The Coworker: The First Nate Castle Read online

  The

  Coworker

  by

  VERNON RUSH

  Copyright © 2014 Vernon Rush

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13: 978-1505531329

  ISBN-10: 1505531322

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. Vernon Rush

  Prologue

  Outside the front windows of the Weston-Hale building—home to Weston & Hale, Attorneys at Law—the night rain was falling in slanted sheets on a nearly empty parking lot. Yvonne Winters stood just inside the doors. As she huddled there in the patchy moonlight, he actually felt a pang of cold sympathy.

  He watched her step outside the large glass doors of the building. She saw his hand waving from afar and approached the car. It was so familiar. She got inside and they drove off.

  He noted how the sounds of crackling thunder made her quiver.

  “Thanks for giving me a ride,” Yvonne said.

  “No problem” he said. He drove down the dark rainy road, casting an occasional glance at her in his strange way.

  ***

  “What do you think I want from you?” he asked, his tone a mixture of condescension and pity. The poor fool. How could she have known?

  She stared at him. The makeup around her eyes had been smeared by the rain, and the effect was sad and freakish, like she was a clown at the world’s most dismal circus. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “I don’t know.”

  Of course you don’t. Satisfied, he opened his door and stepped out into the soggy night. His shoes squelched in the mud. That was fine—just another excuse to get rid of them in the morning.

  He had a kitchen knife in his back pocket. He told her if she screamed he would cut her pretty little throat. He took his time strolling around to her side of the sedan, even though the rain was still soaking through his clothes and skin. When he pulled open her door, she flinched. He made a motion with his hand. “Get out, please.”

  “You don’t have to do this,” she told him. But she did as he requested, and he closed the vehicle behind her.

  “Ladies first,” he said.

  Reluctantly, clearly unwilling to risk inciting his anger, she walked the four steps around to the trunk as he directed her. He disengaged the lock and lifted it open. Together, they gazed down at the stained, bloody knife and the other contents. He leaned down and picked up the length of thick, industrial chain, wrapping it idly around his knuckles.

  At first, Yvonne Winters was mute with horror. Then she said, “Oh, my God.”

  And that was when he turned around and punched her in the mouth.

  ***

  The process of murder, he had found, seemed to defy all known notions about the passage of time. He knew that ligature strangulation took between three and five minutes to cause brain death, but as he looped the heavy iron links around Yvonne Winters’s neck and pulled on the loose end, the moments ran together in an endless stream. Although he had specifically made sure she wouldn’t be able to fight (he was not a large man who could afford to take those kinds of risks), her eyes did open a little under the pressure of the chain. Acting on survival reflex alone, her listless hands clutched weakly at his forearms. He didn’t worry. Nothing would change. He watched the way her lips moved, the way her throat gave beneath his force. Eventually, her fingers loosened and fell to rest in the watery grass, their manicured tips now smeared with dirt. The blue eyes slid out of focus and rolled up into the back of her head. There was a bluish tinge around her mouth.

  He held her down for a minute longer, just to make sure. Other than the blood in her teeth and around her nose, she looked as if she could really just be sleeping. What a strange and lovely thing death is, he thought, bending down to heft the chain over his shoulder. Tomorrow, after a good night’s rest, he would take it to the bridge over the river and lose it to the swirling waters, where it would never be found. The body, on the other hand . . .

  He left Yvonne Winters right where she had been slain, reposing in a pool of murky rainwater, her hair fanned out around her head. Soon, he was sure, some unsuspecting soul would doubtlessly stumble upon the surprise of a lifetime.

  Upon regaining the quiet residential street, the man paused to glance in his rearview mirror at the placid sea of grass at his back. Soon. But not too soon.

  In a small town like Frederick, when murders happened, the chances were great

  you knew the person who did it. It might not be someone you hung with, but you

  could have passed him or her during the course of your stay in that town.

  CHAPTER 1

  Step 1. Just Stop Drinking

  Daria McCarroll was Nate Castle's best

  friend. When no one else would listen to what he had to say—at least not these days, when he needed the company—he knew where to find her: Right by his side, with a pocket full of patience. Not that he was interested, for his devotion lay with the advancing stages of alcoholism and if it didn’t have to do with a drink, Nate really couldn’t be bothered. But as superficialities went, though he adored her somewhere in his heart, Daria wasn’t half bad to look at. Nate wasn’t going to act on that observation in any way; her looks were a boon to his waning self-esteem. Especially when she joined him at the bar. He liked it that she soaked up his every word. With just about everyone else he interacted with while he was worshipping the goddess in the bottle, it was better he kept his mouth shut.

  Daria sauntered up to him, burdened by satchels: her purse du jour and her ever-present messenger bag. Nate was pretty sure she never cracked that bag once. Despite her impeccable dress—Daria always sported a sweet little, albeit tastefully professional, outfit—he suspected she was a clutter bug. The messenger bag to him was a tell. He accepted that she just like to haul stuff around. As always, she was carrying with her a huge smile.

  "What are you up to?—and don’t tell me 5'6." He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. He’d spent his last bit of cash on an afternoon drinking at Jerry's, so no contact lens solution.

