Case File: Canyon Creek, Wyoming

Chapter Two

At the sound of Hannah Cooper’s scream, Riley whipped around to look behind him, half-certain he’d see a crazed maniac with a gun. But all he saw was a nurse run into the room, alarm in her eyes. She pushed past Riley to her patient’s side.

“Who is he?” Hannah asked the nurse, gazing at Riley with wide, frightened eyes.

The nurse looked at him over her shoulder, her expression wary. “What are you doing here? Visiting hours are over.”

“I’m sorry. I should have announced myself at the nurses’ station.” He hadn’t done so, of course, because he didn’t want anyone to tell him he couldn’t see Hannah Cooper. “I’m Riley Patterson with the Canyon Creek Police Department. I wanted to talk to Ms. Cooper about what happened to her this afternoon.”

“The police have already spoken to her.” The nurse lifted her chin, looking like a she-wolf guarding her young.

“That was the Teton County Sheriff’s Department,” Riley said, not ready to give up until he’d talked to the victim alone. “I want to talk to her about a similar case in my jurisdiction.” That was stretching the truth a bit; none of the murders he’d been looking into over the past three years had actually happened in the Canyon Creek jurisdiction. But if nobody else in Wyoming gave a damn about connecting the dots, he was happy to make it a Canyon Creek priority.

“What do you want to know?” Hannah Cooper spoke in a raspy drawl, her voice a combination of honey and steel. Her green eyes remained wide and wary, and she hunkered deeper into the pillow behind her as he approached, but her jaw squared and she didn’t turn away when he reached her bedside.

“I’m going to reach into my pocket and show you my badge first.” He kept his voice low and calm. “So you’ll know I am who I say I am.”

She remained wary as he showed her his credentials. “The guy who attacked me was driving a cop car.” Her gaze lifted defiantly to his. “You’ll forgive me if I’m not particularly impressed by your badge.”

Of course. He should have considered that possibility. Sliding the badge into the back pocket of his jeans, he did his best to soften his expression. “I’m sorry. I know you’ve been through a terrible ordeal. If you want to call the Canyon Creek Police Department, they can verify my credentials-”

“That’s not necessary.” Anger flashed in her eyes, although he got the feeling she was angrier at herself than at him. She pushed her hair away from her face, taking a deep breath. When she spoke again, she was calmer. “It’s okay, I don’t mind talking to him for a minute,” she told the nurse.

The nurse slanted a look at Riley, as if she wanted to argue, but after a short nod, she left them alone.

“I apologize for barging in without any warning.” Riley pulled a chair next to her bed. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I’ve been kicked in the head and dipped in acid.”

“Pepper spray’s nasty.” He’d been exposed a few times, mostly in his police training. “And so’s a concussion. I took a hit my senior year playing football. Kept asking the trainer what had happened every other minute for a solid half hour.”

His confession elicited a tiny smile from her, the effect dazzling. Bandages, blotchy skin and red-rimmed eyes disappeared, revealing how pretty she was beneath her injuries. Her eyes were a mossy-green, her pupils rimmed by a shock of amber-cat’s eyes, bright and a little mysterious. Her small, straight nose and wide, full lips might have been dainty if not for her square, pugnacious jaw. She was a scrapper. He’d known a few scrappers in his life.

Her smile faded, and he felt a surprising twinge of disappointment. Her chin dipped when she spoke. “You said there was a similar case in your jurisdiction?”

He cleared his throat. “Actually, there are a handful of cases I’ve been looking at over the past three years. Similar MO’s-women driving alone on the highway, incapacitated by pepper spray.” He didn’t add that they usually ended up dead, wrapped in plastic sheeting in some river or lake not far from the highway where they disappeared.

Her expression darkened. “How many got away like I did?”

He licked his lips and didn’t answer.

She nodded slowly. “I’m lucky, aren’t I?”

“Yeah, you are.”

She took a deep breath, coughing a little from the aftereffects of the pepper-spray attack. Her lower lip trembled a moment, but she regained control, her gaze lifting to meet his. “He tried to pull me out of the car, but I kept hearing my brother’s voice in my head. ‘Don’t let him get you out of the car.’ So I smashed my elbow against his hand where it was sitting on the window frame and I drove off as fast as I could.”

“That was smart and brave.”

“I don’t know about that,” she said faintly. “I just didn’t want to die today.”

The simple emotion in her voice tugged at his gut. Had Emily felt that way, trapped by a monster on the highway out of Casper? He knew from the autopsy that she’d fought him-her fingernails had been ripped in places, and there was some pre-mortem bruising from the struggle. Had the pepper spray incapacitated her more than it had Hannah Cooper? Had she lacked the opening that Hannah had to fight back and get away?

