Stolen Lives: A Detective Mystery Series SuperBoxset (61 page)

“Jesus Christ. Just listen to yourself, Cooper!” Farnes’s face reddened. “You sound like a lunatic!”

Cooper pressed the end of the pistol against Farnes’s cheek. “It sounds like I’m getting close to something. So this is what’s going to happen: You’re going to tell me what you’re doing hanging out with McKaffee and Marks, or I kill you here and now.”

Farnes eyed the steel digging into his skin. “You don’t have the guts.”

“No?” Cooper pressed harder, and Farnes winced. She felt his trembling reverberate through the pistol and into her hand. Then, with her eyes closed, she lowered the gun. “You’re right. I won’t.” Relief spread across Farnes’s face, but just as quickly as she had lowered the gun, she smacked the steel against his right cheek, cutting a gash in his skin and sending him to the floor.

“Fuck!” Farnes wallowed on the dirty concrete, pressing his palm against the blood gushing from the cut on his face.

Cooper kicked him in the stomach, and he rolled to his back, wheezing and panting. “I don’t need a gun to kill you, Farnes.” She reached down and yanked his collar, lifting his head off the ground. “I’ve been with the department for twenty-one years, fifteen of which have been as a homicide detective. Do you know how many ways I’ve seen people killed? You’d be surprised at what blunt-force trauma can do.” She shoved him down hard, and Farnes’s skull smacked against the concrete, knocking him unconscious.

Cooper checked his pulse and made sure he was still breathing. Both were fine. She holstered the gun and dragged him to a metal post in the center of the factory floor. She retrieved the rope and duct tape from her duffle bag and secured Farnes to the post and taped his wrists together then his ankles.

Impatiently waiting for Farnes to wake, Cooper slapped him across the face. He moaned and lolled his head back and forth, his chin digging into the fat of his chest. His first instinct when he awoke was to run, but the tight restraints kept him still. He looked up to Cooper, the blood on his face dry, though the gash still shimmered in the moonlight pouring in from the windows.

“You’re a dead woman, Cooper. You think my brother will stand for this? You won’t be able to talk your way out of this one!”

Cooper curled her fist and punched Farnes in the gash where the pistol had cut him. Her knuckles glided across the slick blood and sweat. “What are you and your brother hiding?”

Farnes spat a wad of blood on the concrete and cursed some more. Cooper hit him again, this time on his left cheek, knocking his head into the steel pillar behind it. With every strike that transformed Farnes’s face into a misshapen, bloody mess, Cooper’s knuckles were drenched in crimson. Swimming in the pool of vengeance, she pulled her pistol from its holster, and Farnes looked up through half-swollen eyes. “Wait,” he said, his words slurring through dribbles of blood and spit. “I didn’t have anything to do with what happened to your sister. I swear.”

“Then how did Marks get the SWAT uniform to use at the daycare?” Cooper aimed the pistol at his head, and he trembled. “Tell me!”

Farnes cried, the bellowing sobs escaping through hacking coughs as he choked on his own blood. “We get paid to look the other way on the manufacturing and distribution of the drugs in the city. Marks was a middleman for us. He made sure we knew where the drop locations were so the officers wouldn’t go near them.”

“Then why did Marks help the killer?” Unsatisfied, Cooper thrust the pistol into the gash on Farnes’s cheek, and the captain wailed, screaming at the top of his lungs. When she relieved him of the pressure, he panted heavily, moaning and wiggling his body in a defiant tantrum.

“I don’t know,” Farnes answered. “I swear to god I don’t know. Marks never mentioned anything about the killer. I was just as surprised as you were when I found out. The only reason I didn’t want you looking into Marks anymore was because of the drugs. I wanted you to work the killer’s case with Hemsworth, to keep you distracted. That’s it.” He swallowed, tears still cutting through the blood on his face. “I swear I didn’t have anything to do with what happened to your sister. I might be corrupt, but I’m no killer. Neither are you.”

It was the first time in her life that Cooper believed the man. “You’re right. You’re not a killer. You don’t have it in you.” She kept the pistol aimed at his head. “But I just might.”

Farnes started bawling once more, this round more pathetic than the last. “Please. I didn’t help kill your sister. I never even met her.”

