You Had Me at Cougar by Terry Spear

Chapter 14

Early the next morning, Chet and the others had been trying to learn where Benny Langston lived and worked. Now they had his home address and knew he worked at Crawley’s Bar where he was the bartender.

They all had a quick breakfast early, and then headed over to his home where they suspected Benny would be asleep. But when they knocked at the place, no one answered. They’d learned he was a bachelor and didn’t live with anyone. When dealing with cougar shifter rogues, they didn’t need a warrant to investigate if a cougar was committing heinous crimes. They put every shifter at risk.

Chet brought out his lockpicks, unlocked the door, and they went inside to search his place for any evidence relating to the murders.

They discovered jewelry that the victims’ families and friends had said were missing from their bodies or residences in a box under the king-size bed.

Chet pulled out his phone and showed the pictures of the missing items someone had taken from the victims’ homes, and everyone agreed they were the victims’.

“Of course, he could say he went into their places and stole the items after he found the women murdered,” Bridget said.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Chet said, “but you will still know the truth.”

Travis found some photos between the mattress and box springs in the master bedroom. “Hey, these are pictures of the seven victims. They’re alive in these photos.”

“It proves he knew each of the women.” Luke examined them more closely while the others were searching for any other evidence in desk drawers, kitchen drawers, bedroom drawers, and closets. “He met them all at the bar. Crawley’s Bar, most likely. He took the pictures when he was behind the bar.”

Chet looked them over more carefully. “You’re right. He picked up the women at the bar. It must be frequented by cougars.”

They hadn’t talked to anyone about him in Cody, not wanting him to get word they thought he was a suspect in the murder cases.

“He won’t be at the bar this early,” Travis said.

“Yeah, and that worries me,” Chet said. “What if he’s with another woman? Maybe even the one pictured here that we haven’t discovered a body for yet?”

“Then we have to find him,” Bridget said.

They’d checked all the rooms in the house. “You know it’s odd that Benny was sleeping in the spare bedroom also. His scent is on that bed too,” Bridget said.

“Good observation.” Chet didn’t detect a scent for any of the murdered women in the house. And no other males’ scents either. Just Benny’s.

Now Chet wished Ava had been with him if she could have seen something about him. “So what now?” Then Chet got a call from Ava, and he smiled. “Hey, we might have gotten a break.”

“The one the men mentioned in Loveland?”

“Yeah.

“I called to tell you I had a vision when I was in the middle of making donuts.”

“Of?”

“A black-haired man who works at a bar in downtown Cody?”

“Benny Langston?” Chet asked.

“I don’t know his name from the vision. I just got a visual. He has a home near there.”

“Okay, what did you see about him? Was he doing something?”

“He…he’s with a woman. I don’t know if she’s a cougar or not. He might not even be one. But I just keep feeling this impending doom where he’s concerned. If…if he’s the one, you have to find him. The woman could be in danger.”

“We didn’t find him at his place. But we’re searching it now. We found some evidence that we believe could be related to the murders.” The thing of it was he might have taken pictures of the women, but there had been no sinister intent. Still, why only of the women they had found murdered? Except for the one and he was afraid she might be next.

“He’s at her place. There’s a yellow Ford Mustang sitting out front. There’s a…mailbox, uh, house number—45012. The…the street sign says…Fanning Way.”

“We’re on our way, Ava. Thanks.”

“Let me know if you find anything.”

“I sure will. Thanks Ava.” They ended the call and Chet told Travis where to drive to.

“How did Ava get the ‘message’?” Luke asked.

“From what I understand, she could get a visual of something from a person who is in relatively close proximity, sometimes touch, or if it involves her in some way,” Bridget said.

“But this time?” Luke asked.

“Maybe just hearing the men talking about Langston, if he’s the one, she finally had a vision,” Chet said. “She had one about Joe and his friends because she was going to be there, I figure.”

“Okay, this is it, well, actually a couple of houses down,” Bridget said.

Travis parked and they hurried out of the car to go to the house Ava thought the man was at. They saw the yellow Ford Mustang parked in the driveway at the home.

“Why don’t two of us go to the front door, and the rest of us go around the back,” Chet said. “Travis and Bridget in front, Luke with me around back.”

“Hope they don’t have any big dogs in the backyard, guarding the place,” Luke said.

Chet smiled at him, then he and Luke sneaked around the back of the house, hoping that the owner of the home didn’t see them and call the police.

Travis knocked on the front door.

No dogs were located in the backyard, and none were in the house barking up a storm either because they were intruding on the property, thankfully. Chet didn’t smell any sign of Benny’s scent out here.

