Cold feet(28)
Author: Brenda Novak

His cell phone rang. He glanced over at it, reluctant to even check the caller ID, certain it was Holly or his mother. Yesterday he’d told Justine Trovato that he was renting a cottage from the daughter of Ellis Purcell. His mother knew what he wanted from Madison and hadn’t liked his methods at all.

"’What tangled webs we weave,’" she’d quoted.

He should have listened to her.

Whoever had called simply hung up and tried again. Shoving the rest of his clothes into his bag with little regard for neatness, he finally grabbed his cell phone. The caller ID simply said "private."

"Hello?" he barked, curiously tense for someone who’d just gotten out of bed.

"There you are."

Gibbons. "Tell me you’ve found Susan," Caleb said.

For once the detective was noticeably reticent. "I’m afraid we have."

Dropping the tennis shoes he’d been trying to stuff into his bag, which was nearly bursting its seams because he’d put his computer in there, too, he sank onto the bed. "But?"

"It isn’t good news."

Those words seemed to echo through Caleb’s head. He pictured his ex-sister-in-law coming toward him, grinning sheepishly, that time he and Holly had collected her from the airport after the stunt she’d pulled in Vegas, and closed his eyes, knowing instinctively what Gibbons was about to say.

"She’s dead."

Jaw clenched, Caleb didn’t bother to respond. His chest had constricted so tightly he could barely breathe, let alone speak.

"You there?" Gibbons asked after a few moments.

Caleb struggled to find his voice. "Have you or someone else notified the family?"

"Not yet. I thought maybe you should do it."

Thanks, he wanted to say. And yet he knew it was better for him to break the news than some stranger. "Right. I’ll take care of it."

"Caleb?"

"What?"

"She was strangled."

Chills cascaded down Caleb’s spine. "Then I was right."

"There’s something going on. She was killed just like all the others, same fracture to the hyoid bone, same ligature marks, same…" He hesitated, obviously sensitive to the fact that because of the nature of his involvement, Caleb might not want to hear the gory details. "Same everything," he finished.

Which meant she’d been sexually assaulted with a foreign object and positioned for maximum shock value. Caleb closed his eyes against the mental picture that was conjured up in his mind, and cursed. It felt as though he was living in some sort of alternate reality. How could the violence and horror he wrote about in the lives of others now reach out to touch him so personally? "Where did you find her?"

"Not far from where we found the others."

"Near the university?"

"Just off the Burke Gilman Trail, in some trees. A jogger saw a glimpse of white fabric–she was wrapped in a sheet–and went to investigate."

"How long has she been dead?"

"I don’t have the coroner’s report yet, of course, but looking at the body, I’d say at least ten days, maybe two weeks."

She’d been dead before Caleb ever reached Seattle. But what made the killer single Susan out?

"We’ll know the time of death soon enough," Gibbons added, then covered the phone while he coughed. "Meanwhile, I need the next of kin to come down and ID the body."

Her parents were in Arizona, so Holly would have to do it. And Caleb knew, after two weeks, Susan wouldn’t be a pretty sight. God, how was his ex-wife going to deal with seeing her sister like that?

"I’ll bring Holly down to the morgue after…in a couple of hours," he said.

"That’ll work."

Caleb sighed, wondering how to break the news.

"You get anywhere with Purcell’s daughter?" Gibbons asked.

He’d nearly rounded first base, but that wasn’t the kind of progress he’d been hoping for–and it certainly wasn’t what Gibbons wanted to hear. "No, nothing that could help us."

"It’s not too late."

"Too late for what?"

"We can catch this guy. There was a tire track at the scene."

"But do we have a vehicle to compare it against?" Caleb asked. Even DNA evidence wasn’t any good unless the police could pinpoint a suspect and get a sample.

"Not yet, but according to a specialist on tire track impressions, it’s probably from a truck."

"Oh, that narrows it down."

Any other time, Gibbons would have called him a smart ass. But he said only, "I want to check it against the tires on that blue Ford pick-up Purcell used to drive."

The blue Ford. There was a blue Ford in the picture Holly had acquired of Susan. And Susan had been strangled shortly after that photo was taken. "Do we know where the truck is?"

"I already checked with the DMV. It’s still registered to the Purcells."

"So you’re going to get another search warrant?"

"With Purcell dead, I don’t think it’s possible. Judges don’t take the violation of people’s constitutional rights lightly, and we both know Annette Purcell isn’t capable of this murder. I was thinking it would be better to have you borrow the truck so I can take a quick peek."

"I can’t borrow that truck," Caleb said.

"Why not?"

"Having me act as an agent for the police in order to obtain evidence could get you fired, for one thing. And I’m moving out of here."

"You’re making this a bigger deal than it is," Gibbons replied. "I’m not going to touch the damn truck or its tires. The tread of this imprint is unusual enough that I should be able to get some idea from a visual inspection. If it checks out, I’ll ask for a warrant. But I have to know I’m not out of my mind for wanting to see Purcell’s vehicle when the man’s already dead."

Caleb looked over at his packed bag. He’d been halfway out the door…. "Can’t you see the truck’s tires some other way?"

"I could if Purcell’s widow ever drove it."

"Madison won’t lend me her father’s truck," Caleb said, remembering how difficult it had been for her to even talk about Ellis.

"She hasn’t figured out who you really are, has she?"

"No."

"Then how do you know she won’t do you a favor? You haven’t asked her yet."

"She’s trying to put her life back together. She’s running a business, raising a kid. I can’t–"

"Are you interested in solving this or not?" Gibbons interrupted.

"Of course." He wanted to solve it now more than ever. All the friends and family members of the various victims he’d met through the years suddenly seemed far closer to him. Instead of telling the story from a distance, he was now part of the actual picture–and the irony didn’t escape him. To think that someone he knew, someone he cared about, had suffered as Susan must have suffered made him ill and showed him the difference between empathy and real understanding.