Cold Fear (16 page)

“The girls lied to you because they wanted to go to a party. Teens do that. No one could have foreseen the consequences.” Although he could have. Years of seeing murder victims meant if he ever had kids he’d probably keep them under surveillance 24/7. God knew how Alex Parker or Mallory Rooney were going to cope, but he suspected some sort of electronic tracking device might be involved.

“You didn’t leave the house at all on the night of Helena’s murder?” Frazer kept his eyes on the man.

“No. I wish I had. If I’d been at the dunes I might have been able to stop this.” Duncan Cromwell stood and started pacing again. “Where was Kit Campbell when Helena was attacked? They’re supposed to be best friends. They were supposed to be together. Where was the little bitch?”

Whoa.

“It wasn’t Kit’s fault either, Mr. Cromwell.” His words didn’t seem to penetrate. Grief was an ugly creature.

The cat resumed her begging, and Cromwell strode to the cupboard and pulled out a box of kibble, which he poured into the empty dish. The cat started crunching on the food. He looked up. “This is Helena’s cat. She usually feeds him.”

They locked eyes and the realization Helena was never coming back to feed her cat hit home with renewed force. It would hit home every day for years to come, usually a few seconds after they opened their eyes.

“When can we bury her?” Lannie asked.

Frazer saw the strength in her gaze. Hoped it was enough to get the family through this.

“It depends on whether a second autopsy is deemed necessary.”

The mother looked appalled by the idea. Bad enough to suffer that indignity once, but twice? Or maybe everything paled to insignificance when your baby was murdered. Maybe nothing could ever be worse than that.

“I promise to keep you updated and do my best to get your daughter’s body released as soon as possible.”

“Thank you.” She inclined her head stiffly. She looked both stronger and more fragile than Duncan.

“You own two vehicles?”

“One.” Duncan shook his head. “I use a work truck and we have a minivan.”

“Any bikes or motorbikes?”

“No. Well,” his eyebrows pinched, “that’s not true. We have pushbikes in the garage. The kids use theirs.” He jerked his chin toward the connecting door. “But me and Lannie haven’t biked anywhere since the summer.”

“And Helena?”

Duncan’s expression soured. “She rode everywhere in Kit Campbell’s VW. Hasn’t touched her bike in months.”

Frazer’s phone buzzed in his pocket, but he ignored it. He was pretty sure Duncan Cromwell had told him everything his brain could handle at this point. He wasn’t off the hook, but Frazer would wait to see the evidence before he made his next move. This was no ordinary rape-murder, not if Ferris Denker was involved. “The local police might have more questions for you.” He hadn’t mentioned that officially it wasn’t his case, but as he was a senior FBI agent it was unlikely anyone was going to call him on the details.

He went to leave, then hesitated on the threshold of the front door. “I know it’s painful, but you should talk to your other children about Helena’s murder.”

“They’re too young to understand.” Cromwell shook his head.

He looked the man in the eye. “I’m not saying give them details, but tell them enough that they understand what’s going on—because if you don’t, the other kids in school will. And they won’t be kind about it. They’ll be brutal.” He slipped a card into Duncan Cromwell’s hand. “This is the name of a psychologist I recommend for grief counseling. Do it for your kids’ sake. Do it for yourself. But do it.”

He walked outside and checked the message on his phone.

The crime scene techs at the beach had uncovered human remains. Parson’s Point was officially a dump ground.

Chapter Ten

A
FTER DROPPING THE
groceries at home and taking the Christmas decorations down, Izzy decided it was time to confront Kit. She pulled up outside a small cottage on the north side of Rosetown, right next to St. Olaf’s Church. Her mother’s old VW Beetle was parked at the curb. It was Kit’s car now.

Pastor Rice’s house was the other side of the road, facing the church. A small graveyard lay behind the quaint red brick building with its white wooden spire. Her mother was buried there.

Izzy put her hand on the door handle and elbowed it open. Barney watched her attentively from the cargo hold, ears pricked. “Ten minutes.” She told him. Because he understood every word and, apparently, knew how to tell time. She left all the windows cracked for him. It was a cool day and she wouldn’t be long.

She checked the road before she crossed, but traffic was light. It was January 2. A Friday. Some people had returned to work but many more had taken it as a vacation day and made it an extra-long weekend.