  Daria climbed up the bar stool and situated her bags. She looked like a homeless woman with an academic bent. She had boisterous, billowing golden hair, and even in the progressive, artsy, cozy little town in which they dwelled and toiled, her hair flagged a contrast to his light black skin. He was Dr. Nate Castle, revered professor at the local community college and graduate cum laude from the University of Maryland with dual undergraduate degrees in Philosophy and a doctorate in Forensic Psychology. He was the go-to guy statewide as a consultant on crimes—but still, to some, he was just a black guy sitting next to a white chick at the end of the day. It didn’t help him much that his love affair with drinking had rekindled itself. Despite being an invaluable member of society, so many things made him a dispensable one.

  "Never you mind that. I've got news," Daria chirped.

  His friendship with this woman was so comfortable that she could droop and drape over the bar in ways that other guys would think she was coming on to them; not him. Though Daria was good looking woman, he had never known her to really date.

  He craned his neck to bridge their height difference to make eye contact with her. Daria was tall for a woman but he was much taller. "And what news would that be?"

  "They found a dead girl!" Daria beamed and waited for his reaction.

  A curse of nausea twisted through his
gut. He was certain it was alcoholism but he considered for a moment it might be regret for having such a morbid fascination with unsolved crime. "Ok, Daria, in what way is she dead? Is she Sussex Court dead? Mike Cobbsmith dead? Which crime are we talking about?"

  "We're talking a young beautiful associate at Weston & Hale. So she's Coworker Murders dead," Daria effused.

  Those words were enough to sober him up. That he could not put the pieces of that one together made him feel ultra-responsible. He felt he’d had it when the murders stopped. Mike Cobbsmith, a lawn worker, already had a series of unrelated murders attributed to him. He’d been arrested for mulching his yard with victims’ body parts processed by an industrial chipper. A cop at Sunday dinner, on a stroll with his elderly dad, had made the discovery of a human pinky on the lawn. Detectives felt Cobbsmith had placed it there to see if anyone noticed. It was what Nate referred to as "showing" himself: that audacious move some serial offenders liked to make of being hidden in plain sight. They sort of toyed with those around them to make the public feel really stupid for having been right next to the obvious all along. Nate pegged Cobbsmith for the Coworker Murders as well, because Cobbsmith also happened to have lawn maintenance detail at venues connected to each of the victims. As soon as Cobbsmith was in custody, the Coworker Murders also stopped.

  Apparently, until now. Five short years later. The dilemma was: Cobbsmith was still locked up. He officially was removed from the short list of suspects.

  "Where was I?" Nate asked rhetorically. In the bottom of a glass, he thought to himself. He felt such shame, for when he checked his watch it was already six. He had been in the bar seven hours. He’d missed his lecture.

  "Oh, don’t beat yourself up," Daria said, always there with the co-dependent spin. "The quarter is almost over. A couple of measly weeks away. And that's what the internet's for. They can go review on line."

  He grinned at her wanly, appreciative for the bright side. "Oh, that made me feel much better. My brilliance in competition with net surfing."

  As he filtered the news of a possible new victim in what was a dormant serial crime, he contemplated the dregs of the glass his fingers touched and lost his thirst. He dreaded detox but his mind was already there—making mental bullet points of the steps he would have to take to be fit to investigate this latest murder. He had to be ready when the Frederick Police Department called. And they would call. They always did.

  "Spill it," he said. No matter how many murders he worked, he braced himself for the gory details. Thankfully—if there was an upside to the robbery of human life—though it was difficult to comprehend the fact of a dead body, the victims had not met with bloody ends.

  "Her name was Yvonne Winters," Daria began, making a game of tossing peanuts into her mouth.

  "Johnny and Edgar's baby sister," he muttered cynically as he took a healthy sip of the water chaser, the ice of which was but remnant flotsam. The taste of it jarred him. It had no kick. I better get used to it, he told himself.

  Daria paused and gave him a look. "That is not even funny," she scolded. "Anyway, she was a first year associate at Weston & Hale, doing nuts and bolts law. She got it on the last rainy night. They found her car in the parking lot, disabled."

  He interjected. "Disabled?" he said. "You mean it wouldn’t start?" His mind immediately formulated an image of what Yvonne Winters's car might look like, abandoned and bereft of its owner. There was something about the possessions of the deceased that seemed so lonesome, so incomplete. The tools of life, like shelter, clothing, and transportation became clutter, just like that.

  "No, I mean it was tampered with. Someone crawled under the car and cut the power supply to the starter, disconnected the cables, and waited." Daria fiddled with her phone.

  Hmm, he thought. He didn’t question how she knew these things. Daria was interwoven with the fabric of Frederick. Whether she got it from the admin at the police station or a law firm, she always seemed to have accurate information on the murders they worked on. He found her indispensable while he worked to solve the seemingly unsolvable crimes in what should be a safe, quaint little jewel in Maryland and surrounding areas. He knew that whatever information she gave him would soon be, or already was, on the news broadcast on the TV in the bar, which was where he did most of his television watching.