He rubbed his forehead, struggling against the paralyzing images his questions evoked. “I saw your statement to the Sheriff’s Department. You didn’t see your assailant’s face?”

“No. I barely saw his midsection through the window before he hit me with the pepper spray. I didn’t see much of anything after that. Just blurry images.”

“You mentioned a silver belt buckle. Can you remember what was on it?”

Her brow furrowed with tiny lines of concentration. “I just know it was silver and there was a pattern to it, but I can’t remember what it was. Maybe I didn’t get a good look.”

Though his instinct was to push her to remember more, he held his tongue. As frustrating as it was not to have all the answers right now, he reminded himself how lucky he was to have a living, breathing witness to the killer’s MO. Maybe she’d remember more as the effects of the trauma wore off.

“You look tired,” he said.

“Gee, thanks,” she muttered, and he smiled.

Behind them came a knock, then the door opened just enough for the light from the corridor to silhouette the shape of a man. The hair on the back of Riley’s neck rose. On instinct, he moved to put himself between Hannah and the visitor.

“Sorry to interrupt. I’m with hospital security. The nurse thought I should check and see if everything’s okay here.” The security guard remained in the doorway, his shoulders squared and his hands at his side, close to the unmistakable outline of his weapon holster.

“Everything’s fine,” Hannah said firmly. “Thank you.”

With a nod, the security guard closed the door behind him.

“Did the Teton County Sheriff’s Department offer to post a guard outside your door?” Riley asked.

“Why? The guy who attacked me didn’t know me. I was-what do y’all call it? A target of opportunity?”

She was right, but leaving her alone here in the hospital didn’t sit well with him. The staff had shown they had her best interests at heart, but he couldn’t shake the idea that the wily killer he’d been looking for over the past three years wouldn’t be happy leaving behind a live victim. The more time Hannah had to remember details from the attack, the more valuable she was to the police-and dangerous to the killer.

He pushed to his feet, sensing she was running out of energy. She needed her rest, and they could pick up this conversation in the morning. “I’m heading out now. You get some sleep and don’t worry about any of this, okay?”

She nodded, her eyelids already starting to droop.

He slipped out of the room and headed down the hallway toward the nurses’ station, where the nurse he’d met previously was making notes in a chart behind the desk. She looked up, her expression turning stern. “You didn’t stress her out, did you?”

“Is there a waiting area on this floor?” he asked.

The nurse pointed out a door a few feet down the corridor.

Riley entered the room, which was mostly empty, save for a weary-looking woman stretched out across an uncomfortable-looking bench in the corner. Riley grabbed a seat near the entrance, where he could keep an eye on the door.

He hadn’t wanted to worry Hannah Cooper, but it had occurred to him that, target of opportunity or not, she’d seen the killer and lived to tell.

The son of a bitch wouldn’t like that one bit.

ONE OF THE DIRTY LITTLE secrets of hospitals was how shoddy hospital security was, especially in a place like Jackson, Wyoming. Jackson Memorial Hospital had a single security camera trained on the main entrance and a few guards scattered throughout the hospital in case trouble arose. If you looked like you belonged and knew where you were going, nobody gave you a second look.

That’s how it worked in institutions of all sorts.

He wasn’t on duty that evening, but it was a piece of cake to enter right through the front door, wearing his work garb, without anyone lifting an eyebrow. Now, he had just one more job to do to cover his tracks, and then he’d finish what he’d come here to do.

He slipped inside the empty security office and closed the door behind him.

SHE DREAMED OF HOME, with its glorious vista of blue water, green mountains and cloud-strewn skies. The lake house where she’d spent her first eighteen years of life had been built by her father’s hands, with lumber and stone from right there in Gossamer Ridge, Alabama. Though she’d lived on her own for almost eight years, the lake house remained home to her, a place of refuge and a source of strength.

She didn’t feel as if she was dreaming at first, the setting and companions as familiar and ordinary as the sound of her own voice. Out on the water, her brother Jake was taking a fisherman on a guided tour of the lake’s best bass spots. Nearby, her brother J.D. worked on the engine of a boat moored in one of the marina berths, while his eleven-year-old son, Mike, shot a basketball through the rusty old hoop mounted on the weathered siding of the boathouse.

She basked in the sun on her skin and breathed in the earthy wildness of the woods and the water from her perch on the end of the weathered wooden pier. Her bare toes played in the warm water, drawing curious bluegills close to the surface before they darted back down to safety near the lake bottom.

Suddenly, the pier shook and creaked beneath her as footsteps approached from behind. She turned to look up at the visitor and met a pair of brilliant blue eyes gazing out from the chiseled-stone features of Riley Patterson.

“Wake up,” he said. “You’re in danger.”

