“I am.”
“So then you’re also aware that you just let someone under our direct supervision get on the subway, correct?”
Wanting so badly to look down at her hands twisting in her lap, to jerk her attention to the side, to focus on anything but the man sitting before her, Lipski forced her gaze to remain forward.
The subway was company speak for allowing a protected subject to go underground. The place where the agency wasn’t aware of their whereabouts, or even if they were alive or dead.
Of everything the protection service ever faced, it was far and away the worst.
Not only did they lack control of a situation, they didn’t even have working knowledge of it.
“I am,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper.
Keeping his features twisted up, looking as if he were holding back an explosion just seconds from occurring, Knoth turned his head to the side.
“So what the hell are you going to do about it?”
“Right now, my team is waiting for me downstairs,” Lipski replied, the words spilling forth, a last attempt to shove the conversation toward a conclusion. “We are outbound in one hour, headed to Bangor.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
The lights inside the warehouse had been dimmed for the night, turned off at exactly nine p.m., just as they were each night. A rule instituted a half-decade earlier, Vic Baxter hadn’t done it out of any real concern for his employees getting home to their families in time.
It was done because an operation as large as his, tucked away in the woods of Northern Georgia, needed to be inconspicuous. It needed to abide by the cover story that it was nothing more than an auto garage and junkyard, keeping something resembling normal business hours.
Otherwise, it was just a big shiny beacon, a lone point of light projected out from the middle of thick timber, practically begging law enforcement to come and take a look.
The local authorities were easy enough to keep at bay, the overburdened and underpaid excuses for lawmen content with a few grand a year for looking the other way. Even agreeing to occasionally come by and give them a nothing citation, just for the sake of really ingraining the front.
The problem was the boys from a few states north, the feds all but fondling themselves at the notion of bringing him down, the situation he was now dealing with proof positive of that very thing.
Tucked away in the office carved out on the second floor, Baxter stared down at the warehouse below, the shadows of the place made to look even darker by the tinted film covering the glass.
The last worker had left more than two hours before, finishing the pallet he was working on and moving out for the night, departing without so much as a glance up to the man watching over everything.
Not that he really needed to. Baxter was almost always there, a fact that everybody in the area knew all too well.
Once upon a time, he had had a home and a life, a place that he retired to at the end of each day.
Of course, that was before he ever heard the name Tim Scarberry.
Reclined in his rolling desk chair, he stared at the silent machinery spread throughout the shop, the items looking like miniature roller coasters, his very own amusement park built to scale and fit inside the enormous corrugated metal building.
Which, in a way, was a fitting name for the place.
The items he produced brought joy to thousands of buyers, and the money they forked over in return certainly made him a happy man.
If only he could clean up this one loose end, snip away this final thing that had been nagging him for so long. Maybe then he could return to sharing the load, being able to exit the building, having some form of a life again.
Without taking his gaze away from the scene below, he reached over to the desk beside him. Taking up his cell phone, he pressed a single button before tossing it back down, the sound of ringing filling the air.
A moment later it was answered, the voice on the line awake and alert, sounding as if it had expected the call.
“Boss,” Radney Creel said.
“Has he surfaced yet?” Baxter replied, skipping any form of introduction and getting right to the reason they were speaking.
“Nothing,” Creel replied.
“You’re certain?”
“Positive,” Creel answered. “I was onsite all day, put cameras in place covering the rear entrance and kitchen where we’d left the body. No way he shows up without us seeing it.”
Grunting, Baxter shook his head.
In the wake of his brother’s trial, it had taken more than two years to find any link to Tim Scarberry’s life. His parents were dead, his immediate backstory scrubbed away by the fact that he had been in the army, bouncing around the globe.
They effectively had nothing, searching for years before they finally found a thread, the single person in the world that might still be able to link them to Scarberry.
It was only by fluke that they had managed to stumble across him, to this day not even knowing where the man lived. Moving on him when they did had been premature, messy as hell even, but it was the best they could do.
There wasn’t a chance that Baxter could consider waiting so long for another chance to pop up again.
“What about the authorities?” Baxter asked.
“The deputy, the chick with the dark hair, has been working the houses along the lake, but otherwise nobody has even been by the place.”
Narrowing his eyes, Baxter pondered the information, superimposing it onto what he knew, what he would have expected out of the situation.
“Nobody else? No detectives from the city, crime scene technicians, search dogs?”
“Not a thing,” Creel replied, “just the one woman, working the thing like a damn noise complaint.”
Steepling his fingers, Baxter rested his elbows on the arms of the chair. The old man was the only possible link they held to Scarberry, a longshot that they had to play.
Whether or not Scarberry still even kept in touch with his adopted caretaker, there was no way of knowing. Since the day he walked out of the courthouse six years earlier, delivering the damning information that had put Eric Baxter away, nobody had seen or heard a word.
