Spiraled (Callahan & McLane Book 3) (12 page)

“Thanks, Cole. You’ve been a big help. We’ll pass on the coffee.” He handed the young man his card, and Cole accepted it without looking at it. The angry mature-looking man had vanished, leaving an uncertain college kid in his place.

Ava said something polite and headed for the door. The small apartment suddenly felt too warm.

They stepped out into the hall, and she abruptly missed the scent of the coffee. It’d taken over the room without her noticing. Now she smelled old carpet and a subtle odor of cat boxes.

“What did you think?” she asked Zander.

“I think that’s a very confused young man who was probably the best friend Justin ever had. He didn’t care what sort of changes Justin went through; he stuck by him every time. A lot of guys would have bailed.”

“Could Justin have hid something as big as plans of suicide and murder from Cole?” she asked as they jogged down the creaking wooden stairs.

“I don’t know,” said Zander. “Sounds like he was hiding a lot of things from several people. According to the briefing Ray Lusco sent me about their conversation with the psychiatrist last night, the doctor saw his relationship with Justin as very solid and said the professional visits continued because it was what Justin wanted. According to Cole, that’s not true.”

“And his parents?”

“I think they said Justin asked to continue the visits. I don’t know who to believe.”

“We need the toxicology reports from the autopsy,” said Ava. “I want to know who was telling the truth about Justin’s medication.”

Zander raised a brow at her.

“I mean
you
need to get those reports, since this is your case,” she corrected herself. They moved out of the building and into the morning sun. Ava raised her face to the rays and slipped on her sunglasses. “I’m on vacation.”

16

Mason held the Troutdale church door open for Ray.

“Feels different this time,” Ray commented as he passed by. “The shopping mall shooting was a mass of hysteria for a half an hour. This shooting in the park was over almost immediately and under control within minutes.”

Mason fell into step with Ray as they headed down the hall to where police were interviewing Troutdale witnesses. Ray was right. The incident had been over by the time the first responders arrived on the scene. The public had momentarily panicked but then taken back its park. Was it because this was the third occurrence? People had had time to think about how they would react? Or was it because the attack had happened in the open and people saw the threat was over minutes after it had started? Personally, he hadn’t felt the same stress about this shooting that he had about the Rivertown Mall shooting. Probably because he’d known Ava was home and in bed.

Are they related?

That damned Nike logo on the jacket and pants of the Troutdale shooter stabbed at his brain. He needed to check, but he was 99 percent certain investigators hadn’t released to the public what the Rivertown Mall shooter had been wearing. Someone close to the mall investigation would know, but had anyone leaked the information? It wasn’t top secret. They’d identified the mall shooter within twenty-four hours. There was no reason for anyone to be interested in what the Rivertown Mall shooter had been wearing
. . .
unless they wanted to imitate the shooting.

He’d made a call on the way to the church, trying to find out what the Eugene shooter had worn in June, and was waiting for a return call. He’d Googled every article he could on his cell phone, but the description hadn’t gone beyond “dark clothing.” It wasn’t good enough for Mason. It seemed every damned mass shooter in history had worn dark clothing or camouflage.

Did they have a rash of copycats or an organized group of young men bent on killing themselves as publicly as possible?

Inside the church, he and Ray checked in with Chief Deputy Bishop and his organizers. They were assigned a witness to interview. Shirley DeMarco. One of the deaths, Anna Luther, had been in her regular walking group. They met in a quiet room where the woman made constant use of a box of tissues. Shirley DeMarco was seventy-three and widowed, and had walked the lake park five days a week with the same group of women for years.

“Not all of us can make it every day,” Shirley stated. “But we all aim for five days. I haven’t missed a day all summer. Even in the rain we walk.” She dabbed at her nose.

“I’m very sorry for your loss,” Mason said. “How long had Anna Luther been in your group?”

