Chapter 41
“What the fuck were you thinking?” Captain Daniels bellowed.
Vaughn didn’t know what the man was talking about. He knew, however, that Daniels would expound. And the man did—after a pregnant pause.
“Bringing a civilian into a crime scene? A fucking gas scene?”
Vaughn felt Darnell’s eyes on him.
He didn’t look at his partner, but he knew what the man was thinking.
How did Daniels know? Delaney? It had to be Delaney. That’s why the prick wasn’t in the bullpen waiting for you, like he usually is.
Puppy dog dick-riding simp.
Captain Daniels had a hands-off approach. Let the detectives, and to a lesser degree the officers, go about their business without interfering.
But the one thing the captain hated was being left out of the loop.
Daniels waved a hand indicating that it was Vaughn’s turn to speak.
“Dr. Ivy Reeves is from Princeton—a math professor. She helped us understand the first scene.”
Daniels’s icy eyes narrowed.
“How?”
“Our unsub is using some weird math games to kill his victims. They seem random, but Dr. Reeves says that there’s a way to increase their odds of winning. In the most recent crime scene, she’s fairly certain that one of the participants made it out.”
“You need her help?”
Vaughn nodded.
“Yes. I think—”
“Wait—Dr. Reeves? Did you say Dr. Reeves?”
“Yes. A prof—”
“Dr. Reeves?” Daniels repeated a third time.
“Yes, Dr. Ivy Reeves.” Vaughn couldn’t mask his annoyance.
“Dr. Ivy . . .” Daniels shook his head. He was pissed before but now the captain bordered on furious. “I want you to listen to me: under no circumstances is Dr. Reeves to be involved in the case.”
Why? was on the tip of Vaughn’s tongue.
Never got the chance to say it.
Daniels got worked up about a lot of things. Had a resting blood pressure of 200 over 100. But this was extreme even for him.
“Do you understand me?”
“Yes, sir.”
Even though the captain’s anger had peaked at the mention of Ivy, his reaction didn’t make sense to Vaughn.
The man’s fury had to be the result of the press getting wind of this.
The only thing that pissed Daniels off more than being left out of the loop was the press getting on his ass about something.
Vaughn was surprised it had taken this long. Delaney had spoken to the caller about her missing husband. When she didn’t hear anything about her husband’s murder on the news, she probably went looking.
Looking and asking questions.
“I mean it. Bowes?”
The caffeine-laced officer’s legs were bouncing up and down. Vaughn wanted to reach out and grab his knee, make him stop.
“Everything was operated remotely. Whoever’s behind this knew what they were doing. Covered their tracks.”
Vaughn didn’t think that Captain Daniels’s frown could get any deeper.
It did.
“What about this guy who managed to get away?”
“Delaney dispatched a team to look for him. Haven’t seen him yet this morning,” Vaughn said.
“We’re making progress,” Darnell blurted.
Vaughn cringed, glanced at his partner.
Why the fuck would you say that?
But he knew why. Senior detective and all that. Trying to save face, trying to make it seem like he hadn’t passed out and missed last night’s ordeal.
Daniels cocked his head, ran a hand through his thick white hair.
“Progress?”
“I mean—”
“Eleven dead? Two crime scenes? Two more missing canisters of gas?” Fucking Delaney. “You call that progress?”
Vaughn saw Darnell open his mouth to say something, but he smartly remained silent.
“Didn’t think so. And where the fuck were you last night?”
Darnell scowled and Bowes shifted uncomfortably. It was a rhetorical question. Everyone in the room where Darnell was. If not where, for sure what he was doing.
“You guys have forty-eight hours. Forty-eight hours and then I’m—Detective Ryan, would you answer your fucking phone?”
“What?”
“Your phone,” Bowes said under his breath.
Vaughn looked down. At some point, he must have switched his phone to silent—probably before he’d gone to bed—and turned off the vibrate function, too. The flashlight, however, was lighting up his slacks. He took it out.
“It’s Delaney.”
“Answer it.”
Vaughn did.
“Delan—”
“I caught him! I fucking caught him, Vaughn!”
“What? Who?”
