The Suicide Killer Page 8

  Now they knew everything they needed to know about him. He lived and worked too close to where they found her. They would expect him to have found her first. Bobby’s arms ached from holding them above his head. Assholes were probably going to make fun of him after he left.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Bobby Cotton.”

  The man looked him up and down. Bobby hoped he would notice that he was in his work uniform and believe him. The last thing he needed was to get stuck down here with the police asking him questions all day. They would eventually trip him up, and he’d look guilty. He hoped Emily would understand it wasn’t his fault they found her. He wasn’t ready for her to leave him yet.

  “Okay, Bobby. I’m Detective Murphy. Go ahead to work, and I’ll probably send somebody by later to ask a few more questions,” Don said, and handed him his card.

  Bobby didn’t reply. He ran, with his hands still above his head, to get away from the area as fast as he could.

  Don’t worry, Bobby. I won’t tell them you were ever here with me. They’ll never know.

  He stopped at the top of the hill to catch his breath and looked back down to try to get a glimpse of Emily one last time. All he saw was a crowd of uniforms and technicians. The coroner had not shown up yet.

  Don Murphy looked up the hill, and he and Bobby made eye contact.

  Bobby turned and ran. When he got to the parking lot, there were a few more cops, and they were talking to somebody. He continued on like he didn’t see them. He wasn’t positive, but he was pretty sure it was Danielle’s ex, Mike, standing with the cops beside Emily’s car. He stopped at the door breathless and fought to pull the keys out of his pocket. Once inside he sat at a table to catch his breath. He should have driven to work like he planned. Then they wouldn’t know anything about him. Now they were sending somebody up here to question him about Emily. Who told them about her? Why was Mike in the parking lot beside Emily’s car? There wasn’t time to think about that right now. He had to prepare to open the store and prepare for whoever was coming to question him later. He couldn’t slip up and let them know he knew anything about the dead girl.

  Chapter Eleven

  Greg parked in front of the Daily Grind and walked the two blocks to the park. Don called and told him they found another body, but it looked like an actual suicide. He said it looked like an animal was sleeping under the tree beside her at some point. It surprised Greg that whatever it was, hadn’t tried to nibble at the corpse. He didn’t share that thought with Don, though.

  The girl didn’t leave a note, and Don didn’t find anything that looked suspicious, or out of the ordinary besides the animal bed, so there was no point in him coming to the scene. Don wanted Greg to question the boyfriend and then to go to the coffee shop and question the barista who ran through the crime scene this morning. The only thing noteworthy was that the girl looked a lot like Rachel Martin. The girl’s boyfriend called it in when he found her car in the parking lot this morning. Greg stopped at the entrance to the park.

  Morgan Cramer already had her camera set up and ready to start rolling on the story. She smiled at Greg as he walked by. She apparently wasn’t going to try to talk to him again before he had had a chance to see what was going on. Too bad she didn’t say anything. He would have told her this case and the previous murder weren’t connected, and she was wasting her time. He just shook his head and kept going.

  The boyfriend leaned up against his car with his arms crossed and boot heel on the tire, like he thought he was James Dean. It wouldn’t have surprised Greg if he’d had a pack of smokes rolled in his shirt sleeve to complete the look. Police officers surrounded Mike as they searched the girl’s car, but he didn’t acknowledge their presence; he only stared at the dirt.

  “Are you Mike Smith?” Greg asked, looking through his notes.

  “I guess so, seeing as I’m the only one that’s not a cop around here.”

  Mike carried himself with what he thought would be an air of importance, and everybody else knew he was a jerk. Greg thought he had the face of a person you just want to punch in the throat just for looking at you. His farmer’s tan and faded clothes gave away that he worked outside a lot, probably construction or landscaping. He more than likely thought he deserved more, and it was the world’s fault he didn’t have it easier. Anybody could tell his car was the most important thing to him, and he used it as a status symbol. But what did his house look like? It agitated him that he had to be at the park instead of anywhere else. Like there was a better place for him to be while his girlfriend lay dead in the woods?

  “So it seems, Mikey. You act like you’d rather not be here. Like you don’t want to help me find out what happened.”

  Mike stood up straight and puffed out his chest like a bird, making itself look bigger to stop encroachment on his territory.

  “My name is Mike, and yes, I’d rather be somewhere else. I should be at work right now. Instead, I’m standing around waiting on you to show up so you can ask me some questions about my stupid ex. I shouldn’t have called. I should have just left her car here.”

  This guy was a bigger jerk than he appeared to be. He had no respect for Greg or any of the other people out here trying to figure out what happened to somebody he cared for at some point. And worst of all, he had no respect for the girl who was lying in the woods, dead. It wouldn’t surprise Greg if it turned out to be a suicide, and he was the reason she decided to end it for good.

  “I’m honestly surprised you did call it in, Mikey,”

  Being antagonistic toward Mike was not going to help Greg get the answers out of him any faster, but he didn’t care. Mike was a piece of shit, and he wanted to get under his skin.

  “I said my name is Mike. Call me Mikey again and I’m walking.”

