by S W Vaughn
Part of me wondered whether Eva was out in the woods somewhere, as Diamond had been. But if she was, no one would look for her there.
Detective Clarke had also tried to find the husband, Douglas, but she’d encountered a strange problem there. The man had legally changed his name after Eleanor Schilz was sent to prison, and the records were sealed. She would have to get a court order to unseal them.
She was working on that.
With regard to the Reynolds and Mathers murders, all we had at the moment was a partial list of parishioners who attended the First Baptist Church. Apparently they didn’t keep records about that sort of thing, so Clarke had gotten the names from Reverend Fehily, who remembered as many as he could.
Eleanor Schilz’s name had come up when she spoke to him on the phone. That had been a difficult conversation; I could tell from hearing just her end of it. She’d told him about Diamond, and that old lady Schilz — ‘Mama Ellie,’ as she’d apparently styled herself — was living in the house again.
He couldn’t have been happy to hear that.
When I finally left the station at just after five, I went straight to the hotel and crashed on the bed, fully clothed and not caring.
It was dark when I woke with a gasp from a dream I couldn’t quite remember.
I sat up slowly, feeling rested and almost clear-headed for the first time since I’d arrived in Landstaff Junction. The bedside clock informed me that it was almost midnight, but there was no way I’d get back to sleep anytime soon. A quick shower washed away the rest of the sleep-cobwebs, and I got dressed and decided to go for a drive, maybe grab something to eat. And do some serious thinking.
When I reached the lobby downstairs, Bethy Goble was behind the check-in desk. She smiled broadly and waved me over. “Mr. North! I have something for you,” she said.
“You can call me Donovan,” I said as I approached the desk with a confused half-smile and no idea why Preston’s sister would have something for me. I didn’t think Donnie would want to go by the name I’d known anymore — especially since Eleanor Schilz had called him that. “What’s up?”
She stood, reached into her pants pocket and produced a business card that she held out to me. “My brother, David,” she said. “He’s a real estate agent. Preston said she’d mentioned him to you, and well, he says he definitely has a few places you might like, if you want to give him a call. Like, not right this second, obviously,” she added with a giggle.
I couldn’t help smiling. This girl talked a mile a minute, pretty much the opposite of her sister. I’d bet they drove each other crazy as kids. “Thanks,” I said as I tucked the card in my own pocket. “I’ll give him a call sometime, but not right this second.”
She laughed. It was an infectious sound, warm and genuine. “Are you headed out?” she said. “I mean, not that it’s any of my business. I know, I ask too many questions. You don’t have to answer me.”
“I’m just going for a drive,” I told her. “Maybe grabbing a quick bite, if there’s anyplace open around here.”
“Oh! There’s a diner up the road, about ten miles that way,” she said, and pointed in the direction away from town. “Well, it’s a truck stop, really. But they’re open twenty-four hours. Food’s not bad, either.”
I grinned. “Works for me. Thank you, Bethy.”
“You’re welcome! Have a good night, Mr. — uh, I mean Donovan.” She blushed a little.
I waved as I headed for the exit.
Outside, I took a moment to mourn the massive, crumpled dent in the SUV’s driver-side door, the scratches embedded with rust, and the crooked back bumper and cracked taillight courtesy of Oren Beauford, that wily old Red Sox fan. I still had no idea why he hated me, except that it couldn’t be just baseball.
But I found that I was a lot more forgiving toward cranky old men than deeply disturbed, sick women that took in children who were already broken, only to treat them in the worst ways imaginable.
I got in, started the engine and headed north, toward the diner Bethy had mentioned. And I thought about the card she’d given me, the tacit implication that I would stay. Buy a house. Become Donovan North, and belong to this place he must’ve left behind so many years ago.
The place he’d been coming back to when he died.
Did he know that Eleanor Schilz had been released from prison?
It wouldn’t have been easy living here, knowing that woman was around. Maybe, probably, he didn’t know. He’d been chasing a serial killer, and even though he’d gotten mixed up with mobsters along the way, he’d wanted to catch the bastard. The book he wrote, the job he’d taken, and the records he’d schlepped with him proved that.
I had to believe his intentions had been good.
As I drove the long stretch of country road and the houses appeared fewer and farther between, I was struck by how dark it was out here. In New York, streetlights and traffic and neon signs kept everything lit up twenty-four-seven, and the only true darkness lurked inside the buildings and the hearts of the people who occupied him. But here, there were no streetlights. No buildings, no people. Only the trees, silent vanguards of a concrete passage that seemed to intrude on their space.
