Colton Copycat Killer Read online

  Standing there, with one of the double doors closed at her back in order to afford her support—her knees still felt incredibly weak and she worried about them buckling—Zoe cleared her throat and tried, at first in vain, to get everyone’s attention.

  Because her voice was initially so whisper soft, no one even heard her make the attempt except for a couple of the wedding guests who were closest to her at the rear of the church.

  But others saw her lips moving and assumed she was telling them something.

  “What?”

  “Speak up!”

  “I can’t hear you!”

  “What the hell is going on here?” someone from the center of the crowd roared angrily, their voice louder than the rest.

  It was the last disembodied question that caused Zoe to stiffen in response. Angry now, as well as incredibly upset and shaken, she raised her voice as she made a second attempt to be heard.

  “There’s not going to be a wedding,” she began. Her voice was still somewhat shaky, but at least it was finally becoming audible.

  “I drove all that way for nothin’?” an indignant woman cried angrily in response.

  “What do you mean, there’s not going to be a wedding?” someone else demanded heatedly.

  “Why the hell not?” yet another, deep male voice wanted to know.

  As close to losing her self-control as she had ever come, Zoe raised her voice again and shouted, “Because there’s been a murder!”

  Her voice cracked on the last syllable the moment she uttered it.

  A sense of horror dropped over the gathering like an old-fashioned, heavy theater curtain made of asbestos.

  “A murder?” someone near the front of the church cried. “What do you mean, a murder? Like with a dead person?”

  A man two pews over spoke up. “No, she’s kidding. Right? This is what they call black humor or something, right? She’s doing this because Celia’s not ready.”

  “Is that what you’re doing? Stalling until the bride’s ready?” a third person, a woman near the rear of the church challenged. “’Cause I don’t know about anybody else, but I’m getting real hungry just sitting here, waitin’.”

  As the questions and retorts continued to fly fast and furious at her, Zoe gave serious thought to a full-on retreat. The wedding guests who had previously risen to greet the bride were still on their feet and more than a few were coming toward her, as if shortening the distance between them and her could somehow make what she was saying clearer to them—or better yet, transparent.

  Zoe fumbled for the doorknob behind her, thinking to hold on to it and possibly swing the door open again in case she had to execute a very hasty retreat and create a temporary barrier between herself and the wedding guests who were quickly growing more annoyed by the second.

  With her hand behind her back, Zoe wasn’t able to secure the doorknob, but she suddenly felt the door opening behind her. She knew she hadn’t managed to do that.

  Was there someone behind her?

  The next moment, her suspicions were confirmed as she heard Sam’s deep voice addressing the agitated wedding guests.

  “No one’s stalling,” he informed them in a voice that was not to be argued with. “There’s been a murder and you all need to take your seats again.” It wasn’t a request, it was an order. “Someone from the police department is going to be coming to each and every one of you to take down all of your statements,” Sam briskly told the wedding guests in his no nonsense voice.

  “All our statements?” one of the guests questioned in disbelief.

  Both rows of pews were filled to capacity, which in turn translated to a great many statements that needed to be taken. It could literally take hours before anyone was allowed to leave.

  “All of them,” Sam replied in a cool, concise tone of voice.

  Someone closer to the rear of the church was definitely not satisfied with so little information. “Sam, what’s going on here? We came here to see you get married. Who was murdered?”

  Zoe made a judgment call. Sam didn’t look as if he was willing to answer that question just yet, but she didn’t think it was right to withhold the information. These people were supposedly Celia’s friends. Still struggling to come to terms with what had happened practically under her nose, Zoe took the initiative and answered for Sam.

  “Someone shot Celia.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Sam fire her a look that would have definitely kept her silent had she seen it first.

  Her immediate reaction to it was to offer Sam an apology for having overstepped her bounds.

  But any words to that effect never made it past her lips as anger uncharacteristically took over, vanquishing her tendency to just meekly accept whatever was happening rather than protesting it.

  The first volley in that particular battle had been fired when she’d held her ground against her sister, wanting Celia to confess to Sam that she had engineered the lie about being pregnant just to trick him into marrying her.

  Having spoken up then, she couldn’t just quietly hold her peace now, especially when doing so—just because it was expected of her—made absolutely no sense to her. It was just cruel.

  After all, this wasn’t the kind of secret that someone was going to take to their grave. On the contrary, everyone was going to know who was murdered in a matter of hours, most likely in a manner of minutes.

  What was the point of holding back?

  It made no sense to her. Right now, she desperately needed to find something that made sense so she could hang on to it and rebuild her world which was, at this moment, completely decimated into charred, gray ashes.

  Another disjointed chorus of voices was shouting out stunned reactions to the bombshell that Zoe had just dropped.

  “Celia?”

  “Oh my God, Celia’s been shot?”

  “Celia’s really dead?”

  “This is a joke—right?”

  “Who did it?”

  Sam had remained standing next to Zoe. He raised his hands now and gestured for the guests to lower their voices and in essence, cease asking questions altogether. Any further questions were all going to be coming from him, starting now.

