Find Me If You Dare (The Chronicles of Elizabeth Marshall Book 2) (25 page)

   
                 Chapter Sixty-Five

The news reporter for the local station was young and bounced on the balls of his feet with energy. He wore a dark blue pull-over with the station’s logo on it and had dark hair slicked back and gelled into place.

I realized too late that the FBI badge on the lanyard around my neck was like a beacon to him. Drawing the attention of a rookie news reporter probably wasn’t one of the smartest ideas I’d ever had.

“Excuse me, are you involved in this investigation?” He had deeply tanned skin and dark eyes. “Can you tell me what’s happened? Will you give us a statement?”

“No comment.” I backed away from the eager reporter and looked around for a better place to go. Scanning the area, I noticed a local sheriff’s deputy standing next to his car in the parking lot and looking my direction. He gave me very brief nod and subtly patted the holster on his hip. He was keeping an eye on me. I felt relieved and worried at the same time. I was grateful for the protection, but I was really worried that if Elizabeth was here she would be very wary around so much law enforcement.

I looked around at all the businesses in the area. Several of the businesses were being blocked by the police cars and crime scene tape. The coffee shop, though, was doing a booming business. They were a major franchise, very popular, and what better excuse to find out what was going on
while indulging in an iced coffee than there?

What better place to hide than in a crowded coffee shop?

Crossing the parking lot, I decided to take off my lanyard and put it in my purse. I wanted to blend in with the other thirsty people in the shop.

The small shop was at the end of the row of businesses and had a drive through window. As I stepped through the doorway I felt the air-conditioning hit me in a cool wave. The line at the register was long and every seat in the place was filled. I took my place in line and slowly looked around
at the numerous patrons, searching, hoping I would see something familiar. A pair of bright green eyes, a wisp of red hair, a movement or a gesture that I might recognize.

Not long after I had entered the shop,
Agent Ludlow walked through the door. He was in civilian clothes with nothing that would point to him as a FBI agent, but I was able to pick him out. Maybe it was because I had been around so many law enforcement officials lately. He was here to protect me, I knew. I only hoped if Elizabeth was here she wouldn’t notice him.

The employees probably hadn’t anticipated such a rush.
They were scrambling to fill all the orders. It gave me ample time to thoroughly look over the room. There was every age of people there and from every background. Soccer moms, business men, construction workers, every mix of people imaginable, but no Elizabeth. I kept myself turned towards the front entrance, hoping that if she had seen me outside and decided to follow me in, I would see her first.

I ordered an iced chai, paid for it,
then paused next to the main counter, taking my time, waiting for the young man behind the counter to make my drink as I observed the customers coming in and out. I was so busy watching the door that I was surprised when I heard someone speak to me.

“Excuse me.” I turned to see a petite girl behind the counter looking at me. She had short, spiky hair dyed a bright magenta. Her nose and lip
s were pierced and she wore the headset to speak with customers at the drive through window. “I’m sorry, but is your name Caitlyn Stewart by any chance?”

That stopped
me dead in my tracks. I looked at her closely. Did I know her? There was no way I knew anyone from this small city in southern New Mexico. How could she possibly know my name?

“Yes, that’s my name.” I almost had to force the words out past my suddenly dry lips.

“Well, you see, it was the weirdest thing,” her manager gave her a dark look, probably because she wasn’t filling any drink orders, which she promptly ignored, “I was preparing a vente white chocolate mocha frappuccino for this lady at the drive through window. When she got up to the window to pay for it, she looked inside and pointed at you standing in line. She asked for a napkin and a pen. She wrote something down on the napkin and handed it back to me. She told me your name and asked me to give it to you about five or ten minutes after she left. I’m sorry. We’ve been so busy, I don’t know how long it’s been. Here.”

She slid the napkin across the counter
. Despite the air conditioning, I broke out into a cold sweat. The napkin had the coffee shop’s logo on it. There was a message hastily written on it. On the lower right corner of a napkin was a smear of dark red.

“Cate, sorry I missed you. I want
ed to stop and chat but it was a bit too crowded. Have you seen what I did yet? He was nothing to me, less than nothing. Nothing but a sperm donor. Now there’s only one thing left to do. I need to destroy where it all began. I need to destroy the first people who rejected me. Come and find me if you dare, this is your last chance, Cate, do you care?”

                     Chapter Sixty-Six

“Ludlow!”

The words weren’t even out of my mouth and the tall, brawny agent materialized at my side. He took one look at the note on the napkin and started issuing orders in a low voice. I thought he had lost his mind until I saw an almost invisible ear-piece in his ear attached to a wire running down his neck.

Before I could even coherently gather my thoughts, several other agents came through the front door followed by Director Phillips and Logan. The perimeter of the coffee shop was secured and everyone present was either removed or sectioned into groups for interviewing. All of the employees behind the counter were being interrogated to find out what they might know or remember about the one customer that had been in the drive through.

