The Scum of All Fears: Squeaky Clean Mysteries, Book 5 (12 page)

It
was eight o’clock at night, so of course Stephen Alexander’s office was closed. Using my cell phone, I did an online search for his home address, but nothing came up.

Which left Riley and me
back at square one.

Not the place I wanted to be.

Not when I pictured Clarice at the hands of Milton Jones.

Maybe
Clarice would talk so much that Jones would just let her go in order to keep his sanity.

Of course, psycho serial
killers weren’t all that sane in my experience.

By the time
Riley and I got back to our apartment, I noticed a crowd of people had gathered over in the parking lot of The Grounds. They each held candles.

A vigil.

Someone had planned a vigil for Clarice.

Riley and I walked over, took a candle
from one of the girls handing them out, and found a place at the back of the crowd. I wanted to watch everyone, see if anyone acted suspiciously. Mostly, there seemed to be young college kids. I spotted a couple of regulars from The Grounds.

A
girl—a sorority sister, perhaps—stood at the front of the crowd humming
Amazing Grace
. Some people wept. Some hummed. Others sang.

A camera crew stepped out from inside The Grounds. A reporter
pulled out her microphone to do an on-the-scene update with the vigil in the background.

“What are you thinking?” Riley whispered.

“Besides how utterly sad this is?” I shrugged. “I guess I’m thinking that I hate feeling so helpless. I’m the girl who tracks down clues, who follows the evidence. And I don’t feel like there’s a single thing I can do right now.”

“Milton Jones is good at staying hidden. He eluded the best of the best for three years.”

I shook my head. “He has to be working with someone. I know that. I just have to figure out whom. If I can find out that information, maybe I can find Jones.”

“
Excuse me? Are you Gabby St. Claire?” someone said behind me.

I looked up and saw the reporter in front of me,
a cameraman right beside her. Riley pulled me closer to him. I appreciated the fact that he wanted to shield me, but I could handle myself right now.

“I am.”

The reporter looked beyond me just as the light on the front of the camera popped on. They were seeking a good story like a lion sought after its prey. “And you’re Riley Thomas, the prosecutor who put Milton Jones behind bars.”

He nodded stiffly. “I am.”

“What do you think about the disappearance of Clarice Wilkenson?” She thrust her microphone in front of Riley.

I glanced at Riley, that unspoken
couple’s code passing between us. Riley’s jaw was locked in place, and I could tell he wasn’t comfortable with this. I wasn’t either, truth be told. But how could we use this moment to help Clarice?

I glanced beyond the camera and noticed that the crowd had stopped humming. They all stared our way, waiting to see what would play out next.

“I think that the city and the country’s finest are all doing everything they can right now to locate Clarice and to put Milton Jones behind bars again,” Riley said.

“Are the two of you involved
in the hunt for this madman?” the reporter asked.

“I’d rather not comment on that.”
Riley shook his head.

The reporter turned her sights on me.
“Gabby, you’ve helped the police solve some other crimes in this area before. Rumor has it that you have a personal connection with Clarice.”

I pushed a stray curl behind my ear.
“I do know Clarice, and I’m working with the police and other law enforcement officials to insure that she’s found safely.”

“Do you think this is the work of
the infamous serial killer Milton Jones?”

If I answered affirmatively,
the whole city would be in an even bigger frenzy. I couldn’t be responsible for that. “I can’t speak to that issue at this time as I’m not an official part of this investigation.”

“Is it true that Milton Jones has threatened you personally?” the reporter asked.

How in the world had she heard that? I knew the police hadn’t leaked the information, and only a handful of people knew about it.

I shook my head.
“No comment.”

Riley tugged at me. I knew what that meant. This interview needed to be over. Like, five minutes ago.

The reporter continued to call questions out, and Riley continued to lead me across the parking lot back to our apartment building. What a nightmare. To the media, this was the story of the year. To the people who were involved, this was the worst-case scenario of their lives.

One thing was for certain. Fear had a reign on the people in this area. I didn’t see its grip loosening any time soon.

Just as we reached the front steps, I heard
a footfall behind me. I braced myself for the reporter, for more questions. Instead, I saw a lanky, college aged boy. “I need to talk to you.”

I soaked him in. He had acne on his cheeks, gages in his ears
, and a pierced eyebrow. He was sweaty. Breathing fast. Cracking his knuckles.

This was one nervous man. But why?

“Who are you?” Riley asked, going into protective mode again as he nudged himself in front of me.

“My name is Colin
Belkin. I have information that I think will be helpful to you.”

“Helpful t
o us? Not the police?” Riley asked.

He nodded. “Yeah, I need to tell you
both this first. If you’ll give me a chance, you’ll understand why. I promise you’ll want to hear this.”

There was no way I was asking this boy into my apartment. For all I knew, he could be the accomplice
we’d been looking for. No, if we were talking, we were staying right here. “Go ahead. You have five minutes,” I said.

I crossed my arms. I was cautious, and I didn’t know
whom I could trust at the moment. The last thing I wanted was to give details to an information hungry vigilante.

“I’m a friend of Clarice’s,” he started, looking back at the crowds behind him.

I glanced back, too. The reporter had wandered back to the vigil and stood there, talking to the cameraman now. People had raised their candles again, and I could hear them softly humming.

“You said yo
u knew something,” Riley prompted Colin.

