by S W Vaughn
Julie came back a minute later and set two large, lidded, thick paper cups fitted with cardboard sleeves on the counter. “Thanks,” Preston said as she took them and headed over to the extras stand where the sugar, creamer, and stir sticks were kept.
“No problem,” Julie called after her. “Be careful out there, whatever you’re going for.”
Preston kept her wince to herself. For the victim they were headed to see, it was far too late to be careful.
As she added extra cream and a single sugar to her coffee, she heard the bells over the door jingle and glanced over her shoulder, wondering if North had decided to come in and see what was taking so long. But it was Mr. Beauford leaving, his cap pulled low and a scowl set on his whiskered jaw. She shrugged and turned back to the fixings, stirring two sugars into the other steaming cup.
Outside, she’d gotten halfway to the car when she stopped short. Oren Beauford was standing next to the passenger side door, slightly stooped and glaring through the window at Detective North as though he wanted to drag him out and curb-stomp him.
North wasn’t engaging yet, but he looked close to responding with something less than polite curiosity.
“Mr. Beauford,” Preston called out as she made herself resume walking toward the car. “Can I help you with something?”
The older man straightened like a shot. His glare settled on her for an instant, and then he shook his head and spun away without a word, striding toward the rusted, pale-green hulk of a pickup truck that he drove around, the bed heaped with the tools of his trade.
She frowned a bit as she opened the driver’s side door and climbed in, handing North his coffee. That was very strange. “Do you know Mr. Beauford?” she asked.
“You mean that rejected extra from Deliverance out there, who looked like he wanted to cook my liver in bacon grease?” North quipped as he took the cup and speared a glance out the window at the truck. “Never seen him before in my life. Friend of yours?”
In spite of herself, the beginnings of a laugh escaped her. “Not exactly. Pretty much everyone around here knows who he is,” she said. “He’s been here a while, and he doesn’t like city people. That’s probably all it was.”
But she had to admit, Oren Beauford’s little show of aggression did seem like more than the typical New England distaste for city folks.
She just had no idea what else it might be.
North had already started guzzling his coffee, so she swung the car around and pulled onto the main road. She didn’t say anything else until they passed through the other side of the town limits and entered the fifty-five mile an hour zone along County Route 29, which would take them directly to Hynesdale.
She was trying to give the caffeine a chance to kick in.
“So,” she said when North started to look a bit more alert. “I didn’t get the chance to brief you on the incident before, but I’ll tell you what I know so far.”
Incident, she thought with an inward shudder. The words they used in this job were so clinical, so … insufficient. Situation, condition, incident, perpetrator. Bland and non-descript terms that wouldn’t cause public interference or panic if they were overheard, especially when they actually meant bloody crime scene, death, murder, monster.
North gave a nod, though his attention was diverted out the window as if he’d never seen a tree before, let alone a whole forest of them. “Okay, shoot,” he said.
She took a breath. “We had a second victim,” she began. “The call came into county dispatch about forty minutes ago.” She’d gotten a bit more information from Kratt over the radio on the way to Whispering Pines, and she repeated everything to North now. “Her name is Chelsea Mathers, twenty-two. Blond-haired and blue-eyed like Lynn Reynolds, the first victim, and killed in the same manner. Her boyfriend found the body this morning in her bedroom.”
He didn’t respond. She glanced aside to find his jaw clenched tight and most of the color drained from his face.
“You seem surprised,” she said, unable to resist a mild dig at him despite the grim circumstances. “Aren’t you the one who told Chief Palmer that the killer would almost definitely strike again?”
North blinked and shook his head. Some of his color returned. “Guess I must have,” he said in an odd, faraway tone. “That doesn’t mean I’m not sorry I was right.”
That stung a little. She’d been too hard on him. Her personal feelings about hotshot city cops taking over her investigation aside, his reaction had been entirely human.
Maybe he wasn’t the jaded, seen-it-all type she’d thought he would be.
“I’m sorry,” she said, though she wasn’t sure exactly what she was apologizing for. Judging him, she supposed. “You’re right, it’s bad. The lieutenant already told me that she’s even worse than the first one, so …”
She trailed off, not certain where to go from there.
“This kind of thing just doesn’t happen around here,” she finally said, as if that explained anything. “The last murder we had was thirty years ago, and that wasn’t even a murder. In the end it was ruled vehicular manslaughter.”
He flashed a small, crooked smile her way. “Did you work that case too?” he said. “You were what, two years old at the time?”
“I just know my history,” she said. “It’s part of the job.”
And part of spending her whole life in a small town where everyone knew that thirty years ago, a patrol officer had been chasing Greg Hardesty, who was blind drunk and driving on a suspended license. Hardesty had been going so fast that he drove over the side of the creek bridge and ended up airborne, until his car came down in a parking lot on the far side of the creek and smashed through the side wall of the county building. Eighty-year-old Vera Robertson, who’d been out for an evening walk, was five feet from the bridge when the flying car passed by, one tire coming within a few inches of her head. A heart attack had collapsed her on the spot, and she died en route to the hospital.
