Chapter 16 #2
“I’ll take a look back through Larry’s photos. Search for signs of distress or triggers. We can call the team at the hospital too and see if they can get hospital logs or security tape from the dates the victims passed through. See if Larry’s on there.”
Carter shot to his feet again and yanked his coat off the back of the chair. “I have a better idea.”
Lincoln grabbed his wrist. “What are you going to do?”
Determination hardening his features, Carter wrenched his arm free and hustled for the door. “I’m gonna give him another option.”
Lincoln yelled after his partner. He would have chased after him too, if he could just find his damn boots. Another minute of hunting, he found them under a box lid. He shoved his feet inside, grabbed his coat, and shouted another “Carter, wait!” as he turned for the door.
Only to have his path blocked by Jeremiah. “He’s long gone. Got in the elevator I got off of. And y’all sure do have a lot of domestics for newlyweds.”
“Fuck.” Lincoln slung his coat at the chair, missed, and knocked over the stacks of Larry and Barry photos.
Photos he needed to go back through. He could do that faster if he wasn’t doing it alone.
He glanced again at Jeremiah. They’d trusted Jo yesterday; that had worked out in their favor. Time to trust another.
“We’re not newlyweds,” Lincoln confessed. “And I need your help.”
Carter approached the black Dodge Charger parked in the far corner of FP’s lot, positioned to give the occupant a clear view of the chancellor’s mansion across the intersection.
Also Lawrence Petticoat’s current registered address.
Carter rapped a knuckle against the Charger’s window and held up a to-go coffee and bag of muffins, an offering for the car’s driver.
Jo’s tired face lifted into a smile as she rolled down her window. Accepting the goodies, she took a giant gulp of the coffee and sighed happily. “You sure Mark and I can’t steal you away from Lincoln? Or hell, Mark and I can make a quad work.”
Carter laughed. “I think that might overload L’s circuits.
” He still didn’t correct her assumption.
Granted, he’d implied as much when they were at Barry and Trudy’s place, still maintaining some semblance of the cover, but there was no longer any reason to do so with Jo.
She knew their real identities. He spun the ring on his finger; this was starting to feel like a real identity too.
He and Lincoln were even arguing like a married couple.
“Fine,” Jo mumbled around a bite of muffin. “Keep your dopey happiness to yourselves.”
He ducked his chin, hiding his smile, and rested back against the door. “He still in there?” he asked, voice low.
She nodded. “Met with the insurance adjuster at the station last night, then came home. Hasn’t left since.”
Carter probably should have called ahead and set up a meeting.
Pretended to follow up on the course he was supposed to be teaching at some point this week.
But he didn’t want to give Larry the forewarning.
He wanted to catch him off guard. This was what he was good at.
Reading the situation, and the current one warranted surprise.
“You want backup?” Jo asked.
He shook his head. “The both of us approaching might set off alarm bells. I want to get in and get a look around before he suspects anything.” Never mind that Jo would probably lock his ass in the car and call Lincoln to come get his deranged husband if she knew what Carter was really planning to do.
“Good luck,” she said.
He tapped the Charger’s hood in parting, then crossed the street among the morning sea of students. Where most of them turned into the quad, he walked a block farther, then turned up the walkway of the big mansion.
Larry answered the door after the second ring.
His eyes were bloodshot, his hair was doing an admirable Einstein impression, and he had on a flannel robe hanging open over his uniform pants and undershirt.
He gave the distinct impression of hadn’t slept.
“Come in,” he tossed over his shoulder, already starting back down the hallway and expecting Carter to follow.
“I should have called to update you and check in after the explosion, but with Barry missing, that Weathers girl’s murder, school back in session, and trying to coordinate police activity remotely, things are all out of sorts.
I just want to find my brother and Trudy, but there’s all this other shit. ”
Carter interrupted his perusal of the meticulously kept, stately old house to consider Larry’s ramble.
It sounded exactly as it should for an overworked police chief worried about his missing family members.
It didn’t sound like the ramble of a killer but looks could be deceiving, especially if perpetrated by a trained professional.
Hadn’t he just done the same moments ago with Jo?
He twirled the ring on his finger again.
“See you ain’t slept much either,” Larry said. “Lincoln okay?”
Lincoln’s name and a gust of cold air shook Carter out of his thoughts. Larry stood across the kitchen from him, halfway out an open door. “I’m in the cottage there,” he said, jutting his chin at a second unit behind the mansion.
“Bathroom out there?” Carter asked.
“Yeah, but the plumbing’s frozen. That one on your left there”—he pointed toward the open door just behind Carter—“is the only one that works right now. I’ll be in the cottage when you’re done.”
Was the plumbing frozen or was he hiding something—someone—in that bathroom?
Judging by its structural outline, the in-law unit couldn’t be any more than five hundred square feet.
Carter would hear or smell if there were a problem.
Surely Larry wouldn’t invite him in if he were hiding something in there.
He could run though while Carter poked around the mansion bathroom.
He’d have to depend on Jo if that happened.
“I’ll be right out,” he told Larry, then slipped into the bathroom.
Everything was neat and ordered, not what Carter expected of a single bathroom shared by two bachelors.
