The Sholes Key (An Evans & Blackwell Mystery #1) (32 page)

“That’s impossible,” Sophia said. He had to be there. He had to. This had to end tonight; she couldn’t keep playing his game.

Theo walked up beside her and put his hand on her shoulder. “You’re shaking.”

She coughed and her bottom lip began to quiver. “I’m so tired, Theo, I can’t do this anymore.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll keep looking. He has to be somewhere in England.”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry I failed you. I can’t seem to get anything right.” She headed towards the Range Rover but instead kept walking. Suffocation overtook her.

Theo ran up behind her. “Sophia, where are you going?”

“I need air, Theo, I need to clear my head.” She turned to him. “He’s going to get away if we don’t act now. His latest victim may still be alive and we don’t know anything. Hey, what’s that?”

“What?”

Sophia pointed farther ahead and ran. “Look, look, another path.” She followed a set of tire tracks that led into the trees, barely visible with the headlights. “Theo, do you have a torch?”

He turned on the light and ran along beside her. The road didn’t go far, but someone had found a path through the trees large enough for a vehicle. Following the hidden road, Sophia and Theo met up with the main road, just past the fallen obstacle.

“This must be the way he went. And the tracks are fresh,” Sophia said excitedly. Her stomach did somersaults. They would catch the killer. “We must follow this path.”

“How much farther, you reckon?” Dorland asked.

“Four or five miles more to the cabins,” replied one of the officers.

The teams got into their vehicles and took up their chase again, passed the tree and under a wooden sign that read Leary’s Fishing Resort to within a mile of the cabins.

“We shouldn’t go on by car,” Theo suggested. “It will attract too much attention, especially out here in the woods. I want the volume on all radios and phones lowered and noise kept to a minimum.” Theo sent an armed response team ahead. “Once we confirm he’s here and exact location, we move. I don’t want him escaping into the forest in the dark.”

Hours seemed to pass before they finally heard over the radios, “We see a vehicle. A light is on in one of the cabins; we are moving closer for a look.” More moments passed in silence. “We hear noise within but all windows are covered. If we go in, we have to go in blind.”

“Wait until we arrive. Make sure no one leaves the cabin,” Theo whispered.

They ran forward until the first cabin came into view. They crept forward. A chill went through Sophia’s spine. They were so close. So close.

Men with guns drawn slowly made their way up to the cabin door. No more than one room, the occupant had managed to keep it in good repair. It was still painted the original dark camouflaged green. Theo approached the black Toyota and touched the hood of the car. He mouthed the word cold. The killer had been there all night. What had he done to his victim in those hours? Peering in the windows, Sophia saw the car was spotless, other than a large red stain behind the front passenger seat. The victim must have lain there bleeding on the floor during the drive to the cabin.

The officers stood ready to bash the door in. Theo held up his hand to stop them. He took a quick look around the woods. Finally, he lowered his arm and all hell broke loose.

The flimsy wooden door came crashing down. The force of the blow caused the killer, who knelt on the floor behind it, to be pushed against the far wall. Completely unaware and dazed, he slowly got onto one knee before the officers pushed him down flat to the floor. Sophia waited outside until the killer was secure. When she finally entered, she saw Kenneth Houghton lying across the middle of the cabin, face down beside the naked body of his latest victim.

The victim’s eyes were open but didn’t blink. She was dead. The large, blood-matted crater on the side of her skull assured Sophia of that fact. Bending down beside her, one touch of the cold lifeless body almost made Sophia sick. Parts of her smooth back were slowly being carved out by the various pieces of pastry cutter shapes lying on the floor. Some of the shapes were bent from the boots of the officers that had stormed in.

Among the pastry cutters lay a large piece of paper with the same code scrawled across it in neat orderly handwriting. Picking the paper up, Sophia finally had the courage to turn and face the man who for so long had fooled them. Officers roughly lifted the killer off the floor, hands bound behind him.

When he caught sight of her, he stopped complaining about harassment and smiled at her. He wore a clean polo shirt and a neat pair of slacks; padding on his knees prevented the dust and grime on the floor from marking up his trousers. A faded blue baseball cap covered his trim brown hair. A pair of work gloves protected his hands, to prevent fingerprints and the chance of being cut by the pastry cutters.

They faced each other in silence.

But while Mr. Kenneth Houghton was being dragged out of the cabin, he yelled back: “I did this all for you. I knew it was what you wanted—I saw your face—this was what you wanted. You were so disgusted, so disgusted. I saw it. Something had to be done; I couldn’t let it continue, you understand—you understand why I did this? I knew what was happening, you did too.” As he passed her, he leaned in close to smell her shirt. “I couldn’t let it go on, I had to act before it was too late.”

Standing back to let the officers pass, she followed them out to the patrol car. She had no idea what he was ranting on about, but she had to know. She had to know why. Watching them push him into the back of the car, she approached. She leaned in and said, “We saw what they were doing to them, didn’t we? We wanted the cycle to end, didn’t we?” Although inside Sophie felt like she was being eaten alive, he seemed to believe that she was on his side.

