“Good.” Colin had been to the house many times before. Andriana and Jessie had been friends for as long as he’d known Jessie. He looked around, wondering where her ten-year-old son was as he walked across the living room.
He leaned down and gave Andriana a quick hug. Her tangle of red hair was all over the place. A thin red line of dried blood made a path down one side of her face, ending just past her earlobe.
“Where’s Dylan?”
“Thankfully,” she said, “he spent the night at a friend’s last night. He has no idea what happened, and I’d like to keep it that way.”
Colin pulled out a notebook. “Why don’t you start from the beginning, and tell me everything you remember.”
She nodded, then relayed her story: It was Saturday. She slept in until seven, then spent the cooler part of the morning doing some gardening in her backyard. She came back inside about ten or ten thirty and made herself an egg on toast. An hour later, she heard a loud crash that sounded as if it had come from upstairs. Thinking a picture had fallen from a wall, she took a look around upstairs but found nothing out of the ordinary. When she returned to the main floor, a man dressed in black from head to toe stood at the bottom of the stairs. She pivoted, tried to run, but he struck her over the head, gagged her, and dragged her to the dining room, where he used duct tape to secure her to a heavy wooden chair.
For the next thirty minutes, she heard the masked man rummaging through drawers and closets. After spending some time upstairs, he finally left. It had taken her twenty minutes to get the gag from her mouth and another three hours to escape. Bruises marked her arms, neck, and wrists. Understandably she was still visibly shaken.
“Did he ever speak to you?”
“Not one word.” She frowned. “I take that back. He cursed at me after I kicked him in the shin and struggled to get away.”
“Is anything missing?”
“He didn’t take any jewelry, which I found surprising since I have a few nice pieces. The contents of my purse were scattered across my bed, but nothing missing as far as I could tell, although I haven’t been able to find Jessie’s GoPro.”
He raised a questioning brow.
“The GoPro,” she repeated. “The one Jessie used to video Parker Koontz while she followed him.”
He nodded his understanding. Jessie had made a point of wearing the GoPro ever since the shooting incident three years ago. Colin looked over his shoulder at Ren. “Call the hospital and find out what’s going on with Parker Koontz?”
“I’m on it.” Ren pulled out his phone and walked out of earshot.
“So, how are you holding up?” Colin asked Andriana. “Do you need to see a doctor?”
“No. I need to clean up and be here when Dylan is dropped off. I’ll be fine.”
He rubbed his chin. “You should know that Jessie was attacked.”
“What happened? Is she okay?”
“She says it was a younger man. He pulled a knife on her, but she was lucky she had the dog with her.”
“What dog?”
“Long story, but I’m sure she’ll fill you in later. Nine stitches under her chin. She’ll be okay.”
“Thank goodness.”
Ren was back at his side. “Nothing has changed,” Ren said. “Koontz is in a coma, still critical. The doctors have given him a fifty-fifty chance of survival.”
“So, we know it wasn’t Koontz,” Andriana said. “But possibly someone connected to him? Why else would this guy have taken the GoPro?”
Jessie was attacked around five. Had the man with the knife attacked her after he’d left Andriana’s place? Seemed unlikely, since he would have been in a hurry to get away.
“What about hair color?”
“I saw black hair peeking out at the back of his neck.”
“Eye color?”
“Also dark.”
“About the video device,” he said. “Are you absolutely certain the camera is missing?”
“Positive. It was next to my computer. I was going to upload the video and watch it over the weekend.”
“The first time you noticed him was around eleven?”
“Somewhere between eleven and eleven thirty.”
“You said he was wearing black from head to toe. A black baseball cap?”
“No. It was a ski mask, pulled down to his neck, but it didn’t completely cover his hair.”
“How tall would you guess?”
“Six feet, at the very least.”
“If you don’t mind, tell me again what happened from the start.”
It was usually helpful in cases like this to have the victim repeat, blow-by-blow, what happened. Now that Andriana was calm, they might find that she’d inadvertently left something out.
As Andriana obliged, telling them everything from the beginning, Colin’s instincts told him that this incident has nothing to do with the Heartless Killer. His next thought was that Andriana’s attack was driven solely by someone’s desire to get their hands on the video. Why would anyone go to that much trouble unless they were afraid of what might be on the video? And if that was true, then it was likely connected to the Parker Koontz incident. Since the two events appeared to involve two different men, based on physical attributes, Colin suspected Jessie’s and Andriana’s attacks were not connected. The man with the knife never went through Jessie’s pockets, nor did he attempt to steal her bag. He wanted to harm her, maybe kill her. That thought not only left him fearful for her life but also pointed to something darker, something they had yet to uncover.
“I’ll make sure everything is secure before I leave,” Ren told him.
Andriana walked Colin to the door. “Call me if you think of anything else,” he told her.
“I will.”
THIRTY-TWO
Ben’s first stop after watching his oldest kid play soccer was John Hardcastle’s house off Gunn Road in Carmichael. John, a tech writer, had retired from the Tribune eleven months ago. It was his HTML skills, not stringing words together, that had landed him a job with his first tech publication back in the day. But along the way, John had fallen in love with journalism. Before he retired, he’d often entertained Ben with stories about how serious and socially inept Ben had been when he’d first come to work for the newspaper. Although Ben couldn’t say whether the stories were true or not, the two men had become fast friends after Ben’s accident. Although Ben tended to be an introvert, he honestly missed having John around.
Ben had to knock on the door quite a few times before he heard movement inside the house. The door came open. “Hey there, pal. Long time no see.”
“Mind if I come in?”
John scratched the salt-and-pepper scruff covering his chin before gesturing inside. “Come on. Make yourself at home.”
Ben followed him through the small living area, where piles of newspapers and tech publications were stacked high against one of the walls. On the TV screen was a grid-shaped maze, a giant game that had been paused. A remote rested on the recliner in front of the big-screen TV. When they reached the kitchen. John opened two cans of beer and handed him one. “So what brings you here on a Sunday, my day of rest?” he asked with a chuckle.
Ben took a swallow. It tasted better than he’d expected, soothing his parched throat. “I’m hoping you can help me with something.”
“What sort of something?”
“I’m investigating the disappearance of a woman who went missing ten years ago. There’s not a lot to go by, since she didn’t seem to have many friends. But there’s a yearbook that points to a woman named Juliette Farris. I was hoping you could unlock the universe to her social-media life.”
John frowned. “I’m offended.”
“Why?”
“That’s for babies. But come on,” he said with a wave of his hand toward the living room. “Let’s see what we can do.”
“Looks like you’ve been keeping busy,” Ben said after John grabbed his laptop and took a seat in his recliner.
“Don’t be a smart-ass. Most people want to travel when they retire, but not me. For thirty-five years I couldn’t wait to sit in my favorite chair and play games. Not just any game, either. Right now I’m playing The Witness. Took six years to develop at a cost of more than five million dollars. If I wanted to waste my time, I would go on because it would blow your mind, but enough about me.”