Who was Celeste Bradshaw? Think. My heart pounding hard enough to jar my insides, I squatted amid the bushes near the fence I used for camouflage and tried my level best not to react to the words. The woman was dead, for God’s sake. How could he do this? I gave myself a mental shake. What was I saying? He was a murderer. Nothing he did should surprise me, but somehow it did. At least I didn’t have to worry about him trying to hurt the woman. She was already dead. Surely I could bring him down before he got around to her friends and relatives. A massive weight suddenly settled on my shoulders. I made a mental note as to the location of the grave for future reference, assuming I had a future.
I’d almost made a horrible mistake. I hadn’t even considered the possibility that he might blame someone for what he assumed was a leak of information. Maybe this cop business wasn’t for me after all. I hadn’t thought out all the variables.
Too late to be backing out now.
He snatched a gun from under his jacket and fired three times into the ground—into her grave. I jerked with each shot, imagining the accompanying explosions and the path of the piercing bullets plowing into the protective vault that entombed the dead woman’s coffin.
Casting one last sour look downward, Sawyer did an about-face and started to walk away, then hesitated abruptly.
My heart all but stalled in my chest.
I held my breath…held perfectly still as he scrutinized the shrubbery that concealed me. Reason told me that I was too far away and hidden too well for him to see me. But I couldn’t be certain. For what felt like an eternity, he stared directly at my position as if some sixth sense had warned him that I was there.
Please, God. Oh, please don’t let him find me.
Just when I thought my chest would burst from holding my breath, he walked away. Ten full seconds passed before I could move. I quickly retraced my steps and climbed into the relative safety of my Jetta.
Thank God. Thank God.
I watched in the rearview mirror as his SUV tore out onto the highway, and it took every ounce of courage I possessed to execute a U-turn and follow him.
I stayed as far back as possible while still keeping him in sight. As we moved back into the city limits, tailing him grew easier with other vehicles to use as camouflage, allowing me to get closer. If anything about this could be called easy. I suddenly felt ill-equipped all over again for the task I’d set out to accomplish. Where was all that confidence I’d woken up with this morning?
Sawyer returned to his office, presumably to resume the business of overseeing his numerous legitimate working assets. I waited in my car a safe distance away but well within sight of the exit and his SUV.
Three years ago he had purchased more than a dozen convenience stores for the sole purpose of cashing in on the lottery cow. He also owned a number of apartment buildings, which probably contributed to his motive for killing a man. The guy had stood in the way of a major deal and Sawyer had eliminated the problem, though no one, not even the detective assigned to his case, had been able to prove it.
First and foremost, no body had ever been recovered. That was the essential element of the defense’s entire case. Without the body, every meager speck of evidence the D.A.’s office had was circumstantial. The charges had ended up being dismissed when the state couldn’t come up with the body or irrefutable proof. Sawyer had walked away a free man. For more than two years he hadn’t made a single mistake. Probably never would have.
With my two psych classes under my belt and my innate sense of people, I had taken a shot in the dark. I’d used the oldest trick in the book. I’d pasted letters together on a plain white page of paper to form the words that would shake Sawyer’s carefully constructed little world. The message was simple: I know where you hid the body.
I had nothing to lose. If I was wrong about Sawyer, then he would simply get a good laugh out of my meaningless threats and that would be that. But, if he had murdered his competition and disposed of the body as I believed, he would worry, maybe just a little, as to whether or not I was telling the truth.
When I didn’t get the desired reaction immediately, I sent more letters. Gave the details only someone who knew what he’d done would know. Or, in my case, someone who’d reviewed the case file and, for instance, knew that he’d taken exactly $657 from the missing person’s middle desk drawer. The crime-scene report also reported that enough blood had been found on the carpet of the victim’s office that he couldn’t possibly have survived the attack, but there wasn’t a damned thing that indicated a murder weapon or anything else. No body, just a bunch of coagulated blood.
But Detective Steven Barlow had a theory. No letter opener had been found in the victim’s desk. None of his employees or associates could actually say whether or not he’d possessed one. When the pocketknife Sawyer carried was found clean of any sort of residue connected to the crime, Barlow had suggested that he’d used a letter opener. Barlow was convinced that Sawyer hadn’t gone to the victim’s office to kill him. The murder had transpired during the ensuing argument. None of which he could prove.
I, on the other hand, had nothing to lose by using Barlow’s conjecture as a ploy to prod a reaction out of Sawyer. So I sent more cut-and-paste letters. I mentioned tiny little facts no one should know. I also asked questions like, What’d you spend the $657 on? Where did you hide the letter opener? It was a shot in the dark. A play on Barlow’s hunch. But it had worked.
Sawyer was seriously worried.
Tonight at ten o’clock he intended to make a drastic move to protect himself.
I’d sent the first letter in time for Sawyer to receive it the day my vacation started. By Wednesday, when he hadn’t reacted, I sent another from the post office that delivered in his neighborhood. That way I could be sure it would be delivered the next morning. On Thursday I broke down and made a call from a phone booth. The whispered message was simple: I know what you did.
By Friday, I had my reaction.
After all, my vacation was only for one week.
Now all I had to do was stay on his tail until I had the location. Well, there was that one other little detail. I needed backup. Someone who could take him down when he made his move. Even I wasn’t fool enough to believe I could do that part alone.
With two brothers who are cops and two more who are firemen, I could call one or all of them, but that would be a mistake. Protecting me would be their one and only concern. I needed someone who could look at this objectively with an eye toward capturing a killer.
I knew exactly who to call.
Chapter 2
My voice deserted me when he answered my call. I stared at the name flickering on the screen.
Steven Barlow.
Barlow, thirty-five years old. Metro cop for four years, homicide detective for the last nine. Degree in criminology. Barlow was considered one of the top investigators in Metro’s homicide division. He had served as lead investigator—the one who’d tried to nail Sawyer three years ago. I hadn’t personally had the pleasure of meeting Barlow, but I had seen him in the hallowed halls of the city’s police headquarters. He was tall, maybe six-one or -two, and wore his black hair regulation short. But the blue eyes proved his most disturbing asset. He hadn’t ever really looked at me, but our gazes bumped into each other’s once or twice in passing.
