Western Romance Collection: Rugged Cowboys Part 84

"Erin Russo?"

She looked at him, looked at Hutchinson, and looked back at him. Trying to burn the message in with just her eyes that now was absolutely not the time for too much information.

"Yes, what's wrong?"

"Uh..." He'd gotten the message, thank G.o.d. "I've got the plane ticket you called down for, your boarding pa.s.s is right here."

The man handed over a yellow kraft-paper envelope that Erin slipped into her pocket.

"Thank you very much."

"Is everything okay?"

"Everything's fine," she said, feigning a smile. Everything was completely fine. Nothing to worry about. At least, she had to let Hutchinson think so, and she had to get him to stop following her as soon as possible.

"Have a nice day, ma'am."

She kept going out the door. Craig followed her, only splitting off a few feet before she got to her Jeep. He'd parked in the striped No-Parking zone beside her, slung one leg over the bike and kicked it to life as she slid into the Jeep.

"Maybe later?" She called to him over the sound of his too-loud engine.

He nodded, and took off. She took off a little way behind.

She took the drive to her apartment faster than she'd have liked. Someone was following her. No, that wasn't totally accurate. At least two someones were following her. The government car was harder to place than Roy's.

Then again, they seemed to be trying to stop her from noticing. They were taking it smart, switching cars. But she knew in her gut, and when she saw the same two cars again, she knew outside her gut, too.

The other was less subtle, but further back. Maybe if Craig hadn't put her on edge, she wouldn't have noticed it, but without a doubt, there was someone else following her, as well. If she had noticed the government cars, then she had to a.s.sume they had as well. Which meant that things were about to get very messy indeed.

She got into the apartment, pulled aside the police tape, and stepped through the door. She packed light and packed for cold and was back out the door in thirty minutes. And just like clockwork, within two turns of leaving the apartment, two cars were following her.

She lost them in the chaos of L.A.X.

She wasn't stupid enough to a.s.sume that meant they had lost her, though. That would have been a big mistake, and as much as she made big mistakes, she wasn't going to make that one. Not when things were as ugly as they seemed to be now.

She wasn't going to calm down until they touched down in Minneapolis, and then she was going to have something else to worry about.

Thirty-Three.

The touchdown was more exciting than the plane ride, and it went completely as-expected. It was almost strange to feel so panicked for nearly two hours, knowing for sure that someone was following you, and then to be free and clear. It felt no different than her ears popping as the cabin started to lose pressure on the plane's ascent. As if she were reacclimating to a whole different environment.

In some ways, she thought, she was. This wasn't her world. This wasn't L.A. any more. For the second time, she was in deeper than she had any desire to ever be. Now she was out of her jurisdiction-not that it mattered, with her badge confiscated-and more than that, she was in Dad's territory. This was his place, and it was the number one reason that she had promised herself she would never come back here.

But here she was, now that the old man was dead. Here to investigate another murder that broke the pattern. They'd gotten nine women. Nine younger women, aged between sixteen and twenty-six. Why on earth would the person responsible for those murders commit a tenth on an old man? It broke the pattern so wildly that it made no sense.

More than that, their work up to this point had been in L.A. this year. The others hadn't moved around, not this fast. Why now? Why her father, who never hurt anyone but his daughters and the wife who was beyond getting hurt again?

A man in a suit had a paper with her name on it. She introduced herself to him, and he flashed her an F.B.I. badge before motioning for her to follow.

Erin felt strange walking behind him. The cold wind blew hard, but she barely felt it through the heavy down coat. Her body wouldn't move right, though, with all the fabric in the way. Who chose to live like this? Who wanted to live in a place where this kind of weather existed?

Dad had, evidently. He'd hated everything about California from the first minute. How had Becca liked it? Had she preferred the cold to the L.A. heat? There was no way to know. Not any more, anyway, not now that Becca had been taken from her.

They still hadn't released the body, and it was getting to be past the point where she should have been sent back to Minnesota for her funeral. The d.a.m.ned investigation was keeping them from giving the body back to her friends and her family. Then again, Becca didn't have much family left. Just Erin, and after so many years without a word, without a call or a text or an e-mail, how could they really be called family?