Shirley nodded, her bloodshot eyes clouding for a second. “Anna joined us three years ago. We all live close to the park and she made almost every walk.” She blew her nose. “Sweet woman, quiet, but always had a nice smile and a positive word for everyone. One of those perpetually happy people, you know?”

Mason and Ray both nodded.

“She was the type you almost didn’t believe was real. The glass was always half full and she knew how to make everyone laugh. No fakiness going on at all.”

Ray slid a map of the park across the table. “Show me where you walked, where you were when Anna was shot, and what you saw the shooter do.”

Shirley took a deep breath. “We always do two laps around the lake. It’s almost four miles and takes us about an hour. We’d finished the first lap and were close to the play area here.” Her finger circled the lake once and stopped at the south end. “I heard three or four shots
. . .
all close together. We all stopped and looked around. My first thought was fireworks. They do a big display at the park for the Fourth, and it seems like some people continue to shoot off fireworks at least for a week after that, but they’re always at night.” Her finger slid an inch west. “He was here. He’d been behind us
. . .
I don’t know if he followed us from the far side of the lake
. . .
but I didn’t see him until after I heard the shots. I looked behind me, saw his mask, and he was aiming directly at our group.”

“What did you do?” asked Mason.

“I hit the ground,” she said simply. “I could either run or get down. I can walk just fine, but running was out of the question and there was nowhere to take cover within fifty feet. The slides were the closest, but my brain told me to get down.” She shuddered. “Everyone else ran. Including Anna. I heard more shots and saw her fall. He shot her in the back,” she said angrily, her eyes narrowing. “God damned young kid shooting a woman in the back. A woman with a family. I don’t know whether to cry or scream.”

“What happened next?” Ray asked. “Did you look at the shooter?”

“I did. I looked back as I belly-crawled to Anna. By the time I got there she wasn’t breathing.” Tears rolled down her soft cheeks, but Shirley kept her gaze on the men. “The shooter shot at another man, and I saw him fall, and then he vanished into the restroom. I think there was some shouting, and I know there were more shots.”

“Did anyone come out?”

“Yes, someone was yelling that the shooter shot himself. I remember wondering if I was safe now, but people were still screaming and running around. One woman from my group appeared right after that and helped me check Anna again, but there was nothing else we could do for her.” She wiped at her tears with a tissue. “I stayed with her until the police arrived. I didn’t leave until they placed her in one of those bags.”

“That was very kind of you,” Ray said.

“They say one’s spirit hangs around after death. I hope she knew I didn’t leave her alone. I told her husband I stayed with her. I can’t bear the thought of dying alone.” Her demeanor changed and a hardness settled over her features. “Except for that man
. . .
the shooter. I hope he was miserable and terrified when he stuck his gun in his mouth. I hope he knew the world wanted nothing more to do with his kind. Hell was waiting for him.”

Mason blinked, stunned speechless by the rapid change in the kind woman.

She nodded at him. “Close your mouth, Detective; you’re going to catch flies. I’ve lived a long time and believe we’re here to make other people’s lives happy. I have no sympathy for people who want to destroy.”

Mason shut his mouth and looked down at his notes. “You didn’t notice anyone on the far side of the lake when you were doing your first lap?”

“No. No one was over there that I saw. It’s usually very quiet on that side in the mornings. A bit creepy. I wouldn’t walk over there by myself that time of day.”

“But he was behind you when you heard the shooting. On the path that led from that side of the lake? Did you have the impression he’d come from that direction?” Ray asked.

Shirley thought for a moment. “By the time I looked back, yes, he was on the lake path, but he could have come from one of the side streets. I honestly don’t have an opinion about where he’d been. He was simply
there
when things went to hell.”

“Had you seen him before that morning? Did his physical presence remind you of someone you’d seen in the park before? I imagine you run into the same people a lot,” Mason asked.

She shook her head. “I saw a tall man when I looked back. We see a lot of men each morning, usually runners, some familiar, some not. Nothing in my brain said, ‘Hey, that reminds me of
 . . .
’ I’ve lived in the lake neighborhood for a long time, but I won’t claim to recognize everyone in the area.”