The chancellor probably had housekeepers.
Carter bet Lincoln kept the bathrooms in his house like this.
He quickly checked the shower, tiles, toilet bowl, and medicine cabinet.
Took some pictures. Inside the cabinet were the usual toiletries—shaving cream, hair gel, and the like, and several prescription bottles, all Ryan’s.
He snapped more pictures. Nothing else of note.
He flushed the toilet and washed his hands for effect, dried them off, then headed out to Larry’s unit.
Which was a total mess, nothing at all like the main house, nothing at all like the meticulousness of a serial killer who hadn’t, in twenty-five years, left a shred of evidence at any crime scenes.
The cottage was small, as Carter had expected.
An open-plan living, dining, and kitchen area, and down a short hallway, a bedroom and bathroom, doors open to both.
Not hiding anything. The living area was largely taken up by an oversized desk and stacks of cardboard boxes.
“Sorry for the mess,” Larry said as he moved papers out of a chair for Carter. “Still getting used to these digs.”
“When did you move in?”
“After Harry died. He’d stayed with me and June, my late wife.” He sank into the leather chair behind the desk and shuffled more papers around. “She passed a while back, and then Harry too, and I didn’t want to stay out there alone.”
“Out there?” Carter asked.
“On the lake. June’s family had a patch of property she inherited. Not as big as the Petticoat land but good size. Big enough for three of us but too big for just me. And I wanted to be closer to town and the station.”
“Nice of Ryan to let you crash here.”
“We’ve been friends since childhood. His family never had much, and we had more than enough. He’s returning the favor now, and I don’t think he much liked being in this giant old house by himself.”
“And you needed to keep an eye on him.”
Larry froze, two files in hand.
That was the reaction Carter was waiting for.
He was right. There was something here, and Larry had just confirmed as much.
And given Carter a reason to go forward with his plan.
Lincoln was gonna kill him for it, but they had a killer to catch.
Lincoln was doing what he could, and Carter had helped him on that path as much as he could.
But it wasn’t enough; he could do more. Had to.
Barry’s and Trudy’s lives depended on it.
Larry slowly lowered the files. “I’m sorry, what?”
“You needed to keep an eye on him,” Carter repeated.
Larry looked anywhere but directly at Carter as he stuffed papers into files. “He doesn’t make a big deal of it. He functions just fine. But still, if he had an episode—”
“You mean if he fell off the wagon and got high again.”
Greenish-blue eyes zoomed to him, narrowed, and hardened. “Who are you?”
Carter shifted forward, elbows resting on his knees. “You know that already. I’m guessing your BFF told you. Or at least who I am. You already knew who Lincoln was. You lured us here, after all.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. You’re Carter Polk, a former soldier who now does survival training. Your husband got a job here, Harry’s old job, and you’re going to do a course for my department.” Larry’s posture remained stiff, but his voice rose with each pronouncement.
He seemed genuinely surprised, which gave Carter pause but not enough to deter him. There was something here; he was sure of it. He lifted a hip, pulled out his badge, and tossed it onto the desk, opened. “Try again.”
“You’re FBI?” Wide-eyed, Larry leaned forward and read, not touching it, as if the badge might bite.
“Special Agent Carter Warren.” He glanced back up at Carter.
“Are you out here about Stacy? But wait, you were here before that.” He paled and straightened, swallowing hard. “Ryan knows who you are?”
“He does. And he knows who my partner is too. Special Agent Lincoln Monroe.”
“Wait, partner? You’re not married?”
“Undercover.”
“But the two of you—”
Carter gambled, with the truth for dice.
“Love at first sight, eight years ago when I walked into his Academy classroom. Finally got my chance on this case.” He jerked aside his collar, flashing the hickey Lincoln had left on his neck.
“Reality is better than I’d imagined. Living with and around him every day, getting to know him and his fears and sharing mine with someone too.
Watching him survive the station fire and play at the church service, even though it terrified him.
It made me prouder, made me fall for him even harder.
And now I want to do the same. Prove to him I’m not just the hotshot rookie who disrupted his classes, that I can pull myself up from a nobody lost after an accident on the side of the road, from the foster kid who got repeatedly brushed aside, to become a good agent and a man who’s good enough for him. ”
Gasping, Larry slumped back in his chair.
“Prove to him that I can find Dr. Fear.”
Larry stopped breathing altogether, his eyes locked on Carter.
“That I gave Dr. Fear another target besides Barry and Trudy Cousins, because I know Lincoln and I are strong enough to face our fears together and survive.”
Larry’s wide eyes narrowed, and his face hardened once more. The rapid transformation lifted the hairs on the back of Carter’s neck. Larry had become Chief Petticoat right before his eyes. Possibly also Dr. Fear. “Get out,” he barked.
“Not denying it?”
“You came into my home and accused me of being a serial killer, of kidnapping my own brother and his wife. You think you know me. You don’t know a damn thing about me. Just like I clearly don’t know a damn thing about you.”
Carter stood. “Guessing that course gig is off the table?”
Larry tossed his badge at him. “That’s the only guess you got right this entire conversation.”