Suddenly, the back door banged open, and a man bolted out of the house, black hair, eyes wide as he saw Chet and Luke, both running to grab him. He was definitely afraid of getting caught at the house. But it might have only been a case of him making love to a woman who already had a significant other—husband, boyfriend—and he didn’t want to get caught.

Luke and Chet both took the guy to the ground and Chet hoped they wouldn’t find a dead woman inside the house.

“Hell, get off me.”

“We have some questions for you,” Chet said, not moving off the guy as he confined his wrists with wrist ties. He definitely was Benny and he’d been in all the victim’s homes.

“Let me go, damn it.”

A woman came to the back door and watched them, looking shocked, her hand on her mouth, her eyes wide. Thankfully, she was alive and well and she was the same woman from the photo Langston had in his home.

Bridget and Travis came running around through the back gate to join them.

“Are you Langston? Benny?” Bridget asked.

“Yeah, hell, what’s it to you?” Langston glanced back at the woman in the house.

“This is an FBI matter,” Chet said, flashing a badge at the woman.

“Hell, CSF?” Langston looked ill to realize they were cougars who could take him down if he was the murderer and they were onto him.

“Yeah, we need to talk to you. You’re coming with us,” Chet said. They had to get him to a safe place where they could question him in privacy. “I’m going to talk to the woman first.”

Luke and Travis stayed with Langston, while Chet and Bridget went inside the woman’s house to question her and realized she was human.

“What’s going on?” the woman asked.

“Langston is just a person of interest at this point.” But Chet believed they had their man. He glanced at Bridget, and she nodded. He identified himself and Bridget and the woman told them she was Xenia Monroe.

Xenia’s face suddenly drained of color. “You’re investigating the murders of the female cougars in town?”

“Yeah. Where did you meet Langston?” Chet asked.

“At Crawley’s Bar.” She motioned to them to sit on the seating in the living room.

“Have you ever gone home with him before?” Chet asked.

“No. I had just broken up with my boyfriend and Benny was available. So I brought him home. He’s always so friendly. Well, to all the women. God, how could I be so stupid.”

“We don’t know that he’s the killer. We need to question him to learn if he has any alibis for the nights of the murders. Did he take photos of women at the bar?” Chet asked.

“Photos? Uhm, sure. I mean, I don’t know about anyone else, but he took one of me. I thought it was cute of him. Not that I was going to take his coming home with me as anything that could develop into anything serious.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Excuse me.” She headed for a room down the hall, and they heard her throwing up.

“She was thinking he was charming and nice, a change from her former boyfriend,” Bridget whispered to Chet. “She’s sick from upset that he could be the murderer of the other women and she could have been next.”

Then Xenia returned, her eyes red. “I don’t know what else I can tell you.”

“Did you frequent the bar?” Chet asked.

“Yeah, but I was always with my boyfriend. He bought the drinks, and I never really paid any attention to whoever was serving them. My ex-boyfriend had been so controlling. If I so much as looked at another man when I was with him, he would have exploded. You can see why I broke up with him. Benny was so charming, such a change in venue.”

“I’m so sorry you’ve had to go through any of this, but we still don’t know for sure if he’s the real suspect or not,” Bridget said. “I would just be careful who you go out with until this situation is resolved.”

“Thanks. I should have told you that before. You might have just saved my life,” Xenia said.

After they finished talking to her, she had nothing more to share, except she’d made love to him, and they had slept until they heard knocking at the front door, and he’d bolted. She thought he had been afraid her volatile boyfriend had come to see her and would kill him.

“Are you taking him to jail?” Xenia asked, seeing them out.

“Yeah, in Yuma Town, Colorado,” Chet said.

Then they said goodbye and found that Luke and Travis had loaded Langston up in the car already.

“I don’t know what you think is going on,” Langston said.

“That you murdered seven women, six cougars and one human,” Bridget said as she shut her car door, wedging Langston in between her and Luke.

Chet figured she said so because she was hoping he would confess what he’d done in his mind, even if he held his tongue during questioning.

“What the hell? You’ve got to be kidding.”

“We know you have been at all the homes of the victims,” Chet said.

He didn’t say anything to that. What could he say? They were all cougars. They could smell his scent.

“I’ve been to cougars’ homes, sure. I’m a cougar.”

“Why kill a human?” Luke asked.

“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about,” Langston said.

“I suspect Langston didn’t want to be with the woman, but there were no cougars readily available and so he figured he’d kill a human to see if he got just as much of a thrill out of it as he did with killing cougars,” Bridget said.

“He’s the one, isn’t he?” Travis asked.

“Yeah, he’s the one,” Bridget said.

