Colton's Covert Witness Read online

  Mary watched him with alert eyes as he took in the details from the 911 operator. A female caller had seen another woman shot in one of the alley entrances in downtown Grave Gulch. He shifted the phone back to Mary, instructing her to stay on the line as he and Brett headed out. The affirmation from the operator that an ambulance was en route rang in his ears.

  “It’ll be faster there on our own two feet,” Troy said as he headed for the exit. “But we need the cruiser.”

  He knew it was the best choice, especially if they needed to give chase. But the time it would take to get through the melee outside the precinct and into town would cost precious seconds a shooting victim didn’t have.

  Brett nodded. “Let’s go.”

  Troy ignored the protesters as they ran for their vehicle. He well knew the reality of how badly the woman shot in an alley needed them. And if the thought of an innocent person lying in a pool of blood set off an unpleasant string of images of his own mother, he’d just have to push them down.

  He and his sister had been much too young to have actually seen the evidence of Amanda Colton’s murder. It was only years later, as a GGPD rookie cop, that he’d had access to the crime scene photos. They were painful, but a confirmation that finally put to bed what had lived in his imagination since childhood. Even with that terrible reality, his mother’s sudden and violent death was a constant presence in his mind. It drove him to enter law enforcement, and he knew it did the same for all of his Colton family members in the field, as well. Sometimes bad things happened. And even worse, there were times when the bad person who did those things was never caught.

  The cop lived with the cautionary tale.

  The son lived with the painful reality that was his life.

  * * *

  Evangeline paced the sidewalk, still on the phone with the 911 dispatcher. The voice on the line was soothing and calm, but Evangeline felt neither. All she could do was stare down the mouth of the alley, imagining the dead body lying just beyond view.

  She’d suggested that she go down to check for a pulse but the dispatcher had remained adamant that the police were on their way. Evangeline should remain in place or, even better, seek shelter in a nearby shop. The operator had already scolded her for leaving the sea of people farther down the sidewalk and cautioned Evangeline against going anywhere near the crime scene. A terrible sense of cowardice filled her, even as she knew the reality of the situation and the logic in the dispatcher’s orders.

  The victim had taken a gunshot at close range and likely hadn’t survived, she knew. Add on that Evangeline had no medical training to help, and she had to face the bigger risk that the woman’s assailant was still there, trapped in the alley and waiting to make his move to escape.

  “Police are in range,” the other woman reassured her just as the sight of two men and a K-9 came into view.

  Evangeline had lived in Grave Gulch for most of her life and recognized one of the cops on sight. She’d known Detective Troy Colton for years, even though they’d only spoken a handful of times and then only in relation to cases Evangeline was prosecuting.

  But oh, goodness, the man was a looker.

  Tall and broad, he moved with purpose. He was fit and competent, his large frame as impressive for the solid, muscular build as the kind-hearted soul who lived inside. His eyes were a tawny, golden hazel that had the ability to actually weaken her knees and his skin was a warm brown.

  Yes, she’d always had a bit of a crush on Troy. But what were the odds he’d be the one to show up here in her moment of horror and need?

  “Police are on scene,” Evangeline relayed to the dispatcher. “I’m going to hang up now.”

  The operator seemed inclined to argue but Evangeline cut the connection before she could be persuaded otherwise. The adrenaline that had pumped so fiercely through her system hit another uptick as she waved on the men now running toward her. “There! Down the alley. Hurry, please!”

  “Stay here, ma’am,” a man she didn’t recognize ordered her as he and his dog raced down the alley.

  “Please stay here, Evangeline,” Troy said, no less urgently, even as he slowed. “Don’t follow us.”

  “The killer might still be down there.”

  “All the more reason for you to stay put.”

  Troy was already off, following the other cop, so that all she could do was holler at his back. “Be careful!”

  A quiet voice brought Evangeline back to the moment, even as her gaze still lingered on Troy’s retreating back. “Sweetie, are you all right?”

  She turned to find an older, kindly-looking woman. The stick holding her protest sign was dangling from her hand, and her eyes were full of concern. “I couldn’t help but overhear you mention a killer. What’s going on?”

  Although Evangeline saw nothing but support and help in the woman’s rheumy blue gaze, she eyed the sign warily. As an officer of the law, she believed deeply in the right to protest in peaceable assembly. As one of the objects of those protests, however, she found her inherently broadminded nature wavering.

  “Um, I needed some help.”

  “You said ‘killer.’”

  “It’s—” She broke off, struggling for the right words. “I thought I saw something. The police are investigating.”

  “Willie!” The older woman hollered to someone across the street, waving the man over with her free hand. “Get over here!”

  Whatever kindness Evangeline believed she’d seen in the woman was nowhere in evidence. Instead, she saw the obvious thrill of being in the thick of things coupled with an already heightened sense of purpose that had brought her into the streets in the first place.

  “Get Evan and Sally, too!” she added before the man had a chance to cross the street.

  The dispatcher’s words echoed around in her mind, warning her to keep her distance, while this person dragged more innocent, vulnerable people closer to the threat.

  “What are you doing?”

