Race Against Time Page 7

  Brody sat in the armchair that Mrs. Hanson led him to. “I have one specific question for you, if you’ll humor me. There’s a key piece of evidence we might have missed, one that may have seemed insignificant at the time.”

  “What would that be?” She lowered herself onto the couch across from him.

  “An egg timer.”

  Her eyebrows flicked up. “An egg timer? The kind you wind up? The old fashioned sort?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She nodded. “Of course, I have one. I have a couple, actually. I use them all the time when I’m cooking my pies.”

  “Can I see them?”

  “I’ll grab them from the cabinet.”

  He glanced at the house, a clean, sparsely decorated space, as she disappeared into the kitchen. He tried not to tap his foot impatiently as he waited. He wanted answers and they seemed to be within his grasp. A moment later Victor’s mom reappeared with two white timers in hand.

  She held up one. “This is my old one, the one I always use.” She held up a second one. “This one we got in the mail. It doesn’t work very well, but I kept it as a backup.”

  “May I?” He reached for it.

  “Of course.”

  He turned over the timer, his heart racing. This was the same timer that someone had mailed to Madison. There was no such company on the record in York County or the surrounding areas.

  “Was there anything strange about this timer? Do you remember seeing it anywhere unusual after Victor’s death? Think carefully because this is very important.”

  “I don’t even have to think about it—I know the answer. I found this timer in the bathroom. I thought it was strange, but no one else did. I always keep my timers in the kitchen and Victor never used them for anything. He’d have no reason to have it in the bathroom. I thought maybe, just maybe, he’d used it so he wouldn’t be late for work or something. I had no idea.”

  “This was a huge help, Mrs. Hanson. Do you mind if I take this with me?”

  “If it will help to prove my Victor didn’t commit suicide, then you can have it and anything else in this house, too. Just clear my boy’s name.”

  “I’ll do my best,” he promised.

  * * *

  After Madison got Lincoln to sleep, she went into the dining room. She’d been so keenly aware of the note in her back pocket, that it seemed like the paper seared through her denim into her skin. Kayla had disappeared into her own bedroom, so Madison guessed she had a few minutes of privacy. She wanted to read this note again when she was sure she was alone so she’d have some time to process the words there.

  She lowered herself onto a chair at the dining-room table, feeling like she was bracing herself for bad news. Her hands trembled as she pulled the paper from her pocket. She took several deep breaths before unfolding the note. With slow, steady movements Madison spread it smooth across the table. Before her eyes even focused on the words, she soaked in the handwriting. Usually she wrote with flowing loops. Reid had always said she had artistic handwriting that was as pretty to look at as her words were to read. The handwriting on this paper looked uneven. It told the tale of her distress while writing it.

  She closed her eyes and whispered a prayer, knowing she’d need divine strength to relive the nightmare she was about to unveil. Slowly she pulled her eyes open and, ignoring her rapidly beating heart, looked at the words she’d scribbled.

  By the time you read this, I’ll be dead. Really, this whole event was a long time coming. On a brighter note, I love my family very much. One of the most precious things in life. Know I loved you, Lincoln. Love wasn’t enough, though, to get me through my heartache after losing Reid. You’re better off without me. No more pain for me.

  Tears sprang to her eyes, but she tried to pull them back. She’d never leave Lincoln. Never. He was her whole world.

  Her pain turned to anger that the man had forced her to write those words. If Brody hadn’t found her before she’d died, then her son would always have thought that she’d abandoned him and taken her own life.

  It was enough to make her want to track down her would-be killer herself and hand him over to the authorities. He’d even known enough about her that he’d included her son’s name in the note. Her heart felt ice-cold at the thought.

  Why had her attacker picked these words? What was so important about her writing these sentences exactly as he dictated? It just didn’t make sense. The cadence of the words was off. Like on the sentence that started with “On a brighter note.” Then the next sentence was just a fragment. If the killer had so carefully planned the note, why had he chosen those awkwardly phrased sentences?

  She leaned back in the dining-room chair. What if the killer was trying to say something else through the note? She stared at the words a moment, trying to figure out if there was some code to the letters. What were some codes that people used? Every third letter maybe? She tried it, but only ended up with an odd assortment of letters.

  After trying the first letter of every word and various other ideas, she felt ready to give up. She put her forehead to the table, fighting tears.

  “I didn’t know you were still up.”

  Madison gasped and jerked her head back. Kayla stood in the kitchen doorway. She relaxed slightly and chuckled at her overreaction. “Kayla.”

  Her friend approached the table, a sympathetic expression on her face. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I should have known better.”

  Madison waved her off, even though her heart still beat double time. “You’re fine. I’m just looking at this note that the man forced me to write. Something’s off about it and I’m trying to figure out what. It’s got me on edge.”

