Red didn’t get angry or look disappointed. But he did stop smiling.
“Think about it,” he said as he squeezed her hand harder. “I’m going out of town this weekend. Some big business to attend to. Maybe I’ll check back in a few days.”
Mia wavered. He wasn’t pressuring her—not really. And he seemed genuinely interested in her. Yes, he was a little sketchy and he wasn’t attractive at all and what the hell was with that jacket? But then again, he’d been so incredibly kind to her. And not just tonight.
She smiled warmly at him. “Okay. Maybe check back.”
After all, she asked herself, what real harm could there be?
Chapter 17
From what he could tell, Omaha hadn’t changed one bit since the murders. Or, at least this upscale part of town looked exactly the same as he remembered from his frequent drive-bys. Nice homes, nice cars, nice people. People with successful careers. Money. Respect. And the sense of entitlement that came with all that. You could see it on every one of their smug, smiling faces. Even the children.
After parking the car, he rolled down his window and felt the warm early-morning breeze. It had been a long drive from Terre Haute and he was tired. He needed sleep but business came first. He double-checked his notes and confirmed that he was across from the correct address—a well-maintained, two-story beige house. But still, he hesitated getting out of the car. The timing—the feeling—had to be just right.
There was no hurry.
He pulled off his windbreaker and reached under the seat for his flask. He took a large swig, then another. As he relaxed, his thoughts drifted back over the years—back two years, then five years and then ten. He realized he’d been heading toward this particular destination for a long time. It might take him a while—years sometimes—but, just as he’d told his girlfriend Mia, he was a guy who got things done.
He decisively reached into his duffel bag and pulled out a sleek black handgun.
When he rang the doorbell, he heard the elegant chimes echo musically throughout the house. Then he heard overlapping voices inside—a man and a woman’s. A back-and-forth, exasperated-sounding argument about who would answer the door. He rang the bell again, harder this time, making the chimes sound a bit more insistent in their lilting echo. Finally, he heard a somewhat annoyed, “Honey, I will get it!” and a few seconds later the door opened.
The man was in his mid-sixties, balding, fit though just a little stooped in his posture. He was wearing a faded Huskers T-shirt and old cargo shorts, clearly his weekend working clothes. He had a warm smile.
“Hi there, sorry for the wait. Moving day—always the worst!” he said with a slightly put-upon sigh. “You’re here to get the piano? You’re a little early, but that’s okay.”
He glanced out past the man standing on his front porch. “Where’s your truck?”
He then did a double-take. He leaned forward slightly to look a little closer at the squat dark man with the strange eyes. “Hey. I think—”
“Hello, Doctor.”
A confused silence.
“Wait—are—”
Pulling out his gun, the man aimed and shot Roger Brumback directly in the center of his chest.
Chapter 18
The sharp bang echoed throughout the house—just as that infernal doorbell had. Good lord, wasn’t this morning chaotic enough without all this noise?
Mary Brumback looked away from her computer monitor in irritation.
“What’s wrong, Mom?”
The harried woman turned back to her Skype chat. “Oh, sweetie, the piano movers are here and I’m sure your father is trying to tell them what to do and just getting in their way. I heard a loud bang, like they’ve already dropped it!”
Mary’s daughter, Audrey, hoped the dim camera optics hid her amused smile. She tipped her head a little to let her long bangs fall forward. Oh, was she ever glad she was safely away from this scene in her San Francisco apartment. As much as she loved her parents—and knew they loved each other—the dynamics of any Brumback family project usually involved a fair amount of irritated bickering.
“I’ll let you go then, Mom,” Audrey said with a waved kiss to the camera. “It sucks that you’re spending Mother’s Day moving. Make Dad take you out for a nice dinner—an expensive one!”
Mary smiled distractedly back at her daughter. “Oh, who knows when we’ll be finished with all this. But I’ll be fine—as long as I can have my glass of chardonnay at the end of it all. I love you, sweetie—thanks so much for calling!”
