Chapter 13
13
A t six o’clock that evening, they pulled Roxanne’s Range Rover to a stop in front of her dad’s house. Strung across the door and blocking the drive and walkways, crime scene tape fluttered in a breeze, its bright, cheery color a stark contrast to the darkness Lina had seen inside. A lone man, dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a T-shirt, stood on the stoop, his hands in his pockets. He remained still as she took her time assessing the situation. She didn’t expect the police to jump out of the sparse greenery that lined the walkway to the door, nor did she believe Roxanne would ever put her and Jackson in danger. But she had enough experience with law enforcement to hesitate—sometimes, agents didn’t have a choice.
“We don’t have to do this,” Jackson said.
They didn’t. She could walk away from whatever trail her father had left. But she wouldn’t. Jackson knew it, too.
“Vince and Roxanne are close. If something were up, he’d figure out a way to signal to us,” he said, as if reading her mind.
She conceded the truth with a dip of her head. “It’s been three days, but somehow everything...it doesn’t look different, but it feels different.”
“You’re seeing it from a different perspective now,” Jackson replied. “You’re probably noticing how quiet the street is, how easy it was for someone to slip into the house unnoticed, things like that. Things you never considered before.”
“ I’ve changed, not the street,” she said, her lips curling in wry acceptance.
“Death changes people. Sometimes in big ways, sometimes in small.”
Vince shifted, crossed his arms, then leaned against the house, looking as if he had all the time in the world. If he went through even one bottle of the whiskey Roxanne sent, he was probably hoping they’d get the hell in and out quickly. Seeing as they’d dragged him away from whatever his other plans had been, she decided not to keep him waiting any longer.
Taking a deep breath, she opened the door and stepped out. They’d left the rain behind somewhere around Olympia and, uncharacteristically, blue skies heralded their arrival. The evening sun hit her back and shoulders, warming her skin through her sweatshirt. The ends of her ponytail twitched across her back in the sporadic breezy gusts blowing down the street.
She started up the walk, and Jackson appeared at her side as the beep-beeping of the car lock sounded. After shaking Vince Sanders’s hand, she took her first steps into her childhood house since leaving her father’s body.
Hesitating in the foyer, she debated whether to head immediately to the living room where the book she sought would be or down the hall to the dining room. Leaning on old habits, she went for the hard thing first and walked toward the back of the house. Without a word, both Jackson and Vince followed.
“He was lying here when I found him,” she said, unnecessarily pointing to a spot near the dining table. Nothing had been cleaned yet, and the trail of blood leading from the kitchen stopped abruptly.
With her senses heightened, the stench stung her nose, and she shallowed out her breathing as she followed the trail. She’d only assumed he’d been attacked in the kitchen; now she’d know the truth.
Staying close to the wall and well away from the rust-brown streak across the white ash floor, she studied the marks as she walked. Jackson and Vince trailing silently behind.
When they reached the kitchen, the signs of a struggle she expected to see were missing, and her stomach dropped. The attack hadn’t happened in this room. Based on the marks stretching down the hall, he’d been in his office. Another twenty feet away.
Any thoughts of abandoning the quest he’d set up for her vanished. She hadn’t really considered quitting anyway, but now that she saw the lengths he’d gone to to ensure she found the bag, there was no chance.
“He must have kept the bag hidden under the sink,” Jackson said, pointing to the line of blood. It came into the kitchen from the hall, approached the sink, then turned almost ninety degrees before heading toward the dining room. Vince didn’t look surprised by Jackson’s mention of the bag, and Lina figured Roxanne had filled him in.
“He told you to run, so he must have known you were coming by,” Jackson said.
Her stomach curled in on itself. She’d called her dad to tell him she’d be by the following afternoon. He rarely answered the phone, and that day hadn’t been any different. She’d left a short message, her voice brisk and annoyed—annoyed at her mother for setting her to the task, at him for not ever answering his phone or even caring if she stopped by.
Her last words to her father were a terse, “I’ll be by tomorrow at one thirty.” The only salve to the situation was that her father probably hadn’t recognized her irritation.
Jackson’s fingers grazed her lower back, and she realized they’d been standing in the kitchen for more than a few minutes.
“He knew I was coming. I left a message for him the day before,” she said.