  “No, Mikey, you’re not. You’re not going anywhere until I ask you some questions and I am satisfied that you answered them to the best of your abilities. Now, you can keep playing this stupid tough guy routine and piss me off even more, and I’ll keep you longer. Or you can chill out and show some fucking respect to the girl you probably drove to this,” Greg said, backing Mike up against his car.

  The officers going through Emily’s car stopped to watch the exchange between the two men.

  “You can’t talk to me like that.”

  Greg took another step toward Mike.

  “Yeah, I can. Do you really want to try me? Maybe we should just go back to my office so we can talk. I’ll give you a ride in the back of my car and when I’m finished with you, you can make arrangements for somebody to pick you up and bring you back to your car. That should only take all morning.”

  Mike looked to the side and took a deep breath.

  “No, there’s no need for that. Just ask your questions so I can go. I don’t have time for all of this.”

  “Your compassion is overwhelming. Did you live with…Emily?”

  “No, she lived with me. It’s my place.”

  Greg looked up from his notes.

  “Right, your place. How long has she been missing?”

  “I don’t know. A week. Maybe ten days.”

  “So, she lived with you, and you didn’t realize she was gone and you don’t know the amount of time she’s been missing?”

  Mike pushed off the car and slid his boot through the dirt.

  “Look, man, she saw me here with another girl last week. She caused a big scene and ran off into the park. I don’t know where she went after that because I left.”

  “She catches you cheating, runs off into the woods and doesn’t come home, and you weren’t worried about her?”

  This guy was in the running for the lowest form of human waste that Greg had come across while he was on the clock or off. But Mike didn’t kill Emily. He didn’t care enough about her to kill her. If she’d made him that mad, he would have done something psychological to screw her up even more. Murder wasn’t his brand of abuse.

  “No, I figured she was at her moth
er’s house and would come back when she got over it.”

  “When she got over it? And you found her car this morning? Why were you here so early?”

  “Look, I was meeting somebody here, and I saw her car in the same place that she parked it last week, so I called the cops. That’s the entire story. There’s not a lot I can tell you.”

  Meeting somebody else while his girlfriend lay dead in the woods less than two football fields away from him.

  “No, you’ve told me quite a lot. You can go, I’ll be in touch if I have any other questions.”

  “Whatever,” Mike said, and jumped in his car.

  Greg watched as Mike drove off, spinning his tires in the gravel parking lot. He was an ass, but he didn’t kill Emily or Rachel. Don said it looked like the girl killed herself. The questions were only a formality. Now, he had to go to the coffee shop and formally talk to somebody else that didn’t know anything about this girl. He was wasting time out here on this call, while Rachel’s killer was on the loose plotting his next kill or how to screw with Greg more. Maybe Greg was next. The fact that Emily looks like Rachel could be a coincidence, or maybe he did a better job at covering up Emily’s murder. The killer hadn’t said anything about it to Greg when he called him. He would have said something. He was too confident and would have used any excuse to rub it in Greg’s face that he had killed somebody else that they didn’t know about.

  When Greg got back to the shopping center, he stopped under the awning. Sweat soaked through his shirt. The conversation with Mike got heated, and the weather didn’t help either. He pulled out his phone to give Don an update, but it started ringing before he could click on Don’s name.

  It was Rachel’s number.

  “Hello, Detective,” the familiar voice said. “You looked hot out there, so I took the liberty of getting you something cold to drink. I left it in your cup holder.”

  Greg opened the door to his car and got in. A plastic cup covered in condensation sat in the center console. Detective Gregory Burns was written in black marker along the side in the same messy handwriting from the note left for him at the house. The cup had the logo of the coffee shop on it. It read: Daily Grind with a red lightning bolt striking a cup of coffee between the two words. Greg turned quickly to look in the backseat of his car and then at the surrounding area. There was nobody there. A strangled laugh came through the phone.

  “I’m not in your backseat, but thank you, Detective. I really needed that. It’s been a hell of a day for me so far.”

  “I’m not much of an iced coffee drinker, but thanks for thinking about me,” Greg said.

  “No worries. I myself love iced coffee.”

  “Why don’t you come join me in the car and I’ll let you have this one? You’d have to sit in the back, of course.”

  “Aw, Detective, I thought you would have a little more respect for me than that. Has anyone ever fallen for something so lame before?”

  “I’ve never had a killer call me before, but it was worth a shot.”

  “Oh, I’m you’re first. How exciting. It got pretty exciting at Rachel’s place too. I honestly didn’t expect you to show up that fast. Color me impressed. You almost caught me. I’ll have to be more careful from now on.”

  Greg missed his chance. This guy was there the whole time and was still there when he went back, and he blew it, both times. Now the guy will be more meticulous, making it that much harder to catch him. After almost catching him, Greg didn’t expect to hear from him again. He thought the killer would resurface when he found another ‘vessel,’ as he called them. Greg didn’t want to be any part of the killer’s sick game.

  “This isn’t a game.”

  “But isn’t it? I kill. You try to stop me. When you don’t, I kill again. It’s all one big game.”

  “What did you mean by calling Rachel a vessel?”

  “Oh…don’t worry about that. I assure you, it’s nothing.”

