Colton Copycat Killer Read online

  Escape from this prison had virtually never happened. Even if an escape had been successful, there was absolutely nothing to escape to.

  There was nothing for miles and miles but more miles and miles. There was no cover, nowhere to hide. Any vehicle, coming or going, could be seen for miles in either direction. There were no woods to run to, no cover of any sort to hide behind or in. And in the summer, the sun made the exposure utterly intolerable.

  In comparison, the prison itself was almost a welcome resort. It was, in essence, a very haven against the elements and a much less than benevolent Mother Nature.

  The car, Zoe suddenly realized, had stopped moving. Lost in her observations, she hadn’t noticed Sam had pulled into the visitors’ parking area.

  She’d only managed to unbuckle her seat belt when he came around to open her door.

  “This is only going to work if you don’t talk,” he told her.

  She nodded in response.

  He took her silence as a sign of agreement. Sam’s mouth curved ever so slightly in approval. He had no idea just how sexy that made him look to her. “Good.”

  Taking hold of her arm, he squared his shoulders and then ushered her with him as he walked up to the next guard.

  It was time, Sam told himself, to meet the devil.

  Chapter 9

  Matthew Colton was already seated at the small, scarred table in the round communal room where inmates were allowed to meet with visitors on a limited, supervised basis during the prison’s visiting hours.

  This was not one of those occasions.

  But exceptions had been made because Detective Sam Colton was a law enforcement agent and as such, was considered to be one of them. That entitled him, in certain unusual instances, extra courtesies. In this particular case, the exception had been made for privacy’s sake. Aside from the prison guard, Matthew was the only other person in the room when Sam and Zoe entered.

  As Sam approached the white-haired man, he exercised strict control not to show his initial surprise at what he saw. Matthew looked far older than his years. Not only that, but he looked ill, his face appearing grayer than his prisoner uniform. His once healthy pallor was now almost pasty, outward evidence of the fatal disease he was battling and had been battling, unsuccessfully, for a number of months now.

  The prognosis, from what Sam had heard, was definitely not good.

  The news of Matthew’s cancer, when he had first heard it, had left him cold. As far as Sam was concerned, he’d been orphaned twenty years ago. The man he had come to see was merely an empty shell, the leftovers of a once evil, evil man who had regarded death as an equal partner in the life he had chosen to live.

  Intense, probing, eerily blue eyes all but hidden beneath squinting lids studied him as he came forward. Except for their color, they reminded Sam of the eyes of a rattlesnake he’d once come across.

  In his opinion, the rattlesnake had seemed friendlier—and more trustworthy.

  “What’s the matter, boy?” Matthew challenged bluntly, his voice scraping the air like gravel hitting against textured glass and cascading down. “Something wrong with what you see?”

  Sam sat down opposite his father, aware that Zoe had silently followed suit.

  The Matthew Colton that had haunted his dreams as a child had been a large, hulking man. This man was nowhere near that man’s size.

  “Funny,” Sam said when he finally spoke, “I remember you bigger.”

  The once broad shoulders, now slumped beneath the weight of age and the cancer that was relentlessly eating away at him, rose and fell with an indifferent carelessness.

  “Funny, I remember you smaller,” Mathew retorted as he shrugged again. “We all live with our own perspectives.” Eyes that now perpetually squinted at the commonplace world that was his reality took slow measure of the young woman sitting ramrod-straight beside his son. “What’s this?” Matthew wanted to know. Then, before his son could answer, Matthew told him, “If you brought me a woman as a peace offering, you’ve wasted your money. I’ve got no use for them anymore.”

  Sam could feel his anger rising, settling in his chest like a fiery presence. It took effort to keep his voice level. “This is Zoe Robison, a friend,” he said tersely. “And why in God’s name would I be bringing you a peace offering?”

  Matthew ignored the question as he looked even closer at the woman beside his son. “A friend, eh?” he scoffed in a manner meant to be belittling and ridiculing. “Men and women can’t be friends. They can be lovers, or they can be enemies—usually when the female finds out he’s been out tomcatting around on her—but they can’t be friends.” Matthew snorted. “You’d think a boy of mine would have more sense than that.”

  The choice of words instantly offended Sam. “I’m not ‘your’ boy.” It was hard to keep the hatred out of his eyes. And even harder to keep it out of his voice, which seemed to resonate with it. “You gave up all claim to me and to my brothers and sisters the day you killed our mother.”

  Matthew’s shallow face turned ugly. “If that’s the way you think, then why the hell are you here?” the older man demanded.

  This wasn’t going well. She could see it in Sam’s eyes, in his very body language. But he’d come this far. To blow up and just walk out now would lead them right back to the dead end they’d been repeatedly faced with, time and again. Matthew Colton might be their only way to find this new serial killer who had notoriously taken up Sam’s father’s mantle.

  “Because we need your help,” Zoe said, speaking up. She deliberately kept her face turned away from Sam, knowing he had to be glaring at her because she was doing exactly what he told her not to do. She was talking to Matthew.

  “Oh, you do, do you?” Matthew asked, jeering at her. “And just why the hell should I help you?” he demanded, aiming his question at his son.

