Chapter Thirteen
Camden resisted the urge to curse as Millie froze the screenshot on a picture of Kage facing the window as he pulled clothes from the dryer. The camera over the glass doors snapped a photo of him. Once again, he was at the scene of a crime, caught on camera.
“You said you don’t know how often the camera takes pictures, right?” Rochelle asked.
Kage running away from them today wasn’t helping his case for innocence.
And then something caught Camden’s eye on the grainy photo. “Can you zoom in?”
“Sure,” Millie said. “Where?”
Camden pointed to a spot on the window.
“His reflection,” Millie said.
“Is it?” Camden wasn’t certain. “Could we have our experts take a look at the image?”
“Anything you need,” Millie said.
“Would you mind emailing it?” Camden asked before rattling off his email address.
“Mine too,” Rochelle said, doing the same.
“Okay,” Millie said. She minimized the screen after taking a note of the numbered picture. A few seconds later, the email showed up in his inbox. Using his cell, he forwarded it to his supervisor, and Rochelle did the same to her boss. “Two heads are better than one.”
Getting as many experts on the case as possible would only help them. With any luck, they’d find Kage before someone else in law enforcement did. Which reminded him, they should consider updating his parole officer. Would that make matters worse?
Hope that Kage would lead them to the pair of kidnapping victims died the moment he’d taken off. And yet, a growing part of Camden believed the man was innocent. How messed up was that?
Despite the evidence, Camden couldn’t wrap his thoughts around Kage being so careless as to abduct women near his own home.
The old saying “dogs don’t go to the bathroom where they eat” applied.
A good litigator would point out the fact Kage was merely an opportunist, taking women near where he lived.
They might conclude no one else but Kage could be responsible for the kidnappings and subsequent murders because of the pictures and video footage.
The evidence might be circumstantial, but it was damning.
And yet, it didn’t fit. The escalation of crimes didn’t make sense. And the baseball caps kept haunting him.
Hopefully, this image would provide clues. Because Camden’s reasons for defending Kage wouldn’t hold up in court.
“How often would you say this customer used the Laundromat?” Camden asked.
“Every Tuesday evening after dinner at seven thirty,” Millie responded. “I could set my watch to it.”
The killer was meticulous. He was thorough, not leaving behind any DNA.
“Is there anything else you remember about your customer?” Rochelle asked.
“Just what I already said,” Millie said. “I never had a problem with him. Not even when a machine acted up. Some people get upset. This one never did. He was always polite.”
He’d done his time. Paid his debt to society for his crime.
“Did he ever come here with anyone?” Rochelle continued.
“No,” Millie answered. “He kept to himself except when I came out and said hello.” She shrugged. “He’s the last person I would suspect to commit such an awful crime. Or any crime.” Her gaze shifted from Rochelle to Camden and back. “What do I know?”
“Thank you for your time,” Camden said, hoping the tech guy could find something in the picture to send them in a new direction. More and more, he found himself rooting for Kage.
Was it because Camden could see himself taking matters into his own hands if he believed law enforcement was unfairly targeting him in a murder investigation?
Camden would likely strike out on his own to find answers too.
He’d always had an independent streak a mile long, and his stubbornness was legendary in the family.
All of this had him thinking about second chances. Did Kage deserve his?
What about Camden’s mother?
Whoa! Where did that come from?
After thanking Millie a second time, Camden walked out of the Laundromat behind Rochelle. Once inside the truck, he said, “I keep thinking Kage took off because we’re missing something.”
“I have the same feeling,” she said, buckling into the passenger seat.
“Guess we just have to keep pecking away at it until we get a breakthrough,” he said.
“You aren’t used to that, are you?”
“Investigating?” he asked.
“Yes. I keep forgetting that your primary job is to serve warrants once you get a location on someone,” she said.
“I do more stakeouts than interviews,” he said.
“We’ll figure this out,” she reassured.
