Particles of Murder (A Shadow of Death Romantic Suspense Series Book 1) (18 page)

Three months passed by with Andre giving the police minimal information that would never end in a conviction. Detective Stolz, who was working on the case, found out Andre and I were seeing each other when she went searching through his texts to make sure he wasn’t double-crossing us. She told me to break it off. I didn’t. I had romanticized this idea that we could get through anything.

Nearly a month later, the truth came out. It wasn’t just the man attacking me that Andre had set up. He knew the cameras were on him when he was beating the policeman. He knew he could get a deal with the police if he pretended to be more concerned about himself than the Blackman organization. It was a plan he and Tom Blackman concocted one night—give some information to the police that’s half true, half false in order to make it believable, but still lead them in the wrong direction. Keep tabs on how close the police are getting. Get close to one of the forensic scientists because he or she will be the one who finds the evidence to convict Tom Blackman.

Andre confessed this all to me one night after I told him about my sister. Betrayal isn’t even a strong enough word. He told me he would go tell the police if it would make me feel better, but nothing would make me feel better.

After I kicked him out of my apartment, he told Detective Stolz everything. He was arrested. I don’t know much about what happened, but I can only assume they didn’t charge him more harshly because they thought they might need him later, maybe they believed he was truly repentant, or they didn’t have the evidence to convict him of anything worse. I don’t know. I didn’t pay attention to the news for months. I did hear through the police grapevine that he had been stabbed while in prison on the left side of his chest, causing him problems with the muscle in that area, so, in some ways, he paid his dues.

But now he’s dead. He died trying to make up for his sins against me and I never once told him that I forgave him. And I never told him I loved him back after he got out of prison.

And, God, I loved him so much.

* * *

T
he park is
ten minutes away from campus. It’s not awe-inspiring and breathtaking nature like I usually imagine parks to be. Even now, when all of the leaves have fallen off except for a few procrastinators, the tree branches cast an eternal sense of dusk over the park. Nobody comes here with good intentions. As I step into the darkness, I know sunlight is just one step back, but the shadows in the woods seem to have their grasp on me and, honestly, I like it.

I continue to walk through the park, my eyes constantly moving, waiting for the inevitable attack from the Big Bad Wolf. But I’m not Little Red Riding Hood. I’m not on my way to my grandmother’s house with a basket of treats and I certainly won’t wait for a lumberjack to come save me. This will be over very quickly. I have lost too much to dwell on pity, motives, or humanity. The Big Bad Wolf has spent too much time running free and it’s about time that he learned what happens to nuisance animals.

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

I spin around. Alex is learning against a tree a few feet ahead of me. He hadn’t been there a second ago. He was hiding in plain sight, just like he always has been.

“I told you. It wasn’t me,” he continues.

“How else could he have been murdered in your secret apartment?” I ask, unable to even say Andre’s name. Alex isn’t good enough to hear it. I reach behind me, grabbing the gun in the holster pressed against the small of my back.

He shrugs. “I have no idea. He was alive, accusing me of murdering those students, and then he was dead. I got the fuck out of there because I knew what everyone was going to think.”

“Your field of study is chemistry,” I say. “You purposely hurt your arm to hide the scratches from breaking into Iris’s apartment.”

His eyebrows lift. “Is that what you’ve figured out? All of it?”

“All of it?” I ask. “What more is there?”

He smiles, relaxing. “Good. Now, if you’re going to pull that gun out, I’d suggest you do it. Have you ever killed a person? It’s not as easy as you would think. That rage will feed your uncivilized side, that animal side of you to kill me, but you’ve been raised in society to see murder as an unforgivable sin. It won’t be as easy to pull that trigger as you think it will be, no matter how justified you think you are.”

I pull the gun out. Before I can aim it at him, he grabs the barrel. My fingers twist around the trigger guard as he tries to pull it out of my grasp. I try to pull the trigger to at least scare him, but only the tip of my finger is touching it anymore. As he tries to bend my wrist back, I grab his throat. I squeeze.

Using my wrist as a way to balance himself, he swings his leg up and kicks me in the ribs. My grip loosens and I stumble back. He takes hold of the gun.

“Thank you,” he says, pointing the gun at me. “I can’t legally own a gun, though, really—a short stint in a mental institution—but I’d rather use poison anyway. The noise, the fact that you have to rely on mechanics you can’t see, the whole having to take the time to aim, and, of course, the weapon can be turned against you. You should have looked more into my past before you brought a gun. I’ve completed multiple martial arts classes. Perhaps you should have tried some.”

“Perhaps,” I relent. “And perhaps your mother and father should have hugged you a bit more.”

“That is so classic,” he says. “My parents were saints. Don’t point your finger at them. This has nothing to do with them.”

He lowers the gun.

“Is there any way I can convince you to kill yourself?” he asks. “Because if I kill you like this, right now, people are going to look that much harder for me and…well, you don’t need to know the other part. See, with poison, they can still have that little belief that those deaths are natural or accidental, but a bullet is an obvious murder. It really is a terrible weapon of choice.”

“If you’re going to kill me, just do it,” I say. “I’m not going to do anything for you.”