Mason tapped his pencil on the table. The shooter must have done some reconnaissance of the area. But did it matter? They had the shooter. Just not his identity. Yet.

“I think we’re done here.” Mason stood and held his hand out to Shirley. “You’ve been very helpful.”

She looked him in the eye as she took his hand. “Figure out who’s doing this,” she said firmly. “Please find who is driving our young men to kill others and then themselves.”

17

Zander skimmed Justin Yoder’s autopsy report and admired the ME’s thoroughness as Ava studied the computer screen over his shoulder. They had left Cole Hooper’s apartment and headed back to the community center where joint law enforcement agencies were still analyzing what had happened at the Rivertown Mall.

There had been no medications in Justin Yoder’s system.

“Did they look specifically for the medication he was taking?” Ava asked.

“Yes. They had to run some different tests, and I called Dr. Rutledge myself to ask about it. But according to this, Justin Yoder didn’t have a trace of anything in him. Not even Advil. Maybe Cole Hooper was right about Justin’s clean-living commitment.” He glanced over the ME’s notes about the physical condition of the body. The twenty-year-old had been in excellent shape with good muscle tone. Maybe he had been doing the urban obstacle courses.

“This is someone who took care of himself,” said Ava. “So why end it all?”

“And does it lend more credibility to Cole’s story that Justin didn’t want to go to therapy?”

“I would think that a twenty-year-old could convince his parents that he was finished with something. Especially if he’d been doing it for four years. I have a hard time believing he went just because his parents made him.”

Zander nodded. “We’re missing an element of the story.” He pressed his lips together. “I wonder how long he’d been off his medication. I’ll check with his psychiatrist and see if he’d made any changes to his prescription. Although I would guess he wouldn’t change anything unless Justin complained that he wasn’t feeling right. And if he wasn’t taking his meds, he must have been feeling okay.”

Ava snorted. “That’s the problem with going off that sort of medication. Trust me, my twin did it all the time. Jayne would feel great so she’d stop taking it, but she couldn’t see the personality changes that I could. I always knew when she’d switched something up.”

Zander sympathized. Jayne McLane was a piece of work. She and Ava stood on opposite ends of a spectrum. He’d witnessed Jayne blow up a house with her impulsive behavior and abandon Ava with a killer as she chased after her abusive boyfriend. Ava claimed Jayne was currently stable and capable of rational conversations; Zander would believe it when he saw it.

“She’s doing okay now, right?” he asked.

“For the moment.” Ava gave a wry grin. “It makes me suspicious. When things are crazy, I’m relaxed because that’s normal. During the calm times, I’m constantly waiting for something to explode. It’s nerve-racking.”

For identical twins, the women were night and day. How had they emerged from the same genetics? Last time he’d seen Jayne, her hair had been as brown as Ava’s and the resemblance had been startling. But in her dozen mug shots, she was blond. The main difference was in their eyes. Both had blue eyes, but Ava’s felt like calm seas. Jayne’s were more like a hurricane. Even in her photos, restless energy leaped out of her gaze.

“Is there any news on Justin’s vehicle?” Ava asked.

Zander scanned through his emails and opened one. “This says there was nothing unusual in the car. They’ve sent several things to trace, but who knows how long until we hear back on those. There was a gym bag in the backseat with dirty shorts, T-shirt, and running shoes. Only thing of interest was a receipt for ammo from the county shooting range. It was two months old.”

“Doesn’t he need to have his own weapon to be allowed to shoot there?” Ava asked.

“Yes, but remember Cole said he thought he went with a friend. I bet the friend owned the weapon.” Zander scratched a note to visit the shooting range and follow up with Justin’s workplace friends and his parents. One of them should know whom Justin had gone shooting with.

He read further down the report. “This is odd.”

“What?” Ava asked.

Zander kept reading and the hairs on his arms stood up. “Justin’s car was wiped down. Everywhere. They couldn’t find a single print of Justin’s in it. Someone was very thorough.”

