Chapter Twenty-Five

“It’s deer blood. I swear it.” Daniel Fitzgerald pointed to the knife Dayne found in a camouflage backpack in the trunk of Fitzgerald’s gray Nissan sedan. The blade was caked with dried blood.

He held the end of the knife handle with a rag. According to the ME’s report, it was the right size and type. Smooth edged and about five inches long.

Fitzgerald pulled his cell phone from his pocket and began pecking away. “I have pictures of the deer I killed back in December. See?” He handed Paulson the phone.

Dayne eyed Fitzgerald cautiously. With Kat’s life still on the line he wasn’t taking any chances.

Before driving away from the castle hours earlier, he and Remy had parked by the gate, waiting for his replacement. After that, he couldn’t just sit there on his ass doing nothing, so he’d hooked up with Paulson to assist with interviewing owners of the last two gray sedans on the list.

Fitzgerald didn’t look anything like the subject in Becca’s photo or Kat’s sketch. This guy was about five-four, blond hair, clean shaven, and with gray eyes. The suspect Kat described was five-ten, with a mustache and beard, and brown hair and eyes.

“Can you account for where you were on Tuesday, March twenty-seventh between four p.m. and midnight?” he asked.

Fitzgerald thought for a moment, then his eyes rounded. “Yes! I was in Baltimore for work. I haven’t submitted my voucher yet, so I still have all my receipts.”

Dayne tipped his head to the condo. “Get them.”

They followed Fitzgerald inside. Minutes later, he supplied a short stack of receipts with time and date stamps that further solidified his alibi. Fitzgerald hadn’t been anywhere near Becca’s office or the Haven on the days in question.

Dayne dragged a hand down his face. He wanted this guy, and he wanted him bad. But Fitzgerald wasn’t their man. He gave Paulson a quick shake of his head.

Back outside, he pulled out the list of sedans he’d left on the dashboard. Check marks accompanied every vehicle on the list but one. All the other registered owners had been interviewed and discarded as suspects. They were either too old, too young, didn’t fit the description, had alibis, or any combination thereof. One vehicle remained, although it was registered to a woman.

Paulson stood by his unmarked unit. “Who’s next?”

“Carolyn Mauser. Nine eighty-five Oak Court, Edison, New Jersey.” The address was about twenty minutes away. They’d already run all the registrants for the vehicles on the list and knew Carolyn Mauser had no criminal history. Being a woman, she couldn’t have been the one to attack Kat, but they couldn’t be certain Becca’s killer and Kat’s attacker were one and the same. It also didn’t mean someone else hadn’t used Carolyn Mauser’s vehicle.

“Meet you there.” Paulson got into his car.

Dayne was certain the memory card photos were the key to the investigation. The only other thing he could do was sit outside the building in Englewood tomorrow morning and see if the same gray sedan showed up.

He sat behind the wheel and started the engine when Paulson ran over.

“Wait!” the detective shouted. Dayne lowered his window. “We’ve got something.” Paulson enlarged whatever he’d pulled up on his cell. “Verizon came through with their subpoena production.”

“On a Sunday?” He couldn’t keep the surprise from his voice.

“No.” Paulson shook his head. “The original email was dated Friday, but the departmental email server kicked it back as being suspicious. Eventually, it got through.”

“And?”

“The subscriber for the last call on Rebecca Garman’s phone.” Paulson paused. “It’s Carolyn Mauser.”

They stared at each other, processing the ramifications.

Carolyn Mauser owned a gray Nissan, similar to the one Kat saw parked outside Becca’s, and with five of the six license plate digits on Becca’s photo. Carolyn Mauser was also the last person to talk with Becca right before she was murdered.

Or someone else using the same phone.

“Did that name pop up in any of Rebecca’s case files?” Paulson shook his head. “But remember, one of the case files is missing. Stand by.” Dayne tugged his own cell from his belt. “I want to check something.”

First, he ran Carolyn Mauser through DMV. He didn’t recognize her from her DL photo. Next, he ran her address through TLO—a widely used commercial database—and found three other people associated with the same address. From their DOBs, two were teenagers, a girl and a boy. The third was an adult. Christian Mauser.

He went back into DMV and ran Christian Mauser. When he pulled up the man’s DL photo, his blood ran cold. He held his phone out to Paulson.

“Oh fuck.”

Yeah. Oh fuck.

