Before the Dawn(28)

She heard a rustle behind her. Dawn didn't hesitate. She yanked her weapon from her bag and spun around, her grip dead steady. "Freeze!" Dawn yelled.

And the rustle stopped. She saw a man standing in the shadows, his shoulders hunched, his chin pressing to his chest. "I...I don't want no trouble..."

"Then you shouldn't sneak up on a woman." Her heart drummed frantically in her chest but her grip never wavered. Getting a concealed carry permit had been one of the first things she'd done when she got her PI license. No way was she going to walk around without a weapon.

He shuffled back. "Y-you're in my h-home."

Goose bumps rose on her arms as she studied him. Older, maybe nearing seventy, with a long, grizzled beard. There were dirt smudges on his cheeks and his clothes were mismatched. He wore one flip-flop and one sneaker. His jeans were held up thanks to a heavy rope around his waist and his dress shirt had been tucked in to try to keep the jeans in place.

"Sorry," she murmured but didn't lower her gun. "I'm a PI. I was investigating the crime that took place here." My home. 

He took another shuffling step back. If possible, his shoulders hunched even more.

"How long has this been your home?"

He licked his lips. "Don't...don't really know." He lifted up his thin wrist. "Don't have a...a watch, you know?"

She considered him a moment. "You knew the building had electricity, didn't you?"

His gaze cut away from her. "Maybe... I saw a light one night."

And he'd come in from the dark.

"What else did you see?"

His lips had clamped together. "Didn't do nothin' wrong. Empty building... No one was usin' it."

"Someone was. Someone killed a woman here. And they kept her body in a freezer." When he didn't speak, she added, "If it were my home, I'd be aware of what was happening inside. If I saw a freezer, I'd look in it, thinking maybe there was some food in there."

She could hear the rasp of his breath.

Her phone began to ring, vibrating in her pocket. She ignored it. She wasn't about to take her attention off the man in front of her. "What's your name?"

"Red."

She could see that part of his gray beard contained the faintest streaks of red. Maybe once upon a time, he'd gotten that nickname. Or maybe it was his given name. She wasn't going to push on that just yet. "Red, did you see a freezer here?"

He gave a quick, nervous nod.

Her phone stopped vibrating.

"And did you look inside it?"

His hands came up from behind his back.

"Stop!" she yelled, thinking he was pulling a weapon, but...he was just showing her the gloves he had cradled in his hands. Expensive gloves from the look of them. Leather?

"Left these..." he murmured. "Saw him put them behind the wall. I...I never touched them before t-today...was scared..."

The killer had left those gloves?

"Didn't want police to take 'em..." His jaw jutted out. "I can use them m-more..."

So he'd taken the hidden gloves. Dawn licked her lips. "Did you see anything else?"

His shoulders dropped. "I was...hungry."

He was skeletally thin, so she was sure that he had many hungry nights. Pity twisted through her. "When you looked in the freezer, you saw her, didn't you?"

"Frozen lady. Blue, icy." He lifted his gloved hands and pressed them to his eyes.

She stepped toward him. "Why didn't you call the cops?"

"My home!" Now he sounded angry. "They would have t-taken me from my home! I didn't hurt her! Never hurt anyone."

So he'd stayed there, with the dead woman...for how long? "Did you see the man who hurt her? The man who left those gloves?"

Red licked his lips. "He...visited."

Her goose bumps got worse. She needed to get Tucker down there. Needed Anthony to hear this guy's story.


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Her phone vibrated again.

"Did you see him when he visited?"

"H-hid." His head lowered. "Didn't want to get...f-frozen."

Those words made her heart hurt. "Red, may I buy those gloves from you?" Because there might be evidence on them. Especially if Red was telling her the truth and this was the first time he'd gotten them from their hiding space. "It's warm outside. You don't really need them now, anyway."

He frowned at her.

"I'll give you a hundred bucks for them."

He dropped the gloves on the floor.

"Great." Wonderful. She pulled the money out of her bag and offered it to him. He inched forward, his gaze darting to the weapon she hadn't put up, not yet. "I'm not going to hurt you," she promised. She lowered the gun.