“The unsub! Our guy!”
Darnell was on his feet now. Vaughn wasn’t sure if it was because he could overhear Delaney shouting or if he was only reacting to Vaughn’s change in posture.
“What are you talking about, Delaney?”
“He was in a field near the Cedar Ridge Preserve. Vaughn, you ain’t gonna believe this, but the fucker got lost. He was like a zombie, talking some bullshit about Bitcoin . . . he was delirious.”
Delaney was clearly amped up, excited about the idea of catching this collar. Vaughn was of a different mind, considering what Ivy had said, how the man who had been permitted to leave the barn was likely the winner of the game, not the orchestrator.
“Where are you?”
“I have him in the back of my car. I’m heading to the station now.”
“Don’t talk to him, Delaney. Wait for us to meet you outside.”
“I’m going to fucking kill Delaney,” Darnell said.
“Keep your shit together.”
“He ratted us out. He told all that bullshit to Daniels, couldn’t keep his goddamn mouth shut. And what the fuck is this about you bringing Ivy to the second crime scene? I may have been hungover, but I’m pretty sure that you never mentioned that little detail in the car this morning.”
Delaney’s squad car raced into the lot. Stopped directly in front of them before Vaughn could defend himself, explain. Delaney jumped out. He was wired, clearly hadn’t slept all night.
“I got him!”
“Calm down,” Vaughn said.
“Sorry, it’s—”
“I get it—just calm down. We don’t know that this is our guy.”
Delaney’s eyes bulged.
“He is! The man was—”
“He could just be the winner,” Vaughn said flatly. “We don’t know that he had anything to do with this other than trying to make a quick buck.”
Delaney’s eyes sucked back into his head. He hadn’t considered this possibility, and the idea of not being the man who had brought this nightmare to a close took some of the wind out of his sails. He paused just long enough for Darnell to jump in.
“Did he say anything to you in the car?”
Delaney shook his head, and they all moved closer to the vehicle, peered into the backseat.
“No. He . . . he fell asleep.”
And the man was still sleeping, his cheek pressed up against the glass. There was a thin trail of spit on the window. It was difficult to get a full picture of the man with his face compressed the way it was, but Vaughn got a general idea. Wiry, with dark circles around his eyes. Shaggy blond hair.
“You have a name?”
“When I found him in the field,” Delaney said, speaking at a rapid clip, “he said he was Joshua Perry. Gave his DOB, too. Punched it in on the ride over. No priors in the system. Could be a made-up name, though. We need to get him printed.”
“Thanks, tips,” Darnell growled.
“I’ll wake him up; Delaney, you bring him in,” Vaughn said.
“Fuck that, I’ll bring him in,” Darnell said.
“You weren’t even there last night. This is my collar.”
“We don’t even know if this is a collar, Delaney. This is—”
Vaughn didn’t get a chance to finish. Darnell reached out and grabbed Delaney by the throat, surprising all of them. Delaney’s eyelids peeled back, and Vaughn clawed at his partner’s arm.
“You trying to steal this from me too, you fucking worm? Like you tried to steal my job?”
“Darnell!” Vaughn shouted. He tried to pull his partner’s hand off, to no avail. “Darnell!”
The man bared his teeth.
“Little fucking—”
Vaughn used his free hand to rabbit punch Darnell in the armpit. Not hard, but with enough force to make Darnell grunt and curl his body protectively on that side. He finally let go and Delaney coughed as he massaged his throat. Vaughn immediately got between them.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Vaughn snarled.
The anger leaked from Darnell’s face.
“Back up,” Vaughn ordered.
When Darnell continued to just stand there, Vaughn gave him a little push. His partner took two steps back.
“Don’t you move.”
Vaughn whipped around. Delaney had recovered and looked more shocked than injured.
“You good?”
“Y-yeah.”
“Bring him in. Print him and throw him in a room. Don’t talk to him. And don’t say a word to Darnell. Got it?”
Delaney nodded, and Vaughn held the stare for a moment longer. Then he rapped two knuckles against the window, startling the man in the backseat.
“You,” he hissed. “Wake the fuck up.”