Predator Page 2

  She scowled. “Where’d that ring tone come from?”

  Beneath her, Parker chuckled. “Turnabout is fair play.”

  He was getting back at her for putting silly ring tones on his phone.

  “Oh, yeah? I’ll get you for that.”

  She grasped his wrists and shifted her weight, but as she lifted herself up, her gaze caught the display on her phone.

  “It’s Mackenzie.”

  Her daughter never called her.

  Suddenly all passion and playfulness evaporated, replaced by the incessant worry she’d had for her daughter ever since she’d learned who her real father was.

  She rolled off Parker and sat up. He sat as well, concern on his handsome face.

  She snatched the phone with its annoying ringtone off the nightstand. “Hello? Mackenzie?”

  “Oh, Mother. I’m so glad I reached you. I don’t know who else to turn to.”

  Her voice was full of alarm. Miranda could tell she’d been crying.

  Nerves made Miranda pull the sheet around her and get to her feet to pace beside the nightstand. “What’s wrong, honey?”

  “I—I don’t know what to do. I can’t think straight.”

  “Just tell me what’s wrong.” A stab of panic shot through Miranda’s heart. Had her daughter learned who her real father was? Had she told Colby and Oliver?

  “I’m so upset. I know she didn’t do it.”

  Miranda scowled at the phone. “What are you talking about?”

  “Ella Skinner,” Mackenzie said in a whisper.

  Miranda made a guess. “Is that a classmate at school?”

  “Yes, of course. But she couldn’t have done it. I know it. You have to help.”

  Done what? Miranda drew in a breath and sat back down on the mattress. “Mackenzie, calm down, honey. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Haven’t you seen the news this morning?”

  “No, I haven’t.” She turned to Parker. He had heard the young girl’s frantic voice through the cell speaker.

  He opened the nightstand drawer, took out a remote and pressed buttons.

  On the far wall, a cabinet slid open revealing a large flat screen television that they rarely watched.

  Parker turned it on and switched to a local news station.

  Over the words “Breaking News,” a flyover shot of an overpass along I-20 appeared on the screen.

  An area like one of the spots she’d worked when she’d been on the road crew. Cars were backed up in every direction, but it wasn’t because of construction. There was a swarm of emergency vehicles blocking traffic. Flashing lights, cops all over the place.

  On the interstate under the bridge, EMTs were loading a gurney into the back of an ambulance.

  The person on the gurney looked like a female, from what Miranda could see. Her attention turned to the second bevy of cops and cars on the bridge over the scene.

  Had the girl jumped from there? Dear Lord.

  “Are you talking about the girl on the gurney?”

  “Yes. That’s Ella.”

  “Did she do what it looks like?” Miranda avoided the word “suicide.”

  “I don’t know. All I know is she wouldn’t have killed herself. Someone must have pushed her off that bridge.”

  Mackenzie couldn’t know that. She was in denial. Miranda’s heart ached for her. “I’m so sorry about this, honey.”

  “You have to help. You and Mr. Parker.”

  Miranda watched the ambulance drive away on the screen. The girl’s fate looked pretty final. “I don’t know what we can do.”

  Mackenzie’s voice turned to a frantic plea. “Someone tried to kill her. You have to find out who it was.”

  With a helpless look, Miranda turned to Parker again.

  His face was grim, but he rose and reached for his jeans. “We can visit the scene.”

  Yeah, she guessed they could if it would help ease her daughter’s mind. “All right. We’ll go check things out.” She wanted to add, “But don’t get your hopes up.” But she didn’t have the heart.

  “Thank you, Mother. I know you and Mr. Parker will find out what happened to her.”

  “We’ll try.”

  Miranda hung up and stared at the wall, feeling more worried for Mackenzie than ever. And sad for that poor girl who had jumped. “What can we do, Parker?”

  “We can do what we said. Head to that overpass.”

  “Do you really think we’ll find anything other than what we just saw?”