He had become a ghost, sucked up into the Witness Protection Program, never to be heard from again.
For as much bad press as the feds received, Baxter had to admit they’d been airtight on this one, nary a whisper of anything coming back, no matter how hard they looked.
Even after finding Lynch, changing the voicemail on his cell phone was the only shot they’d had, hoping that would be enough to pull Scarberry out of hiding.
Now, it appeared that alone might not be enough.
“Orders?” Creel asked.
Remaining silent for a moment, Baxter allowed the next few days to play out in his head, ways that he might be able to nudge the process along. Hopefully, bring about the end result they’d been looking for for so long.
“Stay in place,” Baxter said. “Let me make a call, see if I can’t speed this shit up for us.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
In a county with a population as low as Monroe, there was no full-time coroner available. Just getting a medical examiner to show up onsite was a stroke of pure luck, a former forensic expert in Nashville having retired to the area years before and offering his work on a volunteer basis.
Which was basically to say, he would show up, make all initial determinations and assessments, and then send the victim on their way to Sevierville, where the real heavy lifting would be performed.
Also meaning that Talula Davis’s day started even earlier than usual, the meeting with Charbonneau the prior evening making it clear that this was her investigation to perform and she was expected to do everything associated therein.
What all that included, she didn’t pretend to know the full answer to, having never been trained as a detective, or even having shadowed one before.
All she had was the minimal trai
ning she’d obtained when joining the department.
A time or two over the years she had debated moving up, joining a police force, trying to work her way through the system. Any such thoughts had ceased long before though, her time with Monroe County making it clear just how much of a Boys Club law enforcement could be.
At this point, she was merely biding her time, doing her due diligence before making a clean break.
Only the third car in the lot outside the Sevierville County Coroner’s Office, Davis slammed the door shut on her Bronco, the morning sun promising that there would be no hope of clouds or rain to bring reprieve to the area. Already feeling a light film of moisture settle on her skin, she cut a diagonal path toward the front door.
Stepping inside, she found the front to resemble a lobby from a tiny elementary school, a small square of space with black and white tile, hallways extending in either direction.
To her right was a sliding glass window, a woman with short gray curls and pointed glasses sitting behind it, staring intently at her.
“Good morning,” she said, unleashing one of the thickest accents Davis had ever heard.
“Morning,” Davis replied, catching a bit of twang creep into her tone as well, a subconscious attempt to match the sound. “Looking for Dr. Asay?”
“Good thing,” the woman said, revealing a gap-toothed smile, “Doctor’s the only other person in the building so far.”
Tipping her head to the side, she said, “In the basement. Can’t miss it.”
Her eyebrows coming together slightly in confusion, Davis offered only a nod of thanks. Following the direction of the woman’s gesture, she took a plain black metal door down a flight of stairs, depositing her in the basement a moment later.
Underfoot, the same color scheme stretched out on the tile before her, the light shifting from fluorescent white to filmy yellow, a slight hum in the air. On one side of the hall sat a pair of matching wooden benches, a trash can between them.
On the other, metal double doors, the faint sound of music carrying out from them.
Following the sound, Davis walked forward and tapped against the doors with the back of her knuckles before shoving the left side one and peering in.
Never before had she been inside a coroner’s lab, though the space looked exactly as she’d expected, television doing a surprisingly real job of putting together what a general setup looked like.
What they hadn’t prepared her for was the sight of the deceased splayed out on the table in the center of the room, a spotlight shining down, illuminating it from above.
Certainly not the competing scents of chemicals and blood in the air.
Or of someone she presumed to be Dr. Asay standing perched over the body, a bone saw in hand.
“Yes?” the doctor asked, a high-pitched female voice loud enough to be heard over Etta James wailing in the background.
Wincing slightly at the increased volume, Davis kept her gaze on the doctor, making a point of not looking at the spread between them. “Talula Davis, Monroe County Sheriff’s Department, I’m here about-“
“Oh, yes,” Asay replied, her forehead crinkling behind the plastic shield and surgical mask she wore, a gesture Davis presumed to be a smile. “You’re here about this one.”
With her saw, she motioned down to the specimen before her. After, she set it to the side, snatching up a remote from the instrument tray and jabbing it toward the wall.
A moment later, the music fell away, the silence just as pronounced in the small subterranean space.
“Sorry about that,” Asay said. “Down here by myself all day, have to maintain some contact with the outside world to keep from going crazy.”
Not once had Davis ever considered the profession of a medical examiner, though she had to admit that Asay was correct.
It would be easy to lose one’s sanity – if not their humanity – in a space like this.
“No problem,” Davis said, venturing two steps further before stopping, her hands hanging free by her side. “Thanks so much for making time, I won’t keep you but a minute.”
Tilting the plastic shield so it was extended straight out from her forehead, Asay waved a hand, dismissing the apology. Using the same hand, she tugged down her surgical mask to reveal a woman in her early thirties with Hapa features, her cheeks large and a bitty puffier than the rest of her would indicate.