“One of the reasons the detective is anxious to speak with you,” Vince responded.
Both she and Jackson swiveled to look at him. He lifted a shoulder. “He heard the message, and a couple of neighbors have doorbell cams that caught your bike—both arriving and leaving. The time of death doesn’t align with your visit, so he’s not looking at you as a suspect. He found the message your father left telling you to run, though. He doesn’t know if you took off because of it or if something more…nefarious happened.”
A little tension eased from her body. She’d still have to talk to the detective, but he’d done his homework, so the conversation shouldn’t be a hostile one.
She looked at Jackson. His gaze lingered on the trail leading into the kitchen.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
“Nothing good,” he muttered. Circling in front of her, he edged around the room and glanced down the hall. “It looks like the attack happened down there.” He pointed.
“My dad’s office.”
“Was his computer in evidence?” he asked. Vince shook his head. “So they attack him, take his computer, then what? Wait around for you?”
Lina shook her head. “They wouldn’t have known I was coming,” she said. Vince’s expression didn’t change, but his eyes narrowed at her comment.
“His time of death was two hours before you arrived, but they were here long enough to put a tracker on your bike,” Jackson said. “What were they doing in that time?”
“Watching,” Vince said. “Waiting.”
She and Jackson looked at him. A beat later, nausea tightened her stomach, and a whisper of vertigo left her unsteady as his meaning hit her. “Let’s talk in the living room,” she said. She caught Jackson’s concerned expression as she turned but didn’t stop. Leading the two men back through the house, they stepped into the clean, untouched room at the front of the house. Walking to the bookshelf, she scanned the rows, finding the well-worn and dog-leafed copy on the second one. Pulling it out, she tucked it into the front pocket of her hoodie.
“They watched him,” she said, more to herself than the others, but Jackson’s lips flattened, and Vince looked away.
“We’ll likely never know, exactly, what happened,” she continued. “But my guess is that they beat him until they thought he was dead, grabbed his computer, and considered the job done.”
“But he wasn’t dead. Not yet,” Jackson said.
She nodded grimly. “He moved. And he moved with purpose. Not being stupid, they realize there’s something important he wants to get his hands on before he dies.”
“So they wait,” Vince said.
“And watch,” Jackson said.
“They watch him crawl from the office to the kitchen. They watch him dig out the little pink backpack from under the sink. Then they watch him make his way to the dining room.”
“They see him write in his own blood, telling you to run,” Jackson said.
She nods. “And they figure out that he expects someone to come by, to find him and the bag.”
“Not only find it, but know what to do with it,” Jackson said. “They must have looked inside and found the map. But it made no sense. Not to them.”
“It barely made sense to me, either, but hey…” She shrugged.
“They wouldn’t have known that, though,” Jackson said.
A weighted silence filled the room, and she looked out the picture window, not really seeing the street beyond. “I always assumed they saw the map,” she said quietly. “Why else would they follow me? But I never—” She looked down, then cleared her throat. “I never put the whole picture together. I never considered that they stood by and watched as he crawled through the house, as he dragged the bag from underneath the sink. As he wrote his final message to me. I never considered that they waited here for hours, in his home, for me to arrive. All while his body grew cold at their feet.”
She’d seen many things in her life, but the scenario they put together portrayed a coldness, a psychopathy, that was beyond the reaches of her mind.
“I bet they put the tracker on your bike while you were inside, thinking you’d grab the bag and lead them to the metaphorical X on your father’s map,” Vince said, his voice almost a growl.
“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” Lina agreed with a nod.
“We lost them after Redding, though. If they couldn’t read the map, how did they end up looking for you in Eureka?” Jackson asked.
“Is the property in your dad’s name?” Vince asked.
Lina shook her head. “It’s owned by my great-uncle who lives in England, but my father has power of attorney. It’s under the control of the university, but occasionally, they need things signed and such.”
“Then that’s your answer. They knew you had a map, and once you started heading in that direction, they probably looked up property records,” Vince said.
Jackson frowned. “That’s not as easy as it sounds. Not unless you’re in law enforcement.”
A well of dread opened inside her as the breadth of resources her father’s killers had access to sank in. “Either law enforcement or deep pockets,” she said. “Neither of which bodes well for us.”