The Hunting Season

by Janice Kay Johnson - His Best Friend's Baby

  Lindsay tiptoed forward, straining to hear any faint sound. As she scanned the room, her nostrils flared at the sharp scent of something burning.

  For a moment, she didn’t understand why two feet clad in white athletic socks were in such an odd position. She took one more step as she grappled with the question…and saw a man sprawled on the kitchen floor. At the sight of his head and the blood pooling on the floor, her stomach lurched.

  Dear God, he was dead. Murdered. And…he was at least the same general size and shape as Martin Ramsey.

  DETECTIVE DANIEL DEPERRO groaned as the canned voice on his cell phone assured him he could go the company website and discover a wealth of information, freeing him from any necessity of bothering an actual person. He’d listened to the lengthy spiel and the ensuing elevator music six times now.

  Since waiting on hold was a chronic time-waster for all detectives, he was mostly inured, but his mood hadn’t been good today for no particular reason. His leg ached, although there was nothing new in that. When a high-caliber bullet shattered your femur, putting the pieces together was a little bit like trying to patch up poor Humpty Dumpty. And yeah, he hadn’t enjoyed informing the parents of a high school senior that he had arrested their son for selling cocaine, and oh, by the way, the kid would stand trial as an adult since he’d turned eighteen three weeks before.

  His desk phone rang and he picked it up, leaving his mobile phone on speaker so he wouldn’t miss a single note of the music.

  “Deperro.”

  “Detective, this is Officer Bowman. I just responded to a call from a CPS worker who found the man she was looking for dead. Head smashed like a jack-o’-lantern someone dropped. I don’t see a weapon, but someone killed him.”

  “Address?”

  Daniel committed the street address to memory and asked if the CPS worker was certain of the victim’s identity. A murmur of conversation in the background was replaced by Bowman’s voice.

  “She thinks she knows who this is, but can’t be positive.”

  “Okay. The name?”

  Martin Ramsey rang some bells for him. Coming in to work yesterday, Daniel had taken note of the report of a severe beating given a fourteen-year-old boy and that the teen had tagged his uncle as the perpetrator.

  Checking his computer, Daniel saw that an Austin Ramsey owned the home where the dead body had been found. Austin, however, was currently in the county jail. Interesting.

  He grabbed his cell phone, cut off the beginning of the spiel, version seven, and walked out of the station to his car.

  The drive didn’t take ten minutes.

  Somebody had filled potholes in the dirt driveway. Ahead, he saw a brick rambler with a double-car garage at one end. Two vehicles sat in front, one an SPD car with a rack of lights on top, the second a common crossover that would handle well in snow and ice, which they would certainly see plenty of this winter. In the crossover, he could see the back of a woman’s head.

  Officer Aaron Bowman came around the side of the house. He was young, twenty-eight or twenty-nine, and had impressed Daniel before with his steadiness and common sense.

  When the two men met up, Daniel said, “That the caseworker?”

  “Her name is Lindsay Engle. She took a boy named Shane Ramsey from his father, who owns this place, and placed him with the uncle. According to her, a couple weeks later the uncle beat the boy bloody. Nobody has picked up the uncle yet, who apparently hasn’t gone home. She thought he might be hiding out here.”

  “And that’s who she thinks is dead in there.”

  “Yeah.”

  Daniel asked a few questions as the two men went to the back door, which according to the woman had been open. Bowman hadn’t gone past the entrance between the utility room and the kitchen.

  “Didn’t need to check for a pulse,” he said, his jaw tightening.

  Daniel immediately saw why. Half the victim’s head had been obliterated. He also understood Ms. Engle’s doubts. If the dead man had any face left, it couldn’t be seen from this angle.

  The odd note was a small metal wastebasket sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor, only feet from the body. He took another step until he was able to see the burned, broken flakes inside, like blackened sheets of paper-thin, delicate phyllo bread.

  Crumpled paper, he realized. A fire that had been deliberately set, and gone out when all fuel had been consumed.

