Читать книгу Laying Down The Law - Delores Fossen - Страница 9

Chapter One

Blood.

Special Agent Cord Granger’s stomach tightened into a knot.

Since he’d worked for the Drug Enforcement Administration for the past nine years now, he’d seen plenty of blood before at various crime scenes. And a lot more of it than the drops that were here on the floor of the barn.

But this wasn’t any ordinary crime scene.

There shouldn’t be blood here because there shouldn’t be a victim.

Cord cursed under his breath and caught the eye of Sheriff Jericho Crockett, no doubt one of the first responders to the small ranch in Appaloosa Pass. This was the sheriff’s jurisdiction. Jericho normally doled out glares and hard looks to Cord, but tonight he just lifted an eyebrow.

Cord lifted one of his own and felt that knot tighten even more.

“Miss Southerland insisted on seeing you,” Jericho told Cord. “Said she wouldn’t get in the ambulance until you got here.”

Yeah, Jericho had relayed something similar about Karina Southerland when he’d phoned Cord about twenty minutes earlier. Jericho had asked him to come to the rental house on a local ranch and had rattled off the address. As an agent, Cord got plenty of bad calls in the middle of the night, some even from local sheriffs, but this one wasn’t DEA-related.

This one was, well, personal.

“Karina said it was the Moonlight Strangler who attacked her?” Cord asked the sheriff.

Jericho nodded. “The guy had on a ski mask, came at her from behind. It fits the MO, too.” He glanced up at the night sky, where there was a full moon.

The glancing hadn’t been necessary, though. A full moon was always a reminder of murder. That could happen when a person had a personal connection to a vicious serial killer known as the Moonlight Strangler.

And when the killer was Cord’s biological father.

It didn’t matter that Cord didn’t personally know the man. Though they had met. In a way. When Cord had been on the receiving end of the Moonlight Strangler’s knife only a month ago. But because the Moonlight Strangler had pumped him full of drugs, Cord didn’t have many memories of the incident at all.

Only the scars.

And while Cord would never—never—think of that snake as his father, they would always share the same blood.

“How bad is Karina hurt?” Cord added.

Jericho hitched his thumb to the rear of the barn. “See for yourself. It’s not nearly as bad as it could have been.”

True. She could be dead. “Did she say how she got away from...her attacker?”

“Oh, she’s got plenty to say. Thought you’d want to hear it for yourself so you can try to make sense of it.” Jericho paused. “Is there any sense to be made from this?”

Cord hoped there was. But he wasn’t seeing it so far.

“The sooner you talk to her,” Jericho continued, “the sooner she’ll be in that ambulance so I can get the CSIs in here to examine the place.”

Cord wanted that, as well. Because the CSIs had to find something, anything.

Making sure he didn’t step on the blood or any other item that could possibly be evidence, Cord made his way toward the two paramedics who weren’t looking any happier about this situation than Jericho or him. The ambulance was parked at the front of the barn, the red lights still on and slashing through the night. That alone spiked his adrenaline and so did the fear of what he might see when he spotted the woman on the floor by some stacked hay bales.

Karina Southerland.

Over the past month he’d met with her at least a dozen times. In those confrontations—and they were confrontations, all right—she’d been intense but composed.

There wasn’t much left of that composure now.

Her dark brown hair was a tangled mess, strands of it sticking to the perspiration on her face. No jeans and working cowboy boots as she’d worn during their previous meetings. Tonight, she had on just an oversize plain white T-shirt that she was obviously using as a nightgown. It was cut low enough at the neck that he could see the bruises there. She had bruises on her knees, too, and scrapes and nicks on her hands that looked like defensive wounds.

And there was the blood, of course.

A smear of it was still on her left cheek, which one of the paramedics was tending. Another cut on her left arm. She had yet another small one near her shoulder.

Along with the two paramedics, there was a third guy with graying brown hair. Lanky to the point of being scrawny, he was pacing just outside the rear entrance of the barn. The guy was chewing on his left thumbnail, had a cell phone gripped in his right hand and was tossing some very concerned glances at Karina. He was in his fifties, and it looked as if he’d dressed in a hurry. No boots, just his socks. But there was a gun tucked at an angle in the waist of his baggy jeans.

“Who are you?” Cord asked the guy right off.

He stopped chewing on his thumbnail long enough to answer. “Rocky Finney. I’m a ranch hand here. You need to help Karina.”

“He works for me,” Karina volunteered. “And he saved my life.”

Cord stared at Rocky to let him know he wanted a lot more details than the ranch hand had just doled out to him.

“I was sleeping in the bunkhouse.” Rocky glanced at the small barn-shaped building about twenty yards from the main house. Such that it was. The main house was small, too. “I heard Karina scream, and when I came out, this man wearing a mask was choking her. I shot at him. I think I hit him in the shoulder. And he ran off.”

Maybe some of the blood belonged to the attacker. If Rocky was telling the truth, that is.

“Where did the man run?” Cord continued.