He didn’t feel the need to point out that Kage’s life depended on it. They might be the difference between a life behind bars and freedom for a crime Camden was more and more convinced Kage might be innocent of.
Either that, or Kage was one of the best actors of his time. He’d be wasting his talents in Austin if that was the case.
“We could stake out Kage’s apartment,” she said. “See if he returns to pick anything up.”
“Okay,” he said for lack of a better idea.
They’d wait and see what turned up.
Hours passed as Rochelle and Camden sat in the truck nestled in between two vans, waiting for any sign of life coming from Kage’s apartment.
The silence was almost deafening after getting to know Camden and all that he’d been through, revealing those fractured parts of himself to her and only her. To have him suddenly close off to her at this point hurt.
Relationships hurt.
Opening her heart to someone hurt.
After losing her mother recently, she didn’t have the resolve to allow her heart to be broken again. Whatever was happening between her and Camden needed to stop. Especially because they were coworkers. Starting a relationship while on assignment would be horribly unprofessional.
Rather than sit there and idly stare out the window, she decided Camden could handle watching the apartment while she studied the photograph of Kage at the Laundromat on her phone.
The grainy photo made details a little difficult to make out.
There were no other photos with that time stamp, so there wasn’t anything else to use as a basis for comparison.
Maybe she should go back and ask Millie for every Tuesday-night photo for the past few weeks to compare.
Deciding it was an idea worth chasing, she sent the email request and informed Camden of what she was doing.
“Good idea,” he said. “I’m not sure why I didn’t think of that while we were still with Millie.”
“I was distracted too,” she said. “There’s something about that photo that just keeps eating away at me.”
“Same here,” he said.
She blew up the photo on the screen. The faces were so similar it was like Kage was looking into a mirror. Therefore, the reflection theory made sense. However, what she hadn’t noticed before was that Kage’s dark gray T-shirt looked black in his reflection. A trick of the fluorescent lights?
“Hey, did you notice this before?” she asked Camden as she outstretched her hand so he could get a better look at the screen.
“I knew something was bothering me,” he said. Then he took the phone and studied it intensely for a few long moments. “The shirts. Aside from the color variance, Kage is wearing a V-neck. The reflection is more of a scoop neck.”
Rochelle leaned over the console. This close, Camden’s spicy male scent filled her senses. Under any other circumstance, she would find it sexy. But right now, she couldn’t allow herself to focus on anything but Kage and that shirt. Camden was right. “I see what you’re saying.”
“The devil is in the details,” he said.
That expression had never applied to any situation more than it did this one in this moment.
From the corner of her eye, she saw movement in Kage’s apartment complex.
“Hey, look there.” She pointed toward a woman who walked slowly and seemed to check over her shoulder nervously a little too much for this to be random, unless the woman was selling drugs or something else Rochelle didn’t want to think about.
“Who are you?” Camden said out loud, but the question was obviously rhetorical.
Rochelle’s muscles tensed as she watched the woman stop in front of Kage’s door.
The female with shoulder-length black hair glanced around a few more times before knocking.
From this distance, it was impossible to tell if she had a secret knock or, honestly, if she even knew him.
The man was attractive and would have his fair share of female fans.
Most women would agree with that assessment.
The secrecy and carefulness with this woman made all of Rochelle’s tingly Spidey senses come to life. The answer was as plain as the nose on Rochelle’s face. This woman knew Kage’s apartment was being watched.
Black Hair put her hand on the doorknob. Froze. And then she hastily pulled a piece of paper from her pocketbook and slid it into the door, closing it so just an edge of paper was visible.
Did this person have prior knowledge that Kage wasn’t home?
Why wouldn’t she just go inside to leave the note in a secure place?
Because the answer was simple. Rochelle suspected the black-haired woman knew Kage wasn’t going to answer the door because of the cops, or she must have expected the possibility of him not being home. Otherwise, why have a note ready?
“Do you think we should go ask her about her relationship with Kage?” Rochelle asked.