Erin blew into her gloved hands, as if she could warm them up even more. She didn't even feel the breath through them, but she slipped into the pa.s.senger seat of the government car.

"What's the situation?"

"I'm not supposed to say. I think that Agent Schafer will bring you up to speed when we get there."

Erin hadn't been in Minneapolis for near twenty years, and she'd never seen the old man's house, but it wasn't hard to follow the route to his place anyways. The place reminded her of when she was just a little girl, and though many things had changed, the feel of the place was how she remembered it. Cold, mostly. Friendly, but not too friendly. Strange memories for a girl to have, but she couldn't get rid of them.

They pulled up in front of a one-story house that was smaller than a bread-box and Erin got out. There was one large-ish window in the front. Enough to seem luxurious compared to the rest of the house, but the window over her bed was larger.

There were three government cars outside, none of them cars she recognized, but then again she knew they didn't bring their own cars with them. They'd be returned whenever the agents inside returned to L.A.

She followed the suit inside and walked into a world she didn't want to be in. Roy met them at the door and put one un-gloved hand on her shoulder, looked her deep in the eyes.

"Erin, are you going to be alright?"

She furrowed her brow at the question. Alright? Why wouldn't she be alright? She nodded just in time to take a look around, a look at the pictures on the wall. There were photos on near every wall, and they were of her face, staring back at her. It took her a minute to register that they might have been Becca's, some of them.

Others, she remembered taking. There was her senior high school photo, right beside Becca's. She remembered that time. Mom had been sliding already. Dad had just moved. Broke them up between junior and senior years. Becca's clothes looked like they barely fit her. She looked tired, ragged, worn out, even though it had only been a few months since they'd seen each other. They barely looked anything alike, when normally you couldn't tell them apart.

The divide only grew wider as the photos got older. Nothing more recent than five years or so. It gave Erin some hope that things had gotten turned around, but what she was seeing hit her hard in the gut. This was what life was for them, huh? What a f.u.c.k up.

She took a breath. She couldn't let it upset her, as much as it was going to upset her in either case. She needed to keep her head level.

"I'm fine," she said in response to Roy's concerned look.

He handed her a pair of rubber gloves and fitted a pair onto his own hands as they walked back.

"We found him in the back."

She followed Roy past the bathroom. There couldn't have been more than four rooms in the whole place, no bas.e.m.e.nt in evidence. The place was about as tiny as anyone could find, anywhere. Erin took a breath as he stepped through the door and braced for impact.

The floor seemed to fall out from under her feet when she stepped through and the room held no evidence of her father's body except for a wicker rocking chair, stained red. There was violence in the room, though. 'Signs of a struggle,' she thought to herself. Trying to maintain her distance as best she could.

A record player on the floor. A speaker system with the front panel kicked in. A second chair, overturned. The blood was all over the room, but in the end the darkest spot was the chair.

"We found him there. In the chair."

"He would have fought back."

"And the room suggests he did," Roy agreed. "But local P.D. found him sitting up in that chair."

"Do we have a time of death?"

"They caught it pretty soon after the guy left. One of the neighbors called, said he heard some loud noises like a fight, saw someone run off, and went over to check on your father."

"Why am I here?"

"I'm getting to that," he said. "She didn't get an answer, called the cops-witness says that the murder took place at around 2:53 in the afternoon, yesterday. Medical examiner's estimate essentially matches that timeline."

"Okay."

"I want to understand why he did this, just as much as you do, Erin. Which means we have to ask the important questions, don't you agree?" She agreed, though she didn't like the discussion one bit. "Which means we need to understand why they would kill a fifty-six year old man who, by all accounts, rarely left the house. Every other murder was in public, young, women. Now we've got a man who looked to rarely go further than the front couch, and he's dead in his house."

"I don't know what to say."

"I know you don't. But we need someone who knows more than we do, or we lose the biggest opportunity we're going to have to catch this guy."

Thirty-Four.