  Kayla stepped forward. “You mind if I look? I’m pretty good with puzzles. Maybe I’ll see something you didn’t.”

  “Go right ahead.”

  Kayla sat beside her and cautiously took the paper, slipping it from Madison’s hand. Her eyes scanned the words there for what felt like hours. “Maybe there’s some kind of hidden message here. Is that what you’re thinking?”

  “That’s exactly what I was wondering.”

  Kayla glanced up. “What have you tried already?”

  Madison told her about all of the brainstorms she’d had, none of which had panned out.

  Kayla narrowed her eyes at the paper. “How about the first letter of every sentence?”

  Madison gripped her pen against the scrap paper in front of her. “Read them to me.”

  “B, r, o, o, k, l, y, n.”

  Madison stared at the paper. “Brooklyn? The letters spell Brooklyn. That can’t be a coincidence, can it?”

  “I don’t think so.” Kayla’s face looked white. “Brody’s from Brooklyn. I don’t think that can be a coincidence, either. You need to call him. Now.”

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later Brody showed up again at Kayla’s house. Madison could see the worry and curiosity in his gaze as he stepped inside. She could also see the weariness in his eyes. He was operating primarily on caffeine, Madison would bet. Every minute that he wasn’t watching over her, she could easily see him working on the case, even if it meant forfeiting sleep.

  Brody turned to Madison. “What’s going on?”

  Ma
dison held up the note, not wanting her heart to soften too much. What if Brody had more to do with this than he let on? The note had spelled the name of the place Brody had just moved from. What if he wasn’t innocent in all of this? “I knew there was something strange about the words I had to write on this note, so Kayla and I decided to play detective. We discovered that the first letter of each sentence spells the word Brooklyn.”

  His eyes narrowed. “As in Brooklyn, New York?”

  “Exactly.”

  He reached for the paper. “Can I see the note again?”

  Madison handed it to him. He studied it for several minutes, grunting and nodding. A certain melancholy seemed to settle over him. “Good work, ladies. I’m going to look into this.”

  She wasn’t going to let him leave that easily. “Brody, why would someone send a message to you through a supposed suicide note that he had me write?”

  Something dark passed through his gaze. “I don’t know.”

  Madison had the feeling there was more to the story than that. But what exactly did Brody know? What connection did he have to this case other than being the lead detective? “What aren’t you telling us, Brody?”

  A wall seemed to go up around him, and his voice turned to steel. “There’s nothing that I’m not telling you.”

  “Nothing, Detective? I find that highly unlikely.”

  Something flashed in his eyes. What was it? Fear? Annoyance? “Let me draw the conclusions, Madison. Let me do my job.”

  “My life is the one on the line, Detective.”

  His gaze didn’t break from hers, sending the clear message that he wouldn’t back down. “There are parts of the case that I can’t share with you, not until we have something firm nailed down.”

  Madison didn’t say anything, but she felt sure there was more to it. She’d find out eventually…one way or another.

  Because she wasn’t going to let a madman get away with this, and she didn’t care who she had to take down to make sure that happened—even Brody.

  * * *

  Brody left his cousin’s house, still feeling cold at his core.

  Brooklyn.

  He had to look at those other suicide notes.

  He’d already questioned the other families involved and gotten nowhere. All they’d said was that they couldn’t believe their loved ones had committed suicide—but nearly every family in this situation said that. He needed evidence, not hunches.

  And thanks to Madison’s keen eye he may finally have what he needed to move this case from attempted murder to serial killer.

  He bypassed his coworkers at the sheriff’s station and went straight to his office. The files for the other two cases were already on his desk. He opened them and rifled through the papers until he found copies of the suicide notes.

  His eyes scanned the words there, writing down the first letter of each sentence. When he was done, he sat back in his chair and stared at the word in front of him.

  Madison.

  The killer had been targeting Madison before they’d even realized there was a killer.

  He had a feeling he knew what the message in the next note was. He jotted it down just in case. He was right. The first word had been Victor, the name of the second victim.

  So why had the killer changed course and made Madison write Brooklyn? Unless he wasn’t telling them the name of Brody’s old precinct, but of his next victim.

  He had to talk to the sheriff.

  * * *

  It took forever for sleep to find Madison. She’d tossed and turned in bed, her mind racing with possibilities. What in the world was Brody hiding? And why? What was the reason for his aloofness?

  All she knew for sure was that his secrets might be hindering the outcome of her case.

  The man could get under her skin, but she’d always assumed he was on her side. Maybe her initial impressions of him were correct. Maybe he was simply rude, arrogant and completely self-centered. She could live with those things—or at least learn to ignore them. But if he was somehow involved in this case and not telling her about it…that was a different story. This was her life on the line.