Rocky pointed in the direction of a heavily wooded area. Which was also the direction of the road since it was just on the other side of all those trees.

“There’s no blood trail immediately around the barn,” Jericho quickly informed Cord. “But the CSIs will look. I don’t want anyone in that area until they’ve searched it.”

Neither did Cord. Because blood could give them the DNA of the person responsible for this.

“She needs stitches,” the paramedic said when he snared Cord’s gaze.

The bulky, bald paramedic looked at Cord as if he could magically make Karina get in that ambulance and head to the hospital. But Cord had less influence on her than anyone else in this barn.

“I told you Willie Lee was innocent,” Karina said, her mouth tight, “that he wasn’t the Moonlight Strangler.” Her voice was raspy but clear enough for Cord to hear the accusation in there.

The Moonlight Strangler had been a source of contention between Karina and him after Willie Lee Samuels was identified as the serial killer. And then captured. That had happened a month ago, after he’d attacked Cord.

Of course, Willie Lee didn’t know about the multiple murder charges against him yet because he’d sustained a gunshot wound and been in a coma ever since being taken into custody.

And Cord had been the one to shoot him.

Willie Lee hadn’t been able to confess. Hadn’t been able to confirm anything related to the dozens of murders he’d committed as the Moonlight Strangler. Or any of the other crimes for that matter. Still, Cord had been sure Willie Lee was the right man.

Until tonight.

If the Moonlight Strangler was in a coma, then who the heck had attacked Karina?

“He’s your father,” Karina added. “Don’t you feel in your bones that he’s innocent?”

“No. I don’t feel anything about him one way or another.”

It was a lie. Cord felt plenty. Plenty that he didn’t intend to share with her or anyone else for that matter.

Cord knelt down to make better eye contact with Karina. “Why don’t you go ahead and get in the ambulance? We can talk this out on the way to the hospital.”

She didn’t budge, probably because she didn’t trust him. She’d wanted him here only so she could say that she had told him so, that the cops had the wrong man in custody. But he glanced around at the signs of the struggle to remind her what’d gone on here. The toppled bales of hay and feed. The scattered tools and tack.

And the blood.

“You don’t want to stay here,” Cord reminded her.

He motioned for the paramedics to come closer and do their job, and Cord breathed a little easier when Karina didn’t resist. Once she was on the stretcher, they started toward the ambulance. Cord followed right along beside them.

Rocky didn’t attempt to go with them, probably because Jericho ordered him to stay put. No doubt so he could question the ranch hand and begin this investigation. Well, unless...

Cord stopped that thought. He didn’t want to go there yet.

Because the real Moonlight Strangler hadn’t done this.

“Make sure the horses are okay,” Karina called out to Rocky.

Rocky assured her that he would.

“I’ll meet you at the hospital as soon as the CSIs get here and I take Rocky to the station,” Jericho said to Cord. “Anything Karina says to you will need to go in the report.”

That last part wasn’t exactly a request, but Cord had already known it would need to happen. Whether he wanted this or not, he was officially involved. Partly because Karina had insisted on calling him. Also in part because anything that had to do with the Moonlight Strangler automatically had to do with Cord.

“You’ll need to drop the charges against Willie Lee,” Karina insisted.

Cord had been stunned with the news of this attack on Karina, but he was a lawman above all else. And a born skeptic. Being abandoned at a gas station when he was just a toddler could do that. Hard to grow up trusting people when most people he met weren’t trustworthy.

Karina just might fall into that category.

And that was just one of the many, many reasons he wouldn’t even consider trying to get those charges dropped against Willie Lee.

“Did you set all of this up to make Willie Lee look innocent?” Cord came right out and asked her.

She didn’t exactly look outraged by the question. Just disgusted. “You think I had this done to myself?” Her breath shattered, and the tears came while her gaze skirted across the two cuts she could see.

There was another one, on her cheek, that she couldn’t see.

The bald paramedic scowled at Cord, probably because he thought Cord was being too hard on her. If he was, he’d apologize later. For now, he needed to get to the truth, and the fastest way to do that was by not pulling any punches.

“Did you set this all up?” Cord persisted.

The glare she gave him could have frozen a pot of boiling water. “No.”

Cord didn’t want to believe her—it would be easier if he didn’t. Easier because it would mean there wasn’t a killer out there. But even if she hadn’t done this to herself and there was another killer, it didn’t mean Willie Lee was innocent.

One of the paramedics got in the driver’s seat. The other got into the back with Cord and Karina, and they finally started the drive to the hospital.

“This attack could have been done by a copycat,” Cord suggested to her. “Maybe someone who wanted to get back at you?”

If this had been a regular interrogation, this was the point where Cord would have asked Karina if she had any enemies. But he already knew the answer.

She did.

And Cord was one of them.

It was hard not to be enemies with a woman who was defending and praising a serial killer. But that’s exactly what Karina had done.

“You don’t know Willie Lee,” she said. “And if you did, you’d know he wasn’t capable of murder.”

