Dog Days Read online

  “Shucky darns.”

  The phone rang.

  Once.

  Twice.

  Three times.

  I held my breath.

  Wyatt came to stand near my chair and nodded.

  Declan had a hand on my shoulder.

  “Mossy Creek Police Department. This is Maggie Mercer. How may I help you?” I hit the speakerphone button.

  There was no doubt in my mind about who would be on the other end.

  “I almost had you, Beth. Almost. You’re mine. You’ve always been mine. Can’t you understand? Next time you won’t be so lucky. Next time there won’t be anyone to rescue you.”

  Click.

  Declan reached over my shoulder to hang up the phone.

  Court grabbed a couple tissues from the box on the corner of my desk and handed them to me. “We’re going to get him, Maggie. I swear we are.”

  As I blew my nose, the other members of our crew voiced similar affirmations.

  “I know you will. I believe it with all my heart. Thank you.”

  Wyatt shifted, folding his arms. “All right, people, let’s find him. Rick, Becca, I know the truck is gone, but maybe someone was in the area at the time it arrived here and saw something, or remembers something about it. Go talk to the folks who live the closest. We’ve got a pervert to catch. Learn stuff and report back.”

  “On it, boss.”

  “Gus, let’s take the other side.” Declan patted my back. “See what we can roust out.”

  “I’m with ya.”

  “Court and I will take whatever’s left. Maybe we can figure out which way he went.”

  “Good idea, Paul. Have at it.”

  Wyatt stayed where he was.

  “I feel like such an idiot.”

  He knelt beside my chair. “And why is that?”

  “All those guys are out there questioning people about someone who is threatening me. It’s maddening, knowing I should know who this is, and not be able to remember. It’s like my brain has this wall around that piece of memory.

  “So, yes, I feel like an idiot, but also like a whiny baby. Who does this guy think he is, anyway? Why should I let him get to me like this? Making me scared to be alone.”

  “Babe, you’re his target. You’re in his sights. We don’t have any idea what his intentions are, if—a big big if—he ever gets his hands on you. I personally don’t want anything to happen to you. You feel like an idiot, but I feel helpless I can’t keep you safe enough from this cretin.”

  I grabbed his hand. “I’m safe with you. There’s no one else I’d rather have with me than you.”

  “And yet you get mad when I shadow you.”

  My nose wrinkled. “Well, there is such a thing as being too close. But don’t ever think I don’t want you next to me.”

  He pulled me to my feet and wrapped me in his strong arms. “I’ll never let go of you, ya know. Never. Ever. That might make me sound a little unstable myself, but it’s the truth. I’ll never give you up if I get to have a say.”

  We both knew he meant if this dimwit tried to take him out again.

  I wasn’t going to let that happen, either, if I got to have a say.

  We kissed.

  Chapter 36

  … WEDNESDAY…

  * * *

  … September 16th…

  * * *

  MONDAY, I GOT an email, around 1445, from the county lab that they were releasing our evidence back to us.

  Well, hallelujah!

  They were in the process of packing it up, and it would most likely be sent the next morning, and could possibly arrive at our office by mid-day on Wednesday. They’d be sending another e-mail when it was on its way.

  At 1445, I got confirmation of shipment.

  At 1450, a courier arrived with a van-full of boxes.

  Boxes, and boxes, and boxes. Big ones.

  There were ten, actually.

  There were also—in the email—several official document attachments, which I forwarded to Wyatt.

  The delivery wasn’t unexpected, but the sheer volume was overwhelming. I hadn’t realized we’d sent them so much.

  Whoever said crime scene evidence was easy to go through probably never had to do it. Yes, the lab had it tagged and labeled, and neatly typed notes were in folders—that alone took up almost three boxes.

  That part was easy.

  No. What I’m talking about is the emotional upheaval that takes place when going through it all. Memories of when an event took place, who was involved, and the ultimate outcome….

  All of that was taking a toll.

  By the fifth straight hour of slogging through bullet casings, DNA results, and the mutilated corpse of someone’s pet puppy, I was in the midst of a horrendous migraine.

  No, I didn’t actually handle that poor canine’s body, just seeing the photos and reading the cause of death (repeated blunt force trauma to the head), plus the fact it had been a pet (was still wearing a collar when Wyatt and Declan scraped it off my stoop), was enough to turn my stomach inside out.

  We don’t know for certain whose pet it was, there were no markings on the collar, and no implanted chip. Then again, no one had reported their pet missing, either. That wasn’t the point. It could have been a road-killed skunk, and it would still have been shudder-worthy.

  Some of what we got back was so old, we’d forgotten we sent it. There was no viable excuse for the amount of time it took them to get us the results, but I did have a different perspective.

  Fingerprint evidence pointed to a Darren Clifton Lewis. The name was familiar, only because he was on the list of locksmiths employed by John Sutton.

  Wyatt called the shop and talked to Mr. Sutton, requesting a picture, for one thing. Sutton actually brought a copy of Lewis’s employee badge to the office within twenty minutes of that phone call.

  No recognition. Not from me, but a queasy roll in my stomach did not bode well.

