Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
TEMPERANCE
Iwas in the middle of a really steamy part of the romance novel I was reading when a knock came at the front door.
Lifting my gaze, I watched as my bodyguard for the day, a hilarious man named Marco, moved to the door and looked through the peephole before unlocking it.
A second later, Carl came walking through.
“Hey,” I greeted, standing and moving to the entryway to give him a hug. “This is a surprise. What brings you by?”
He held up a white plastic bag with Evergreen Diner’s logo in big bold letters along the front. “Knew you were still on lockdown, so I figured I’d bring you lunch and keep you company for a bit.”
My mouth started to water and my stomach let out an embarrassingly loud groan as the smell of Ralph’s famous fried chicken filled my nostrils.
“Oh my god. You’re the best friend in the whole entire world!”
The three of us headed into the kitchen, and I started dishing everything out and passing plates around.
Marco took his plate back into the living room so I could hang with my friend without someone hovering.
Carl took a seat on one of my stools, and as I slid his plate across the island, I noticed him freeze when he caught sight of the ring on my left hand. “You got engaged.”
I lifted my hand and fiddled with the diamond, twisting it so it rested right in the center of my finger. “Yeah.” I let out a little laugh and turned my attention back to him. “With how fast gossip spreads here, I can’t believe you hadn’t heard already.”
“I’ve been outta town for work,” he returned once he’d shaken off his surprise.
“But that’s great news, darlin’. I’m happy for you guys.”
Reaching across the counter, I placed my hand on top of his. “Thanks, Carl. That means a lot coming from you.”
“So when’s the big day?”
I dug my fork into the buttery mashed potatoes and took a bite before answering, “We haven’t set a date yet. Kinda hard to think about any of that right now.”
He cocked his head to the side in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“Well, Hayes just has so much on his plate right now trying to catch this killer. I don’t even want to think about setting a date until that psycho’s behind bars.”
Something in Carl’s demeanor changed, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was. “Well, maybe that’s a good thing, you know? A longer engagement might be smart. Gives you time to change your mind if things go bad.”
My back went stiff as I put my fork back on the plate. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
His nostrils flared and his cheeks started to burn red. “Come on, Tempie. You know what I mean. You two have been down this road before and look how that turned out. I’m just worried that maybe you’re moving too fast.”
“Seriously?” I snapped, anger blooming in my stomach. “We were just kids before, Carl. You know that. Where the hell is this coming from? You just said you were happy for us.”
That red in his cheeks deepened to an unnatural color, and a voice in the back of my head started screaming that something wasn’t right.
“It’s coming from a place of concern. I saw what your breakup did to you the last time.
You were crushed, Tempie. You two were barely broken up for a second when he went out and fucked someone else.
Even after that, you were still so goddamn na?ve, you were gonna give him another chance.
All it took was one fucking note. I just don’t want to see you get hurt again. ”
A sour feeling hit my stomach. The blood began rushing through my ears and I took a step backward, my voice low as I asked, “How did you know that?”
I could see the exact moment he realized his mistake. “Know what?”
“About the note. How did you know about the note?”
“Come on, Tempie.” He laughed, trying to play it off casually, but it didn’t work. “You told me.”
I shook my head slowly. “No I didn’t.”
“Temp—”
A loud crash came from the living room, and my head jerked in that direction. “Marco?”
He suddenly came stumbling into the kitchen, banging against the wall like he was having trouble standing on his own two feet. “Temp—” he tried to speak, but his legs gave out just then, and he started going down.
I rushed around the island, trying to get to him before he hit the floor, but I wasn’t fast enough.
I slid across the floor on my knees, skidding to a stop at Marco’s side. “Marco. Marco, sweetie, wake up. Come on.” I gave his body a violent shake. “Wake up!”
Movement from the corner of my eye caught my attention, and I looked up to where Carl was standing over us. “Call 911,” I rushed, panic gripping my chest like a vise. “Something’s wrong. We need an ambulance.”
Carl sounded almost bored as he said, “He’ll be fine.”
That was when it sank in. The only way he could know Marco was going to be fine was if he knew what was wrong with him. “What did you do to him?” I whispered, inching back as he moved closer.
“Nothing that’ll cause any permanent damage. I didn’t want to hurt him. He’d never done anything to harm you, but I needed to get him outta the way. ”
My body began to shake uncontrollably, and as I slowly rose to my feet, I feared my knees would give out. “Carl,” I breathed, taking another step back. “Please tell me it wasn’t you. Please.” Tears filled my eyes and leaked out onto my cheeks as he took another step closer.
“I did it for you. Can’t you see that?” His expression twisted into something terrifying, a mixture of agony and rage that turned my blood to ice. Then he bellowed, “I did it all for you!”
I whipped around just as he reached for me, running as fast as I could out of the kitchen and through the living room. I needed to get to the security panel by the front door. There was a panic button built in, and if I could just get to it….
My feet skidded on the wood floors, but I managed to stay upright. I was only inches away. So close. I lifted my arm to jab the button, but before I could get to it, I was jerked back by my hair so hard that I cried out in pain.
“You ungrateful bitch,” he hissed into my ear. Then, using his hold on my hair, he slammed my head into the wall beside the front door so hard that stars burst in front of my eyes and I felt the skin open on my forehead. He wrenched my head backward again and slammed it into the wall a second time.
And that was all it took for everything to go black.
Hayes
Slamming the phone into its cradle, I rocked back in my chair and raked my hands through my hair. “Goddamn it.”
Trick looked up at me. “Nothing?”
“Not one goddamn thing,” I grunted in return.
It’d been seven days since Perry’s last phone call to Tempie, and since then, the guy had turned into a goddamn ghost. “No activity on any of his credit cards, landlord back in Chicago hasn’t seen him for weeks.