  From him and from the rest of the officers he had just called in to act as his backup.

  “That’s what we’re going to be trying to find out,” Sam informed the sea of faces that were turned toward him. “Now, this’ll go a lot faster if you all just get back into your seats and wait until someone comes by to take down your statements.”

  “But we were all in here,” one of the older women protested helplessly. “We didn’t see anything.”

  “And if that’s the case, it’ll go even faster,” Sam replied. His tone of voice, neither friendly nor accusatory, gave nothing away.

  The church was now filled with several more patrol officers from Granite Gulch in addition to the detectives and officers who had been invited to the actual wedding ceremony. The latter group also included Sam’s older sister, Annabel, who was a police officer on the same force.

  The incoming officers joined forces with the law enforcement agents who were already there to make the process of questioning the temporarily captive wedding guests as painless as possible.

  Growing just the slightest bit calmer, Zoe looked at Sam after he had finished briefing the newly arrived police officers.

  “Who do you want me to give my statement to?” she asked.

  Mindful of what Ethan had said to him earlier about the shock she was dealing with, he looked at Zoe with what he felt might very well be remotely associated with concern. After all, Zoe had been through a lot, and Celia was—or had been, he corrected himself—her sister. Moreover, though he didn’t have any proof at the moment, his gut told him that Zoe had nothing to do wit
h Celia’s tragically dramatic end.

  “Are you sure you’re up to this now?” he asked Zoe, scrutinizing her closely. He was a fairly good judge of what a person on the fringe looked like. He’d sent enough of them there during interrogations.

  Zoe curled her fingers into her hands and dug her nails into her palms, as if registering that pain could somehow help her maintain control over the grief running rampant all through her.

  “Yes,” she answered in a small, but firm voice. “I am—but thank you for asking.”

  He hardly took note of the last part. Glancing around the church, he took in the scene.

  A handful of law enforcement agents from the small precinct had scattered throughout the pews, singling out wedding guests the way cowboys cut out cattle from a herd for branding. Every available police officer and detective currently there was clearly busy and would remain so for the next foreseeable several hours, if not more.

  That essentially made up Sam’s mind for him, although, in all honesty, it had pretty much been made up the moment he had found Zoe in the same room as Celia’s body.

  “You can give your statement to me,” he told Zoe crisply.

  Glancing around again, he looked for somewhere a little more isolated where he could interview the victim’s sister in private.

  When he spotted the reverend, he issued Zoe a quick order, “Come with me.” He made his way over to where the preacher was standing near the front of the church, comforting several of his regulars, people who always attended Sunday services without fail. The parishioners were clearly distraught.

  “Reverend Rimmer,” Sam began as he approached the older man.

  He got no further. The tall, thin man of the cloth immediately made his excuses to the trio he was talking to, cut the distance between himself and the groom and took hold of Sam’s hand in both of his. For a thin man, he had very large, capable hands.

  The moment the reverend began talking, it was obvious he had misunderstood why Sam had sought him out.

  “Sam, I am so sorry this terrible thing happened. If you need to talk—”

  “I do, but not to you right now, Reverend,” Sam said, cutting the man off before the reverend could get wound up. “Would it be all right to use your office?” He nodded at the woman on his right. “I need to take Ms. Robison’s statement and I need someplace where we won’t be interrupted.”

  “Yes, of course, of course.” But rather than step out of the way as Sam had expected him to, Reverend Rimmer turned toward Zoe and took hold of both of Zoe’s hands in his.

  “Zoe, please accept my heartfelt condolences on your tragic loss. I didn’t know your sister as well I would have liked—I didn’t see her at Sunday services very often,” he explained, “but I know she was a good woman who had love in her heart for her family and friends.”

  Zoe offered the man a smile, patiently taking in his words. She knew what the reverend was saying to her had to be his “go-to” comfort speech, offered to the family and friends of deceased people whom he had never gotten to know on a personal basis.

  To the best of her knowledge, the only time her sister ever turned up at any Sunday services in Rimmer’s church was when she was guaranteed a number of cute, eligible young men were in attendance, as well. During those rare occasions, Celia always arrived just a little bit late so she could make an entrance as well as an impression.

  Celia always loved being the center of attention, Zoe thought. She felt it was her due.

  In a way, Zoe thought now, if it hadn’t ultimately involved her death, Celia would have reveled in the attention this whole thing going on now was generating for her.

  But Zoe knew Reverend Rimmer was doing the best he could under the circumstances, trying to comfort her on the death of her sister. This all had, after all, happened under his roof, so to speak, and she felt bad for the preacher.

  “If you need anything, anything at all,” Reverend Rimmer was saying to her, “please don’t hesitate to give me a call. Mrs. Rimmer and I are entirely at your disposal—day or night,” he added, and for what it was worth, Zoe believed him.

  “Thank you, Reverend,” Zoe replied. “I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.”