  Daniel called for CSI. He wanted to walk through the house, but found the front door locked and didn’t want to contaminate the kitchen by tromping through it. He asked Officer Bowman to stay and to start a log of who came and went. Then he went to the caseworker’s car and knocked on the passenger side window. She unlocked once he asked if he could get in to talk to her.

  He turned in the seat to survey her, and felt an odd stirring he identified as surprise. In some inexplicable way, she didn’t look like a Child Protective Services caseworker, yet he knew that was ridiculous. He’d worked with enough of her colleagues to be fully aware they could be young, middle-aged, near retirement, outwardly cheerful or glum, blue-eyed or brown. The stereotypes didn’t work. About all he knew for sure was that in the local office, a majority of the caseworkers were women.

  This one had medium brown hair worn in a roll on the back of her head, blue eyes and a voluptuous body he thought could be a problem when she worked with unstable men and hormone-ridden teenage boys. But that was none of his business.

  What did make him curious was her guarded air. He wondered if she was ever completely open. The fact that he sensed she had secrets might in fact be his business.

  “Ms. Engle?” He held out a hand.

  Hers was icy cold. “That’s right.”

  “Tell me what brought you here.” He smiled, hoping to relax her. “Start at the beginning.”

  She spoke succinctly, her voice pleasingly husky. Mostly, what she told him was a recap. He listened intently when she explained her reasoning for checking out this house, and for deciding to get out of her car and ring the doorbell.

  “You didn’t consider calling for police backup?” he asked.

  “I should have.” Her cheeks warmed. “I don’t like to do that unless I know something’s wrong, though. I mean, that’s a waste of your time. This was just…”

  He waited through her hesitation.

  Her eyes met his. “I really don’t know. Just a feeling, I guess. I almost chickened out when I first came around the back of the house. I could have sworn someone was standing in that wooded area. But I don’t know, when I kept looking I didn’t see anyone.”

  Was she tossing out the possibility that someone else had been watching her to keep him from focusing on her? Or had a killer really been there, and she’d been an idiot to disregard what her instincts had surely been telling her?

  She continued. “When I saw that the back door was open a crack, I justified going inside.” She made a face. “I actually tiptoed, believe it or not.”

  Yeah, he could see her doing that. He wanted to say, You know walking in that way was stupid, don’t you? Instead, he settled for an “uh-huh.”

  “What I don’t understand is who could have killed him. It doesn’t make sense.”

  She sounded sincere. Was she that good an actor? He must have hidden what he was thinking, because her expression didn’t change until he asked, “Is Shane still in the hospital?”

  Her mouth dropped open. “You’re suggesting Shane would do this?”

  “I’m asking where he is.”

  She didn’t look very friendly now, but said, “I picked him up at the hospital late this morning and took him to a receiving home. I assure you, he’s in no shape to borrow a bike, pedal across town and beat a man to death.”

  “But he has excellent motivation,” Daniel said softly.

  Her anger, or dislike, flared from a simmer to a
rolling boil. “That’s ridiculous! He never even fought back when his father abused him. He’s a good kid. You might as well accuse me.”

  He didn’t say a word, because yes, the thought had crossed his mind that she might have cracked and killed a man who epitomized everything she hated.

  She retreated without moving a muscle. The rest of her answers were single syllables. He couldn’t even blame her, but the reality was that he had to consider her a suspect at this point.

  Ten minutes later, already on his phone, he watched her drive away. If she intended to call the receiving home, he’d beaten her to the punch—and what he learned in a brief conversation set a red flag to flapping.

  Chapter Two

  Shane was missing.

  Lindsay learned as much when she reached the receiving home. Althea and Randy Price had never been among her favorite foster parents, but they’d seemed capable for short-term placements. Live and learn. Apparently Althea had shown Shane to his bedroom and then failed to notice his absence until four or five hours later.

  The woman’s round-cheeked face flushed. “I assumed he was sleeping.”