That was why I noticed the reflectors, two bright red winking eyes at the end of a long dirt driveway that disappeared into the woods. Far back among the trees, I caught flashes of a wooden building, one dim yellow light glowing from a window, a large blue vehicle — a truck or a van — parked in front, smoke from a chimney curling toward the star-spattered sky. Someone’s log cabin, way out here in the midst of all this green-carpeted darkness.
I could never stay in a place like that, trapped in the nothing that surrounded it.
Not long after I passed the cabin, I spotted the diner ahead, a fluorescent oasis of parking lot lights and rumbling trucks and human life.
But I wasn’t hungry anymore. Suddenly, the idea of sitting alone in an impersonal booth, interacting with unhappy late-shift waitresses and eating bland truck stop fare, was too much. I had no idea what I wanted, but I knew it wasn’t that.
So I kept driving. Into the black.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Preston
She’d slept badly last night, but that didn’t surprise her. Yesterday had been awful. But today she was back at her desk, bright and early, ready to dive back in.
If only she knew where to dive.
There was one thing she definitely wanted to check on, something that involved the landslide of information she’d received yesterday — and that was exactly where the information had come from. The envelope marked only with her maiden name. She’d given it some thought, and she had a possible theory.
Her father. Maybe this was his way of telling her the things he’d never been able to say out loud.
She had no idea how he would’ve gotten hold of social service records, but it was worth a shot.
It was just after eight in the morning, and she knew he’d be awake. For as long as she could remember, Howard Goble had been up and moving at seven A.M. sharp, every day, including weekends and vacations. She got her cell out and dialed the house phone — a number that had remained the same since her childhood.
Her father answered on the third ring, the way her mother had always insisted that everyone answer the house phone: “Goble residence.”
“Dad, it’s me,” she said. There was a comfort in knowing that her father would recognize her voice and never mistake her for Bethy. Her mother had always been the one to go through the whole list of names before she settled on the right child.
“Preston! Good morning, sweetheart,” he said, the cheer in his voice confirming that he’d already flushed Monday night’s tension from his life, like expired leftovers found hiding in the back of the fridge and dumped down the toilet. “Is everything okay?”
“Sure, everything’s fine.” She’d been hoping he would ask about the envelope right away, save her the trouble of having to probe gently at the issue so she could
avoid opening a new fissure in the family dynamic. No such luck, though. “Listen, I was wondering … did you send me something? Here at the station?”
She could hear the confusion in his pause before he said, “No, I don’t think so.” And then: “Did someone send you flowers? Maybe you have an admirer.”
“No, not flowers.” She tamped down the irritation at the echoes of her mother’s gentle but unending quest to steer her onto the dating path. Et tu, Dad? “It was paperwork,” she said. “Copies of foster care records from social services.”
“I didn’t send you any paperwork.” A brittle note entered his tone, and she knew he understood exactly whose foster care records they were.
He wasn’t lying, though. He hadn’t sent the envelope.
She hesitated, unwilling to rip off the band-aid he’d already placed over this whole mess, but she still had murders to solve. Three of them. “Dad, it would be really helpful if you could remember the name of the boy you were talking about,” she said. “Was it …” She paused, swallowed. “Was it Donovan North?”
She didn’t want to ask, but she had to.
Every possibility.
“Honestly, Preston, I don’t know,” her father said. “Wait a minute … isn’t that your new detective? He lived in that freakshow house?”
It took a lot of effort for her to refrain from screaming. He still insisted on calling it a freakshow, a circus, a den of iniquity — as if the kids who’d been forced to live with that horrible woman had any choice in what happened there. “Yes, he did,” she said, and then mentioned the other possibility she didn’t want to consider. “What about Anton Fehily?”
“Your sister’s pastor?” Disgust drenched his voice. “My God. She’s got to stop going to that church.”
“Come on, Dad. Are you really blaming those kids for what happened to them?” she blurted, unable to hold back her frustration. He could be so damned bullheaded sometimes.
“They’re rotten. All of them,” he pronounced. “Preston, I can’t remember the boy’s name, because I never knew it. And I don’t think you should be digging around that place or associating with anyone who lived there.”
She couldn’t take any more. “I have to go, Dad. I’ll see you Monday,” she said, and hung up.
It was a subtle dig. He’d be offended. But she didn’t care.
