Deep in Death: A Shelby Nichols Adventure (14 page)

That mental image helped get me out of the building and into my car without once checking to see if he followed me. Let him come. He’d picked the wrong girl to mess with this time. He thought he was so smart, hah! He wouldn’t know what hit him.

I drove home with a new purpose, knowing that whatever he planned to throw at me, I’d have to have a counter-plan. Or I could just ask to meet with him again, tie him up real tight, and ask him questions about where the other women were buried. Even if he didn’t answer, I’d know.

I still might want to torture him a bit anyway, or at the very least, stun him a couple of times. But I could do that. I’d just have to pick the right time and place. Maybe I could even use the basement room in the same building as Thrasher Development. I’d spent some time tied up down there and knew firsthand what a perfect spot it was.

I’d probably need some help. I wasn’t sure Chris would agree to do what I wanted, but he might if he knew I was the next target, although he didn’t have much experience with kidnapping and torture. Dimples was out of the question, but what about Ramos? He had all the necessary skills and lack of conscience that would make him the perfect partner. The only problem with that was not telling Chris anything about it. Could I do that? I wasn’t sure. I only knew that I wasn’t going to be anyone’s victim, and I wasn’t going to end up dead. So that meant being proactive.

Of course, once I knew what Sean had done with the bodies, how was I supposed to get him arrested and help the police build a case against him unless he came after me first? Since I didn’t want that to happen, it left the door open for him to bring charges against me. I could hardly leave him alive if that were the case, but I couldn’t really kill him, no matter how much I might want to. Hmm…I might just need Chris for this after all. He’d know how to build a case without getting me in trouble. But how could I torture him then? Damn! I’d probably have to leave the torturing part out.

There had to be another way to get the results I wanted, but right now, I wasn’t thinking rationally, mostly because deep down, I was scared to death. It creeped me out to think I was his next target, especially when I could imagine all sorts of horrible things he may have done to the other women.

I got home and went directly to the den where I kept the files of all the missing women and opened them up. I had a small whiteboard and taped each picture to the top and wrote their names in dry-erase marker beneath. Then I wrote “Sean Hanley” below that and circled it. Next, I drew lines between each woman’s picture to Sean’s name with the date of disappearance on the line.

I propped the whiteboard on the desk against the wall and studied it, feeling a sense of control wash over me. This was my storyboard, just like the one Kate Beckett used on my favorite TV show, Castle. She always figured it out, and I could too. Too bad I didn’t have Richard Castle standing beside me right now, telling me how to catch him. I needed to lay a trap, but the only thing that really made sense was using myself as bait. I didn’t really want to do that much, but with Ramos as back-up it could work.

I spent the afternoon thinking up different scenarios to catch Sean that didn’t involve letting him get me first. In all of them there was just too much that could go wrong, and it didn’t leave me with many options besides just grabbing him like I first wanted to.

I looked up Sean’s address and phone number to add to the storyboard, and found it on google maps so I’d know exactly where he lived. Maybe I could drive by on my way home from my meeting with Addie and Billie later tonight and check it out. If he had a big yard, maybe the victims were all buried there. Or maybe I could sneak in while he was gone and take a look around. Thoughts of doing that kind of made me sick, but if I got Ramos to help me, it could work.

My kids got home from school, so I took the storyboard off the desk and turned it around against the wall by the side of the desk where no one would see it and left the room. I was ready for a break, and talking to my kids and getting dinner ready would help ground me. I hurried into the kitchen where Josh was guzzling milk straight from the jug. It was almost empty, so I only shook my head and let it go.

“You know…you could have some cookies with that,” I said.

He shrugged and kept guzzling. Savannah rushed past me, heading up to her room where she could cry in peace. Whoa. What was going on with her? I followed her to the bottom of the stairs.

“How was school?” The words popped out of my mouth before I could call them back. I inwardly cursed, knowing it was about the worst thing a parent could ask their child if they wanted to know the truth.

“Fine,” Savannah said, but inwardly she was thinking it was crappy and about the worst day she’d ever had in her life, and life sucked, and all she wanted to do was listen to her music and cry and never go back to school again.

“What happened?” I asked, hoping she’d open up.

“Nothing! I said it was fine.” She continued up the stairs to her room, and I had no alternative but to follow her if I wanted to get her to talk to me.

“Yeah…well, if the way you’re snapping at me is any indication, then fine isn’t quite the right word to describe it. How about crappy? Does that work better? What was so crappy about it?”

“Mom…” she whined, turning back before she entered her room. “Are you doing that premonition thing on me again? I don’t like you doing that. It’s like…invasion of privacy.”

“No honey, not at all. I’m just concerned because you seem a little upset and I’d like to talk about it…if it would help.” Since I didn’t really have premonitions, saying that wasn’t lying.

“You wouldn’t understand,” she said, thinking no one my age could ever remember what seventh grade was like, especially since cell phones and the Internet weren’t even invented back then.

I almost blurted that she was wrong and it wasn’t that long ago, but let it go. “I remember seventh grade very well,” I said. “It was one of the worst years of my life. I was always getting picked on by the older kids and sometimes the boys were really mean. Other times, the girls were even worse, especially my friends. I hated that.”

“You hated seventh grade?” she asked. “Then why did you tell me it was going to be fun?”

“Because I hoped it would be fun, and I didn’t want to discourage you before you even got started.” The glare in her eyes softened, so I took that as a good sign and continued, “So just tell me one thing that made today so bad.”

She let out a sigh and heaved her backpack onto the floor, leaving the door open for me to follow, then threw herself onto the bed and stared up at the ceiling. Grateful, I sat on the edge of the bed and listened as she began to talk. As all her frustrations spilled out, I got her to move over so I could lie down beside her.