Ava sucked in a breath. “Would he wipe down his own vehicle before going into the mall? That says he assumed the police would find it—”

“He didn’t hide the vehicle. Of course he expected it to be found. But why wipe it down?”

“Maybe he wasn’t the one who left it there?”

Zander was silent as his brain searched for an explanation. “Then who? And why?”

“Has his cell phone turned up?” Ava asked.

Zander rubbed at his forehead. “Not that I’ve seen. We got back his records from his wireless company. There were no calls or texts the morning of the shooting. The company lost contact with the phone during the night at some point. His mother tried to contact him several times the day of the shooting, wondering when he was coming home. The calls went nowhere.”

“I don’t get it.”

“You and me both. The wiped-down car really confuses me. Did Justin think he could get away after the shooting? Removing his fingerprints doesn’t hide who the car belongs to.”

“Logic dictates that it wasn’t his fingerprints he was hiding
. . .
or someone else was hiding. Someone doesn’t want us to know who else was in that vehicle, right?” Ava asked slowly. “You said a minute ago that we’re missing an element of the story. I think there’s a big glaring one missing here. It’s almost as if the things that are missing are what’s creating the path. Missing medication in Justin’s system
. . .
missing fingerprints
. . .
things that we expect to be there, aren’t.”

“You’re saying someone else is involved. Could it be the shooter who died this morning in Troutdale?” Zander glanced up at the silent television someone had tuned to the local news station. It’d canceled all regular programming and was running constant reports about the Troutdale shooting, interspersing them with details from the Rivertown and Eugene shootings. The reporters had already connected the similarities among the three shootings, commenting on the ages of the shooters, the weapons, and the suicides at the end.

“When’s the briefing on the Eugene shooting?” Ava asked, her gaze following Zander’s as a high-school picture of the shooter from Eugene flashed on the TV screen.

“In an hour. They moved it up. Lane County Sheriff’s Department is presenting. They handled the entire investigation two months ago.” Zander pulled up a news article from June about the Eugene shooting. “Joseph Albaugh. Age twenty-four. Grew up in Eugene. Did both high school and college in the area. Was an employee at Home Depot. Opened fire early morning in a park. Four adults killed. Two children injured.” The same high-school senior photo from the newscast accompanied the article. Joe Albaugh was fresh-faced, with blond hair and a heavy coat of freckles. His smile was infectious. “Shot himself in the restroom. The usual comments from friends and family that it shocked the hell out of them that he’d done it.”

“This is giving me the creeps,” muttered Ava. “It’s like they belong to the same herd of sheep.”

“Word out of Troutdale is that the shooter is a young male, too. No ID yet.”

“There has to be a connection between the three of them,” Ava stated. “There’re too many similarities.”

Zander took the devil’s advocate role. “It could simply be generational. They could have all been disgruntled young men. Once they saw the first one do it, they decided to follow suit. Something about shooting innocents and the media coverage feels glamorous to them.”

“There’s nothing fucking glamorous about it!”

“It might be similar to the mind-set of the young men who are willing to blow themselves up to kill their enemies. Or the Japanese pilots who were willing to make their planes into torpedoes. They think they have a higher purpose.”

“Then what is the goal?” Ava waved a hand, encompassing the hub of the investigation. “What are these young men trying to achieve? A hundred virgins in paradise? Notoriety? Revenge?”

Anger washed through Zander.
Don’t they realize that life is a gift? And the people around them will forever mourn their loss?

“That’s what we need to figure out.”

Will there be more?

Ava turned away from the photo on Zander’s computer screen, disturbed by Albaugh’s all-American looks. Blond hair, blue eyes, white teeth, sun-touched skin. He looked as if he’d grown up on a corn farm and should be starring in an ad for Ralph Lauren denim. What had driven him and Justin Yoder to murder and suicide? Two young men who seemed to have the world waiting in front of them? They should have been looking forward to picket fences and taking their kids to the river to fish someday. She knew she was jumping to conclusions based on his looks. Perhaps the briefing would present a history of mental illness. The few newspaper articles she’d read hadn’t alluded to it.

