Chapter Thirteen
Lexa drove the cruiser away from the station while Aiden waited on hold with San Antonio PD, a call that she hoped would answer a huge question. What had Chloe meant in the conversation that Orville had overheard?
You owe Mom that after what you let happen to her .
Unfortunately, Hudson wasn’t doling out any answers about that because once again, he wasn’t responding to the attempts for Owen to contact him. Considering Hudson was out on bail, he definitely shouldn’t be ignoring the cops.
But then if he was a killer, he might be on the run.
So, a lot of attention was now being focused on him.
The other person who was getting attention was Aiden’s neighbor, Orville, and Owen had made it clear he wasn’t over the moon about Aiden and her going out to see the man. But Aiden had been insistent that Orville wouldn’t talk to them if they brought along a hoard of cops.
Of course, they could get a warrant so they could retrieve the car and arrange to have it taken in for processing. However, that could rile Orville, and he might just clam up or refuse to make an official statement about the phone conversation he’d overheard. If he did that, they could charge Orville with obstruction of justice, but they needed his statement to build a case against Hudson.
So, after much going back and forth, Owen had decided to try to appease Orville and get both his account of what he’d heard and his cooperation in retrieving the car. That meant sending Aiden and her to get a statement from the man and for them to take a look at the car to find out if there was any evidence that would clear up some things.
But Aiden and she wouldn’t exactly be solo.
Despite Orville’s insistence they come alone and Owen agreeing to cooperate with the man’s wishes, Shaw and Declan would make their way through the woods between the two properties. While they would stay out of sight, they’d be ready in case fast backup was needed.
“Yes, I’m still here,” Aiden said to the person he had on the line. “No, I really need to speak to the officers who arrested Miles Bennett. Have them call me first chance they get.”
Sighing, Aiden ended the call and glanced over at her. “The two cops are dealing with a domestic dispute that turned very ugly. It might be a while before they contact me.”
That was too bad. Aiden had already done a search of the arrest record for Miles’, and there hadn’t been a mention of either Chloe or Hudson. However, it was possible that something had come up about them, and the info hadn’t made it into the reports.
“The arresting officers might not have known that Silby was Chloe and Hudson’s mother,” Aiden went on. “But if Orville is right about what he heard, then Chloe blames her brother for some part of that. I’m just not seeing it. Yet. Miles, Hudson, and Chloe all lived in San Antonio but nowhere near each other.”
“Hudson’s a bartender,” Lexa pointed out. “And Miles had been drinking when he killed Silby.”
“Yeah, already checked that angle,” he said, which didn’t surprise Lexa one bit. She knew Aiden was thorough. “Hudson has never been charged or cited for serving underage drinkers, and his boss insists that they card everyone who orders a drink in the bar. That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, but I can’t place Miles anywhere near that bar. Or Hudson and Chloe.”
She heard the frustration in his voice. Felt it continue to simmer inside her. They needed proof to back up Orville’s statement, and if they didn’t find it, then they were going to have to figure out a way to get Hudson to confess.
“Maybe Owen will have better luck speaking to Miles,” Lexa muttered.
And that would hopefully be happening soon. When Aiden and she had left the station, Owen had been in the process of trying to call Miles’ parents so he could set up a phone interview.
“Why wouldn’t Chloe just go after Miles instead of Wylie?” she asked as she mulled that around.
“She could have planned to do that. After she took care of Brady. Since everyone would believe she was dead, she might have believed she could get away with murder.”
True, especially if Chloe set it up as some kind of accident. Or pinned the blame on Hudson. That would kill two birds with one stone. Unfortunately, the plan might still be in place if Chloe had an accomplice. Owen would no doubt warn Miles and his family about that possibility.
For now though, Lexa had to push that aside and keep watch as she threaded the cruiser on the narrow, curvy road. Aiden was watching as well, but he was also texting with the car rental company to get some kind of verification that Chloe had actually rented the vehicle. If she hadn’t, if someone else had rented it for her, then that could be the accomplice.