  Images began battering her again. She pictured the man hiding silently in her bathtub with his weapon drawn. She remembered the fear that had rippled through her as her shaky hand wrote the dictated suicide note. She felt the familiar jolt of paralyzing fear at the thought of dying and leaving Lincoln all alone.

  In an instant life could be forever altered. She thought she’d already learned that lesson, but here it was slapping her in the face again. When would she learn to fully rely on her faith instead of constantly giving in to fear?

  Lord. I’m sorry my trust in You is so quickly swayed by my anxious thoughts. You’re my strength, my refuge and protector, and even through life’s hurts, You’ve never let me down.

  But when she fell asleep, the nightmares still came.

  She couldn’t wake up. Nor could she breathe. The scent of leather consumed her. Tension squeezed her chest. And the faceless man from her nightmare grabbed for her. As hard as she tried, she couldn’t escape. Her limbs had frozen.

  She had to wake. Had to wake up.

  An unknown pressure weighed on her. A dream? Then why didn’t it feel like a dream, but reality? She had to escape.

  Finally she jerked her eyelids open.

  She stared at a nightmare.

  Her attacker stood over her, his gloved hand pressed against her mouth. He’d come back. This wasn’t a dream, but cold, hard reality.

  She thrashed, trying to get away. But the man had her pinned, trapped, unable to escape. She wanted to scream, but no sound would emerge.

  Madison knew without a doubt that the man had come back to finish what he’d started. What did he have planned this time around? Terror gripped her at the very thought.

  Lord, help me.

  EIGHT

  Brody shoved the keyboard back under the desk and ran a hand over his face. He needed another cup of coffee. “From everything I can tell from my own search and through talking to the County Manager, there’s no one named Brooklyn in York County.”

  Sheriff Carl leaned over the desk, staring at Brody’s computer screen. “Maybe the killer is operating outside of York County. Maybe he’s targeting someone in one of the nearby towns. Or maybe we’re just assuming Brooklyn is a person. Maybe the killer is taunting you.”

  “Why would he break his modus operandi now? Every letter has spelled out the name of the next victim. I think it’s just a coincidence that Brooklyn happens to be the place I moved from. To take this case in any other direction would be a mistake, in my opinion.”

  Sheriff Carl sighed and lowered himself into the chair beside Brody’s desk. “I agree. I just don’t know what that something we’re missing is. Not yet.”

  Brody stared at Madison’s suicide note again, each word burned into his memory. “This guy is sick. And I don’t think he’s going to stop until we catch him. The key is, when are we going to catch him?”

  Brody put the letter down and picked up a pencil, instead. He twirled the device between his fingers and stared off in the distance, mentally running through everything that had happened. The killer had laid that clue out there for them, dangled a hint about who his next victim was. So why did they feel powerless to stop the next cr
ime from happening?

  Sheriff Carl turned toward him, his eyes softening a moment. “How’s Madison holding up?”

  Madison’s face flashed through his mind and Brody inadvertently smiled. “She seems to be doing surprisingly well, everything considered.”

  Sheriff Carl seemed to study Brody’s expression a moment. “She’s a special lady.”

  “You’ve known her awhile?” Brody leaned back, ready to let his mind wander to something else for a moment. Sometimes you needed to step back from the facts in order to process them. Maybe this conversation would help him to do just that.

  “I knew the family before they moved to Florida.” The sheriff laced his fingers together across his belly and let out a pensive sigh. “She goes to church with me also. She’s struggled since Reid died, but she always keeps her chin up and she always works hard. Plus, she’s got a great heart. It doesn’t matter if she needs money herself, she’s always the first one to step up when another family is in need at church. She’s one in a million.”

  Why did the thought of that make Brody’s heart warm? No one could deny that Madison was special. It was even more reason he needed to stay away from her.

  “Don’t hurt her, Brody.”

  He cut a sharp glance at the sheriff. “I would never want to hurt her, Sheriff.”

  “I’ve heard about your track record with women. I don’t want Madison to end up as your flavor of the month. She deserves better than that.”

  “It’s not like that, Sheriff.”

  “Maybe it’s not. But in case it is, I just wanted to make it clear that I didn’t assign you this case so you could flirt with a pretty woman. I assigned you because I believe you’re one of the best in the department and you have far more experience in homicides than the other detectives.”

  The last thing Brody wanted to do was to explain to his boss how not only had he been misunderstood but how any remnant of the man he’d once been was gone. Tragedies did that to a person. Instead, he shifted in his seat. “I don’t play games with people’s hearts, Sheriff. I promise you that. You can’t always believe the rumors.”