  He came around the end of the bed, took her hands and pulled her to her feet. “We won’t know until we get there.”

  Chapter Four

  They showered and dressed quickly, jumped into Parker’s Mazda and headed south on 400.

  Forty minutes later, they approached the overpass.

  Miranda blinked at the map on her phone. “This is fifteen miles away from our place. It’s farther from the Chatham’s. What was this girl doing down here?”

  She assumed a classmate would live near the school, which wasn’t far from Mockingbird Hills.

  “A good question,” Parker said as he came to a halt and studied the traffic.

  They were at a standstill. The incident on the bridge was still being investigated, and cars were backed up for more than a half mile. Would have been much worse if it had been a weekday.

  “What do we do now?” Miranda groaned, feeling more hopeless than when they left the penthouse. They weren’t going to find anything good here.

  Parker pulled the Mazda over to the shoulder and turned off the engine. “We walk.”

  “Good thing I wore my flats.” Though she wished for jogging shoes. They’d decided to go professional in dark suits, in case they had trouble being taken seriously by the cops.

  Miranda got out of the car and trudged along the interstate’s shoulder, the feel of the asphalt once more taking her back to her road crew days.

  Pulling her jacket around, her she hiked in silence at Parker’s side until they reached the spot below the overpass.

  Here officers were examining an area of the street where a huge yellow emergency air cushion still lay on the asphalt. Miranda stared up at the cold, grimy-looking concrete of the abutment of the overpass and felt empty.

  Before anyone on the crew noticed them, Parker nodded toward the ramp.

  “Good idea,” Miranda muttered to him under her breath. They’d learn more up there.

  As they trudged up the curving incline to the bridge overhead, they garnered some curious looks and scowls from the folks trapped in their cars. But were soon out of their sight, keeping to the grass and under the bare branches of oaks trees that made up the entrance ramp’s landscaping.

  At the top of the ramp, there were more officers, as well as crime scene tape at the bridge itself, blocking their access.

  Parker strode up to one of the uniforms. “Excuse me, Officer. We need to pass through. Our help is needed here.”

  He didn’t say who needed it.

  The officer straightened his shoulders. “I’m sorry, sir. No civilians allowed beyond this point.”

  Miranda studied the policeman. He was young and didn’t have a Southern accent. Must be new on the force. She was about to ask him if he knew who he was talking to when she spotted the familiar image of blond-reddish curls atop a youthful face coming toward them.

  Her old buddy, Officer Chambers.

  He was dressed in plain clothes and looked cold and uncomfortable as he reached them.

  “What’s the problem here, Berry?”

  The officer’s shoulders grew even straighter. “Nothing I can’t handle, sir.”

  Chambers ignored the reply and nodded a stiff greeting at his newly arrived guests. “Morning, Mr. Parker. Ms. Steele. What are you two doing here?”

  Warm as ever.

  Resisting the urge to ask him the same question, Miranda told him about the call from Mackenzie. At the mention of her daughter, Chamber’s jaw went tight, and h
e held her gaze in a long steady stare.

  Miranda could guess what he was thinking.

  Chambers had been the one who’d taken her statement the day after the case in Jasper County was closed. He knew who Mackenzie’s real father was and all the gory details that went with that story.

  Turning, he nodded toward the barrier. “Mackenzie thinks someone pushed her?”

  “That’s what she said.”

  “And what is she basing that assumption on?”

  Miranda shrugged. “The emotions of a fifteen-year-old girl.”

  Chambers shook his head. “We haven’t found any evidence of foul play.”

  “Do you mind if we take a look?” Parker asked.

  Chambers took a moment to weigh the pros and cons, and decided it could do no harm to have the city’s top PI and his partner check behind him and his colleagues.

  He turned to the officer. “Let them through.”

  Looking stunned, Officer Berry did as he was told, and Miranda followed Parker to where the metal railing met the concrete barrier along the side of the bridge.