The cottage she was headed for belonged to the church, who rented it out at a reasonable rate to families in need. It had been freshly painted bright white, the shutters a sky blue, and the shingles had been replaced since she’d been here last—the day her mother’s headstone had been installed. She knocked on the front door. No sound from within.

She waited, but no one answered. Kit’s car was here so Izzy wasn’t about to walk away without exerting a little effort. She headed around to the back door and knocked again. The lawn was slightly long but not out of control. Her glance went to the open garage at the end of the drive. A beat-up Chevy van took up most of the space, but a black dirt bike was tucked down one side. A tingle of awareness shot up Izzy’s spine. Still no answer from the cottage.

Was Kit avoiding her? That was entirely possible. But so was the chance her sister was in danger. Izzy pulled out her cell and dialed her sister’s number again. A snatch of a ring tone floated over the tall fence from the direction of the cemetery. And along with it another sound—voices. Then the voices grew louder. People were arguing and one of those people sounded a lot like Kit.

Izzy reached into her jacket and grasped her Glock and ran back the way she’d come, jogging to the main gate, trying to force herself to relax. Memories of Helena’s dead eyes refused to leave her alone and amped up her fear to full-out panic. She increased the pace but then slowed, hugging the wall of the church as she peered around the corner. Some tall lanky guy held onto Kit’s arm with one hand, a cigarette dangling from the other. He leaned down and yelled into her face. “It wasn’t my fucking idea, and the cops are going to crucify me if they find out.”

Whoa
.

The young man had straight, ink black hair and pinched narrow features. She didn’t recognize him. She held the gun in a two-handed grip, pointing it at the ground but making sure it was visible as she stepped around the corner and approached the teens who stood at the end of a cracked concrete path.

“Get away from her,” Izzy gritted out.

Kit’s jaw dropped and her expression turned incredulous. “Oh, my God. Go away, Izzy. This has nothing to do with you!”

Izzy kept her expression neutral at her sister’s less than happy greeting. Nice.

“I said, get your hands off my sister,” Izzy repeated to the creep. The cop comment had her senses on high alert. What had he done that would make them crucify him?

He snorted and said to Kit. “
That’s
your sister? You’re right, she’s a total bitch.”

Izzy flinched and her mouth went dry. The young man didn’t seem to recognize her, which meant if he was the bad guy, he didn’t know anything about her past misdemeanors.

Kit jerked her arm out of the boy’s grip. “Shut up, Damien.” She turned back to Izzy. “What are you even doing here? Why do you have your frickin’
gun
out?”

“I saw him attacking you.”

Damien shook his head and rolled his eyes. Kit looked like she was going to stamp her feet like a two-year-old.

“Dammit, Izzy, we were arguing. If you shoot everyone I shout at, you’d better start with yourself.”

Ouch
. She ignored the hurt that statement wrought and slid the weapon back into the holster, but she didn’t snap it closed.

“So, what were you two arguing about?”

“None of your business,” Kit muttered.

Izzy narrowed her gaze at both of them. “Fine. Why don’t we add this to the list of potential topics? If you ever do drugs on my property again, you,” she pointed to the guy she assumed to be Damien Ridgeway, “will be receiving a visit from the police.”

He sneered. “But not your precious sister?”

“For God’s sake, grow up. She’ll be talking to the cops, all right, but she isn’t the one supplying.” She held Kit’s gaze with narrow eyes. “She’ll also be grounded until school finishes.”

Kit crossed her arms over her chest. She was wearing a couple of long sleeved t-shirts and jeans so tight Izzy could see the joints in her knees. “You can’t ground me, Izzy. You are not my mother.”

“Thank God.” Izzy smiled her professional smile. “But I’m your legal guardian and I can limit your funds enough you can’t even afford to buy gas, let alone cannabis.”

“Sal will give me more shifts at the diner.” Kit gave her a sly smile. “And, anyway, I don’t need to
buy
it. I can get anything I want if I ask nicely enough.”

Damien smirked at the ground.

The insinuation in the word “ask” was blatantly sexual.

“Jesus, Kit, you’re seventeen. Don’t mess up your life when you’re just starting out.”

Kit shook her head. “Why am I the only high school student getting reamed out for being normal? Everyone does it. Why do you have to be such a hard ass?”

“Helena didn’t do drugs,” Izzy argued.

Kit’s blue eyes glittered. “Helena’s dead, Iz. Thanks for reminding me.”