The poor girl with the spiky magenta hair had the director, Logan and Agent Ludlow questioning her. The name tag on her green apron said “Brandee” and she looked as though
she was regretting coming to work that day. I’d always thought that I’d never want to be on the receiving end of an interrogation by Logan, let alone the director.

The description she gave of Elizabeth was vague. Brandee remembered little more than the customer in question wearing an old cowboy hat and sunglasses. She said her hair had been tucked up under the hat and she wasn’t certain about the color but she thought it might be a light brown
or red. Cowboy hat? Since when had Elizabeth started wearing cowboy hats?

The only thing Brandee remembered about the vehicle was that it was a white Ford or Dodge truck.
In this area of the country, every other vehicle you passed on the street was a white truck. It was a little information to go on, but not enough.

She wasn’t certain how long ago Elizabeth had been at the drive through window so Phillips had the manager access the computer system they used for orders and check the time of her receipt. A vente white chocolate mocha frappuccino had been ordered twenty-two minutes ago. Had it really been that long? The clock was ticking.

While Phillips was issuing an APB for the white truck within a thirty mile radius Logan was working with Special Agent Ludlow. They had discovered that there was a security camera near the menu board at the drive through. Unfortunately, the camera was set too high and didn’t have a wide angle view. The only thing they were able to see was the blur of the top half of a white truck and a shadowy figure inside with a hat on.

They took a copy of the footage and sent it ahead to the nearest field office for a more thorough analysis. They were hoping with digital enhancement they could get more information about the truck.

A forensic specialist had shown up to take the napkin in gloved fingers and place it in a clear plastic evidence bag. Before they could take it away, Madeline appeared. She had come straight from the crime scene. She wanted to see the note for herself. She read the note quietly then raised her eyes to me.  She didn’t have to say a word. She wanted my take on Elizabeth’s message.

I took my time and read through the message again. Just seeing the words, seeing Sophie’s handwriting again
, sent chills through me. I tried to ignore the chaos going on around me, the frantic employees wondering how they had all gotten themselves into this mess, the federal and local law enforcement officials, asking questions, closing the coffee shop down against the manager’s protests, turning it into temporary crime scene.

“What is she saying to you?” Madeline asked when I didn’t answer her right away. She
held the plastic sealed napkin in her hands. I didn’t even want to touch it now. I would rather touch a deadly, poisonous snake.

“She did stick around that this crime scene like I thought she would
.” That was the first thing I noticed. “Up to this point, she’s been pretty unpredictable. Why now would she start being predictable?”

“Good point.” She raised her eyebrows, realizing the same thing.

I knew Elizabeth was gone from this area now, I could feel is as sure as I felt her presence when she was here. The intense fear of having her so close was starting to leave me. My mind was clearing. I looked at the letter again.

“Her clues are almost starting to get obvious.” I hesitated to call it careless, but she seemed to be telling me more with each crime scene. “Either I’m getting better at understanding her, or, I don’t know…..”

“What is it?” Madeline knew I was on to something. Her eyes lit up in anticipation.

I thought it through before I said anything.

“It’s almost as though she wants to get caught.” As wild as that may sound, it was the only thing that seemed to be making sense. “She’s lingering at the crime scenes, she getting bolder in her notes and clues. If she’s acting as though she wants to get caught, maybe Sophie doesn’t have full control all the time. Maybe there are other family members that want to stop this crime spree.”

Madeline let out a long breath.

“I hadn’t thought of it that way.” She shook her head and looked back down at the note. “Maybe there really is someone in there that’s helping us. We’re getting closer. We get closer every time.”

“Not close enough, though.” There was yet another crime scene I still had to visit just across the parking lot.
We had to find her. We had to end this.

“We have every available law enforcement officer out there right now, closing down streets and freeways,” it was Logan speaking this time. His voice was confident and determined. He knew that was what I needed to hear right now. “They’ve called in a county helicopter as well as a helicopter from a local news station here. We’ll be watching every road leaving Las Cruces. We’ll find her.”

“Well, if they don’t find her,” I wanted to believe that they would, but she had slipped through our fingers before, “if by any chance they don’t find that white truck, then I know where she’s heading.”

“Where?” Phillips must have heard me.
He was at my side before I knew it and I had his instant attention.

“We need to go to Iowa. She’s going after her maternal grandparents.”

      
              Chapter Sixty-Seven

Before I entered the building, Logan and Madeline had warned me that the crime scene might be difficult to see. They weren’t exaggerating.

The trail of blood started near the receptionist’s desk and wound its way back into the office. The furniture and décor was modest by most standards. No heavy and expensive wood, just a simple oak desk with a black leather office chair and few cushioned chairs in front of the desk for clients. Probably all bought at a local furniture store.
The theme was the popular southwestern desert motif. A small potted cactus was tipped over and balanced on the edge of the desk where it had almost been knocked off.  Pictures of red rock desert landscapes hung on the walls as well as a degree from a business school and a business license.