Travis said, “We’ll question him on the way to the jailhouse.”

“Sounds good to me,” Luke said. “But I’m going to let you handle this. We have three vehicles. Just drop me off at the hotel and keep me informed.”

“Will do,” Chet said. After driving for a few minutes, Chet parked at the hotel. They said their goodbyes to Luke, thanking him for helping them.

“Thanks for nabbing the guy,” Luke said, smiled and headed into the hotel.

“Okay, so how are we going to work this?” Chet asked Travis and Bridget.

“Two cars, one driver for each, and one of us takes a turn sitting in back with the perp,” Bridget said.

“Let’s do it. I think we should leave him in your car though, Chet,” Travis said.

Bridget said, “I’ll stay with the prisoner and you, Chet, and then we can switch off later.”

“Two hours’ time,” Chet said.

“Sounds good to me.” Travis gave his wife a hug and kiss, then he went to their car and got in.

Then they were on the road, Travis following behind, while Chet drove, and Bridget questioned Langstone nonstop—asking him about every victim, times, dates, murder locations, and she was taking notes. She could be a one-woman CSF team.

It would be enough to drive a man crazy. Chet only smiled, figuring that even when Langston didn’t answer her, she was gathering all the information she needed.

“I told you, I want a lawyer. I’m not speaking without a lawyer.”

“Rules are different when a cougar kills innocents,” Chet said.

“Besides, your scent and posture reveal all there is to know,” Bridget said. “So don’t mind me. I’ll keep questioning you until someone else does.”

When they stopped for gas, Chet drove the MacKay’s vehicle and Travis sat in the back seat with Langston and he started the questioning all over again. Only this time, Bridget was quiet, listening in on the one-sided conversation.

When Chet took his turn in the back seat with Langston he asked, “How come the woman is always in the car with me? You think she intimidates me?”

“I think you like to have the upper hand with women, but in this case, she has got your number and all of a sudden, you aren’t in charge,” Chet said. And then he began the questioning again. Only when he was questioning Langston, the guy was giving him answers. Chet figured the reason he hadn’t answered Bridget was that he really didn’t like any woman to be in charge of him. Though he didn’t trust Benny’s answers either. They just weren’t adding up.

“That’s not what you told Travis,” Bridget repeatedly said.

“I didn’t tell him anything.” Langston growled at her and if looks could kill, Bridget would be on his hitlist for certain, Chet was thinking.

During a switch off, Chet drove the MacKay’s car again, getting close to Yuma Town, and he called his boss. “Hey, Chuck. We’ve got some evidence concerning the murders in Cody and caught the person we think is the murderer, Benny Langston. We still need to learn what his motivation was, but we think he’s our man.” He shared all they had discovered. “I’ll call Dan as soon as we’re off here so he knows he has got a prisoner coming in.”

“Good job. You sure caught him quick. I heard you spent the weekend on your vacation at Ava’s place.”

“Yeah, the safehouse was under renovations and she had the only room available.”

“Well, you let me know if you’re putting in for a transfer, will you?”

Chet chuckled. “Yeah, I sure will.”

“Yeah, well, first it was Leyton and Travis and Bridget. It’s like a Shangri-la for cougars.”

Chet agreed. Especially if a male cat connected with a female there.

Then Chet called Dan, telling him that they had caught the suspect and we’re bringing him in.

"Good show. And Addie will do some investigating to see if he has committed any more serious crimes. Bridget always comes in real handy for the interrogations with being able to read their thoughts."

"Yeah, absolutely."

"Do you have another job to do after this?" Dan asked.

"Not yet. Chuck hired three more special agents to work out of Cheyenne."

"That's a long drive here. You'll have to stay overnight."

"Yeah, I'm going to check in with Ava and see if she has room for me.” Chet didn’t want to take things for granted. "All right. I'm giving Ava a call now." Then they ended the call and Chet phoned Ava. "Hey, I'm coming in late tonight with the murder suspect. It might be too late by the time I get in"—he really should have thought of that first, but he wanted to see her so badly, he wasn't thinking of that—"but if it's all right with you—"

"I'll leave the light on for you. The spare key will be on the back patio under the table leg."

"Okay, thanks. I can't wait to see you."

"You didn't get bitten this time, did you?"

He smiled. "No, we arrested him as a human."

"Good. I'll see you when you get in."

"I'll try not to wake you."

"No problem. If I hear you coming in, I'm going to get up to make sure you're not an intruder."

"All right, and thanks so much, Ava."

"Is the safe house available?"

"Yeah, so if you want me to stay there and not trouble you tonight, I can do that."

She chuckled. "You can stay here with me."

That’s just what he wanted to hear.