The dream images shattered, like a reflection in a pool displaced by a falling stone. She woke to the murky darkness of a hospital room filled with alien smells and furtive movements. A shadow shifted beside her in the gloom, and she heard the faint sound of breathing by her bed.

She froze, swallowing the moan of fear rising in her throat. It’s a nurse, she told herself. Only a nurse. In a minute, she’ll turn on the light and check my pulse.

But why hadn’t the nurse left the door to the hallway open?

She felt the slightest tug on the IV needle in the back of her hand. Peering into the darkness, she caught the faint glint of the IV bag as it moved.

The intruder was putting something into her IV line.

Panic hammering the back of her throat, she swallowed hard and tried to keep her breathing steady, even though her lungs felt ready to explode. Slowly, quietly, she tugged the tube from the cannula in her right hand until she felt the cool drip of liquid spreading across the bed sheet under her arm. She had no idea where the nurse call button was, but it didn’t matter anyway. She was too terrified to move again. The last thing she wanted to do was let the intruder know she was awake.

Instead, she focused on her breathing, keeping it slow and steady. In and out. Her heart was racing, her head was aching, but she kept breathing until she felt the intruder move away from her bedside. A moment later, the door to her room opened and the silhouette of a man briefly filled the shaft of light pouring inside. But he was gone before she got more than a quick impression of a solid, masculine build.

The door clicked closed and she jerked herself to a sitting position, groping for the nurse call button that hung by a cord from the side of her bed. She flicked the switch that turned on the bedside light and frantically pressed the call button.

A few seconds later, a woman’s tinny voice came through the call-button speaker. “Yes?”

“Someone just came into my room and tried to put something in my IV line,” she said, her voice shaking.

After a brief pause, the nurse’s voice came through the speaker again. “I’ll be right there.”

A few seconds later, the door opened and a nurse hurried inside. She hit the switch by the door, flooding the room with light. Her brow furrowing, she looked at the tube Hannah had extracted from the cannula. “Are you sure someone was in here?” she asked, checking the IV bag.

“He was standing right there. He put something in that port thing.” Hannah pointed toward the bright orange injection port positioned a few inches below the IV bag.

The nurse’s frown deepened.

The door to the room whipped open and Riley Patterson entered, his tense blue eyes meeting Hannah’s. “What’s going on? I saw the nurse run in here-”

Hannah watched him close the distance between them, unsettled by how glad she was to see the Wyoming lawman again. The memory of her dream, of his quiet warning, flashed through her mind, and she felt the sudden, ridiculous urge to fling herself in his arms and thank him for saving her life.

Instead, she murmured, “I thought you went home.”

“You thought wrong,” he said drily. “What happened?”

She told him what she’d just experienced, watching with alarm as his expression darkened. “I wasn’t imagining it,” she said defensively.

He looked at her. “I didn’t say you were.”

“I’ll call security,” the nurse said, heading for the door.

“I think we should call the Teton County Sheriff’s Department, too.” Riley reached for the phone.

“So you believe me?” Hannah pressed.

“Any reason I shouldn’t?” He started dialing a number.

Hannah sank back against her pillows, reaction beginning to set in. She tried to hold back the shivers, but it was like fighting an avalanche. By the time Riley hung up the phone and turned around, her teeth were chattering wildly.

He sat beside her on the bed and took her hands in his. “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.”

His eyes were the color of the midday sky, clear and brilliant blue. They were a startling spot of color in his lean, sun-bronzed face. He seemed hewn of stone, his short-cropped hair the rusty color of iron ore, his shoulders as broad and solid as a block of granite. His lean body could have been chiseled from the rocky outcroppings of the Wyoming mountains. He had cowboy written all over him.

Aware she was staring, she looked down at his hands enveloping hers. They were large, strong and work-roughened. A slim gold band encircled his left ring finger.

She tugged her hands away, acutely aware of her own bare ring finger. “I should have screamed. I let him get away.”

“There are probably security cameras around. He took a big risk coming after you here.”

“He was so calm.” She gripped the bed sheets to keep her traitorous fingers from reaching for his hands again, though she felt absurdly adrift without his reassuring touch. “His actions were furtive, but he didn’t seem nervous.”

“Did you see anything about him?”

“It was too dark. I saw his outline when he slipped out the door-definitely male.”

“My size?”

She let her gaze move a little too slowly over his hard, lean frame. Chiding herself mentally, she shook her head. “Heavier. More muscle-bound or something. Probably your height, maybe an inch or two taller.” She pressed her lips together to stop her chattering teeth. “I should have made noise, gotten the nurses in here-”

“If you’re right about what you saw, the man came here to kill you. Making a noise only would have made it happen faster.” He briefly touched her hand where the cannula remained, unattached to the IV tube. “You got that tube out. You saved yourself, and nobody could expect anything more.”