Would the Troutdale shooter turn out to be more of the same?

Glancing at her phone, she saw it was midway through the afternoon and that she’d missed a call from Jayne. She excused herself to Zander and headed out into the blazing heat to return the call. Spotting a bench under a tree a dozen yards from the back entrance of the community center, she sat in the shade. The front parking lot of the community center was still packed with media, anxiously waiting for news of what had driven young men to murder. Out back it was calm and peaceful. She eyed the face of her phone. If she called Jayne, would the peace continue?

“Dammit.”

How does making a simple phone call cause so much distress?

She hit the missed call and waited, one-handedly cracking her knuckles as she anticipated Jayne’s voice.

Is it a good day or bad?

“Ava? Where are you?” Jayne howled as she answered.

Bad day.

“I’m at work,” she answered calmly. “What’s wrong?”

“You’re not here! I came to visit because I knew you were on vacation and our calls have been so good and I wanted to see you in person, but
you’re gone
!” The words flew out of Jayne’s mouth as if they couldn’t keep up with the speed of her brain. She noisily sucked in a deep breath.

Ava’s mind shifted into calm-her-twin mode. “Slow down. I’m unofficially following up on a case today.” She repeated Jayne’s outburst in her head. “What do you mean you came to visit?”

“I’m at your house but
you’re not here
. The woman says you mooooved!”

Her heart slowed. “Are you at my condo?”

“No! The house. The one where you lived with that guy! How could you not tell
me
?”

You mean the house you broke into last spring?
Thank goodness the new owners had been home. Would Jayne have broken in again? “His name is Mason. What made you go there?”

“Because every time we’ve talked on the phone, you’ve mentioned you’re at
the house
. I assumed you got rid of your condo and lived with him now.” She paused. “Are you at the condo? Did you break up?”

“Jayne, I haven’t seen you in person in almost five months. I did sell the condo, but things—”

“I came all this way to see you, and you didn’t tell me you’d moved! What are you hiding from me?”

“I’m not hiding—”

“I can’t believe you did this to me! Are you ashamed of me? Because I used drugs? I’m clean now.” She burst into fresh tears. “I just wanted to see you. I needed to talk to you and you’re not here!”

“Now, Jayne, I
never
know where you’re living. You flit from one place to the next.”

“But you’re different! You’re a rock,
my rock
.
As long as I know where you are, I know there’s someplace I can
go
!”

“Do you need to go somewhere? Is something wrong at your house or with your job?”

“No! I just wanted to see you!” Rapid breaths came through the line.

She’s out of control.
Nothing could calm Jayne down when she got worked up.

“You moved and weren’t going to tell me. Were you going to change your phone number next? Is that what you’d do to me? I know where you work, Ava. I could find you if I needed to. I’m not stupid,” she snapped.

And her mood wildly swings to anger.

“Jayne, what was so important that you needed to talk to me in person?”

“Are you saying I’m not important? Your own twin? I’m all the family you have left, Ava. Don’t make me feel guilty because I wanted to see my sister.” Her words stabbed deep.

“I’m not—”

“Were you planning on never seeing me again?” she breathed. “Do you hate me that much?”

“Jayne, you haven’t let—”

“You do hate me. You’ve always hated me and believed you were better than me.”

Ava froze. It wasn’t her sister speaking. It was as if something had taken over her body.
Did she stop taking her medication? Did she find some drugs? Or is this just an episode?

“You wish I was dead, don’t you?” Jayne whispered. “Wouldn’t your life be easier if I was simply gone?”

Yes.

“Jayne, I don’t think like that. You’re my—”

“Just think, Ava,” she said in a hushed voice. “No more crazy Jayne. No one to wreck your cars, steal your men, or break into your house.”