Everyone had heard the story. They also knew the famous line that old Judge Litchfield had uttered in the middle of Hardesty’s trial: “Who do you think you are, pulling that Dukes of Hazzard crap in my town!”
That was the kind of thing that passed as legendary around here.
“So, you’re ambitious.” North still wore that half-smile. “I knew it.”
“I prefer dedicated,” she said in a clipped tone, trying not to think that his remark had anything to do with her being a woman … or a hick. She decided to change the subject. “What’s it like living in New York?” she asked.
Not that she cared that much. Bethy was the one who’d been obsessed with the Big Apple for years and desperately wanted to visit New York someday — though even her big-city-dreaming sister wouldn’t want to live there.
North’s expression grew distant, as though he were searching for the best way to describe the infamous city. Finally, he shrugged and said, “Loud.”
It should’ve been a little funny, but there was something almost sad in his tone.
“Think you’ll miss it?” she said.
He turned to look at her, and his eyes were grim. “Not anytime soon.”
In that moment, the cop in her suspected that something bad had happened to him in the city, and maybe he was running away from whatever it was. But she didn’t know him nearly well enough to point that out, so she kept her mouth shut.
It was time to focus on the case, anyway. They were almost there.
Chapter Nine
Marco
A murder. And not just any murder, but the second one.
Donovan North had come here to investigate a serial killer.
I had no idea how I’d managed to even speak after Clarke explained the ‘incident’ to me, let alone sound halfway normal. What the hell was I getting myself into here?
At this point, all I could do was stick things out until I got back to Whispering Pines and pray that no one asked me too many questions. Hopefully, I’d seen enough movies and cop s
hows to bluff my way through this. I felt kind of bad that I was already planning to ditch this town and these people, when obviously they’d pinned their hopes on Detective North being able to help them catch a murderer.
But I was not the real Detective North — not even close. I was a hitman. Practically the opposite of a cop. I couldn’t do anything for them.
On the other hand, I couldn’t go back to New York. Clarke had brought that home for me with her question about life in the city. What I could have said, and what I ended up saying, were miles apart.
I could’ve said that New York was a world unto itself, a sprawling study of contrasts and contradictions. It was utterly massive and cozily familiar, hyper-busy and eerily quiet. It could be honey-sweet or dirt-mean, cold and impersonal or warm and welcoming, the ugliest blight you ever saw or breathtakingly beautiful. Every perception depended on who you were, where you went, who you knew — and what you wanted to get out of it. The city could give you everything, and it could take it all away just as fast.
And for me, right now, New York was one thing: Death.
“This is the road,” Clarke said, pulling me from my thoughts as she slowed for a left turn onto a side street with a marker indicating Greenleaf Lane. The street signs, both here and in Landstaff Junction, were brown instead of green, an odd detail I couldn’t help noticing.
Just like I noticed the mistrusting, resentful glances that the detective kept throwing me.
She didn’t want me here. Didn’t want Donovan North, the cop from the big city, coming into her town where she knew everyone, horning in on her investigation. The anti-outsider sentiment wasn’t as strong from her as it had been with the old man at the donut shop, but it was there. And I suspected it wasn’t just because of the New York thing.
There was something she wanted to prove, and my presence was impeding her.
Well, I’d be out of her way as soon as possible.
The crime scene was a little canary-yellow house at the dead end of the winding side street that was Greenleaf Lane, set back from the road and hidden behind a screen of trees. A picture-perfect country setting, complete with blue sky, bright sun, and chirping birds.
All you had to do was ignore the two ambulances, three police cars, and the small swarm of official-looking people moving around the property whose expressions ranged from serious to horrified.
I took in as much as I could while Clarke navigated the long driveway and wove around the snarl of vehicles to approach the house. There were at least three uniformed officers here. One had been stationed at the top of the driveway, probably to keep nosy people out, and two more were heading inside the place. A guy in a dark blue coat, wearing gloves and a cap, inspected the bushes in front of the porch. The open briefcase at his feet looked like a forensics kit. A young man who resembled an animated corpse — gray and trembling, his eyes bulging and bloodshot, fingers convulsing as they twitched restlessly at the blanket draped around his shoulders — sat in the back of one of the ambulances while a paramedic attempted to speak to him and got no response.
I assumed he was the victim’s boyfriend.
There were three other people on the porch. A forceful-looking block of a man in his late forties, dressed in a suit and tie, stood beside the open door barking something at a taller, slimmer, and younger man in slacks and a button-down shirt, who looked mildly confused. The third person, an auburn-haired woman in pseudo-military clothes, stood at the far end of the porch directing a pointed expression at the fresh-cut lawn surrounding the house and the woods that edged the property, as if the shrubbery had insulted her.
Clarke stopped next to a red-and-white car that read CHIEF OF POLICE along the side and turned the engine off.
“Okay, we just need to check in with the chief,” she said as she unfastened her seatbelt. “They won’t have moved the body yet.” She sounded a little uncertain of that, as if she was concerned that someone had, in fact, moved the body.
The body I was supposed to investigate.