Which, in turn, could be the person who’d murdered her.
“It’s the manager at Hannigan’s Sporting Goods,” Aiden relayed to her when he got another text. He read it and tapped an attachment. “He just sent me a photo from their security cam. It’s Chloe.”
He lifted his phone and showed her the grainy image. It took Lexa a couple of glances to realize it was indeed her. Chloe had stuffed her long hair underneath a baseball cap. Maybe to disguise herself?
“She bought the ammunition four weeks ago. Two cases of five hundred rounds each,” Aiden explained, glancing through the message again. “And she paid cash.”
“A thousand bullets,” Lexa said, giving that some thought. “It seems like more than that were fired at the two sites.”
Aiden shrugged. “She could have purchased other cases elsewhere. Because she didn’t buy the timers and detonators for the fires here. She could have gotten more bullets when she got those.” He stopped, pulled in a breath. “She doesn’t appear to be under duress here in this photo. No one seems to be forcing her to buy this much ammunition. So, that likely means this was her plan, that she wasn’t simply drawn into it.”
Lexa had to agree, especially in light of the conversation that Orville had overheard. So, who had killed her? Again, they didn’t know, and it brought them full circle back to their suspects. Brady, Wylie, Hudson, and Gillian.
She went past the private road to Aiden’s house, and it wasn’t long before she came to a small creek that Lexa estimated was about twenty feet wide. The whiskey-colored water was moving fast, slashing against some embedded boulders, but it didn’t seem to be that deep.
There was a clearing beneath a cluster of oak trees that would be easy to access from the road. It was no doubt where Chloe had parked when Orville had spotted her, and Lexa could understand why Chloe might not have noticed Orville. Beyond the area where Chloe would have been, there was an area of thick cedars and sage bushes with yet more trees. Orville could have stepped behind any one of them, and they would have been wide enough to conceal him.
“Why would Chloe come here?” Lexa muttered, though she already had an idea about that.
And Aiden voiced it. “She could have been scoping out my place. You can see it through the trees. Chloe might have wanted to make sure she could lure Brady here, to a familiar place where she could either kill him or further set him up to make it look as if he’d murdered her.”
“Chloe did lure him here,” Lexa picked up where Aiden left off. “And she had the added bonus of having us around.” She paused. “But maybe we weren’t the targets. Maybe it was always just Brady.”
“Yes,” Aiden agreed. “It’s possible Chloe hadn’t intended to kill us at the manor either. If the cleaning lady had seen the blood, she would have reported it, and soon it would have been all over town. Brady would have come running since he knew Chloe was supposed to be there. The fire and the bullets in that cook-off could have been meant for him.”
Though Lexa hated to think of the people who could have been hurt or killed, including Aiden and her, with Chloe’s sick plan to murder Brady, she was still tamping down her anger about that when she spotted the house ahead.
It was nothing like Aiden’s well-kept place. There was yellowing, scabbed paint on the exterior. Several boarded up windows. Knee-high weeds in the yard, such that it was. What it did have that Aiden’s didn’t was a huge fence. It looked like something more suited for a prison than a residence.
She pulled into the driveway and immediately spotted the man at the gate. He was in his late sixties with a pot belly beneath his stained shirt and jeans. Orville, no doubt. He studied them for a moment with intense, wary eyes before he opened the gate and motioned for her to drive in.
“He doesn’t have a criminal record, and I personally have never had any trouble with him,” Aiden muttered. “But let’s watch our six. Not just for him but in case Chloe’s killer is still around.”
Lexa would do just that.
She parked ,stepped out, and sized up Orville while he did the same to her. “Orville, this is Deputy Lexa Mullen.”
“I know who she is,” Orville said. “I keep up with the news. She’s one of the city cops brought in after the old sheriff and everybody else got killed.”
That about summed it up. A lot of cops had been brought in after most of the police force had been massacred.
“Let’s get this done then,” Orville insisted, motioning for them to follow him.