“Not at all. Be nice to have someone down here to talk to. These guys,” she said, motioning to the table before her, “aren’t the greatest conversationalists.”
Smirking slightly, Davis replied, “I bet not.”
Bringing her hands together before her, the slap of her gloved palms loud enough to almost make Davis flinch, Asay said, “So, you’re here to see what happened to Mr. Lynch.”
Given the time of day and their surroundings, the amount of joy and energy Asay seemed to radiate was surprising, Davis not sure how she would handle a work environment such as this.
Not that it could be a great deal worse than the Sheriff’s Department, if she really wanted to think about it.
“Please.”
Motioning toward the table, Asay said, “The short version? This guy seriously pissed somebody off.”
Taking a few more steps forward, Davis closed the gap between them by half, her focus still on the woman across from her.
“Yeah?”
“Oh, yeah,” Asay confirmed. “This is some serious revenge level stuff right here, the type of thing I read about in med school but never thought I’d actually see.”
Folds of skin appeared around Davis’s eyes as she processed the information, an involuntary wince folding her features together.
“Not what I’m wanting to hear right now, Doc.”
“Nor what I’m wanting to share,” Asay replied. “And damned sure not what this guy wanted to endure.”
Slide stepping to the side, she started at the feet. “Take this for instance.”
For the first time, Davis forced herself to take in the body, to focus on the remains before her. Steeling herself, willing the acid of the coffee in her stomach not to turn to bile, she followed Asay’s finger to the mangled stumps of what had previously been Lynch’s toes.
“Somebody went through these things one at a time,” she said. “Snipped them off, then seared the wounds so he wouldn’t bleed out.”
“Damn,” Davis whispered, seeing the blackened and mottled skin that had at one point been his feet. Ranging in height and severity, the only thing the digits shared was that all ten had been mutilated beyond use.
“Yep,” Asay said. “Not surprised the ME on the scene missed it. His boots were still on when he arrived here, and it wasn’t the type of thing anybody would think to check for.”
Thinking back two days earlier, Lynch pictured the scene as she arrived, thought on the body and how it had been positioned. Whether he was wearing boots, she couldn’t recall.
But like the doctor said, it certainly wasn’t the sort of thing she was looking for.
“The burning makes any definitive results difficult to ascertain,” Asay continued, “but if I were to guess, I’d say they were removed with snips of some sort, seared with an iron.”
Wincing again, Davis rocked back an inch. “So they moved the body?”
Glancing up at her, Asay cocked an eyebrow. “No sight or smell of it at the scene?”
“Nothing,” Davis confirmed. “Just a single pool of blood under his chest, where the stabbings had occurred.”
Bringing her lips together, Asay nodded slightly, “Which, as I’m sure your guy on the scene told you, wasn’t the actual cause of death.”
Snapping herself away from the toes, from finding herself back inside the cabin two days earlier, Davis said, “Huh? He said it was from shock due to blood loss.”
“And it was,” Asay said, “but those wounds to the chest are all just superficial.”
Moving back up to her original position, she picked up one of the chest fla
ps lying open before her, flipping it back into position. Like a wet towel slapping down, it smacked against the rib cage, hiding most of the interior gore from view.
“See here,” Asay said, pointing at the wounds, gaping like open mouths across the flesh. “Rounded on one side, they were made by a serrated blade, hence one side being a smooth slice, the other being much rougher.”
Moving her finger over the skin, she said, “But see how there is no lividity here? Given that he was found face down, if these had been the cause of death, blood would have pooled tight against the surface of the skin.”
Recalling once more what she had found, Davis nodded. There was no doubt that Lynch had been lying on his chest when she walked in.
“So then...” she began, letting her voice trail off.
Across from her, Asay looked up, any trace of her previous mirth long past.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Stop number two was the only other place in the world I could think of that might give me a clue as to where Uncle Jep might be. While I already knew what had befallen him, and who had done it, there was still an infinite amount of information in between I needed to obtain.
Like finding out where my uncle’s body was, making sure he was taken care of.
And finding out just how pissed I needed to be afterward.
After the early evening the night before, I was awake well before dawn. Sleeping in had never been a favored pastime of mine, something that began on Uncle Jep’s watch, was permanently ingrained under Uncle Sam’s.
Not bothering to set an alarm, the glowing red digits on the alarm by the bed said it was just minutes after five when my eyes popped open. Staring up at the cracked swirls of paint affixed to the ceiling above me, miniature stalactites pointed my way, it took just a moment for my surroundings to come into focus, for my mind to pick up exactly where I had left off the night before.
Starting with a lukewarm bottle of water, I drained the entire thing before padding into the bathroom. This time I kept the shower to just ninety seconds, another callback to my time in the military, soaping and shampooing in short order and rinsing it clean with the coldest water I could stand.
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