  AT HOME THAT afternoon, I started baking. While the first batch was in the oven, I picked up the journal I’d been reading.

  Second batch went in, first was on the cooling racks.

  “Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod! It’s him. I just know it. OH. MY. GOD!”

  Someone was shaking me, calling me. I could hear the voice over a beeping shriek of a sound.

  “Wake up, sweetheart. Come on, babe, open your eyes.”

  I blinked. What’s going on?

  “That’s it. That’s it. Open those gorgeous green eyes.”

  I was looking up at him. “Wyatt?”

  His face was pale and sweaty. “Thank Jesus.”

  Feeling breathless, and not sure why. “What’s that noise?”

  He blew out a deep breath. “Smoke alarm.”

  Hmm? “Why?”

  “You burned the cookies.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. Kitchen’s full of smoke.”

  Crap.

  This was bad.

  “I’m on the floor.”

  Really bad.

  “You are, yes.”

  “What happened?”

  “A helluva question, babe. I haven’t got a clue.”

  “Help me up.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah. You need to make that noise stop. My head is pounding.”

  He sat me in a chair, carefully. “That’s probably from when you smacked it on the floor when you fell.”

  “I—? Oh, well. That beeping isn’t helping it get better.”

  “Funny girl.”

  After turning off the oven, he grabbed a dish towel, opened the back door, the kitchen window, then the oven door.

  The tray he removed was buckled and smoking. The cookies were charred lumps.

  He carried the thing outside and came back to slap the towel at the smoke alarm on the ceiling in the corner.

  A few seconds later, blessed silence.

  But my head was still throbbed.

  Bringing me a bag of frozen peas from the f
reezer (for my head), he pulled another chair close, and grabbed my free hand. “What happened? You’re not pregnant, are you?”

  I laughed. And laughed and laughed.

  And the laughter turned to sobbing.

  Unstoppable, uncontrollable. (Felt like it.)

  “Aw, sweetheart. Come on. Let’s go in the living room.”

  My wonderful man. Calm, cool, and collected while I fall apart … hysterically. I was saturating his shirt.

  Through the blubbering, I tried to talk.

  Not my finest moment.

  “Hush now. Just let it all out. We’ll talk about it when you’re done.”

  He held me tight as my now unburdened mind flooded with old buried pain, shock, and the new realization of what it all meant.

  I fell asleep wrapped in his arms.

  When I woke, I felt sane, but muzzy-headed. I asked Wyatt to fetch me the notebook that was on the kitchen table.

  He handed it over. I clasped it against my chest, and after a deep breath, in and out, I began to explain. It was a slow process, and I was still emotional. “As you know, over the last few weeks, when I had a few minutes, I’ve been in the attic pulling down boxes, and going through them. In one were the journals I’d written during Bernie’s illness. The last time I wrote was about six months after he died. The next to the last passage says I agreed to meet someone for coffee. The next entry is a few days later. I was surprised at the difference in the penmanship.”

  I opened the journal, found the page, and handed it to him.

  He read it out loud.

  “‘I’m not sure I can even put this on paper without screaming. Cliff wanted more than coffee. The date (and I hesitate to even call it that) started off innocuous enough, but when I said I had to get home to my boys, he had a fit. Once we were in the car, I thought he was going to drive me home, but we took a detour. He stopped the car in a really remote part of Foggy Bottom road and started grabbing at me, at my clothes. He ripped my blouse, tore open my slacks, and was trying to kiss me. I slapped at him. He was so close I couldn’t get a good angle to hit him. Finally, he sat back and I stiff-arm punched him in the face. Blood was spurting, but I didn’t wait to find out what the damage was. I ran. Ran and ran and ran.

  “‘He had the audacity to show up at the house the next day. To apologize, he said. But I wouldn’t open the screen. Had it locked. Good thing, too, because he tried to get in. I told him if he didn’t leave me alone, I was going to have him arrested. He called me all kinds of names. Said I was a tease. That I lead him on. What a creep.’”

  Wyatt let out a long breath. “This is him, isn’t it?”

  I nodded. “I’m pretty sure it is. And it was much worse than I put on paper.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “What he did to me. It was more … worse. And I really don’t want to talk about it now.”

  “Did he actually—?”

  “No. He never got that far, but it was a close, terrifyingly close, thing. Which is probably why when I read what I wrote, it broke down all the walls, and I remembered … everything. I can tell you, at one point, I had bite marks that lasted almost a week.”

  Wyatt went white. “Bite marks?”

  He stood to pace the room.

  I wanted to make it stop. I wanted to stuff everything back inside my brain, but it was too late, and I couldn’t process it any faster. Couldn’t help him process it any faster than he was able, either.

  I shredded the tissue. “This is all my fault.”

  He threw the book across the room, and turned. “How do you figure that?”

  “If I’d reported him to the police when it happened—”

  He came to sit next to me, again. “You can’t think like that. This was his choice. All this is on him. He’s sick.”

  “Yes, but I could have stopped it.”

