9. Avery
Avery
N o one was hungry after listening to Remy Talmadge recount his evening, and even my talk with Graeme didn’t help my mood for long.
It had been hard to let him go; I wanted to keep him talking, his voice warming the cold pit in my stomach.
Amazing that not even twenty-four hours after meeting the man, I could yearn for something as simple as sitting with him.
I could almost feel my wolf pacing inside, wanting his mate, whimpering, whining, becoming more and more agitated with each passing hour.
I’d be crazed by the time the evening rolled around if I couldn’t figure out how to placate the animal inside.
It turned out grief was the answer.
At eight in the morning, Wade and I went to the Lowells to deliver the death notification for Imogen. It was horrible. Her mother screamed, turned into her husband’s arms and sobbed. Mr. Lowell appeared shattered.
He clung to his wife, his eyes telegraphing a deep well of pain and horror. “Where is she? When can we see her?” he asked me. “We need to make arrangements for…”
I glanced at his wife, saw her face was still buried in her husband’s chest, and shook my head. Mr. Lowell took a breath.
All we could do now was promise to find her killer.
“Please, when they call to let you know her body is being released, have her sent directly to the funeral home.” His gaze met mine. “Perhaps have your wife go lay down before she collapses.” I suggested gently.
He called for his housekeeper, who rushed in, and when his wife was halfway across the room, I stepped in close to him, my mouth near his ear. “Make certain it’s a closed casket,” I whispered. “Please. Neither you nor your wife need that to be the last image you have of your child.”
He nodded quickly.
Back in my Jeep, Wade and I both sat there for a while outside the Lowell mansion, neither of us speaking, before I drove us back to the station.
Hours later we were in the briefing room with Ness and Peck, staring at whiteboards, facts and details and timelines laid out on them, three of us sitting in a row while Wade paced, the only one of us still capable of being upright.
The camera had, in fact, been taken. Our forensics team determined the house was a perfect storm of smudged prints, trace evidence pointing to everything and nothing, and, surprisingly, not a drop of fluid found anywhere that would suggest sex.
Even Remy Talmadge’s bed was pristine. All of it, every square foot of the house, was a wash. The word of the day was inconclusive .
“Who do we think took the camera?”
“Maybe the person who killed Highmore,” Ness offered, his head resting on his arms folded on the table. “Maybe not. Who the fuck knows?”
This was the day we were having. No answers, just more questions. Sitting there listening to him, I recalled a time before I valued his words and opinions.
The first time I’d met Craig Ness, I’d thought, with his blond hair and blue eyes, square-cut jaw, ruddy, wind-chapped complexion, and the “aw-shucks” grin, that he just got off a train from Iowa or Idaho or someplace where they ate a lot of potatoes and corn.
I thought he was a hick and couldn’t be all that bright, especially since he was built like a linebacker.
Big and dumb was my initial conclusion. It was stupid and judgmental, and when he solved a cold case his second week on the job, I found out that while big was applicable, nothing else I thought about the man was.
His brain worked lightning-fast, and God help you if you thought you could outrun him.
He was like a tank charging down the sidewalk, and folks tended to scatter.
What always impressed me was how quickly he could calculate angles and trajectories in his head, and how strangers opened up to him right away.
It was a gift I didn’t possess, putting others at ease. I tended to get on people’s nerves.
Wade turned, arms crossed, to look at all of us. “Okay, this person, this killer, decides on the fly to kill Highmore; we heard from Talmadge himself he didn’t plan on calling his buddy, but because so many omegas showed up that night, he needed the help.”
“Yes,” I agreed and then nudged Ness who echoed my affirmative.
“So our killer strips out of their clothes, shifts into wolf form, kills Highmore, shifts back because they need thumbs now, puts their clothes back on, grabs the camera, moves things around on the walls to throw us off, and kidnaps Imogen Lowell.”
“Without leaving a single print or strand of hair, or anything else, anywhere in that bedroom,” Peck chimed in.
I often said if anybody was smoother than Eddie Peck, I didn’t know who that would be.
I was never sure if it was the walk—all swagger and attitude—his crooked grin, his devotion to fashion, the deep, rich sepia skin that had both women and men reaching for him, or the infectious laugh that made you want to join him in whatever he was doing.
He’d been a transfer from narcotics, and Wade never missed an opportunity to remind him that homicide was a step up.