Erin wasn't sure that she was who they needed. Someone who knew him? Her father was a closed book to her. She knew as much as she could imply from the pictures on the walls. She knew as much as Mom had told her, and most of that had been delirious. She knew that he was the man who had left her mother to fall apart because he didn't like the dust on the wind, the dirty air, and the heat that never got too extreme.

The droughts hadn't even started by then. He had just left his wife and daughter to their fates and that was the man she knew him to be.

"What do you need from me?"

"We need some sort of insight. Why him? Why now?"

Erin took a breath. It had something to do with her sister, she knew. But Becca had been a closed book, too. When she was fifteen, she'd liked the same things everyone liked in 2005.

That had been more than fifteen years ago. The girl who she'd seen dead on that slab was a stranger. It wasn't fun to admit that the person who Erin owed the most, the one who had taken responsibility for watching Dad, the one who had been her twin, a second person exactly like her, was a complete and total stranger.

She shouldn't have been thinking about it, and she certainly shouldn't have been thinking about it in those terms. Erin knew she needed to have her wits about her, and beating herself up wasn't helping.

"I don't know if I can help you. I don't know anything about my sister's life."

"I don't know if we're talking about something to do with your sister, Erin."

"What's that supposed to mean?" She let her irritation touch her voice in spite of herself. "Becca was killed by the same guy, might even have been the same knife. Or if not the same guy, definitely the same couple of guys. There's obviously a connection. I just don't know what it is."

"Maybe you do, Erin. Who knew your sister? Who knew her well?"

"I don't know. Probably a lot of people. She was always popular in school."

"But who knew her well enough to know her father, to know that he lived alone apart from her? Who knew where the house was? Who had a grudge against him?"

Erin let out a disappointed sigh. "I can think of one person."

"Oh yeah?"

"I did."

Roy dipped his head to look up into her downturned eyes. Erin turned her back.

"But you didn't do it."

"I might have, if I had the opportunity."

"I also know you weren't here yesterday at 2 o'Clock P.M."

"That's right," she said. "So it wasn't me. But I don't know anyone else with a motive. The man didn't leave the house except to buy booze. He paid the mortgage with welfare money and Becca's work on the side, I'd guess. The few times I've taken his calls, she's working, he's drunk."

There was no story to be told here. Someone had died here, and they'd sat Dad back in his seat as if to try to rub it all in her face.

She took a deep breath in, held it an instant, and breathed it back out. Slow. She had to think. Someone else with a motive. Someone else who knew her sister. She was an idiot for not thinking of it sooner.

"Hutchinson."

"You figure?" The expression on Roy's face told her that he'd already considered the idea, and he hadn't dismissed it.

"I told him about Dad. He seemed to already know, and then he made a remark about how, if it was his dad, he wouldn't let him get away with it."

"That sounds like he was considering this already."

"And maybe he was. But why? She was already dead. Eventually he'd have realized what happened when the beers in the fridge ran out. He was on a downward trajectory already. No reason to kill him now."

"I don't know, but we have a connection now, and a solid one."

"Do you mind if I just-can I wait outside?"

"Sure," Roy said, suddenly seeming to realize where they both were, and what she must have been feeling as she stood there surrounded by the tatters of her sister's life.

Erin managed to keep herself looking professional until she hit the door, and that was about all she could manage. What was wrong with her? What was wrong with Dad? Why would Becca stay in a place like that? It looked lifeless, the whole place. Erin liked small places. She liked her apartment, which was only half the size of the house she just walked out of, and no garage.

But that place looked less like a happy home than it did a tomb, where her father waited to die and her sister hadn't been able to touch, not in ten years.

She sucked in a breath. This was a mistake. She shouldn't have come here. It was only upsetting her. But she couldn't change where she was. Why had Roy brought her here? Why did he think she needed to see this? Was he trying to hurt her?

No, she thought. That didn't make sense. He wasn't that kind, not normally. There was something else at work here, but she couldn't begin to figure what it was. That was the worst part, was thinking that she couldn't be sure why any of this.

She had about caught her breath when Roy came out and sat down on the stoop beside her.