  Scared for Shane, Lindsay said, “You didn’t check even once on a boy you knew had suffered a head injury and had spent the night at the hospital.”

  Randy Price glared at her.

  Althea’s chin rose defiantly. “You’ll have to forgive me if I thought he needed sleep more than lunch!”

  “He needed care, Mrs. Price. And I’ll admit I’m disturbed to learn that he walked out without either of you seeing or hearing a thing.”

  She sniffed. “Well, I’m sure that detective who called will find him.”

  Oh, crap. That detective had probably called before Lindsay had made it down the driveway. He wanted to pin the murder on her or on poor Shane. Why work when you can go for the easy answer?

  She knew what she had to do: find Shane before Detective Deperro did.

  But first she had to figure out why Shane had taken off. Only one possibility leaped to mind. He could have gone out to the highway to hitch a ride to some bigger city where he imagined he could live on his own until he turned eighteen. When she thought about it, Randy was a big man who might have reminded Shane unpleasantly of his father and uncle. Lindsay had thought Shane understood that he’d be with the Prices for only two or three days until a suitable foster home was located, but even if he sort of trusted her, believing that the next placement would be any better might be beyond a boy like Shane.

  It bothered her that he hadn’t had any stuff of his own to take with him. Thanks to police planning to search his uncle’s house, they couldn’t get into it at least until tomorrow to collect the duffel with his belongings. He wouldn’t have any money, either—unless he’d taken some out of Althea’s purse. Lindsay wasn’t about to ask and put any ideas in the woman’s head.

  “If you’ll excuse me, I need to look for him,” she said. “Obviously, I won’t be bringing him back here.”

  Randy’s jaws bulged. “We wouldn’t have a boy who’d sneak out like that.”

  Walking down the sidewalk to her car, Lindsay rolled her eyes. Really? Every kid they’d taken in was a saint? She was angry enough; she intended to contact a colleague and suggest they reconsider the Prices’ receiving home license.

  She hadn’t reached her car when an unmarked police SUV rolled up behind her bumper. Deperro got out and watched her approach. She felt a tiny bump in her chest, because there was no denying he was a magnificent male specimen—six foot two or three and broad-shouldered, with dark hair and eyes and bronze skin—but he’d done or said nothing to make her think she’d like him. So she nodded vaguely in his direction and went around to her driver door. She couldn’t think of a thing she wanted to say to him.

  His deep voice carried well. “Ms. Engle.”

  That tone would scare Shane, too. She really had to find the boy first. “Detective.”

  “Can we talk?”

  Gee, he’d asked.

  Only after she opened her car door did she face him. “We’ve already done that. You may research my background and job performance to your heart’s content, but I think I’ll get an attorney before I sit down with you again. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” Not looking at him again, she climbed in behind the wheel and gave a yank to the door handle, only to meet resistance.

  Somehow, he’d moved fast enough to grab hold of the top of the door.

  Lindsay turned a blistering glare on him. “What do you want?”

  “You to tell me where I might find Shane.”

  “How can I? My best guess is that he decided he can’t trust any adults. It would appear he’s right.”

  Those espresso-dark eyes narrowed. “His uncle was murdered. You don’t think it would be irresponsible of me not to sit him down for a talk? To think, oh, his caseworker says he’s a nice boy. He couldn’t have anything to do with this, and think how much I’d upset him by asking where the hell he was while someone was beating Uncle Martin’s head in.”

  Lindsay tried very hard to hold on to her dislike, but that was hardly fair. Of course, his job demanded he find out where Shane had been while Martin was being killed. Ask Shane if he knew who might hate Martin—or benefit from his death.

  Her keys were biting into her palm. Not looking at him, she said quietly, “I really don’t know where he is. I’m…scared for him.”

  There was a moment of silence. He moved again, squatting inside the open door so he was closer to her eye level. Lindsay was painfully aware of the way the fabric of his black cargo pants stretched across powerful thigh muscles. She hated being torn between so many conflicting emotions and impulses.