The victim’s body had been removed shortly before I had walked over from the coffee shop. The forensic team was almost done taking samples and documenting everything at the scene.

“Has everything been photographed?” I asked a young man with county ID as he was sealing an envelope containing what looked like blood samples.

“Yes,” was his distracted answer.

As I looked around the small office, I tried to block out the splotches of blood flecked across the desk and the off-white wall behind it. I tried to see it as it had been when Robert Marshall had walked in that day to begin what he had probably thought would be a routine day of work.

I took a step closer to the desk, wondering if Elizabeth had left anything behind for me to see. The light brown carpet
beneath my feet crunched as I stepped on it. I took as step back then knelt down to see what I had stepped on. Glass. Shattered glass.

Carefully, not wanting to cut myself, I searched around the desk and looked underneath it, finding more tiny shards of thin glass. Peering underneath, I thought I could make out a piece of wood. I reached under and slowly pulled out a rectangular wooden frame
with one gloved hand. The glass had been shattered almost to dust. I shook it off and looked at the picture in the frame.

“What did you find?” Madeline wasn’t more than a few feet away.
Logan was speaking to local county sheriff near the receptionist’s desk, bringing him up to date on the search for the suspect.

I couldn’t answer for a few moments. It was a family portrait, not a stuffy, photographer’s studio portrait, but
a real flesh and blood family picture taken on some tropical vacation. Robert had his arm around his wife. He looked to be of average height and she seemed as petite as Madeline. Each of them had a daughter on their other side, one almost as tall as her father, the other just a bit shorter than her mother.

The each had flower leis, tropical shirts and big smiles.
They looked like a very happy family.

“What is it?” Madeline stood right behind me now.

“Elizabeth has his nose,” my voice wasn’t much more than a whisper. “The shape of his eyes too. I’d never seen a picture of him. The daughters…” I couldn’t speak for a moment. They resembled Elizabeth too. They each had long hair, more blond where Elizabeth’s was red, but there was no question they were her sisters. They had been raised with what looked to be a loving mother and father. How differently would Elizabeth’s life have been if she’d had that same love and support?

“Yes, I see the resemblance,” Madeline looked at the picture I held up for her to see. A thought suddenly struck me.

“Logan,” I called to him in the front foyer. He stood in the doorway
within a moment. “The wife and the daughters,” I had a hard time getting the words out, “have they sent a protective detail for them? Elizabeth might…”

“I’m certain they’ve have the local police with them since they were notified, but I’ll make sure they’re protected.” His voice had a determined edge to it. He was gone
again before I knew it, probably back out to talk to the local authorities to make sure that the wife and daughters were safe.

I passed the photograph over to the same young man with the county ID so it could be taken into evidence and possibly checked for fingerprints. I took a quick final glance of the once happy family, knowing now they were shattered.

With a deep breath I looked around the room once more. I walked around the desk to see the dark stain on the black leather chair then dripping onto the carpet. I noticed there seemed to be more blood here than at Dr. Ross’s home, more scattered, flecked on most surfaces. There were papers all across the desk and floor, tax forms, receipts. A cup that had held a colorful assortment of pens and highlighters had been knocked over and were spread across the desk and onto the floor. There had been a computer on his desk but the monitor had been knocked over, the keyboard dangling by its cord almost to the floor.

“What do you see?” Madeline had been walking slowly around the room, not touching anything, just observing, noticing every detail.

“I see a mess.” It was the first thought out of my mouth but it was true. “This is different than the others.”

Madeline gave me a side-ways glance and a slight smile.

“I thought so too,” she put her gloved hands behind her back and continued her slow walk around the room. “What difference do you see?”

It was always interesting working with Madeline this way. It was as though she knew then answers, but she wanted me to find the answers for myself, in my own way. I took a moment to try to put into words what I was thinking.

“I don’t know if this makes sense,” I took a step back, almost to the doorway, and tried to see the scene from a wide angle. I could even see blood splatter on the ceiling, across the ceiling fan still rotating in a lazy circle. “The other crime scenes seemed more controlled, if you could call it that. In some ways, they were almost neat compared to this one. This is more frenzied, as though she’s losing control.”

“Yes, I thought so too,” she gave me a nod. “I think this was more intimate than the others, it was more personal to her. The wounds were more personal too. She used
a knife.” She didn’t say more. I think Madeline knew by now that I didn’t need to know every gory detail.

“The symbol?” I searched the room. I hadn’t seen it yet. It wasn’t on the desk, on any papers I could see. Had she left it?

“It was on his body,” Logan was back and standing behind me in the doorway. I turned to look at him, bracing myself for his next words. “It was carved into his chest, right over his heart. It was what killed him.”