“One second.” Clarke twisted and reached between the seats to grab a backpack from somewhere in the back. She opened the main compartment, pulled out a small, black soft-sized zip case and handed it to me. “Mini crime scene kit,” she said. “I’m assuming you didn’t have time to grab your own.”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak as I took the case, unbuckled and opened the door. It was one thing to claim I was Donovan North, and another damned thing entirely to look at some woman’s murdered body and pretend I could do something about it.
Coming here was a mistake. I should’ve cold-cocked Detective Clarke and ran for it when I had the chance, female or not.
Clarke was already out of the car, and I was getting to my feet when I saw slacks-and-button-down descend the porch steps and practically run toward us. The guy looked about my age, maybe a year or two older, brown-haired and fair-skinned with a dusting of peach fuzz on his upper lip. His brown eyes seemed a little too big, his lips a little too full, but he wore an earnest smile as he came straight at me, one arm outstretched.
“Detective North, sir. It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he said almost breathlessly.
I was careful not to frown as I shook hands. “Thank you …?”
“Senior Officer August Farnsworth.” There was a proud emphasis on the senior part. “I’ve read your book, sir. It’s fantastic.”
Oh, God. I wrote a book?
Clarke came around the car and sent a pointed look at the senior officer, though it was more mild exasperation than anger. “August, we need to get inside,” she said.
“Oh, right. Sorry.” He fell into step slightly behind me as I followed Clarke toward the porch. After a few glances at her, he leaned close to me and said in a stage whisper, “Hey, uh … when you come in, do you think you could sign my copy of Stab and Shoot? I have it at the station.”
I winced inwardly. Didn’t really know much about book titles, but that sounded like a terrible one. “Uh, sure,” I told Farnsworth. He’d never be able to get an autograph from the real Donovan North, but he sounded like a fan. I could maybe do one nice thing before I ditched these people.
“Wow, thank you!” August said. “Listen, I know some of your reviews are … not that great, but I hope you don’t let it bother you. It really is a great book. I read a lot of true crime, and yours is one of my favorites.”
Detective Clarke glanced back and cleared her throat loudly. Senior Officer Farnsworth stopped talking.
Thank God for small favors.
Now, I could concentrate on being introduced to the chief of police.
I assumed the chief was the suited man at the door, gruffly ordering people around. Instead, when Clarke started up the porch steps and called out, “Hey, Chief, we’re here,” it was the auburn-haired woman who turned away from her vigil on the woods to look at him.
Her green eyes slid from Clarke to me as I followed a few steps behind, and she raised an eyebrow and folded her arms, starting across the porch to meet us. “Clarke,” she said with a nod to the younger woman, and then she extended a hand to me. “Thanks for coming on such short notice, Detective North. It’s good to meet you, though the circumstances aren’t exactly ideal.”
So we hadn’t met before. That went into the plus column and almost balanced out the shiver of dread I felt when she called me Detective. “Chief Palmer,” I said as I shook her hand, grateful I’d at least picked up the name from Clarke. “It’s no trouble.”
Her eyebrow stayed raised after we shook. “You look better in person than on Skype. I guess the camera really does add ten pounds,” she said brusquely as she looked me deliberately up and down, her gaze coming to rest on my face. “Is that haircut regulation in New York? Looks like you cut it with a weed whacker.”
Someone behind me choked on a laugh.
It took me a breath or two to swallow my response. Marco Lumachi would’ve gotten an apology out of her, one way or another. But I was supposed to be Donovan North, who pro
bably didn’t go around intimidating his superiors. So I pointed to my head and said, “This is why you don’t feel sorry for a half-blind street corner barber who swears he’s just going to trim it a little.”
More laughter behind me, and Chief Palmer cracked a small smile. “Didn’t know you were a comedian, too.” She nodded past me. “My lieutenant, Rufus Krattiger.”
I turned to suit-and-tie-guy, who gave me a nod. “Call me Kratt,” he said. “Good to have you on the team, North.”
“Thanks.” I probably should’ve said something more, but I knew that if I opened my mouth too wide, my foot would jam itself right in. I still knew next to nothing about the real Donovan North, other than the fact that he’d written a book with a terrible title and a bunch of bad reviews.
“All right. Victim is in the upstairs bedroom, end of the hall,” Chief Palmer said, mostly addressing Clarke this time. “Why don’t you two head up, and we’ll regroup here when you’re done?”
“No problem.” The detective looked at me. “Ready?”
“Yeah,” I managed, and followed her into the house.
She led us through a small, pin-neat living room and up a carpeted staircase to the second floor. The stairs led to a T-shaped hallway with one door to the left, another to the right, and a third at the end of the short corridor branching from the middle. The third door stood open.
“That must be the bedroom,” Clarke said as she moved toward the center hall.
She walked in first, and I forced myself not to hesitate as I stepped through the doorway and stood next to her. It was a large bedroom, probably just as country-charming as the rest of the house, but I couldn’t take in anything except the woman sprawled on the bed.
She hadn’t been murdered. She’d been brutalized.
“Oh, God …” Clarke’s voice beside me was a hollow sliver of sound. She coughed once, gagged on a breath, and then slapped a hand over her mouth. I heard her rapid, retreating footsteps and hoped she could find a bathroom fast, but I didn’t bother watching her leave.