corner of his eye Mason watched her slip a stubby fingernail between her teeth. He turned his head toward her, and she whipped the finger out of her mouth, never taking her gaze off Shaver. She swallowed hard.

Does she need distance from this investigation?

He’d thought being involved would help her, but maybe it’d done the opposite.

Shaver made assignments and Ava wasn’t included. Mason wondered what she’d say if he told her to go home. She’d probably just smile and ignore him. He shoved his hat on his head. He and Ray were to look over the Eugene interviews. The group broke apart, and Ava followed him and Ray. Zander had been assigned to oversee the search for more video clips of Justin Yoder and their third witness—the possible shooter.

“I think we need to travel down to Eugene,” said Ray. “We’re going to want to talk to several people face-to-face.”

“Agreed,” said Mason. He eyed Ava, wondering if she’d fill him in on her discussion with the other FBI agent in front of Ray. He lifted a brow at her.

“I’ll stay here,” she said. “Zander can use another pair of eyes.”

“Your car or mine?” Ray asked.

“I get carsick if I read in a car,” Mason said. “We could get a lot of files covered on the ninety-minute drive down there if you can stomach it.”

“Not a problem.” Ray looked from Mason to Ava and back again. “I’ll meet you out front in a bit.”

Mason jerked his head toward a door, and she followed him out of the main room into a quiet hallway. She leaned against the wall with a sigh. He stepped close and lifted her chin until her gaze met his. “What happened?”

“Nothing happened.”

“I saw your
discussion
with that agent. What’s up his ass?”

One side of her mouth curled up. “He was questioning my presence here. He knows I’m not assigned.”

“Did Ben Duncan send him?”

“No. If Ben wanted to tell me to go home, he’d call me.”

“Are you going to get a call?”

She frowned. “I don’t know. I’ve been half expecting it.”

“How’d you think to look in the ceiling?”

“I’ve been wondering if these young men were under orders from some cult-like figure who directed the shootings. But then Zander mentioned that maybe the third guy hadn’t come forward because he was an ex-con that didn’t want to be noticed. Something about the word ‘ex-con’ made me think about repeat crimes and how if the shootings
were
repeat crimes, how else could one person accomplish it? We’d seen a person in black go in and not come out. Suddenly I knew he’d have to take off the black clothing and hide it because I talked with him when he left. He was empty-handed. It had to be somewhere.”

Mason didn’t question the way her mind had jumped around. It’d happened to him dozens of times. When his neurons started firing he didn’t question how they worked.

“Maybe you should go home and relax for the rest of your vacation. Read a book or binge-watch something.”

Her wary dark gaze held his. “What are you saying?”

He lifted one of her hands and lightly touched the ragged nails. Her gaze followed his touch. “This isn’t like you,” he said. She tried to pull back her hand, but he held on and clasped it between both of his. “Look at me,” he said.

Insecurity looked at him through her blue eyes.

“I know you want to help. I know how good it feels to lose yourself in work when there’s something stabbing at your heart. I’ve done it a million times. But I think you need some more downtime. Didn’t you have an appointment today?”

“Crap!” She yanked her hand out of his and dug out her phone. “I missed it! Finding those clothes put all rational thoughts out of my head today. Dammit!”

A lecture about letting work overtake her life was on the tip of his tongue. But he couldn’t do it; he was just as guilty—if not worse.

Kettle, meet pot.

“Call them. Now. Get in as soon as you can. I don’t like you tossing and turning all night.”
Or lunging out of bed in terror.

“You’re not the only one,” she muttered. “I feel like only half my brain is engaged these days. But I had to wait for this appointment. I’m afraid they won’t get me in until next week.”

“I’m heading to Eugene. If they can’t see you today then go home. Get away from this for a while.”

“I will,” she promised.

He looked hard at her.

“I will.”

He hugged her and kissed her good-bye. “I’ll be back late tonight,” he said. He and Ray could stay in Eugene overnight, but he didn’t want her alone tonight. She probably didn’t mind, but the thought of her alone in their bed bothered him. A lot.

“I’ll be waiting.”

Ava wanted to bang her head on the steering wheel. The therapist couldn’t see her until next week.

I knew it!

She hadn’t sounded pleased that Ava had missed her first appointment, and Ava knew the woman had no interest in taking on flaky patients. “This really isn’t like me,” she’d pleaded. “We had a hot hit on a case today.”