After more mimed kisses, the women logged off. With a pained sigh, Mary stood up, stretched, and went into the nearby guest bathroom. Looking in the mirror, she said out loud, “My hair!” Even though she wore her frosted hair short, it seemed to be sticking out in every direction this morning. She thought she must have looked like a madwoman to her daughter. She certainly didn’t want the movers to see her like this. Picking up a comb, she brushed and fussed until it was at least tamped down. In the background, she overheard Roger moving about in the kitchen.
Entering the bedroom again, she bent to pick up another flattened moving box and started opening it up.
“Roger?” she called out. “Audrey sends her love. What on earth was going on out there?”
At first Mary heard only silence but then the squeak of the hallway floorboards as someone crossed them.
“Roger?”
The house went silent again. Her patience already sorely tested, Mary dropped the box and marched out into the kitchen. Though the floor was nearly covered with boxes, the table, sink, and counters were all spotless. But as she walked through the room, Mary saw that her walnut butcher-block knife set had been taken out of the open box she had just put it in not twenty minutes ago! It was sitting on the counter, and two of the knives were missing. Surely Roger wasn’t using her good cooking knives to cut twine or packing tape? Or was he letting the piano movers use them?
She strode into the living room. “Roger!”
No one was there. In fact, the piano was still sitting in its usual place. Then what had caused that racket, Mary wondered. She stepped up to the bay window and looked outside. There was no moving truck in front. The street was empty except for a silver SUV parked in front of the Coopers’.
“Roger!” she shouted this time. Where was that man? Had he gone to the garage?
Mary entered the foyer and started toward the front door.
And then she saw Roger sprawled flat on his back.
In her shock, the first thought that crossed Mary’s mind was that her husband had had a massive heart attack.
But that didn’t explain the gaping wound in the dead center of his chest, as if the Huskers logo on his T-shirt had been used as a bullseye.
Mary gave a strangled scream. The world seemed to turn upside down and she involuntarily staggered backward, away from the horrifying sight.
She backed up right into someone’s arms—which was startling yet somehow comforting, too. One arm came around her chest, as if to prevent her from collapsing. But the other arm flew through the air in front of her—first up, then down. The hallway light bounced off the side of the knife the person was holding. One of the sharp knives with the distinctive dark walnut handles.
Long, horrible moments later, Mary Brumback slid to the floor a few feet away from her husband.
Her good cooking knife was sticking out of her throat.
Chapter 19
How could anything be wrong on beautiful, sunny, calm Sunday morning like this—Mother’s Day yet, for Christ’s sake? The day was just too perfect for any kind of emergency. Derek Mois decided whatever it was could wait another ten minutes while he finished his five-mile jog.
Since turning forty—and finding gray hairs sprouting up through the tattoos on his forearms—Mois had made it a personal goal to run three times a week. And he’d stuck to it religiously. If he stopped to answer his buzzing cell, he wouldn’t finish this run and he’d blow his perfect rec
ord. Keeping commitments was important to the detective, even ones he’d only made to himself.
He did the last mile and a half in ninety seconds under his usual time. Not bad for an old guy, he thought. He entered the house through the back door and went into the kitchen for some water. Danny was at the table, tapping away on his laptop.
“Dad, what took you so long? We’re going to be late!” his son cried as he looked up with concern. “There’s going to be a huge line at the theater!”
Mois couldn’t believe how much Danny had grown in the past year or so. He was already an inch taller than his father, and didn’t look to be slowing down any time soon. Most unnerving of all to Mois was the faint but definite goatee Danny was growing. Gone were the gawky, skinny frame, the crooked teeth, and the horribly uncool eyeglasses. That boy no longer existed. The image caused Mois’s mind to turn to another long-gone adolescent: Tom Hunter, the kid who never got to outgrow his awkwardness. Five years ago. The case still unsolved, despite the assurances Mois had given Tom’s father. So much for delivering on my commitments, the detective thought bitterly.