  Gently disengaging her hands from the preacher, she turned to a somewhat surprised-looking Sam. Taking a breath, she said, “Let’s get this over with.”

  He’d known Zoe for a lot of years. Just how many, he couldn’t have honestly said. But in all that time, he had only been vaguely aware of her. Still, she had never struck him as someone who spoke up, who could hold their own, especially not against a crowd. When he’d sent her off to inform the guests that the wedding had been called off, he’d just thought of her as a messenger. He hadn’t thought anyone would give her a hard time.

  He certainly hadn’t thought she could actually stand up to anyone.

  Live and learn, he thought now.

  He spared her a quick glance. “This way,” he instructed, taking Zoe by the elbow and guiding her out of the crowded area.

  He’d gotten the church’s layout just the other day, when Celia had dragged him to meet with the reverend to make the final arrangements for the splashy wedding she had made abundantly clear she had always wanted.

  As far as he was concerned, they could have exchanged two-minute vows in front of some justice of the peace. He had absolutely no desire to have witnesses to something he wouldn’t have done on his own in the first place. But since he’d made up his mind to do right by her and especially to do right by his unborn child, they were to exchange vows in front of people who were all one and the same to him at this point.

  He didn’t care. He’d just wanted it over with.

  And now it is, he thought in an almost accusatory tone.

  He forced himself to focus on the moment and not the past.

  “The reverend’s office is this way, down the hall,” he told Zoe.

  Releasing her arm, he led the way down the narrow passageway.

  Compared to the rest of the church and its connected areas, the hallway was almost tomblike in its silence. The lighting that came through the windows located eight feet off the ground was strained and diffuse. Nothing about it was welcoming in Zoe’s opinion.

  “Kind of eerie,” Zoe noted, stifling an unbidden shiver that shimmied up and down her spine.

  “You don’t have to be afraid,” Sam responded almost automatically, then assured her, “Nobody’s going to hurt you.”

  Although he wasn’t carrying his primary weapon, because he was supposed to be off duty and the tuxedo afforded no place to carry the heavy piece, he still had his backup weapon strapped to his ankle. Wearing it beneath the tuxedo trousers had been a challenge, but in the end, he had managed.

  He thought of the old adage, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

  “I’m not afraid,” Zoe replied, waving away the suggestion that she was. “But it is eerie here,” she pointed out. That feeling was only heightened by the crime that had just taken place there.

  Arriving at the reverend’s office, Sam tested the doorknob. The door wasn’t locked. Even so, he looked carefully around and then entered the tiny alcove of a room first.

  Caution trumped chivalry every time in his book.

  A quick visual sweep of the area assured him there was no one in the small, rather claustrophobic room. Shelves crammed full of books of all sizes and shapes lined three of the four walls, adding to the intensely cramped feeling.

  The reverend’s desk was no different from the rest of the room. It had piles of papers and folders stacked around, behind and in front of an antiquated computer someone had donated to the church. The piles of paper and the computer succeeded in taking up all the available space on the desktop.

  There were papers on the chairs, as well. At first glance, they looked to be preventin
g anyone from making proper use of the chairs.

  Sam cleared off what was obviously the reverend’s chair and then turned his attention to the only other available one in the office. He put both piles of paper on the corner of the desk as carefully as possible, sincerely hoping there wouldn’t be an avalanche.

  Finished, he gestured toward the chair and then suggested, “Why don’t you take a seat.” When Zoe did so and he had followed suit, he said to her, “In your own words, why don’t you tell me exactly what happened before you left your sister—and then what you saw when you came back.”

  The knot in her stomach returned, tightening and threatening to cut off her very air supply.

  She didn’t want to tell him what Celia’s last words to her had been.

  Chapter 3

  Zoe folded her hands in her lap and for a moment, she just focused her entire being on breathing.

  Once she had taken in and exhaled several deep, cleansing breaths, she raised her eyes to Sam’s and addressed his request—at least in part.

  “I really don’t have anything to add to what I’ve already told you, Sam.” She’d racked her brain these past couple of minutes, trying to remember some small, salient clue she could offer him that would turn out to be the crucial piece of the puzzle and solve this awful crime, but she had come up with nothing. “Celia and I were alone in the bridal room. When I left the room, she was still fussing with her veil. When I came back a few minutes later, she was exactly the way you saw her—dead on the floor.”

  Zoe pressed her lips together, struggling to keep her voice from breaking again. Crying wasn’t going to do anyone any good, least of all Celia. “And you know the rest.”

  “You forgot a part,” Sam told her, his voice neither accusing, nor annoyed. He was merely calling her attention to a fact.

  She looked at Sam quizzically. She’d told him everything. “What?”

  He leaned in a little closer over the desk, creating a sense of intimacy. He was well aware of the fact that trust was grounded in intimacy. “You said you argued with Celia.”

  She’d forgotten about telling him that for a second. Or maybe she’d just pushed it out of her mind. Either way, it wasn’t something she was willing to bring out into the light of day. Besides, the argument had no bearing on her death.