The sedan pitched forward as Pennington slammed the brakes. Scorched rubber polluted the air, enveloping me like a cloud. He drove his shoulder into his door, stepped onto the asphalt, slammed the door shut. He ran up to me. “The hell is going on?”
“Slow down, man,” I said. “Cervantes is inside, securing the scene. You need to talk to the dog-walker over there. She saw them leaving.”
“Who?”
“Cassie and her abductor.”
Pennington’s face went slack. Beads of sweat formed along his perfect hairline. “This isn’t happening.”
“Afraid it is, man. Now you need to tighten up and do your damn job. Go talk to that lady over there.”
He looked past me, his eyes narrowed, and studied the woman. Fixing his gaze in my direction again, he stepped forward. “I swear, Tanner, if you had anything to do with this…”
I moved to block his path. “Me? You better step the hell back, man. I’ve known Cassie a long time. She means a hell of a lot more to me than you’ll ever understand.”
“You were the last one with her,” he said. “I know you were at her house late last night. Spent the whole day together, didn’t you?”
Had he been watching or having her house patrolled? Keeping tabs? On who? Her? Or me? Perhaps he’d had someone else doing it. Told them he was concerned for Cassie’s safety because of what happened earlier in the day, and assigned a unit to her neighborhood, with the focus being her.
I got close enough to his face I could smell his breakfast lingering between us. “What exactly are you accusing me of?”
He said nothing, focusing on my face, my expressions, looking for the tiniest of signs of deceit. Problem is anger can trigger some of the same responses cops are taught to look for. And my blood was boiling at that point.
“Look, Pennington, I left Cassie last night and haven’t seen her since. Then I saw the paper this morning. You seen it?”
He nodded tersely.
“Then you understand the implications.” I put my hands on my hips and took a step back. “I couldn’t reach her by phone. Went to her house, and she wasn’t there. Went to the precinct to find you guys, to find out if you’d seen the paper yet. How many guilty men you know walk right into a police station?”
He mulled it over for a second. Almost smiled. “Dirty cops do it every day.”
“Pennington,” Cervantes said. “Come on. We ain’t got time to dick around with this.”
He brushed his shoulder against mine as he passed. “We’re not done, Tanner.”
I turned and followed him, stopping halfway. “One of you needs to talk to that woman. She saw something this morning. I’m outta here now.”
“You leave Savannah and I’ll make you our number one suspect,” Pennington said. “Stay put until you hear from us.”
The keys dangled and glinted in the sunlight as I held them high and waved back at the other detective. He could go to hell. I got back in my rental and drove straight to Cassie’s house. Maybe they’d use it against me later. I didn’t care. Stepping into her house, I caught a whiff of the smell of her hair, raising hope for a few moments. It didn’t take long to determine she was not there. I searched the kitchen, her bedroom, even her computer desk for something, anything, that might indicate why she went back to the crime scene, and who she thought might’ve been there.
It was busy work meant to keep my mind from diving into the reality of what Cassie was going through at that moment. What else could I do? I didn’t have the ability to talk to the dead, like her. I had to work with logic. Not the easiest thing when dealing with a psychotic killer. There was little to go by at this point, but all I needed were one or two clues and I’d be off to the races.
The photo in the paper, and the revelation from Cervantes that Novak had escaped from jail more than three weeks earlier, left little doubt in my mind that Novak had followed her to the crime scene house. Or perhaps he sprung a trap, baiting her to come. Hell, he might’ve been waiting for her there, knowing somehow she would show up on her own. Were they inexplicably linked through a bond created by attempted murder, a bond that gave him such powers?
I stood in the hallway underneath an air vent. The cold air washed over me, chilling the last of the sweat that covered my skin. I listened with my eyes closed. For what? Hell if I knew. Maybe the same spirits that spoke to Cassie would chew on my ear a bit, too. It’d never happened. Christ, I doubted it happened to her. Yet I waited there for a couple minutes anyway.
Beep-beep-beep.
The sound nearly startled me into a cardiac event. I rushed into the kitchen expecting to find a bomb taped under the table with a note written To the Late Mr. Tanner. The red light on the coffeemaker blinked with each subsequent squeal until the machine cut off.
I walked over and pulled the pot off the burner. Held it to my nose and inhaled. The brew had gone stale and had a burned smell to it, but it was piping hot. I poured half into the sink before thinking better of it and stopping. I had a thought. The machine had an auto-cutoff. That time had to be programmed into the device. With that information, I could pinpoint the earliest possible time that Cassie left the house.
I spun around to check the brand.
“Shit.”
The coffeemaker refused to cooperate. On the top were three buttons, labeled “two,” “four,” and “six.” Select one of those and it would turn off in that many hours.
I knew it couldn’t have been two. I was there more than two hours ago. Was it on at that time? I couldn’t say yes for sure, but I did smell coffee when I came in. So between five and roughly seven-thirty am. It was a start, and we could cross reference the time I was here earlier, along with the dog-walking woman’s estimates from the window of her breakfast nook.
Draped over the back of a chair was one of Cassie’s shirts. I grabbed it, held it to my face, inhaled her scent.
I pictured her walking through the house, alone, and encountering someone. I felt her fear. My response wasn’t hers, though. She knew the man, and seeing him caused every muscle in her body to cramp, locking up and rendering her immobile. But in time I knew she’d adapt, and overcome her assailant.
I hoped so, at least.