“Dad!”
Danny’s voice snapped Mois out of his dark thoughts. He took a long, slow drink of water, teasing out the delay. Danny’s eyes grew wide at his father’s seeming indifference to his worry. Finally, Mois put the glass down and casually said, “Dude, I’m all over this.”
“What do you mean?” Danny asked with suspicion.
Mois broke into a big smile. “I already bought the movie tickets online, pal. Paid extra for the reserved seating section.”
“Really?” Danny brightened. “You got one for Charlie too, right?”
“Charlie, too.”
They were going to see the latest superhero movie—try as he might, Mois could never tell one from another—at Omaha’s newest stadium seating theatre. Reclining leather seats, eardrum-shattering Dolby sound, drive-in-sized movie screens. Since Mois’s wife had taken her own mom out for a Mother’s Day Champagne breakfast, the boys had the morning to themselves. Mois had felt a pang of guilt at how excited—and surprised—Danny had been when he’d suggested they see the film. It made him realize how long it had been since they’d spent time together.
“I’m going to jump in the shower. Be ready in five minutes, pal,” Mois said as he bounded out of the kitchen.
“Hurry, I don’t want to miss the trailers!” Danny called after him. “And don’t forget you promised an extra-extra-large popcorn!”
As Mois took the stairs two at a time, his cell phone buzzed again. He’d forgotten to check his voice mail. He pulled the phone out of his running shorts and saw a text from Teresa Negron:
Answer phone! DOUBLE homicide!!!
Mois slumped against the wall in disbelief. There hadn’t been a killing in the Omaha metro area since January. Why today?
“Four minutes, Dad!” Danny yelled.
As he turned to go back down the stairs, Mois could literally feel his heart break. At this moment, a double murder—however horrible the scene—sounded a lot easier to face than giving his son this news.
Commitments, Mois said to himself. Yeah, I’m all over them…
Chapter 20
“So, I see that the front door is open an inch or two. And I lean forward just a little, and that’s when I see it. A gun clip layin’ right there on the floor! A gun clip—in a house like this!”
The large middle-aged man with a beet-red face gestured dramatically as he related his story to Negron and another officer. He was wearing a black T-shirt that said JASON PETERSON, THE PIANO MAN. As Mois approached the front of the residence, he saw that a truck with the same printing on its side was sitting in the driveway. Two patrol cars were parked at haphazard angles in the street, and a flashing ambulance sat between them.
“So, I push on the door, but it wouldn’t budge no more—like something’s blockin’ it,” Peterson continued, raising his voice. “That’s when I start thinkin’ I better call the cops, and pronto!”
Negron looked up and saw Mois coming up the drive. She put her hand on the other officer’s forearm then hurried over toward Mois. She noted the set jaw that indicated his mood was a dark one. After five and a half years of working together, she knew his every expression.
“Why so grim?” Negron asked. “You haven’t even seen what’s inside yet.”
“The timing of this is not optimal,” Mois all but snarled.
“Wow, pardner,” Negron said incredulously. “You mean there’s a good time for a double murder?”
Mois frowned and shook his head, abashed.
“No, of course not,” Mois said apologetically. “Scratch that comment from the record. It’s just I had plans with Danny, and I’m probably going to have to buy him a car to get him to speak to me again.”
Negron gave his shoulder an understanding squeeze. “I’m pretty sure Danny’s going to forgive you when he hears the details on this one. Come on, we gotta go through the back. One of the bodies is blocking the front door.”
Mois followed after Negron as she quickly went up the drive to a side door that lead into the kitchen. As they entered, Mois noted the array of differently sized moving boxes stacked around the otherwise tidy room.
“Fill me in. What do we have?” Mois asked.
Negron stopped Mois in his tracks before he could advance any further.
“I don’t know how to tell you this,” she said, a bit breathlessly. “We have a husband and wife. Retired doctor. He was shot once in the chest and stabbed multiple times. But the thing is—”
“Stabbed first, then shot?” Mois asked impatiently.