“Is this how you honor her memory? By going off the rails?”

Kit’s eyes filled, and the tears brimmed over. “What does it matter? She’ll never know!”

Izzy knew she was handling this wrong. If someone broke their leg, she was more than capable of repairing that injury. But when it came to messy emotions like love and guilt she could barely cope with her own issues, let alone a hormonal female who’d lost her mother and her best friend within the space of a year. Part of her wanted to wrap Kit in her arms and baby her, the other part wanted to shake some sense into her.

Kit was better than this, although she was doing a damn good job acting like a loser. The government should bring back compulsory National Service and give these youngsters some understanding of hard work, sacrifice, and service. The fact Izzy thought of the teens as youngsters made her feel as ancient as sand.

Damien shifted his feet, drawing her attention back to him.

“Where were you last night, Damien?” Izzy quizzed him.

He remained silent. Was he the one who’d broken into the tool shed? Was he the one who’d stolen her shovel? He was too young to have watched her on the beach all those years ago, but could he have killed Helena? Izzy couldn’t read him. “Where’s your mother?”

“None of your business.”

“I see you have a dirt bike.”

His brows jammed together. “So what?”

She turned to Kit because Damien wasn’t going to tell her a damned thing, the little weasel. “The night of the party, when you came back to the cottage—did you see anyone outside, near our house?”

Kit’s expression changed, and then she shook her head. “I didn’t see anything, Izzy. I was so wasted I wouldn’t have noticed a thing unless it bit me on the ass.”

Damien smiled in a way Izzy did not like. She narrowed her gaze at him and the expression vanished. “What about you? Did you see anything?”

“I was too busy looking at Kit’s ass to be looking out the window.”

She lunged forward and grabbed the guy, shoving him against the brick wall. His eyes went wide and his skin lost color. “You want me to tell the cops about you supplying a seventeen-year-old with weed?”

Kit started screeching to let him go and Izzy shoved him away from her.

He kept his mouth shut but the anger in his gaze burned. After a tense moment, he took another long drag of his cigarette, dropped the stub, screwing it into the ground with his heel. “I don’t think you know your precious sister as well as you think you do, bitch.”

She gritted her teeth at the “bitch” insult. Wasn’t the first time she’d been called it. Probably wouldn’t be the last. As for not knowing Kit very well, tell her something she didn’t already know.

“I’ll talk to you later, Kit.” He turned away, walking down the fence to a gate Izzy hadn’t spotted earlier.

Kit gave Izzy an exasperated look and stalked off down the path. “I can’t believe you just did that.”

“He was hurting you when I arrived.”

Kit rubbed her arm. “He was holding onto my arm. Jeez. I’d have decked him if he’d tried anything.”

And then he could have knocked the crap out of her, the same way some asshole had done to Jesse and Helena. “Damien could be the killer.”

“He’s a friend of mine.” Kit defended him.

“Didn’t look like much of a friend to me.”

“That’s because you don’t have any friends, Izzy. You’re too fucking high and mighty for the people around here.”

Izzy flinched, but she didn’t have time for a pity party, not with a killer on the loose. “Last night someone broke into our toolshed, and smacked me on the head when I went to investigate.”

Kit’s expression turned to one of total horror. “What time?”

“About two.”

“Why didn’t you wake me?”

“When my gunshot didn’t wake you, I figured you must be exhausted and needed the rest.”

“You fucking shot someone?” Her sister’s mouth hung open.

Izzy shook her head. “Just into the ground to attract the attention of the FBI next door.”

“But you didn’t wake me?”

“You had your headphones on…”

“And you wonder why I don’t talk to you?” For once Kit looked disappointed in her, rather than the other way around.

A wave of shame rolled over Izzy. Kit was right, she should have woken her, but it was too late to change that now. She was used to doing things on her own. Izzy pushed on because what she had to say was more important than sisterly issues. “The thing is, when ASAC Frazer and I took a look at the shed I realized our shovel was missing, and…” She had to swallow repeatedly to get the words out. “He, ASAC Frazer that is, showed me a picture of the shovel that was used to beat Jesse the other night, and…it was ours.” She moved closer so her words didn’t carry on the wind. “Whoever broke into the shed last night rode a dirt bike. Is it possible Damien left you at some point in the evening on New Year’s—when you were asleep?”