Cooper’s mind raced down every possibility of what her life would be like if she pulled the trigger. She could taste the satisfaction of killing him even though she knew he was telling the truth. Farnes didn’t have any more reason to lie to her; he’d already confessed enough to land him in jail.

Just when she felt her finger apply the lightest pressure on the trigger, a phone rang. Cooper jerked left and right, trying to pinpoint its origin. When it rang a second time, she realized that it was coming from inside Farnes’s jacket. She ignored it, but after it went to voicemail, it rang again and again and again. Finally Cooper reached inside Farnes’s jacket and pulled the phone out herself. The number was blocked, and when it ended once more, the phone rang again. A shiver crawled up Cooper’s back as she answered.

“Hello, Detective.”

Cooper’s blood ran cold, her stomach performing backflips at the sound of the killer’s voice. “Where are you?”

“I know you’ve been working out some of your aggression on the poor captain there, but I think he’s had enough, wouldn’t you say? And besides, he’s telling the truth. He didn’t put Zane Marks up to kidnapping that boy. It was me. You’d be surprised at what people will do when they don’t want to die.”

“You’re a dead man.”

“A fair response from you considering what you’ve lost, but you’ve done such a fine job so far, Detective. It would be a shame to veer off the path now.”

Cooper squeezed the phone so hard her knuckles cracked. “The only path I’m walking down is the one that leads me straight to you, and when I get to the end, you’re going to wish there was true justice in this world, because by the time I’m through with you, they won’t be able to identify your body!”

“Sticks and stones, Detective.” The killer spoke calmly. “I don’t think you realize how long I’ve been waiting for this, how deep my planning has dwelled. Do you remember the story of Heracles and the twelve labors I told you about?”

Cooper looked to Farnes’s bloody face, the pistol still gripped in her hand. “I remember.”

“All of those tasks I put you through, I felt a bit like Apollo. But then again, I am more than just a man.”

“But you haven’t always been that way,” Cooper said, trying to get under his skin.

The killer remained quiet for a while, and Cooper believed she’d managed to shake him, but the moment was short lived when he finally replied. “You’re right, Detective. It’s been a very long road to what I’ve become. I’m not sure if I would have the stamina to do it all over again if truth be told. It’s so tiresome making sure everything goes according to plan, and the larger the scope of your ambitions the more chances there are for things to go wrong. But I’ve made it this far… No reason to think I won’t see the end.”

“You won’t.” The stone-like foundation from which Cooper spoke the words didn’t feel like her own. But she hadn’t been herself, not for a long time now, even before Beth died, or her mother. Her job had transformed her into something beyond the woman who’d first donned the badge more than twenty years ago.

“Well, that’s up to you, Detective. Now, I know I haven’t quite given you the same number of labors that Heracles received, but I promise you this last one will be more sporting than the others, and far more interesting to you personally.”

“Fuck you.” Cooper spit the words through the phone. “No more labors. No more phone calls. No more notes. I’m going to find you, and when I do, I’m going to kill you.”

“Well, it’s going to be hard when you’re on the run, Detective.” A silence followed as Cooper processed the words. “Caught your attention, have I?” She heard the smile through the phone, and it was like she was staring into those dark, beady eyes face to face. “I know you think you don’t have anything left to lose, but that’s where you’re wrong.”

“I swear to god if you hurt my ni—”

“Calm yourself, Detective. You should know by now that I have no interest in hurting children. In fact, that’s the only pattern I’ve kept over the past thirty years. I’m only interested in adults, which means your nieces are off-limits. And you care nothing for that brother-in-law of yours, so he’s out of the picture. No, what I mean to take from you now is far more personal.”

Cooper took a few steps backward and into the moonlight that spilled through the windows. The captain’s blood shimmered on her hands, and the hue of the moon gave her a ghostly complexion. “What have you done?”

“It’s not what I’ve done but what people will think you’ve done.”

A gunshot rang out, and glass from one of the windows shattered on the far side of the factory. Cooper ducked, aiming her pistol toward the gunshot, and fired out of instinct. The shell casing clinked across the floor and rolled around her feet. She squinted into the darkness but saw nothing except the shadows of machinery.

“It’s no use trying to shoot back. I’m well out of range.”