“I don’t know! Just listen to me, Mois!” Negron nearly screamed. “Because this is major. You’re not going to believe it. Both victims have, well…ah hell, just come and see for yourself.”
Negron pulled Mois toward a small sitting room off of the front foyer. Two ashen-faced patrolman—rookies, Mois assumed, from their obvious youth and shocked expressions—were standing guard. On the floor, a silver-haired woman in her sixties was lying on her side. Blood was everywhere—all over her clothes, all over the floor, all over the walls. Mois took in the grisly sight as stoically as he could, then did a double-take.
A long kitchen knife was sticking up out of the side of the woman’s throat.
Mois shot Negron an astonished look. Wide-eyed, she gestured to his right toward the front door. Mois looked over and saw a man in his sixties lying flat on his back. A horrific chest wound ringed with darkening blood initially demanded Mois’s attention—until he saw another knife sticking out of the side of the man’s throat.
Mois turned to Negron—they just gaped at each other for a beat.
“He’s back,” she said in a stunned whisper. “The bastard has struck again!”
His mind reeling, Mois quickly paced from one body to the other. He immediately saw that woman had not been shot, she’d only been stabbed—but many times, countless times. Defensive wounds laced her arms and hands—she’d put up a fight.
“Okay, just hold on now,” Mois said, trying for calm as he went over to take a closer look at the man’s body. “This could be a copycat.”
“Not a chance!” Negron protested. “The MO is too specific!”
“But the Hunter crime scene details are well known. The knives left in the throats made headlines,” Mois cautioned. “For Christ’s sake, they even used it on a Law & Order episode. And don’t forget, no gun was used in the killings at the Hunters’ house.”
“And don’t you forget that it was never revealed that the knives were taken from the Hunters’ kitchen block set,” Negron said pointedly. “Just take a guess where these knives came from.”
In continuing disbelief, Mois stepped past one of the frozen patrolmen and glanced into the kitchen. There it was: an expensive-looking dark-wood knife set sitting in the middle of the counter. Two knives were missing.
“You are way ahead of me, Negron,” Mois acknowledged as he looked over the fron
t of the house. “Who are these people, anyway?”
The sergeant looked at her notes. “Dr. Roger Brumback. And his wife, Mary.”
Mois worked a hand over his chin, trying to process this confounding scene. He looked around the house again, finally zeroing in on the sitting room. After a beat, he strode quickly across the room and picked something up from a small side table.
“Wait—Roger Brumback? We met him!” Mois exclaimed. “We met him in Dr. Hunter’s office.”
Mois turned around and held up a large coffee mug for Negron to see. “This is it—this is the link!”
On the side of the hefty ceramic cup was a sky-blue logo: CREIGHTON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE.
Chapter 21
“Two—possibly three—murders committed in 2008. Then, in 2013, two more murders. Five killings, five years apart.”
Confused murmuring rippled across the room.
“The math doesn’t make sense to us now, but it will eventually—it has to.”
Mois let his words sink in to the multiagency task force he was addressing. It was a sizeable group—the largest Mois had ever headed up. About fifteen people were crammed into the Omaha PD’s biggest conference room. Rows of long tables had been set up classroom style facing the speaker podium where Mois stood with Negron at his side. Laptops were open, pencils were held at the ready, all eyes were wide. The energy in the room was crackling—it was an exciting case. Mois could see and feel the intense dedication pouring out of every officer and technician that sat in front of him.
Mois gave a nod to Alex Burns, who sat on his left with a laptop perched on a crossed knee. Alex’s once massive beard was a now thing of the past, an apparent casualty of his having been made head of the IT department; he now worked a much more buttoned-down look. He clicked a few keys and the white screen behind Mois lit up. A slow dissolve revealed smiling photographs of Tom Hunter and Shirlee Sherman on the left side of the page, Joy Blanchard appeared in the middle, and then Roger and Mary Brumback came into view on the right.