  “If a killer’s on the loose, you can be damn sure I want a front seat to his arrest.”

  Chapter 2

  Ember let out a series of hard, sharp barks as Troy crossed the last few feet into the alleyway. He stopped short at the T-shaped entrance; the sidewalk alley that fed into the broader area running behind the various shops and buildings was empty. With the precision honed over years of training, he lifted his service weapon, sweeping the area, only to find his initial assessment was correct.

  “No one’s here.” Troy gave the alley one additional sweep before dropping his gun.

  “Nope,” Brett said as he ordered Ember to his side, the two of them trotting back from the end of the alleyway that gave access into downtown.

  “But dispatch said a woman had been shot. There’s no one here. No body.” Troy reviewed the ground, quickly taking in the area that would have been visible from Evangeline’s position on the main street. “No blood.”

  His gaze roamed the alley again, even though he knew what he’d see. He’d lived in Grave Gulch his entire life and while he hadn’t spent that much time walking the town’s alleyways, he knew how they were structured. The long, thin corridors served the functional aspects of the town’s businesses, just wide enough for delivery trucks and garbage pickup to pass through.

  A killer could have escaped through one end of the alley or the other, but dragging a body through the area would still have left a mark. Not to mention that it would have captured the attention of people back out in the main walking areas of town. Only there was nothing. No shell casings, no blood. Not even a sign of a struggle in overturned trash cans or knocked-in recycling receptacles.

  “I don’t understand.” Brett moved close, Ember at his side. “The call was legitimate. And I realized we passed by her quick, but Evangeline looked scared out of her mind as she pointed us down the alley.”

  Troy had seen it
, too: the black eyes, even from a quick glance, that were obviously wide and terror-filled. The strong, straight pose that had seemed crumpled up on itself somehow. Defeated, almost.

  He’d known Evangeline Whittaker for quite a while now. She was strong, smart and tough as nails. Her reputation as a fair but tenacious member of the DA’s staff had taken a serious hit over the past few months. A situation he could appreciate since the GGPD’s had taken a hit, as well. But fair or not, their citizens had a right to be upset.

  And Evangeline’s actions in the courtroom sat squarely in the midst of their unhappiness.

  Was it possible this was some sort of stunt? A way to drum up sympathy and to take the heat off the bad press directed her way?

  As a trained detective, Troy knew he had to consider all the angles. Yet even as he did consider the very real possibility Evangeline had made the entire thing up—a situation only corroborated by the lack of evidence and indication that anything had even happened—something in him fought the suggestion. Hadn’t he learned that lesson the hard way? Randall Bowe had tampered with evidence, ensuring things weren’t what they appeared on the surface.

  Recent events aside, he’d also spent years observing that she was incredibly good at her job. A role that, if done right, required honesty, thoroughness and overall decency. He’d always been impressed by her, on the occasions where he was part of a case she was prosecuting.

  And she’s gorgeous.

  That lone thought whispered in, hardly subtle and completely inappropriate for the moment. Yet even as he couldn’t deny the images of her that always sprang to mind when he heard mention of her, Troy pushed them aside. Especially when he considered the scared woman, shuttered behind a large floppy hat and big sunglasses, that he’d spoken to on the sidewalk.

  The long waterfall of dark hair he normally pictured, along with the eyes that were the color of her hair and the firm cut of her cheekbones had no place in this situation.

  Nor did they have any bearing on her possible guilt or innocence.

  Which meant it was time to talk to her and find out what was going on.

  Brett had already started for the alley exit with Ember, and Troy turned to follow.

  Which made Brett’s heavy shout, along with Ember’s corresponding bark, deep and angry, that much more jarring.

  Especially when his fellow detective and his K-9 partner took off at a run, straight for Evangeline.

  * * *

  The crowd pressed in around her. The anger Evangeline had only heard from a distance earlier as she’d observed the protesting residents had an entirely different quality as it hemmed her in from all sides. Snippets of fuming remarks and heated utterances grew louder and louder, the frustrated citizens’ anger reigniting at the chance to focus on a new object.

  No longer a person, she thought frantically. She was increasingly not a person to them, but rather, a target for all that ire and fear.

  That’s the one from the DA’s office that put a killer on the streets.

  I thought she was fired.

  What right does she have to stand out here talking about killers when she’s the reason Len Davison’s on the loose?

  Over and over, the remarks flew, picking up steam along with the head nods and the angry faces and the stifling press of bodies.

  She hadn’t told the older woman what she was waiting for or why she’d mentioned a killer to the police, but the crowd had made up a story of their own. That and the continuing fear, coursing through all of Grave Gulch, that a serial killer was on the loose.

  “Excuse me! Break it up!” An authoritative voice rose up over the comments of the citizenry.

  That voice was joined by a second, ordering everyone to move on and disperse.

  The whirling blur of humanity slowly stood down, the individuals’ movements too sluggish for Evangeline’s taste. But even in the lingering panic, she couldn’t deny that they were moving along. As her panic receded, she could make out faces again. Some she recognized, some she didn’t, but the whirling rush of fear had stopped spinning quite so quickly.