“We’re heroes aren’t we?” Kenneth Houghton said.

“And the writer?” Sophia asked him.

“One less whore dragging the mums from their kids. I got rid of that bitch before she could do any more harm. I wouldn’t allow it. As soon as I knew she was coming to corrupt those women, I got rid of her.”

Unable to stomach any more time with the killer, she left him and went back inside. Noticing for the first time the row of two freezers against the sidewall, she joined the officers peering inside.

It had to be Lorna and Carrie-Ann. The two bodies were completely covered in a blanket of white ice, huddled in the fetal position. Left there naked, like frozen pieces of meat.

Looking out of the small dust-glazed windows at the officers digging and roping off the secluded area, Sophia felt a cold hand grab her. She quickly pulled away, subconsciously thinking it came out of the freezer. She turned to Theo. “Sorry, this is all a bit overwhelming.”

“Not much closure, is it?”

“Is it ever?” she asked him.

The sun was rising higher in the trees and she felt the warmth of it against her face. The hunt was over; they had their man.

* * *

Theo slipped the key into the lock and opened his front door. The house was quiet—not even his mother emerged from the kitchen to greet him. He stopped at the closed sitting room door and rested his hand over the door handle. It had only been a week since he had met Sophia here.

The room was dark except for a dimly lit table lamp. He entered and sat down on the sofa—alone and exhausted. He had spent the day trying to get Kenneth Houghton to talk, to explain his actions. At one point he even begged Sophia to talk to him. If anyone could convince Kenneth Houghton to talk, it would be her.

But Sophia had refused.

Theo understood why. No matter what the man said, it wouldn’t change what he had done.

“I want this to be over, Theo,” she had said.

So Theo had brought Sophia coffee as she answered the officer’s questions; and another when she wrote up her report. He took the third cup from her shaking fingers as she broke down in tears.

“My life’s never going to be the same again, is it?” she had remarked.

No, he knew that. It only took a split second for one’s life to change dramatically.

“That doesn’t have to be a bad thing,” he had replied.

She had nodded and held out her hand. “It was nice working with you.”

He shook her hand, knowing he would probably never see her again.

“Why are you sitting in the dark?” asked a voice in Greek.

Theo saw his wife standing in the doorway. She wore a light pink silk gown that he had bought her for their first anniversary.

“We closed a big case today,” he replied in Greek.

Agneta smiled. “It makes you happy, doesn’t it?”

“What?”

“Your work.”

He shrugged. “It takes my mind off other things.”

“Like us?” She came and sat by him on the sofa. “I’ve been trying so hard to discover who I am that I forget how hard these months must be on you.”

He took her hand.

She said, “I talked to my parents in Greece, and they said I could come home.”

“Do you remember them?”

Agneta shook her head. “I can’t keep torturing you like this anymore. It’s not fair. Perhaps someday if my memory returns, I can come back to London.”

It sounded like the perfect solution: she would leave and he would forget her. That’s what he wanted, wasn’t it? To move on with life, without Agneta?

He turned to her; and, after taking a deep breath, he said, “Someone at work referred me to a doctor, a person who specializes in memory loss of all sorts. Before you make any decision to move back, we should at least try.”

Epilogue

A week later, Sophia drove to the library where Kenneth used to work. She paced the walk outside, back and forth, wanting to postpone the visit. But she couldn’t; she had a job to do. Yuri was counting on her.

It was just before lunch and a small class of students sat at chairs and tables working on their laptops. Little children ran around the children’s area, pulling books from the shelves, exasperating their mothers and the librarians. This was the library as Sophia remembered it. Nothing was different, and no one knew that at one time a killer stood behind the counter picking his next victim. All now went about their business with optimism. This was what Sophia wanted to see. She dropped off her old books and grabbed another one off the shelf.

Standing in line, she held her book and her library card. Normality was good. Tapping the card against her book, she waited behind various mothers and their young ones, eager to get home to read their pictured stories. What was wrong with the mums wanting to read a novel or two? Everyone needs escape. They can be like children and live in an imaginative world for a while, couldn’t they?

Looking down at her card, she thought, “This provides us all with a little means of escape.”

That was when she noticed the numbers. All this time, the numbers she had memorized, while desperately searching for their meaning, she now held in her hands. 29065014495311.
Her library card.
The killer had framed his code with her library card, and she had never guessed to look there.

If only she had.

About the Author

Clarissa Draper was born and raised in Canada. She now lives in Mexico where she spends most of her time composing, planning, and writing code-based mysteries. Although she has written from an early age, she started writing full time in 2006 and is currently writing her third mystery in the Evans/Blackwell series.

Visit with Clarissa at her blog,
Clarissa Draper
.

About the Publisher

WiDo Publishing
is dedicated to publishing books that appeal to a wide audience. A well-written book with a compelling story and identifiable characters transcends the boundaries of religion, culture, politics, age and gender. Each title will be marketed to its primary audience, with the expectation that the overall excellence of the book will carry it beyond its initial demographic to a broader audience.

Website:
www.widopublishing.com

E-mail:
[email protected]

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