  She peered over the side and shivered. Long way down. Miranda had been doing some risky jumps herself lately, but nothing like that.

  Then she noticed a narrow ledge about five feet below. “Did she climb over the barrier to there?”

  Chambers followed her gaze. “That’s what Officer Cowan told us.”

  “Officer Cowan?”

  He nodded toward one of the squad cars where a woman in uniform sat, her head in her hands, talking to another officer.

  “She was the one who tried to talk her down.”

  And failed. “Can we talk to her?”

  “She’s giving her statement now.”

  And Chambers didn’t want them to see how shaken his colleague was. But Miranda couldn’t blame her.

  “Do you have her name?” Parker asked.

  Miranda knew he was double-checking what Mackenzie had told her.

  “Her name is Ella Cassie Skinner. She’s a student at Old Ferncliff Academy. Fifteen years old.”

  Though she already knew the information, Miranda’s heart sank at the finality of the words.

  “She lives with her parents in Tuxedo Park. They’re both lawyers. Father’s a corporate tax attorney. We know the mother. Kelly Skinner. She’s an attorney with the DA’s office. Trial Division.”

  That made the incident even sadder. “How did Ella get here?”

  “She drove.”

  “She had a car?”

  Chambers pointed over Miranda’s shoulder. “You must have passed it on the way in.”

  “Show it to us.”

  Looking annoyed, Chambers led them a short way back down the ramp to where the metal railing began. There in the grass behind a dark tree trunk several more officers were gathered around a late model metallic blue Mercedes.

  The kid was spoiled. As far as Miranda knew, Colby and Oliver hadn’t even discussed getting Mackenzie a car.

  She turned to Chambers. “Ella was only fifteen. She didn’t have a license.”

  “Learner’s permit.”

  So she’d broken the law, driving over here by herself.

  The door had been left open, and when Miranda peeked inside she saw girl things.

  Earbuds. A water bottle. An oat bar. A small blue purse with pom charms on the zipper.

  And Ella’s phone in a pink case.

  “She left her phone here.”

  “Unusual for a fifteen year old,” Parker said.

  “We found the door open.”

  Parker studied the interior of the car. “It appears the girl was upset over something.”

  “Yeah,” Miranda said. “And whatever it was had made her think about ending it.”

  “That’s what we’ve been able to ascertain so far.”

  “So she pulls her car over here, abandons it, and heads for the bridge. She looks over the railing, thinking about throwing herself over it—”

  “That was when someone saw her and called 911. Officer Cowan was on the scene in minutes. Emergency personnel arrived not long after.”

  But it was too late. “Have the parents been notified?”

  “We dispatched an officer to the home about twenty minutes ago. They headed to the hospital right away.”

  Hospital? “Ella wasn’t DOA?”

  Chambers shook his head. “She’s hurt badly, but as far as I know they rushed her into surgery as soon as the ambulance arrived.”

  She was alive. There was still hope.

  “Which hospital?” Parker asked.

  “Brandywine-Summit.”

  Chapter Five

  The same hospital Leon had been in, Miranda thought, after they had trudged back down the interstate ramp and climbed inside Parker’s Mazda.

  He turned around, managed to drive across the bumpy median, and now they were zooming down I-20, heading in the direction they’d come.

  Miranda peered at the stalled cars in the opposite lane. “This isn’t adding up Parker.”

  “What you mean?” His tone said he knew exactly what she meant.

  “If Officer Cowan was talking Ella off the bridge just before she went over, how could someone have pushed her?”

  “An excellent question.”

  She knew he’d been thinking the same thing. And the obvious answer was they couldn’t.

  She scratched at her hair. “The only evidence we have is of a distraught young girl who was so upset she drove off in her car with only a learner’s permit, abandoned the car, and tried to commit suicide.”

  “Kelly must be beside herself.”

  Ella’s mother, the attorney with the DA’s office. “You know her?”