  The pause meant it was something. If Greg could keep him talking, he might be able to get something useful out of him. The killer was too calm. Greg wouldn’t be able to get under his skin as easily as he had Mike. That definitely ruled Mike out as a suspect. There was nothing calm about that guy.

  “Well, since you’re assuring me, I guess I’ll believe you.”

  “For some reason, I don’t believe you.”

  He still had the false bravado to his voice, but the more he spoke the more Greg could tell there was something a little off about him today. Maybe almost getting caught had thrown him off more than Greg originally thought.

  “Anyway, I was just hanging around and happened to see you in the park. What’s going on over there?”

  He needed to know why they were there. He wouldn’t be curious about another investigation that didn’t involve him somehow. They had pretty much determined the girl in the woods was a suicide. Greg didn’t see why he would be asking about her unless maybe he knew her.

  “Why would you want to know about what we were doing? Did you have something to do with it?”

  “I didn’t kill her if that’s what you are asking.”

  “Why should I believe you?”

  “Because she was dead before our friend Rachel, and I would have already been gloating about how I had killed somebody you didn’t know about and probably wouldn’t find for a while.”

  He was definitely telling the truth about that. The playful sound in his voice wavered when he spoke. Either Greg was getting to him, or this girl meant something to him.

  “So now you’re calling me to get the scoop on the story? Well, I hate to break it to you, but I can’t discuss an ongoing investigation with anybody.”

  “I don’t want to know her damn life story. I only want to know how you found out she was there.”

  “My partner called me and told me, and then I came over to see if it was your handy work or not.”

  “Detective, you know that’s not what I meant.”

  “Wow, who’s tired of playing games now?”

  Greg almost had him. A little more pushing and he would be ready to scream at him and hopefully reveal something.

  “You really are trying me. I only want to know who called 911 and told them there was a dead girl in the woods of Rusted Lakes Park.”

  Greg walked around the parking lot trying to see if he could find him by listening for his yelling. He had to be inside one of these buildings or in a car nearby.

  “You’re not going to find me looking around like that. Quit looking for stupid shit. I’m not an idiot.”

  “I don’t think you’re an idiot. Maybe crazy, but not stupid. But, I can’t have you making me look stupid either because you were behind me the whole time.”

  “Considering the way some of your coworkers look at you, I can’t say that I blame you. How do they feel that you’ve been talking to a killer on the phone? They probably think you’re as crazy as I am.”

  “Yeah. I guess they think it’s weird.”

  Shit. He hesitated. That’s all it would take with this guy, and he’d gain the advantage again.

  “They don’t know, do they? Don’t worry, Detective. I won’t tell anybody our little secret. I promise.”

  A phone rang once in the background, followed by a crash, and everything sounded muffled. He’d covered the receiver to answer another phone. Most people didn’t have a landline anymore. He could be at work. Which meant he was stable enough to keep a job where he dealt with the public. A dulled scrape filled the phone like cotton being removed from an infected ear, and Greg could hear again.

  “Oh well, I have to go for now, but I will talk to you again soon. Don’t worry. My lips are sealed,” the killer said, and hung up the phone.

  Greg kicked himself for giving the killer leverage over him. He hadn’t even told Don. The killer knew he couldn’t tell anybody now and could hold it over Greg’s head for not telling anybody sooner. Greg could lose his badge if anybody found out. The fate of his job rested in the hands of a kil
ler, like the lives of his victims.

  Greg didn’t have time to worry about that right now. He still had a pointless interview with the barista that walked through Don’s suicide scene. The coffee cup in Greg’s car was from that shop. Maybe he remembered the guy who bought it and it wouldn’t be as pointless as he thought.

  Greg walked into the shop. A customer stood by the end of the counter, waiting for the only barista on duty to make their drink. He went about his job methodically and didn’t look up when he addressed Burns.

  “Welcome to the Daily Grind. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  “Are you Bobby Cotton?”

  “Or now,” he said under his breath. “Yeah, that’s me. I guess your boss sent you over to ask me questions about this morning.”

  Greg watched as Bobby sat the customer’s drink on the counter and wiped the condensation on his apron. He put a straw on top, before telling the customer their drink was ready.

  “He’s not my boss. He’s my partner.”

  “He acted like he was everybody’s boss, but whatever you say.”

  Bobby walked back to the cash register.

  “I noticed you didn’t write that girl’s name or order on her cup. Why’s that?”

  “Because she’s the only one in here. It would be hard to get her order confused with anybody else’s.”

  Greg should have known that, but this guy seemed off and was obviously agitated. Of course, that could be because he has to come to this job every day. Waiting on people who don’t care or acknowledge your presence until you screw up their order, then they want to know you and your boss and anybody else’s name they may need. People always believe that mistakes happen as long as they are the ones making them. If it’s anybody else, then the only logical explanation is incompetence. Greg immediately regretted the way he came at the guy. The killer got him all worked up on the phone and then just left him. He decided to let it go.

  “So what happened this morning?”

  “Like I told your partner, I live in the neighborhood behind the park and I cut through in the mornings on my way to work.”