There are no airline or car rental records.
It’s like the motherfucker’s disappeared off the face of the earth. ”
When we’d searched every hotel, motel, vacant building, abandoned warehouse and house in and around Hope Valley and come up empty, Leo and Micah had reached out to the police in Chicago.
An APB had been put out on Perry Frasier three days ago, and all we’d gotten in that time was a whole lot of nothing.
“I’m tellin’ you,” I continued as my gut twisted into knots, “something about this isn’t right. The man left a trail through every goddamn state he’s ever visited, and now he’s in the wind? Doesn’t make sense.”
Trick studied me closely before asking, “What are you thinkin’?”
I let out a slow exhale as I gave that question some thought. “I think we need to go back to the very beginning and look at this from a different angle.”
“And what angle would that be?”
It made me sick to even think it, let alone say it, but there was a voice in the back of my head that had been nagging at me relentlessly, and it was time I stopped ignoring it. “I think we need to start considering the fact that it might not be Perry Frasier we’re lookin’ for.”
I stood in the conference room with Trick, Leo, and Micah, staring at the four crime scene photos taped up on the whiteboard.
“Okay, so this is what we know,” Leo started talking, thinking out loud in an attempt to piece together a new theory that the killer was someone from her life here in Hope Valley.
“Marcum stole from her, she and Harley got into a public altercation, and Henderson killed her dog. So it would seem those three were revenge killings, done in the killer’s mind as a way to exact vengeance for Temperance.
But if we’re using that argument, then the murder of her parents doesn’t fit. ”
Trick turned to me, and I could practically hear the wheels turning in his brain. “Her parents were the first to be killed, and there was an extensive gap between theirs and Marcum’s death. So let’s assume that the first killing wasn’t done as a twisted idea of justice.”
“Then what would it have been?”
“That one was personal for the killer. Something happened in the time leading up to that night to push him over the edge. Something he viewed as an insult to him, not Tempie. What happened leading up to you guys breaking up?”
For the past twenty-one years, I’d done everything I could to push those memories out of my head, but I knew deep down in my bones that the reason for all of this had to start there.
“She’d been pregnant,” I said as realization came crashing down on me like a ton of bricks.
“Christ, you’re right.” I looked to Trick as more of the puzzle pieces started clicking into place.
“She’d gotten pregnant during our senior year.
We planned it all out, marriage, jobs, all that shit for once we graduate and the baby was born, but she ended up having a miscarriage.
We didn’t tell anyone about the baby. Her parents only found out because she lost it.
Tempie told Rory after, but that’s it. Her folks were killed a couple weeks after that. That was the trigger. It has to be.”
Micah pressed his palms into the table, giving me his eyes as he stated, “But you just said yourself, no one else knew, so how could that be the trigger?”
The piece regarding that goddamn note I’d been trying to force into place for weeks now finally clicked, adding to the puzzle and causing a nasty, burning sensation deep in my stomach.
“Tempie and I had a place out in the woods by the old abandoned mill. I used to sneak her notes when I wanted her to come meet me. No one knew about that either. But the night the Levine’s were killed, there’d been a note she thought was from me, asking her to meet me there.
If someone had been stalking her close enough back then to know about that spot and those notes, it’d make sense they could have found out about the pregnancy. ”
“And assholes like that can’t help but insert themselves into the lives of the people they’re obsessing over,” Leo added. “So the question is, who’s been talkin’ to Tempie this whole time? Someone who kept in contact with her even when she lived in Chicago?”
“No one,” I answered immediately, then stopped as a conversation I’d had with Tempie not long ago replayed in my head.
It had just been a one-off comment, something I didn’t give any thought to when she said it, but thinking back on it now, that last very last piece of the puzzle fell right into place. “Carl.”
Everyone in the room went on alert, but it was Trick who asked, “What?”
“Carl. She mentioned a while back that there was this pizza joint in Chicago she loved to go to, and that she took Carl one time when he was in town for work. He’s the only person from here who she stayed in touch with, and the only reason for that was because he traveled to Chicago for his job occasionally and reached out to her every time he was in town.
If it hadn’t been for that, their friendship probably would’ve faded away like all the rest.”
“Fuck,” Trick hissed. “Didn’t he move back to town around the same time Tempie came back?”
“And he was at the diner when Harley came in, itchin’ for that scene,” I told them. “He knew about Martin Henderson shooting her dog because everyone in town knew. And if he kept in touch while she lived in Chicago, it’s not a stretch that she would’ve told him about Marcum.”
Leo rushed to the phone on the sideboard and yanked it from the cradle. A second later, he was barking orders, but I was already on the move, storming from the conference room. I had my cell out of my pocket and to my ear by the time I hit the steps that led out of the bullpen.
“Come on,” I muttered as one ring went into a second, then a third. “Come on, baby. Pick up.”
“Hey, you’ve reached Tempie. I can’t come to the—”
That sick, sour feeling in the pit of my stomach grew and grew, slithering up my throat until I thought it might choke me. I hung up and immediately dialed again, getting her voice mail once more.
I ended the call and hit the button for Lincoln’s number.
“Yo, brother. What’s goin’ on?”
“Tempie’s not answerin’ her phone,” I barked.
“Shit. Gimme a second. I’ll try to reach Marco.”
Shoving through the doors of the station, I barely felt the cold wind as it whipped around me as I made my way through the parking lot to my truck, “I’m already on the move. You get Marco on the line, you call me. If not, I want you to meet me at the farmhouse.”
I hung up and stuffed my phone back into my pocket.
Trick caught up with me just as I beeped the locks on the Sequioa.
“What are you doin’?”
“The fuck you think I’m doing?” he asked, not breaking stride he reached the passenger side door and yanked it open. “I’m backin’ my partner up.”