  Parker nodded. “She’s a consummate professional who nearly always wins. I’ve testified in a few cases she was prosecuting.”

  “You mean she put you on the witness stand?”

  “For corroborating evidence.”

  Miranda would have liked to have seen that.

  “I didn’t realize Ella was her daughter until Erskine mentioned it. A very sad scenario.”

  Too sad for words. “I’m so sorry for her.” She hated this was happening to one of the good guys. “But why was Mackenzie so sure someone was trying to kill Ella?”

  The idea that some creep Kelly Skinner had prosecuted might have done this to her daughter crossed her mind.

  But that was a farfetched idea with so many cops around.

  “As you pointed out, teenage emotions aren’t always logical.” Apparently, Parker thought so, too.

  “True, but there’s more to it than that. We’re missing something.”

  “Maybe we’ll discover what it is at the hospital.”

  She hoped so.

  Though it seemed like forever, it took only about fifteen minutes to reach the massive complex of sand colored glass-and-brick buildings that was Brandywine-Summit. Took another ten to find a parking spot. Finally they left the car in the deck and followed the signs to the trauma center.

  It was a long convoluted trek, but at last they located the place.

  Miranda marched next to Parker through the large waiting room that was about one third full, to the receptionist window.

  “Excuse me,” Parker said to the scrub-clad attendant behind the desk. “A young woman was brought in within the last forty minutes. Her name is Ella Skinner.”

  Recognition and dismay flashed across the woman’s face, making Miranda’s stomach tighten.

  “Yes, sir. She’s been taken to ICU.”

  “Are her parents here yet?” Miranda asked.

  “I’m not sure.”

  The woman gave them directions, and they headed through the set of double doors she had indicated and down a wide hall to the elevators.

  After traversing another maze of corridors, they arrived at the ICU waiting room.

  This one wasn’t as large. It featured several round tables with magazines and an arrangement of brown and beige seats that matched the d
ecorative circles in the otherwise plain linoleum floor.

  Not many people were here, but Miranda recognized the stodgy figure sitting in a corner by himself.

  Lieutenant Hosea Erskine of the ADP, a longtime friend of Parker’s.

  “Hosea,” Parker said as they approached him.

  Erskine rose as if he knew they be getting here any minute. “Wade. Ms. Steele. Chambers alerted me you were on your way.”

  Miranda didn’t have time for formalities. “How is she? Have you seen her?”

  Erskine let out a breath of defeat. “I saw Ella Skinner only a brief moment before they rushed her into surgery.”

  “So she’s alive?”

  “As of about half an hour ago. Apparently only her head and a portion of her upper torso landed on the partially inflated rescue cushion, and the lower part of her body hit the pavement. From what I could ascertain, her injuries are extensive.”

  Jumping twenty feet onto rock hard asphalt would do that, even with a cushion. Miranda’s heart broke for the girl.

  “The poor thing.” She felt Parker’s comforting hand against her back.

  “Are her parents here?” he said softly.

  Erskine nodded. “They arrived just before I did.”

  “We need to speak to them,” Miranda told him.

  “They’re meeting with a counselor just now. They asked not to be disturbed.”

  Miranda’s shoulders sank. She scratched at her hair, feeling at a loss.

  The dark orbs of the lieutenant’s eyes studied her intently. “Chambers told me Mackenzie said she thinks someone pushed Ms. Skinner.”

  “That’s what she said. She insisted Ella Skinner wouldn’t kill herself.”

  “Chambers also said there was no evidence of the girl’s being pushed.”

  Miranda glanced at Parker. “We didn’t see any, either.”

  With a stiff nod, Erskine resumed his seat. “Well, I’m waiting here until I can learn more.”

  Meaning until either the parents finished with the counselor or the girl came out of surgery. If the doctors could save her.

  Miranda glanced at the staff behind the reception desk and the doors beyond them. No sense trying to get into an operating room to interrogate doctors at work.

  She sat down beside Erskine. “We’ll wait with you.”