Peck, not to be outdone, explained that narcotics worked ten cases to our one.
At some point they would put the rivalry to bed, but it wouldn’t be any time soon, as evidenced by Wade still calling him everything but his actual name.
It didn’t help that they had a similar taste in women.
“Rhine,” Ness snapped at me, “pay attention.”
“Sorry, sorry,” I apologized quickly, hating that I’d been caught with my mind drifting. “What’d you say?”
“I asked, why would Imogen leave with Highmore’s killer?”
“Talmadge said she was passed out. Maybe she didn’t see anything, didn’t know that the person she left with killed Highmore.”
“Yeah, but Talmadge said she ran down the hall. Why do that other than to get away from the murder scene?”
“Right,” Wade agreed. “Then maybe whoever Imogen ran into when she left the house, that’s the person she left with, thinking she was safe.”
“Then there have to be two people,” I concluded. “Two killers. Whoever killed Highmore didn’t kill Imogen.”
“I agree,” Peck declared. “She ran away, left with whoever, and the killer messed around in the house.”
“Does the person who killed Imogen even know that someone was murdered there?”
“Maybe not,” Wade admitted. “Maybe someone, whoever, was just picking her up. Talmadge told us that all the omegas left in different ways; it could be the person who drove Imogen was prearranged to be there.”
“So no savior, just someone she trusts and knows,” Ness proposed.
“Right,” Peck agreed. “But then why kill her?”
“Something must’ve happened in the car,” I advised him.
“And this all makes sense unless Talmadge is lying and Imogen never ran by him, in which case we could be back to one killer.”
“I tend to think that part’s true, though,” Wade apprised me, “because it makes Talmadge look bad that he didn’t do anything to help her.
I mean, he could have yelled at her to get in the goddamn panic room with him, but he didn’t, he was too scared and put his own safety before that of a frightened young woman.
Who admits to something like that unless it’s the truth? ”
“I agree.” Peck’s voice gave out on him, hoarse because he—all of us—had been up for so long.
He cleared his throat and continued. “He’s terrified, he sees Imogen run by, and all he’s worried about is savin’ his own ass.
I think she’s runnin’ out the front door, away from the bloodbath, just like Talmadge is, except he’s running to his panic room. ”
“She’s scared to death,” I began, imagining the layout of the house, “and gets all the way to the street. She snuck out of her own house earlier in the night, and we know from her phone records she took an Uber to Talmadge’s, so she has no car.
Now she’s there, alone, on the street, lookin’ around, and… someone appears.”
“Yeah,” Wade agreed, nodding, “Either prearranged or not, she’s freaked out, and she goes with whoever it was, thinking that person is saving her life.”
“That’s the only thing that makes any sense,” I told him.
“Okay, so two people,” Wade affirmed and wrote down the number. “One person butchers Highmore and steals the camera, the other one kills Imogen Lowell.”
It made sense.
“Why, though? Why kill Imogen?” Peck asked us.
“Maybe that was never the plan,” Wade surmised.
“Maybe it started off good, like whoever this person is really was going to help Imogen, but at some point during the trip from Talmadge’s house to wherever, something changed.
Instead of dropping Imogen off safely at her house, this person took her from Talmadge’s, then ends up killing her and making her wounds look similar enough to Highmore’s that we think there’s only one killer. ”
“Except there is a difference,” Ness pointed out.
“Highmore was aware he was choking to death on his own blood, and had to have been in excruciating pain before he died. Miss Lowell, on the other hand, had her neck broken. Yes, she was torn to pieces as well, but she was dead long before that happened. All that damage was done postmortem.”
“Okay,” Wade said, lacing his fingers behind his head. “Both people were murdered, Highmore because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And Imogen, technically for the same reason?”
Then something occurred to me. “Maybe whoever killed Highmore thought they were killing Talmadge. I mean, uniforms on-site even made a false identification and called Mr. Davenport to tell him that his cousin was dead.”
“Yeah, that was fuckin’ great,” Wade groaned. “Way to make us look like assholes.”
“We’re so lucky he’s a good guy,” Peck declared with a yawn, “and not calling the mayor. That would be all over the news, and whoever called Mr. Davenport would be so out of a job.”
“Focus,” I ordered them. “If Highmore was killed by mistake, then whoever did it might make another attempt on Talmadge’s life.”