“Well, then, it’s a good thing I brought back-up,” he says. He pulls a rubber glove out of his left pocket, his right hand still holding the gun. I could tackle him, but if he’s truly experienced in martial arts, it would be pointless. He puts the gun next to his feet and pulls the rubber glove on. It would be so easy to grab it, but I’d have to be able to get a shot off before he could take it back from me and there’s simply no way I could do it. He takes a pen that had been in his left pocket, barely peeking out.

He holds it out to me. I stare at it.

“Take it,” he says.

“That’s how you did it,” I say, staring at the pen. “Victoria was in John’s office, Everett was in class, Iris was working at her play. They all would have used pens at some point. That’s why you broke into Iris’ apartment. You needed to get your hands on one of her pens.”

“Actually, I just placed a new pen on her backpack,” he says. “I couldn’t get close enough to her to slip it into any of her things, but no one notices if a random new pen shows up and it looks generic. Victoria and Everett were easy. I put one in Victoria’s purse while she was visiting her lover boy. When Everett was snorting his drugs, I slipped one in his backpack. It’s so easy. And now it’s your turn.”

“But why?” I ask. “What did any of those people do to you? Why are they all connected to John?”

He smirks. “I’ll die before I tell you.”

“Why? You already plan to kill me,” I say. “And what about that note you shoved in my mouth? What was that about?”

Confusion clouds his face for a second before he smiles again. “It’s all part of the game, dear.”

He holds the pen out to me.

“You either take the pen or I shoot you,” he says. “I highly endorse the poison. It’s painless—I couldn’t have people screaming or vomiting as they died, so it’s just like falling asleep. It’s just more permanent.”

I will become just like my sister and Andre: another dead body, another mystery that will be buried under the events of everyday life.

But if I die, their memories will die with me. Especially Andre, whose only friends were criminals who used him.

I lunge forward, knocking the pen out of Alex’s hand as I tackle him. As we both land on the ground, I can feel him trying to pull the gun in between us. It begins to dig into my stomach and I can feel my breathing slow down. It can’t end like this.

The sound of brakes screeching in the parking lot breaks through the silence. Alex jerks at the sound, looking to his right toward the sirens. I grab his arm with the gun, dragging his arm out from between us. I slam his wrist against the ground. He hits it hard enough against the roots of a tree that he drops the gun. I scramble to grab it, but Alex is faster. He bolts in the opposite direction of where the sirens are coming from. I wish I had my gun, but he’s weaving through the trees. I wouldn’t be able to get a good shot, anyway.

I walk toward the parking lot. I barely take three steps before I see Detective Stolz running toward me. She raises her arms in a confused gesture.

We stop in front of each other.

“What’s going on?” she asks. “Why are you here?”

“I’d ask you the same thing,” I say.

“Well, you sounded like you were going to do something stupid when I talked to you on the phone, so I had Alex's and your cell phone tracked,” she says. “His phone must be turned off, but we found yours. It said you were heading here, so I came as fast as I could. So, it’s your turn now: what are you doing here?”

Well, considering the fact that she was tracking my phone, it wouldn’t be that hard for her to find out what texts I received either.

“A college student named Alex told me to come down here, telling me he wasn’t the killer, but he knew who had killed those three college students.”

I tell her everything, repeating several parts as she’s slightly annoyed that I refused to bring back-up. Her eyes narrow as I bring up the gun.

“Did you come here, intending to kill him?” she asks.

“I needed to be able to defend myself,” I lie.

“How did that work out for you?”

“I guess I need to work on my wrist strength,” I say, shrugging.

“And now he has your gun,” she says.

“What does it matter?” I ask. “He made it clear that he doesn’t like to use guns and he has his own way to kill that doesn’t leave a trace on anyone.”

“I need to get a BOLO out on him.” She begins walking back toward her car. “Go back home. Stay there. If you don’t stay put this time, I’ll have you arrested for obstruction of justice. I know you’re grieving, but I can’t deal with you running straight into danger.”

“Aw, does that mean you actually care about me?” I ask.

“It means that I hate going to tech to track down your phone,” she says. “Go home. Drink. Sleep. Forget about Alex.”

* * *

“
I
s
that what you’ve figured out? All of it?”

“All of it? What more is there?”

What more is there?

But he’s right: I didn’t figure it all out. Back in my apartment, I still can’t understand why he would be killing John’s students—his favorite ones—or why he would steal the recommendation letters. As far as I know, he never met John until Victoria had already been killed.

What was his motive?

There’s the chance he could have just been insane, but I can’t imagine that someone would be so crazy to go out of their way to target John’s favorite students.

I cradle my head in my hands. I know all these thoughts are just my mind’s way of distracting me from the fact that Andre is dead and I’m indirectly responsible. I’ve heard people going down this route, destroying themselves over a murder they feel like they could have prevented, and I know I need to confront this before it devours me, but it already has its teeth in me and all I can feel is anger.

I pace around my apartment, trying to recall good memories I had with Andre. I pick up a pen and my pad of paper. I try to write. I end up doodling my gun as no words come to me. I can remember Andre’s childlike smile and how he’d practically bounce on the balls of his feet when he was happy, but I can’t put that into words. He gave everything up for me, and I just turned him away.