  "And on a rainy night, I am guessing not much is available in the way of forensics," said Daria. "April Showers mean late night investigative hours." She paused, waiting for some validation of her cleverness.

  He regarded her with amused incredulity. The mention of a case caused his mind to feel as though it was already clearing of the booze. He didn’t kid himself; he was beyond legally smashed. "Cute, but you shame me. We don’t call these Random Stranger murders, do we? We call them Coworker Murders. Why?" He asked these questions to her in the same way he would ask a lecture hall full of students. He believed in the old fashioned summoning of facts to keep the focus on the correct and narrow.

  "Because someone who knew the victims through work," Daria replied, as though reciting a drill. "This is not a random/stranger murder."

  "That's right." He smiled. "Our guy knew the victim. He knew her car enough to formulate a plan of sabotage and to make her vulnerable. But what does that mean to you and me?"

  "That we get most of our dope on the crime through the relationship element of the victim’s life. And FYI, she drove a fifteen-year-old Honda. That's fairly basic," she replied. Nate gave her an "oh really" look. "I am just saying, we keep saying 'him' as though only guys have know

  "Where was she found?" he asked, filing away each piece of information intently.

  "In a grassy field just off of 270. With the weather, yes, there were tire tracks. But nothing that will tell on our guy. Who, by the way, can’t be Mike the Lawnmower because he's locked up for the other ones. And so, that probably means the ones we thought were Cobbsmith before were probably not at all."

  "Duly noted," he said. "Duly noted."

  Serial offenders were in two camps, as he saw it: Those who liked to talk about their crimes and those who didn’t. The talkers liked to relive the thrill of their conquests and the non-talkers kept it to themselves. They only seem to speak up where there was an instance of not getting credit for their crime. At one time, when he and the Frederick PD had investigations of what turned out to be two distinct serial killer crime sprees, Cobbsmith, the Lawnmower Killer, had flipped out when one of his kills had been attributed to the Coworker crimes. Cobbsmith was clear: His crimes were to be fully attributed to him and no one else. In return, he would cop to all crimes he'd actually committed and no more.

  Nate made a face.

  Daria asked, "What's wrong?"

  He suppressed a laugh, which was the first positive emotion he felt in quite some time. "I'm going to have to start eating actual real food and stop drinking." He looked at her. He knew Daria knew what he meant. He would have to detox. After Cobbsmith had gone to prison and the murders had stopped, Nate had slipped back into his routine of teaching at the school, the same trite curricula over and over again: Psych, Hist, and Phil 101 and 201. He was lucky to have a full load, but because of the red tape of getting course syllabi approved, he never changed up and he could teach the classes with his eyes shut. Well, close enough; he was half in the bag when he delivered his lectures, or as with today, at Jerry's getting polluted. Now, with the resolution of a new murder afoot, he had to straighten up. It was a long, drawn-out, often painful process. Sometimes it required medical attention and sometimes it did not. It probably always required medical attention; Nate just didn’t always seek it.

  Daria's face softened with sympathy. She was most definitely Nate Castle's friend. "Let me know what I can do for you," she said.

  "Can you buy me a hamburger? I will likely throw it back up, but a journey of a thousand steps begins with a single puke. And I am flat broke," he said, both excited and filled with dread. It was a never his intention to actually stay sober. It
was just his goal to be sober enough to do justice to his investigation. His students didn’t require the same consideration. The courses he taught didn’t have any weight at the university level. The students would have to take upper division level courses for them to count so it didn't really matter. At least not how he saw it—though, he conceded, as a practicing alcoholic, his thinking was more than a little skewed.

  "Yes, I would happily buy you a burger. One for both of us," Daria answered. "Step one, move away from the bar."

  He smiled. He knew the nature of their relationship was that she was a born caretaker and he was always a hopeless mess. Daria had alcoholism in her family and so he was aware that this sick aspect of their interaction was oddly therapeutic for her, as well as very convenient for him.

  They took their conversation to a booth in the dining area, slowly because Nate was very drunk, even drunker when he stood up. One false move, as a drunk big guy, and he would topple over the tables at Jerry's.

  CHAPTER 2

  Diaphoresis of Detox

  If it weren't for Yvonne Winters, Nate Castle would probably be heading to work that morning, drunk from the night before. He had a small debt to pay to each victim whose murder he worked, for the brief bouts of sobriety they inspired. He managed to absorb some internet news about Winters's murder. The pictures. The details of Winters's victimology. Just like Daria mentioned, Winters was a first year associate at the most established law firm in Frederick. She had worked there previously as a summer associate. He didn't need news copy to see that Winters had been an attractive young woman. Though Weston & Hale was not the firm where the other two victims in the Coworker Murders had been employed, the fact that each murdered woman was notably good-looking spoke to consistency. The killer either idolized them or coveted them. Either way, their looks represented something of the killer's values. Reports didn't say anything about Winters's personal life outside of where she worked, so Nate would have to snoop to find out whether Winters was from a working class family or not, like the first two. Pretty though she was, there was something about the images of Winters that sparked his intuition she was not a blueblood. So the facts of her upbringing would be a confirmation of what he already believed.