Cooper checked herself for any wounds but found herself unscathed. “You’re getting sloppy.”

“No. I’m not.”

Farnes gurgled and gasped, coughing blood, and a crimson stain spread across his protruding stomach. Cooper rushed to Farnes’s side, applying pressure to the wound, dropping the pistol and phone. She felt the warm gush of liquid squish between her fingers as she tried to staunch the bleeding. Farnes spasmed, choking on his own blood and spit. His cheeks and face flushed a purplish red, and his eyes turned bloodshot. With his last bits of life his eyes grew wide, and then his head slowly tilted to the right, where it rested on the fat of his chest and shoulder, his body motionless.

“No.” Cooper lifted two fingers and pressed them against his neck. No pulse. She pumped his chest, feeling the crack of ribs as she tried to breathe life back into the bastard. “You fucking prick, no!” She pumped harder, but Farnes’s body only jiggled with each shove. “Shit!” She landed backward on her hands and ass, her fingers trailing curving paths of blood. Cooper eyed the phone she’d dropped and slowly reached for it, her fingertips transferring more blood to the device. She pressed it to her ear, hearing nothing but the killer’s light breathing. “Why?”

“I wanted to strip you of that final piece of armor that protected you from becoming someone like me.” He chuckled. “All those enemies you made at the police station, all of those people who hated you for turning on your partner, for breaking the bond of brotherhood that’s held so sacred in the police fraternity. They’ll hunt you down and kill you for this. No matter what the evidence says. They’ve been looking for a reason to kill you, just as you’ve been looking for a reason to kill me.”

Cooper looked at Farnes, his hands tied, his face beaten. She looked at the blood on her hands and the shell casing on the ground. There was enough evidence in here to force a trial, and if that were the case, then she’d never have the chance to stop the psychopath.

“The bullet that killed Farnes is one of the same kind you use in your service pistol. I know you understand by now that if this did go to trial, there wouldn’t be enough hard evidence to convict you, but you combine testimony from other officers, the recent tragedy you suffered with the death of your sister, and the unstable nature your peers have seen in you over the past few days, and it would be enough to put doubt into any jury’s mind.”

The wail of police sirens in the distance caught Cooper off guard, and she whipped around to the window, the blood on her hand creating a red print on the wall next to it.

“Your DNA is all over the scene, your car is at the captain’s house, and you have the motive to kill.”

“You called the police?”

“Of course. There’s been a murder.” He laughed, the same laugh she remembered from right after she’d flipped those switches on the box in his cabin basement. “But to be fair, their response time has been padded, as I called them ten minutes ago.”

Cooper bolted into action, holstering her pistol and flinging the duffle bag strap over her shoulder. She kicked the shell casing around her feet and kept the phone glued to her ear as she sprinted to the rear of the factory, the blues and reds of the police lights flashing through the windows. “What do you want?”

“The same thing you do: justice. I’m well aware of your investigation into Farnes and his brother, the former governor. Everyone knows they’re dirty, but no one has ever been able to prove it. That’s what I want from you, Detective. I want you to bring down our state’s most dangerous man.”

Cooper lowered her shoulder and smacked the back door open, spilling out into the gravel yard in the rear of the factory. The sirens grew louder, and above the wailing din she heard the bark of dogs. She hastened her sprint and weaved throughout the old, abandoned buildings.

“I could have done that with a badge.” She felt her legs cramp, and she was forced to slow her pace to a half sprint, half limp.

“But that’s why I took it away from you, Detective. You’ve hidden yourself behind that shield your entire life, using the law as a means of balance. And now that’s gone, and there is only one way for you to stop me now.”

Cooper ducked behind an old semi truck in one of the abandoned lots. The sweat from the run had slicked her hands and rewetted the dry blood on her palms, causing the phone to slip through her fingers. She felt the panic rising. The fear of the run stuck in her heart, she found that her hand went to the badge that no longer dangled around her neck.

“I’ll be in touch, Detective.”

The call ended, and Cooper dropped the phone in the dirt. The howl of dogs filled the night air along with the shouts of officers. She pushed herself up from the ground and continued the sprint through the factory complex, heading east as fast as she could. There was no way she’d be able to outrun them, not with the dogs tracking her.