Lexa expected the man to pepper Aiden and her with a lot of questions, especially since he had likely heard all that gunfire during the attack. But he didn’t. Orville didn’t say a word as he had them trudge through the weeds, rocks, and uneven ground to the back of his property. There, they went through a back gate and essentially into the woods.
“This is all Orville’s property,” Aiden pointed out. “His land butts up to this side of the creek. My land starts on the other side of it.”
It was definitely remote by anyone’s standards, but she soon saw an old ranch trail. They were common in this part of Texas, and while some were hard to walk, this one was fairly level.
“How would Chloe have gotten a car out here?” Lexa asked. “Wouldn’t she have had to cross the creek?”
“Not if she’d approached it from the north,” Aiden explained. “There’s a bridge, and from there, she could have followed a trail that would have brought her here.”
“And then she would have walked to your place?” Lexa questioned. “It wouldn’t be easy to wade through a creek while carrying a case of ammo. What would a case weigh?”
“About thirty-five pounds,” he was quick to provide. “So, she might have had to make a couple of trips. And as for wading through water. There are parts of the creek where the water is only a foot or two wide and only ankle deep. ” Aiden shook his head. “But how the hell would she have known about it?”
“I figure it was those damn ghost walking tours,” Orville griped. “The library sets them blasted things up, and sometimes they go to that bluff folks call Lover’s Leap. The idiots think it’s haunted. It’s ain’t, but idiots will be idiots. Anyway, if she did that tour, she’d been able to see the start of this trail.”
Aiden glanced at her. “You know about these tours?” he asked.
Lexa nodded. “I went on a Halloween one when I was a teenager to a ghost town about five miles from here. I don’t recall Chloe ever mentioning that she went on one though.”
Still, that would be easy enough to check, and she took out her phone to text a friend of hers who worked at the library. In under a minute, she had a reply.
“Chloe did go on one of the tours, shortly after she moved to town,” Lexa let Aiden know. “And it was to Lover’s Leap.”
So, she had likely been planning her death and these attacks even then. Probably before she’d even met Brady. Because Lexa was thinking that meeting hadn’t been an accident. Chloe had probably set it up so she could start doling out what she considered justice to Wylie.
Lexa’s attention shifted to the right when she caught a flash of the sunlight glinting off something. Her first thought was this was a gun. And the start of another attack. But she soon realized it was the trim on the car that was parked right on a curved part of the trail.
Since the license plate was facing her, she could see that it matched the one Orville had given them.
“I want to see if there are two sets of footprints or one leading away from the car and toward my place. Did you walk on the trail that way?” he asked Orville as he motioned to the trail on the other side of the vehicle.
“Yeah, I went up a little piece. Just up to that tree.” He pointed to an oak just past the car.
“We’ll need to look beyond that,” Aiden muttered. “And maybe take an imprint of his shoes to rule him out.”
Yes, they would, and she hoped the man would cooperate with that and not make them get a warrant.
When they approached the car, they looked inside it. Just as Orville had said, there was a purse on the front seat and a Hannagan’s box on the back. It made her wonder why Chloe hadn’t stashed these things in the trunk in case anyone did some walking by.
Maybe because she hadn’t planned on being gone that long. But there could be something else in that truck. Something that Lexa would want to take a look at.
“Orville, wait here,” Aiden told him, no doubt so the man wouldn’t leave more footprints.
Aiden and she walked ahead. They stayed off the trail, walking along the sides, and both of them studied the ground.
She definitely saw two sets of footprints, and Lexa gauged one of them to be about her size. So, probably Chloe’s. The second set was likely Orville’s because they stopped at the tree that Orville had pointed out.
“What the hell is that?” she heard Orville say. Lexa turned to see the man heading toward the trunk of the car. “There’s something sticking out. I didn’t notice that before.”
“Stay back,” Aiden shouted.
But it was too late. Orville had already stepped toward the trunk.
Just as the car exploded.