  “Evangeline. I mean, Ms. Whittaker...” Troy Colton started in. “We’d like to talk to you.”

  “Did you find her? Is she okay? Did you find the man who shot her?”

  “Shot who?”

  The other man she didn’t recognize posed the question and it only managed to re-spike her waning reserves of adrenaline yet again. “The woman! The one I called nine-one-one for!”

  “There’s no woman, Ms. Whittaker.”

  She whirled to look at Troy, the face she’d so recently thought sexy and competent now set in hard lines. “What do you mean, there’s no woman? I saw it. A man and woman were fighting. Right there at the end of that alley.” Her hand flung out toward the entranceway between the two buildings. “He shot her. I saw the spread of blood all over her white shirt myself.”

  A hard shaking settled in her bones, rattling her body as the adrenaline faded, leaving nothing behind, not even the reserves of strength she’d been subsisting on for the past few weeks. “I saw it.”

  Troy’s gaze hadn’t left her face and she saw the pity that shifted his mouth from grim to something far worse. Doubt.

  “There’s no one there?”

  He glanced at the crowd that still surrounded them. The protesters had moved back to give them room, but they hadn’t left the area. And they were all within earshot of everything taking place.

  “Why don’t you come with us? We’ll take your statement and try to figure out what’s going on.”

  What was going on?

  And why did she suddenly feel as if the world had fallen away beneath her feet?

  * * *

  Mary had radioed for additional backup and the two officers on duty who’d taken her call helped disperse the rest of the crowd. Another team was sent to scout the entire downtown area, checking for anyone on the run or bearing any resemblance to a beefy man in a hat.

  Troy commandeered use of the police vehicle while the pair working the crowd stayed to make sure everyone went on their way, promising to send someone back for them. The other cops on duty only nodded, even as they assured him that they could walk, based on their proximity to the precinct.

  Brett and Ember took the cruiser they’d driven over from the precinct to cover off the area around the alley and corresponding routes that fanned out from there. So it was only a matter of settling Evangeline in the back and heading to the GGPD.

  He’d been deliberate and careful in his movements and she was obviously uncuffed, but it still struck him that having to sit in the back of a police cruiser might make her feel like a prisoner. She remained quiet on the quick ride, and every time he glanced at her through the rearview mirror her face remained wan and pale, her wide eyes determinedly focused on the still above-average-size crowd out and about downtown Grave Gulch on a Sunday night.

  Troy considered what he knew about her, beyond his knowledge of her prowess in the courtroom.

  She had been a part of the Grave Gulch County DA’s office for a number of years, her case record impeccable up until the issue with the town serial killer, Len Davison.

  Davison’s actions had caught them all off guard, his escalation a situation the GGPD was trying desperately to manage. The entire department had gathered as much information as possible and were all working around the clock to catch the man, but his methods so far had been unpredictable.

  So had his connections.

  What their chief, Melissa Colton, had originally assumed was mere sloppiness coming out of the CSI department had taken a dark turn earlier in the year. Their chief forensic scientist, Randall Bowe—responsible for working some of the most challenging cases the GGPD managed—had been falsifying evidence. Or flat-out not collecting it.

  Troy had seen that truth himself when he worked with Melissa to comb through
Bowe’s files. Or what little they could get their hands on, seeing as Bowe had fled with his hard drive and hard copies of his work back in January. The GGPD’s tech guru, Ellie Bloomberg, had managed to recover quite a bit and it all supported what they’d already come to suspect: Bowe had been mishandling and destroying evidence.

  They’d spent the ensuing months combing through all of Bowe’s cases, searching for inconsistencies and falsehoods. All while going after a serial killer, as well as dealing with the normal amount of crime in Grave Gulch. His cousin Jillian, a junior member of the CSI team and Bowe’s scapegoat prior to his skipping town, had been putting in serious overtime, trying to find whatever she could in the files. She’d done an amazing job working through the evidence, but the department still had a lot of holes.

  Holes, Troy thought as he walked Evangeline into an empty conference room, holes that had caused problems for the DA’s office, too. Belief in Bowe’s evidence had caught all the prosecutors short and had resulted in several mishandled cases, including Len Davison’s.

  And it was that mishandling that put a serial killer on the streets. A fact she would be well aware of and, likely, feel some responsibility for.

  “Can I get you anything, Ms. Whittaker?”

  “It’s Evangeline, Troy. We know each other. And no, thank you. I’m okay.”

  Troy recognized the shock and fear that still mixed beneath her gaze. He walked over to the small fridge in the corner of the conference room and snagged two bottles of water despite her polite decline. “Why don’t you have some water anyway.”

  She accepted the bottle with a quiet thank-you before her gaze tripped around the room. It was covered with notes, maps of Len Davison sightings and crime scene photos. Concern for her rode low in his gut. “I’m sorry you have to see these things.”

  “No, it’s fine. And they’re all images I’ve seen already.”

  “I guess you would have.”

  Although the DA’s office had to request crime scene photographs through normal legal channels, it wasn’t a surprise that she had seen the images of Davison’s victims.