  “And how do you know that? Okay, so maybe you reported it, there was a trial, and he was found guilty, and went to jail. By now, he would be out, probably. Do you think, obsessed as he is, that you would be in any less danger than you are now?”

  I bit my lip.

  “Please don’t start crying again. I didn’t mean—”

  I laid my hand on his arm. “No. What you said makes a lot of sense. But, please God, I just want it to go away.”

  “I know that, sweetheart. No more than I do.”

  “And I still can’t fathom why he went after Tom.”

  “Who knows? Maybe the poor guy just got in the way. When we catch this moron, that will be one of the many questions I have for him to answer.”

  I snuggled in.

  “In your journal, you call him Cliff.”

  “Yes. I don’t remember his full name. Maybe I never knew it. We’ll have to check the yearbooks again.”

  I sounded normal, but there was nothing calm or peaceful about my insides. On the verge of a nervous breakdown, is more like it.

  Chapter 37

  … THURSDAY…

  * * *

  … September 17th…

  * * *

  WYATT UPDATED THE team with all the information I’d relayed to him last night. Glad he hadn’t asked me to retell the tale. I actually stayed at my desk, instead of being in the conference room with them.

  Made me feel like a wimp, but at least they wouldn’t see another meltdown.

  He gave out assignments, and they dispersed.

  I puzzled over the name in my journal, the name in the yearbook, and the one the evidence pointed to. Could they be the same person? There were similarities.

  The man in my journal was named Cliff. No last name. The evidence says the stalker, and Tom’s killer, was Darren Clifton Lewis. Dandy had said the kid in the yearbook was Darren. The name under his yearbook picture was D. Clifton.

  My gut was telling me they were all the same person.

  The crew returned at lunchtime with negative reports.

  No sightings.

  They’d driven past the house where Josh saw him, too. No luck there, either.

  They went by his most current address, via his employer, John Sutton. Apparently, the stalker lives in Jenson City. Wyatt called their P.C. and arranged for a stake-out at the man’s residence. So far he hadn’t showed.

  Gus and I went back to the courthouse and talked to Hyacinth. She gave us access to the Department of Vital Statistics records where we found that the owner of the house is/was our suspect’s mother, and that at her death, he’d inherited the house and grounds where Josh had seen him.

  Gus uncovered another property at the lake. We passed that information along to Wyatt. He sent a team out there to check on things, but the place didn’t look like anyone had been there for a long time. (Like maybe January?)

  Mr. Lewis … had disappeared. Obviously lying low. Maybe that failed kidnap attempt in the parking lot scared him off.

  Wishful thinking, I know.

  I was still freaked out by my revelation.

  I’d heard stories over the years about people whose minds blocked their memories of tragic events, until something traumatic allowed them to remember. Never was a hundred percent sure it was true.

  I am now.

  Incredible what my brain had been hiding from me.

  With the wedding looming only two days away, not knowing where this bozo was going to pop up was worrisome.

  Moving the pieces of the puzzle around, it’s beginning to look even creepier than first imagined. Apparently, he’s been stalking me since high school. Bernie and I were pretty solid, and then we married right after graduation. There were no attempts of any kind, even after Bernie died, and even after the idiot’s attempted rape.

  Maybe because of the boys?

  Nothing, He’d made no attempt to contact me again, not until Wyatt and I start seeing each other, and then guy went berserk.

  In my opinion, (and I may be biased) he didn’t feel threatened before. I was his possession, and he could have me any time he wanted.

  Hah.

 
; My being with someone else? That was totally unacceptable. Thus the … antics.

  Chapter 38

  … FRIDAY…

  * * *

  … September 18th…

  * * *

  DANDY CALLED.

  My mother called.

  Annetta called.

  Betsy Peters called.

  Everybody was calling to comment on the fact that Wyatt and I were working the day before our wedding.

  Is that really unusual? Annetta was especially irritated, for some reason, and actually stopped in. “I can’t believe you’re working today.”

  “Why? We’re investigating a murder. Tom deserves the best we’ve got.”

  “Maybe so, but you’ve also got a wedding to throw tomorrow.”

  A sigh. “I know, but I have no energy left, and I need the distraction. So whatever happens at the wedding, happens … or doesn’t happen. It’s as done as it’s going to get. All we have to do is show up on time.”

  “If you don’t, I will personally drag you out of your house by your earlobes.”

  A roll of the eyes. “The wedding is in my backyard. I don’t think that will be necessary.”

  “Really, Maggie. Couldn’t you just take some time off to do … I don’t know, girly things? Is Wyatt staying at his place tonight?”

  I nodded. “He and his groomsmen are staying there. They’re having a Binger.”

  “You’re sure it’s a Binger, and not something else?”

  “I can only tell you what he told me.”

  “Uh huh. Are you doing anything with your bridesmaids?”

  “Dandy and I have some things to do, and she’s going to keep me company. We’re having a movie marathon, and snacks.”

  “Sounds like fun.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Oh, come on, Maggie. Lighten up.”

  “Sorry. This is as light as it gets.”

  “Fiddlesticks. Listen, kid, I gotta go. We have some wedding food to prepare for tomorrow. Somebody’s getting married.”