He was saying all the right things, but she heard disappointment in his voice. Clearly, finding the man who’d attacked her was more than just another case to him.

She’d always been insanely curious-nosy, her brothers preferred to call it-but something kept her from asking any more questions of Riley Patterson. She sensed that pushing him for more information would make him back off. She couldn’t afford for him to back off.

A man had tried to kill her twice in one day, and she had a feeling Riley Patterson might be the only person who could stop him if he tried it a third time.

JOE GARRISON ARRIVED not long after the Teton County Sheriff’s Department detectives. Riley caught his boss’s eye as he entered Hannah Cooper’s room, motioning him over with a twitch of his head. Joe met him in the corner, his gaze wandering across the small room to where Hannah Cooper sat in a chair by her empty bed, her green-eyed gaze following the activity of the evidence techs who were processing the scene.

“The Teton County Sheriff’s Department wants her in protective custody, but she’s refusing,” Riley said. “She said she’d rather go home early tomorrow and forget all about this.”

“You don’t want her to leave.”

Riley met his friend’s understanding gaze. “She saw the guy. Maybe she didn’t see his face, but she’s the only living witness, and she’s about to fly back home to Alabama.”

“You can’t keep her here against her will.”

Riley pressed his hands against his gritty eyes. “I can’t let her leave.”

Joe’s answer was dry as a desert. “So kidnap her and hold her hostage.”

Riley slanted a look at his boss. “Did you drive all the way here to give me a hard time or are you going to help me figure out how to keep her in Wyoming?”

“Do you want me to arrest her or something?”

“Could we?” Riley glanced at Hannah, only half-joking. She looked calm now, more curious than worried, her slim fingers playing absently with the hem of her hospital gown, tugging it down over her knees.

“Maybe you should tell her why you’re so desperate to solve this case.”

Riley looked back at Joe. “Tell her about Emily?”

Joe nodded.

Riley looked at Hannah again and found her returning his gaze. After a couple of seconds, she looked away.

“Maybe if she knew how many victims we could be talking about, and the way they were killed…” Riley said softly.

“You want to scare her into staying?”

“Maybe she’ll want to help.”

Joe arched one eyebrow. “At the risk of her own life?”

Riley sighed. “You’re just a wellspring of optimism.”

“You want a yes man, you called the wrong guy.” Joe thumped Riley on the arm. “But maybe you’re right. The Teton County Sheriff’s Department doesn’t know what we know about these murders. They’re not giving her the whole picture. I guess you could lay the truth on her and let her make an informed choice.” Joe’s gaze shifted as the hospital-room door opened and a tall, rangy lawman entered. “There’s Jim Tanner.”

As Joe left Riley to greet the Teton County Sheriff, Riley crossed to the chair where Hannah sat. She looked up at him, a dozen questions swirling behind her eyes. He smiled slightly and crouched beside her. “Three-ring circus.”

“I’ll be glad to be out of it,” she admitted. “I get the feeling the police aren’t taking me very seriously. I think they think I’m just paranoid.”

“It shouldn’t take that long to find out what the guy put in your IV tube. I heard them say the lab is working on it right now.”

“They just want to prove it was nothing so they can pat me on the head and tell me it was just a dream.”

Riley had a feeling she was right. “I don’t think it was just a dream.”

She shot him a look of pure gratitude. “I wasn’t asleep. I know what I saw. And all that’s supposed to be in that IV is saline, so there’s no reason for anyone to put anything else into it.”

“You don’t have to convince me.”

She lowered her voice, eyeing the technician standing nearby. “Nobody in the Teton County Sheriff’s Department said anything about multiple murders.”

He couldn’t hold back a little smile. “Yeah, I know.”

“But you disagree?”

He lowered his voice, too. “I’ve been tracking a series of murders, one or two a year, for the last three years. All across Wyoming, east to west, north to south. Women driving alone, disappearing en route from one place to another. Their bodies are later found wrapped in plastic, dumped in a lake, river or other body of water. Three of the six showed traces of pepper spray around the mouth, nose and eyes. The other bodies had too much weather exposure to take a sample.”

Hannah’s face went pale, but she didn’t look away. “If I hadn’t gotten away-”

He didn’t finish the thought for her. He didn’t need to.

The door to the room opened, and a woman in a white coat entered, carrying a file folder. She crossed to speak to Jim Tanner, whose brow furrowed deeply the longer she spoke. Joe looked across the room at Riley, his expression grim. Riley’s stomach twisted into a knot.

Joe and Sheriff Tanner crossed to Hannah’s side. Riley stood to face them.

“The lab report on the IV tube is back,” Tanner said.

“And?” Hannah asked.

His expression grew hard. “There was enough digoxin in that tube to kill you in a matter of minutes.”