  Damn, he hated this, Sam thought. He hated sitting here like some obediently transfixed little disciple, worshipping at the old man’s feet. But he knew if he meant to solve these murders, he had no other choice.

  “Because there’s a serial killer on the loose and he’s killing young women in their twenties with long dark hair,” Sam began.

  He was forced to stop talking while his father had a coughing fit that temporarily drowned out any words.

  Finally, the coughing abated. Dragging a creased, dingy handkerchief out of his back pocket, Matthew Colton wiped his mouth and then his eyes, which had watered during the coughing spell.

  Sucking in a ragged breath, the older man shoved his handkerchief back into his pocket. The look in his eyes, when he could finally focus them on his son, was malevolent.

  “I’ve got cancer and maybe six months to live. Maybe less. Why the hell would I give a damn about some twenty-year-old tramps that are being offed?”

  “They’re not tramps,” Sam informed him. “And you should give a damn because the killer’s drawing red bull’s-eyes with red dots on his victims’ foreheads, just the way you did when you were killing men who looked like uncle Big J.”

  For a split second, there was a flash of interest in the opaque blue eyes. Interest—and something more. Sam could have sworn to it.

  “You mean I got me a—what d’you call it?—a groupie?” Matthew asked with a harsh laugh.

  “More like a follower,” Zoe corrected the man quietly.

  “A follower. Huh.” Matthew turned the word over in his mind. Another coughing fit ensued, stealing more time away from him before he could ask, “So what do you want from me about this—this ‘follower’ that you claim I have?”

  Sam tread lightly, knowing that any moment, his father could veer off in another direction, leaving him with his hat in his hand and nothing to show for it except for humiliation.

  “You get a lot of mail in prison,” Sam told him.

>   Matthew was immediately on the defensive, the way he had been for most of his life, no matter what the situation.

  “So? There’s no law against that,” Matthew snapped defiantly, daring his son to say differently.

  It was definitely a struggle for Sam to hold on to his temper when all he really wanted to do was hurl a few well-earned insults at his father and storm out.

  Either that, or strangle the man with his own bare hands.

  Neither could get him what he wanted and this, he told himself, wasn’t about him. It was about the serial killer’s victims. The victims and their families who were left to come to terms with dreadful losses that would wound anyone’s soul.

  “No, it’s not,” Sam agreed. “But did any of these letters—especially ones you might have received in the past few months,” Sam qualified, “stand out as a possible copycat in the making to you?”

  Matthew cocked his head and looked at him myopically. “Copycat?”

  “You know, someone obsessed with you and your MO,” Sam explained further, hating every word he was forced to relay. “Maybe asking you for a lot more details about the cases that the press might have left out.”

  Matthew seemed to take umbrage at having the term clarified. “I know what copycat means, boy. I’m not dumb.”

  “Nobody said you were,” Sam replied, schooling himself to hold on to his temper and not snap at the man sitting opposite him.

  As he spoke, he studied his father.

  The old man was stalling, Sam thought. There was something in Matthew’s body language, in the look on his sunken face, that made him think that. There was only one reason for it. His father was stalling because he knew something and he was trying to decide how best to make it pay off.

  Everything, Sam knew, had always been about him for his father. No one was even a close second.

  “You know something, don’t you, old man?” Sam said. As he said the words, it felt as if his entire body had gone on alert and come to attention.

  Matthew sneered. Having the upper hand had always been all-important to him.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t have to,” Sam told him. “I can see it in your eyes.”

  Anger rattled in Matthew’s voice. “There’s nothing in my eyes except for disappointment. Disappointment that none of you ‘fine, upstanding young citizens’ ever came by for so much as a visit. And now you want my help. Well give me one good reason why I should help you,” Matthew challenged malevolently, his whole countenance turning ugly.

  “Because it’s the decent thing to do,” Sam snapped angrily.

  “Not interested,” Matthew retorted. “I don’t give a damn about decent.” And then a devious, conniving look entered the man’s watery eyes. “Tell you what I do give a damn about. I give a damn about getting some extra TV time—and a special massage pillow to help soothe this aching body of mine. Oh, yeah, and some pecan pie. For starters,” he added significantly.

  Sam stared at him in complete disbelief. “You want pecan pie.”

  “For starters,” Matthew stressed, taking on a superior tone.

  Sam couldn’t help himself. His temper surged until it was all but out of control.

  “You smug, arrogant SOB, you think this puts you in the driver’s seat, don’t you? That it lets you dictate terms just because you may or may not have some information to dangle in front of us? Well, I don’t believe you.” Sam’s complexion reddened as he struggled not to shout his outrage over the game he felt his father was playing. “I don’t believe you have any real information to offer in exchange, because all you’ve ever done is lie, cheat and kill your whole miserable excuse of a life.”

  As he spoke, Sam’s fury just seemed to grow to dangerous excesses.

  But he wasn’t finished yet.

  He hadn’t gotten to what bothered him most.