An hour later, she was feeling good enough to help me fix dinner. As we got started, I picked up from Josh that he was relieved to see us out of her room. He was starving and had debated about asking what was for dinner earlier, but he didn’t want to interrupt our ‘girl’ talk. What was it with girls anyway? They were always so hard to understand. One minute they were nice and happy, and the next they were screaming and crying. He didn’t get it. Now it looked like Savannah was turning into one of them. That was tough, and he thanked his lucky stars he wasn’t a girl.

That thought coaxed a laugh out of me, and I glanced at him with a knowing smile.

“What?” he asked. “What’d I do?”

“Nothing,” I answered. “I can just tell that you’re hungry, that’s all.”

He shook his head, thinking he’d never understand women. “I’m going to go shoot some hoops,” he said. I nodded and he left to go outside where we had a basketball hoop set up against the garage.

Chris pulled up a few minutes later, shocking me that he was home early. He quickly changed and joined Josh in the driveway while Savannah and I finished dinner. As we sat around the table for dinner that night, I sighed with gratitude for my family. We had our challenges, but having them in my life was worth everything.

Around nine o’clock, I got a text from Billie reminding me about our meeting with Addie. I’d totally forgotten and had to rush to get ready. Chris wasn’t happy I was leaving, but since it didn’t have anything to do with Uncle Joey, he couldn’t complain too much.

“Just call me if you’re going to be later than eleven,” he said.

“Oh, I’m sure it won’t be that late.”

“Good. How’s the investigation going anyway? Was today your appointment with that guy from the Marketing Company?”

“Yes. It went well, and I found out some stuff, but I don’t have time to tell you about it now.” I’d put off telling Chris about that meeting because I hadn’t decided exactly what to tell him. Now that would have to wait until I got back. “I’ll fill you in later.”

I rushed to make it to Gracie’s Tavern by nine-thirty and pulled into the parking lot only a few minutes late. For a Monday night, the place seemed a lot more crowded than it should have been. Thankfully, Billie spotted me and waved me over to her table. I slid into a chair and smiled at Addie whose pale face and haunted eyes underscored the quick smile she gave me. I picked up on her anxiety and the subsequent stomachache she suffered. She was thinking that if we ever let anyone know she was the source of this leak in the Attorney General’s office, her career would be over. She still wasn’t sure she could go through with it.

Billie was ready to get down to business and get this done, totally missing Addie’s reluctance. As she opened her mouth to ask Addie what information she had, I spoke up. “You can trust us, Addie. Neither of us will ever tell anyone where we got this information. That’s a promise.”

I glanced at Billie with raised brows and she quickly responded. “That’s right. As a journalist I don’t have to reveal my sources, as long as the information is accurate. So your secrets are safe with me.”

Addie licked her lips. “How will you put it in the paper then?”

“Oh we always say it’s from an anonymous source.” She didn’t add
‘close to the attorney general’
like she was thinking. “No one will know who gave it to us, so you’ll be fine.”

Addie glanced between the two of us, then sighed and leaned forward. “Okay. Here’s what I’ve got. First of all, I overheard Grayson talking to one of the businessmen who contributed quite a bit to his campaign about getting the charges dropped against him. I don’t know exactly what that means, but you can guess. After you left last Friday I got suspicious about something.

“A while back, I caught Grayson at my computer a couple of times. He brushed it off, but on Friday, I decided to check all my files. I found one I didn’t know about and opened it up. It showed two men’s names that I recognized as campaign contributors along with files showing inquiries into their businesses. The inquiries all came in at different times, in various stages of investigation, and were based on things like tax evasion, retaliating against witnesses, and obstructing justice. They’re all felonies. When I checked the public records to see what became of the charges, I found out our office had never filed them. It looks like they were given to Grayson, and he put them on my computer.”

She licked her lips nervously. “From how big the files were, I don’t think Grayson could have put them there from just the few times I caught him, unless he somehow found out my password. But I change it every month and these files spanned about six months’ time. So I don’t know how he did it.”

“Hmm,” Billie said. “Unless he got your IT guy to give him your passwords. Then all he’d have to do is stay late or come in on a weekend and use your computer.”

“So do you think the reason he put everything on my computer was so it would look like he never got them and it was my fault?” Addie asked.

“Could be,” Billie said. “So what did you do with the files?”

“I copied them onto a thumb-drive,” Addie answered. “And it’s a good thing I did too, because this morning when I checked my computer, they were gone. He must have come in over the weekend and deleted them.”

“Wow,” Billie said. “That was close.”

“Tell me about it.” Addie sighed and opened her purse. She took out the thumb-drive and handed it to Billie. “It’s all there. After everything I’ve done for that man, he pays me back like this? It’s unbelievable. I guess you never really know someone as well as you think. I believed in him. I thought he was a good man.” She was thinking how stupid she was to turn a blind eye to his above-the-law attitude. She could see it now, but she’d mistakenly let the power go to her head as well. Now look where it had gotten her.

“Thanks,” Billie said. “You won’t regret this.”

“Just keep my name out of it.” With a nod from Billie, Addie stood and quickly left the tavern.

Billie glanced at me. “What a story. This is great.” Before I could respond, her phone rang. “Um…it’s my boss. I’ve got to answer it.”

I nodded and gathered my things to leave. Billie’s hand on my arm drew my attention back to her, and I found her eyes round with surprise and shock. I hadn’t been listening to her conversation, but from her expression, I knew something big had gone down.

“What is it?” I asked, my stomach clenching with dread. 

She put her phone away and pursed her lips. “There’s been an explosion…in Seattle. A yacht owned by the Passini Shipping Company blew up about an hour ago. They’re saying Joe Manetto was onboard.”