“I have a better idea,” Camden said. “Let’s follow her.”
Rochelle was out of the car in two seconds flat. She met Camden at the front of his truck, where he wrapped an arm around her shoulder, leaned close to her ear, and whispered, “Follow my lead. Okay?”
“Alright,” she said, ignoring the way her heart raced the second he touched her.
“Is it okay if I touch you like we’re a couple?” he whispered.
“Yes,” she answered, hearing the frog in her own throat.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she tried to convince herself the excitement had more to do with finally getting a small break in this case and not with the fact that her attraction to Camden was getting ahead of her.
She had the discipline to keep it at bay.
She had the professional sense to know what a disaster it would be for her career and therefore her life if she gave in to a momentary distraction like Camden.
The knowledge didn’t exactly make the attraction go away, but she could deal with it.
All she had to do was remind herself of how easy it was for him to shut down anytime they had a breakthrough or started getting closer to fully opening up to each other.
His instincts shut it down before anything could transpire, which was probably for the best even though her heart wanted to argue otherwise.
Black Hair hadn’t driven unless she parked her car a block away, which would be smart so anyone watching the apartment wouldn’t be able to get her license plate.
If that was the case, this woman was either a criminal herself and knew exactly what she was doing to avoid capture, or an expert at making certain she wasn’t tied to a current case.
There was another possibility and that was that Kage had told her to stop by and had warned her that someone might be watching his apartment, in which case surely he would have given her a reason.
No guy was gorgeous enough to risk a felony just to go see him at his apartment. Right?
Then again, having a twisted set of morals was exactly the type of people Rochelle came across on a daily basis in her work.
Black Hair slipped around behind the complex in a surprise move and then cut left, disappearing from view. She must have, in fact, stashed a car behind the building. Was it a getaway car?
“Should we grab the note before we do anything else?” Rochelle asked.
“I had the same thought,” Camden admitted. “We can split up. I’ll follow her while you go check the note.”
“Deal.” Rochelle banked a right while Camden disappeared around the side of the apartment complex. The second his arm left her shoulder, she noticed his absence. But she couldn’t think about that right now.
Technically, she had no authority to take a note out of Kage’s door. However, if the note fell on the ground and onto public property, then she wasn’t in any violation. It would be in public domain and, therefore, fair game.
Or she could just stand there until Kage returned and then ask him to show her the note.
Rochelle almost laughed out loud at that one. After everything that had happened today, Kage wasn’t going to be inclined to share information with the law. In fact, he would run in the opposite direction if he saw her standing at his front door.
Wind whipped her hair around as she made the walk toward his apartment. Part of her wanted to retreat to the truck and watch to see if Kage returned. However, the contents of the note could be lost forever, and he could deny it was ever there in the first place.
Rochelle’s curiosity about the note was getting the better of her. By the time she made it to the door, it took all her willpower not to accidentally elbow the piece of paper to dislodge it from the door.
She’d been around detectives who started cutting corners.
It never led to anywhere positive in their career or personal life.
So even if it meant taking longer and unfortunately risking lives that were somewhere out there hanging in the balance, she had to play this by the book or risk losing the case in court.
As much as letting the perp get away ate at her, she couldn’t let herself become sloppy.
The note was flapping in the wind and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do to free it from the door. There was at least a small chance it would break free and she could then catch it legally. In the meantime, she pulled out her cell phone and started snapping pictures.
Where are you, Kage?
Cell phone in hand, Rochelle had to resist the urge to call or text Camden to see if he was making better progress than she was.
She didn’t realize she was tapping her toe on the concrete sidewalk in front of Kage’s apartment until she glanced down.
Shifting her focus to the screen in her hand, she didn’t catch the barrel pointed at her from a tree across the street until a shot had been fired.
Too late, she saw the flash and then a second later heard the bullet whiz past her head by inches, lodging into the door and nailing the piece of paper.
What the hell?