Christian Mauser was five-ten, brown hair, mustache and beard, and with brown eyes. The face staring back at them looked a helluva lot like the man in Kat’s sketch and could very well be the subject in Becca’s photo. The critical word in that sentence being could.

Kat had described her attacker’s eyes as being cloudy, but Dayne couldn’t enlarge Mauser’s image enough to verify that.

“One last thing before we head down there.” He took his phone back from the detective then ran Mauser for a criminal history. “Negative. The guy’s squeaky clean.” Yet something had the hackles on the back of his neck waving back and forth in warning. “Let’s get down there. Fast.”

…

Kat yawned. Her abdominal muscles ached from crying hours on end. She pulled the gauzy taupe curtain aside. It was only eight p.m., but the sky over the river was as black as ink. Like her mood.

Dayne was out there somewhere because she’d sent him away. No matter how many times she relived their last conversation, the end game was always the same. She loved him with all her heart, but being near him would have been unbearable.

Angus sat up from where he’d been curled happily at the foot of her bed. She and Agent Shanahan had taken him out earlier and met Hakeem, the new guard on duty. He was so young. Surprisingly young to be armed with a gun.

Needing to be more comfortable, she changed out of her dress and into jeans and a light blue sweatshirt. No sooner had she settled back onto the bed to find something—anything—on TV to keep her mind off Dayne, when her cell phone rang. It was Agent Shanahan.

She swiped to answer the call. “Beth, is everything all right?”

“No, Miss Vandenburg.” Beth’s voice held a note of urgency. “Hakeem just told me there’s a fire outside the castle. On the northwest corner. I’m going outside to check it out. Stay here.”

Kat bolted from the bed, upsetting Angus who pranced worriedly to the edge of the mattress. With the phone still pressed to her ear, she ran to the other window and yanked back the curtain. “Oh my god!” Flames shot from one of the hedges. Smoke billowed and blew past the window.

She flung open her closet and shoved her bare feet into a pair of Ferragamo flats. With her heart racing, she picked Angus up and hastily made her way down the stairs. The pup wriggled and struggled in her arms. At nearly twenty pounds, she had to set him on the floor.

The keypad on the wall by the door blinked green. Beth must have deactivated the system, and since the fire was completely outside the castle, the smoke alarm hadn’t gone off. Yet. She hoped it didn’t come to that.

Kat peered out one of the windows to see flames licking higher. She was about to call 911 when her cell phone rang again. It was Hakeem, the outside guard.

“Miss Vandenburg,” came Hakeem’s worried voice. “I know the castle is made of stone, but you’d better play it safe and come outside. I’ve already called the fire department.”

“Thank you.” Through the window she glimpsed flames spreading to Walter’s beloved hydrangeas. Even with the wet spring season, the shrubs were catching fire quickly. Through the thickening smoke, she searched for Beth but didn’t see her. “Where’s Agent Shanahan?”

“She’s with my partner,” Hakeem answered. “They’re hooking up the garden hose. Please, hurry. The fire’s getting worse.”

“C’mon, Angus.” Her heart raced as she flung open the door. They’d be fine. The fire department was only two miles away.

The puppy bounded down the front stairs, barking his head off. “Angus!” She chased after him, worrying the little guy would get run over by a fire truck if she didn’t corral him quickly. “Beth? Hakeem?” As she rounded the corner of the castle where Angus had disappeared, a wave of heat and smoke hit her in the face. A chemical smell raked at her nose and throat, making her cough. Gasoline.

“Angus!” she screamed, staggering back. Where is he?

Barking drew her attention to the grass near the edge of the adjacent tree line. Angus’s tail whipped back and forth as he sniffed something on the grass. Was that—?

The security guard lay face down, unmoving. And was that blood on the back of his head?

She touched her fingers to the young man’s head and they came back sticky with blood. “Hakeem!” she cried. “Hakeem!” She slid her fingers to his neck, searching frantically for a pulse. While she waited for the telltale thumping of life, something else caught her attention. Beth and the other guard lay ten feet away, also face down in the brush.

Fear snaked up her spine. That hadn’t been Hakeem on the phone. No one had called the fire department, and no one ever would. Beth and the guards were dead, the fire intentionally set. To get me outside.

Leaves crunched behind her. Too late, she realized her mistake.

She’d played right into the killer’s hands.