The boy nodded, shifting uncomfortably.
He rubbed his palms on his skinny, aqua blue jeans. “I don’t know how to say this.”

“Just say it,” I encouraged.

He cracked his knuckles so hard that I cringed. “I know it’s not right. Well, now I know that. At the time, we thought we could convince you. That you’d see things our way.”

I shook my head. “What are you talking about?” I was clueless right now. Truly.
“Who is ‘we’?” I prepared myself for him to say Milton Jones.

Before he could answer,
Officer Newell stepped from the shadows. “Do you need help?”

I shook my head. “I’m fine. I’ll signal if things get hairy.”

The officer nodded, looked Colin over again, and then went back to his car.

I turned back to Colin.

His eyes shifted. “I think Clarice may have mentioned me to you. I want to break in with Hollywood, you know? Maybe do some directing and producing and creating. I’m not sure which one yet.”

I nodded. I did remember Clarice mentioning something about a friend of hers and reality TV. I still wasn’t making the connections yet, though. What was he getting at here?

“I was with Clarice when Sharon told us you were looking for some help. Sharon told us a little about what you do. The whole crime scene cleaning and all.”

“Okay.” I wished he’d get to the point. However, I had a feeling I wouldn’t like his point. That
’s what my gut instinct told me.

He cracked his knuckles more.
“We thought you’d make great reality TV.”

My hands went to my hips.
“Clarice mentioned that. I told her I wasn’t interested.”

He looked down for a minute. “Yeah, we figured you’d change your mind.”

Okay, all this hemming and hawing was getting to me. “What are you getting at, Colin?” I finally asked.

He sucked in a deep breath
that filled out his bony chest. “What I’m getting at is the fact that Clarice wore some special glasses that had a camera in them. She was recording you on your jobs in hopes that we could convince you to let us go live with it.”

My lips parted in shock. “
Are you insane? Have you lost your mind? That’s a serious breach of so many things, both legally and ethically. I could get in so much trouble for that. So could you, for that matter.”

Indignation
rushed through me. If Riley hadn’t nudged me back, I might have lunged at the boy.

Colin
raised his hands as if to surrender. “I know, I know. We didn’t put anything online yet.”

Riley stepped forward. “Nor will you, if you know what’s best.”

“There’s more.” Colin swallowed so hard over and over again that his Adam’s Apple looked like it was involved in a Ping-Pong match.

“Go on.” Why delay the inevitable?

“We had this crazy idea. You know most of reality TV is contrived anyway, right? Everything from the personalities they choose to showcase to the plotlines they develop to the editing of the tape. Producers prompt contestants with leading questions. They set up scenarios to bring out the worst in people.”

“What are you saying, Colin?” Riley’s hands were on his hips, and he looked none too happy about this turn of events.

“Sharon was telling us about the first scene you were going to clean. She didn’t give any names or anything, but she gave us some details about the crime. I looked it up online, and we found the address. We had a brilliant idea. We decided to set up the crime scene. We snuck in and put that message on the wall using some blood I bought at a butcher shop.”

“What?” I wanted to throttle the man.

He held his hand up. “We had second thoughts. We washed it off. At least, we thought we did. We realized we could get in big trouble. Then you used the Luminol. The reaction blew us away.” He made a little blow up sound and fanned his fingers out like an explosion near his forehead. “It was some incredible footage. Totally made for TV.”

“How’d you know where my next crime scenes would be?”
I needed to stick with the facts or my emotions might knock me over.

“Clarice took a picture of your list of crime scenes with her camera. I guess it was in the van, and you’d run inside a house or something. The next time, we left
the message instead of erasing it.”

I sighed, trying to find the right words.

Colin shook his head. “We had no idea it was going to turn into this. We were just making up a storyline. We wanted to be . . . famous. We were going to call it
Little Job of Horrors
.”

That’s where all of Clarice’s references had come from.

“You’re going to be famous for something you don’t want to be famous for,” Riley said, shaking his head. “Messing with a crime scene? Breaking and entering? That’s just the start. You could go to jail for this.”

The boy’s face went p
ale. “It was stupid. I know that now. But we really thought this would be our big break. I mean, come on. You’re hot,” he looked at me. “You’re dating a former prosecutor. In some circles, you’re already like a little mini celebrity. We could have propelled you to the top.”

“You weren’t concerned about propelling me to the top. You just wanted to propel yourselves.”
I had to push down my anger before I did something I regretted.

He glanced down
and shuffled his feet. “You’re right.”

Riley’s jaw looked locked in place, a sure sign that he wasn’t any happier than I was.
“Is Clarice’s disappearance a part of this charade?”

Colin
shook his head with enough strength that his brain was probably dizzy. “Absolutely not. That’s the reason I came forward. I want to find her. Anything I can do.”

Riley continued to stare him down. “You know we have to tell the police, right?”

“I figured.” Colin’s voice cracked. “I’m going to be in big trouble, aren’t I?”

“Maybe since you came forward with the information willingly they’ll cut you some slack.”
Riley didn’t sound convinced. His eyes were still narrowed, and his body language screamed, “Agitated.”

An idea had begun to swirl in my mind. “Wait one minute first. Colin, do you still have the video from those crime scenes?”

He nodded. “Yeah, the feed was sent to a server. Why?”

“Before we go t
o the police, I want to see the footage.” Maybe, just maybe, there was a clue there that would help me to find Clarice. We’d watch it until the police got here.