  “Trevor and I have been waiting for years for you to tell someone where you buried our mother so we could give her a proper burial and maybe, just maybe finally put that awful chapter of our lives to rest. But you never said so much as a single word. So why should I believe you’ve suddenly changed and you’re willing to tell me what I need to know for a pillow and a damn pie?” he wanted to know, his face all but contorted in anger.

  “Pecan pie,” Matthew interjected, almost taunting him.

  Sam had had enough. This was going nowhere and he refused to allow his father to manipulate him any further for his own amusement.

  “Let’s go, Zoe,” Sam ordered, getting to his feet. There were daggers in his eyes as he looked contemptuously at the old man. He’d wasted enough time here. “He doesn’t know anything.”

  Turning away from his father with finality, Sam began to walk away and he had absolutely no intentions of ever coming back.

  He and Zoe were nearly at the door, about to signal to the guard to open it and let them out, when he heard Matthew call out.

  “There’s something much bigger I want in exchange for telling you kids where your mama’s buried.”

  Sam wanted to keep going. To walk out the door and never look back. But he knew if he did that, he would be permanently turning his back on the possibility of ever finding where his mother was buried.

  And even a slim possibility was better than no possibility at all.

  It was for her, not for himself, not even for the victims, that he decided to turn around again.

  But even as he wrestled with his conscience, he felt Zoe lace her fingers through his. She gently tugged on his hand, silently urging him to turn around and give the old man the audience he craved.

  He knew she was right even as he resisted. And in the end, he glared at the man, but he went back to playing the game.

  “What?” Sam asked. “What is it you want in exchange for giving us that information?”

  Matthew didn’t answer right away. He couldn’t. Another coughing fit had seized him and this one lasted longer than the other two. Long enough to alarm Sam despite the fact that he didn’t show it.

  He was surprised when Zoe took out her own handkerchief from the small shoulder bag she had and then used it to wipe the beads of sweat that had popped out on his father’s brow.

  Managing to regain his composure, Matthew nodded his thanks in her direction.

  He struggled to get air into his lungs at a steady rate before he attempted to answer the last question his son had put to him.

  “It’s something I want to be buried with,” Matthew told him.

  Sam hadn’t a clue what the old man was going on about, or what he could have possibly wanted next to him when he was finally put into the ground.

  He had stopped thinking in terms of having a funeral for his father a long time ago. For his money, Matthew Colton’s remains could be scattered in a potter’s field, to stay there for all eternity.

  Either that, or just be cremated, his ashes thrown into some ravine.

  That the old man was thinking in terms of an actual burial—and with some kind of item no less—was a complete and total surprise to him.

  “What?” Sam asked impatiently, thinking his father was deliberately dramatizing the moment.

  Was there a box stored somewhere? A box filled with the trophies he’d taken from his victims to remind him of all his kills so he could relive them? Was that what the old man wanted to be buried with?

  He wouldn’t have put it past Matthew.

  Opaque blue slits met and held his eyes. “It’s an old watch.”

  This made even less sense. “What old watch?” Sam demanded.

  Granted he hadn’t seen his father since he was five, but up until that point, he couldn’t recall there being some sort of special watch that his father wore or was never without.

  This had to be a bunch of bull, Sam thought. But
if so, to what end? To string him along?

  Or—?

  “I hid it on a property clear across Texas,” Matthew told him. “I need someone to get it for me.” He pinned Sam with his intense gaze. “Somebody I know won’t make off with it.”

  “So suddenly I’m trustworthy.” Sarcasm dripped from Sam’s lips. “Interesting.”

  “You’re a police detective. An honest police detective, which is almost as rare as a damn unicorn and not nearly as pretty,” Matthew said with contempt. “I don’t know how the hell that happened, given that you’re my son, but you are, and I might as well make some kind of use of it,” he said flippantly. His eyes narrowed until they very nearly disappeared altogether. “So, we got a deal?” he wanted to know.

  Considering the fact that Matthew was the one who was setting down terms and asking for things without first volunteering a damn thing of his own, Sam knew he’d be a fool to say yes outright. And the one thing he did remember about his father was that the man had no use, and even less respect, for fools.

  “I’ve got to talk it over with the others. I’ll get back to you on that,” Sam replied.

  “Oh, you do, do you?” Matthew sneered. “Well, while you’re doing all this conferring with those other losers, here’s something more to talk to them about,” his father added, seemingly out of the blue. “I want to see one of you—a different one—on the fourth Friday of every month.”

  “And if they don’t want to come?” Sam challenged.

  “Oh, they’ll come all right. If they want to find out where their mama’s buried, they’ll come,” Matthew said smugly. “The way it’ll work is after each ‘loving’ visit, I’ll give each of them a clue. You kids put all the clues together—and you’re really, really smart—you’ll get your answer where I buried her,” Matthew concluded.

  “You’re playing games?” Sam asked, outraged.

  In response, Matthew shrugged. “I’ve got nothing else to do. And, as an added bonus for you, just ’cause I’m feeling generous, I’ll let you have those letters you were asking about. Letters from my admirers,” Matthew laughed harshly. “I’ll even throw in a couple from people who hate my guts, just to add a little variety to the pot.”