It was the same argument he’d heard from her too many times to count. She considered herself a good judge of Willie Lee’s character because the man had worked on her family’s ranch in Comal County for the past fifteen years. A ranch she still owned now that her folks had passed, but she’d rented this place near Appaloosa Pass so she could be near Willie Lee while he recovered.

If he recovered, that is.

After all, the man had been in a coma for over a month.

“Willie Lee’s DNA was found at the scene of a woman he murdered,” he reminded her, though it was something she already knew. That DNA match had been confirmed shortly after he was caught. Since it was a verbal jab, Cord waited for her to get her usual jab back.

“It could have been planted, and you know it.”

Yes, he did. But there was the other match. “My own DNA is a familial match to Willie Lee’s. No one planted that. I had three labs repeat the test.” And each time Cord had hoped the results would be different. “How do you explain that?”

She huffed. “Willie Lee might be your father, but that still doesn’t mean he’s a killer.”

Again, it was an argument they’d already hashed and rehashed. “Willie Lee also matches the height and weight descriptions that witnesses of the Moonlight Strangler have given over the years.”

Many witnesses. Cord didn’t bother to remind her of that, too. She knew. She also knew none of those witnesses had gotten a look at his face.

But that didn’t explain who’d done this to her.

“Serial killers often develop a following,” Cord said, going for a different angle. One that might put an end to this conversation sooner rather than later. “Groupies. Has anyone like that contacted you? Maybe someone calling themselves a fan who wanted you to get a photo or some other personal item of Willie Lee’s?”

Karina shook her head after each of the questions and then winced. The paramedic moved quickly to examine her, and that’s when Cord noticed that she had another cut that her hair was covering.

“He clubbed me on the head.” Karina’s voice was trembling again. No doubt from the fear and adrenaline. None of her injuries appeared to be serious, but the memories would be with her for a lifetime.

“Start from the beginning,” Cord insisted. Because that hit on the head was a game changer. She couldn’t have done that to herself. “Tell me everything that happened.”

Karina flinched again when the paramedic dabbed at the head wound. “I woke up when I heard the horses. I thought maybe they were just spooked because it was a new place. I’d just moved them out here this week.”

Yes, he’d known about that. Karina was setting up a temporary operation here for training her cutting horses. Ironically, the name for that kind of trainer was a cutter. A sick joke now considering her injuries.

“I went outside to check on the horses,” Karina continued after she’d gathered her breath. “When I stepped into the barn, he hit me over the head. I didn’t even see him. Didn’t know he was there until it was too late.”

Cord jumped right on that. “But you could tell for sure that it was a man?”

“Yes,” she said without hesitation.

Damn. He hoped that meant the guy hadn’t sexually assaulted her in some way. But if this piece of dirt had done that, it would definitely break from the MO of the Moonlight Strangler, who’d never sexually assaulted any of his victims.

“What happened next?” he persisted when she didn’t continue.

Karina closed her eyes a moment. Shuddered. “I screamed as I was falling, and he cut my face.” She reached to put her fingers there, but the paramedic moved them away.

It was the slice on her cheekbone. And the signature of the Moonlight Strangler.

Or rather the signature of his copycat.

“Did your attacker say anything to you?” Cord asked.

She swallowed hard. “He laughed and said, ‘This will show them.’ It wasn’t in a regular voice. He was whispering as if his throat was raspy.”

Perhaps just someone who wanted to clear Willie Lee’s name. Of course, to the best of his knowledge, there was still only one person who fell into that particular name-clearing category.

Karina herself.

Cord studied her injuries, trying to look at the pattern to see what they could tell him. Karina didn’t seem like the vain type, but he had a hard time believing that any woman would allow her face to be cut so she could try to prove someone’s innocence. If she’d set this up, she could have merely had the person hit her on the head and leave bruises on her neck.

Cord’s phone buzzed, and when he saw Jericho’s name on the screen, he answered it right away. “Did you send that ranch hand, Rocky, off to do something?” Jericho asked.

“No. Why?”

“Because he’s not here. The CSIs finally made it so I started looking for him to take him to the office, but he’s not in the house or bunkhouse.”

Hell. “You don’t think he went looking for the attacker?”

Jericho cursed, too. “If he did, I don’t need this now. If Karina has his number, try to call him.”

Cord assured him that he’d try, but he figured since she didn’t have her phone with her, there was little chance Karina would remember the ranch hand’s number.

But she surprised Cord when she rattled it off.

“I have a good memory,” she mumbled. A comment that snagged his attention because there seemed to be something else, something that she wasn’t saying.

Something that she remembered.

“What is it?” Cord asked, staring at her.

She didn’t get a chance to respond. Didn’t get a chance to explain, either. The driver hit his brakes, bringing the ambulance to a jarring stop.

“Draw your gun,” the driver told Cord.

Cord did. And he soon saw why they’d stopped and why the driver had given that order.

It certainly wasn’t what Cord had expected to see.

There. In the middle of the dark country road. A man. He was wearing a ski mask.

And he had a gun pointed right at them.