  “I understand,” Deperro said, in an entirely different voice. “Believe it or not, I’m concerned about him, too.”

  She made herself meet his eyes. “Why?”

  It was obvious the detective wasn’t sure he wanted to tell her, but after a moment he rolled his shoulders as if to release tension. “What if the uncle saw him on the street and grabbed him? Shane might have had reason to fight back. Or what if he was there in the house when someone else killed his uncle? Did he run before that person had a chance to get a hand on him, too? Or did he see something he’s afraid to tell anyone?”

  Lindsay was afraid her mouth had dropped open. He was right. Those were real possibilities she hadn’t considered. Shane might be in danger because he was only a kid standing with his thumb out beside a highway. But he might be dead, too, or running from a killer.

  All the air in her lungs left her in a rush. “None of that occurred to me,” she admitted.

  “You could help me do my job.”

  If Shane were here, wouldn’t she encourage him to answer Deperro’s questions?

  Of course she would. “For the third time, I really, truly, cross my heart, don’t know where he is. I don’t have the impression he has any good friends. How could he, when he didn’t want anyone to know how bad it was at home?”

  “Yeah,” the detective said gruffly. “I get that.”

  “My best guess is that he’s running away because he didn’t like the Prices and is afraid of what will happen to him once he’s placed again. He might think he can get by as a street kid in Portland or Seattle until he ages out.”

  Deperro swore. “I’ll put the word out to watch for him. Damn. We want to stop him before he gets too far.”

  Again, he was right. And he was able to marshal help from sheriff’s deputies and even the state patrol in a way she couldn’t. Had she really thought she’d find Shane by driving aimlessly up and down local roads?

  Deperro frowned. “Could he have gone by his uncle’s house to pick up his stuff?”

  “Would he dare?”

  “It’s worth looking.” He rose easily to his feet and stood gazing down at her.

  “I can go out there while you—” />
  “Head out there, too.” His eyebrows rose, giving him a devilish look. “You’re welcome to join me.”

  Lindsay closed her eyes. As much as she hated to surrender, she just about had to.

  “One question,” he said.

  She braced herself.

  “Has Shane ever been caught setting fires? Even small ones?”

  Remembering the smell of something burning at the Ramsey house, Lindsay was profoundly relieved to be able to shake her head. “No. Never.”

  The detective’s eyes stayed narrow and intent, but finally he nodded.

  That didn’t mean he believed her.

  DURING THE DRIVE, Daniel coaxed Lindsay—she’d stiffly given him permission to use her first name—into telling him what she knew about both Martin and Austin Ramsey.

  Shane’s mother had died when he was nine. When Shane came onto Lindsay’s radar, he’d admitted that his dad hurt his mother, too. He thought Dad had killed her, but didn’t know for sure.

  Daniel gave her a startled glance. “Did you report his suspicion?”

  “No. I made a note in his file, but he wasn’t home when his mother died, and he said his father denied having anything to do with it.”

  “How did she die?”

  “She was helping paint the exterior of the house. Supposedly, Austin heard her scream and raced around to find her on the ground. She’d been atop a tall ladder, painting the trim on the eaves.”

  “A fall.” Daniel heard how expressionless that came out.

  “Hard to prove anything.”

  “Unfortunately.” The odds of a woman whose husband had been battering her dying in an accident struck him as about a hundred to one, but there really wasn’t much he could do all these years later.

  “I should have done more of a background check on the uncle,” Lindsay admitted after a minute, not looking at him. “Martin’s ex-wife didn’t return my phone call then, and I depended too much on Shane’s confidence in his uncle. While I was at the hospital this morning, I finally reached Martin’s ex-wife, who has remarried and lives back east. He hadn’t abused the kids, who were really young when the divorce happened, but he’d hit her a few times, she said. He hasn’t demanded visitation, but she said there was no way she’d let their kids go for an unsupervised stay with him.”