He would get over it.
And she was back to having no idea who’d sent her that envelope.
She sighed and fiddled with the papers strewn all over her desk, wondering if there was anything in here that would lead her to the actual killer. Either of them, or maybe there was only one. She didn’t even know that much. Where was her big clue, the sudden break in the case that would make everything fall in line like dominoes and point directly to the bad guy, with a big flashing sign that said ARREST THIS MAN?
That kind of thing never happened in real life, though. Police work was slow, frustrating, and rarely neat — bound by bureaucracy and laws, fractured by a reliance on fallible human beings who provided pieces of the puzzle that were cut from their own experiences and personalities, and almost never fit snugly into place. There were jagged bumps and overlaps, wide cracks where information you didn’t even know you needed could slip through.
She’d never find that flashing sign. The best she could hope for was a whisper that would echo slowly through the canyons of what she knew, picking up bits and pieces of the puzzle until it became a roar of accusation she couldn’t ignore.
But there was nothing whispering to her now.
Her desk phone rang. She frowned at it, then picked up the receiver and pushed the button next to the flashing light that proclaimed the call was from an outside line. “Landstaff Junction PD, this is Detective Clarke,” she said.
“Preston Clarke?” The voice was gruff, male, unfamiliar. “Huh. Thought you were a guy.”
“Yes, that happens a lot,” she said carefully, unsure where this call was going. “Can I help you?”
He chuckled. “I’m thinkin’ maybe I can help you, sweetheart,” he said. “Sergeant Tremblay, NYPD. I got a request here for information on the Kid Glove Killer? Looks like it was sent in … oh, a little more’n three weeks ago. Don’t know what happened, but it got shunted down to the records room. Sorry about that.”
She listened with a growing sense of unease. That request had already been filled — by Detective North. It was his first contact with the chief, through email, and eventually led to him being hired here permanently.
“It’s no problem,” she said slowly, choosing her words. “Do you think you could send them over?”
“Yeah, sure. Take a few days, though,” the sergeant said. “Red tape bullshit, you know how it is. And I gotta ask why you want ’em, of course. Says here you got a murder case with a similar pattern?”
A few days? North had sent the records the same afternoon they received the request. What the hell was going on here? “Two now, actually,” she told the sergeant. “Had another one just Monday. We’re thinking it’s a copycat.”
Sergeant Tremblay laughed, a coarse and cynical sound. “All the way up there in Vermont? Jesus, you must have some bored people out there.”
Yes. Because people who were bored often turned to serial killing to spice up their lives.
Out loud she said, “Maybe. I’d appreciate a copy of those records, though. As soon as you can get them.”
“Sure, sweetheart. Like I said, a few days.”
His tone set her teeth on edge. “Thank you,” she said. “Oh, and Sergeant, do you mind if I ask you something?”
“I’m not on that case, if that’s what you’re after,” he said.
“No, not the case. It’s about a detective who used to work there. Donovan North? He actually just transferred here, and I was wondering if you knew him.”
“Well, sweetheart, the NYPD’s a lot bigger than your little mountain town,” the man drawled. “But that name does ring a bell. Hang on … North. Donovan North,” he muttered. “Oh, Christ. Not that weasel from the cold case unit, is he? Guy’s a nuisance. I’m sorry you have to put up with him.”
The cold case unit. “So, he didn’t work on the Kid Glove Killer case?”
“That what he told you?” Sergeant Tremblay gave a raucous bellow. “He barely touched that case. Hell, the only reason he wasn’t out on patrol was the chief figured somebody’d shoot him for being obnoxious, since he wasn’t intimidating. At all. I don’t know how he ever made detective,” he said. “But he only ran grunt work on the KGK case. Research, fact checking, that sort of shit.”
“I see,” she said. Though she didn’t.
“And that book of his, right?” the sergeant said. “Hah. Book. He never quit talking about that thing, how important he was, you know? An author.” He chased that with a snort. “We all passed a copy around and got a good laugh out of it. What an awful load of drivel. Anyway, my condolences on being stuck with that guy.”
Preston’s head throbbed. None of this sounded like the Donovan North she knew — the man who’d be arriving at the station any minute. Except the book. But even that … he never talked about it, and he’d seemed downright embarrassed when August brought it up.
Something didn’t add up here.
A whisper in the canyon.
“Thank you, Sergeant,” she finally said, somewhat stiffly. “I appreciate the records, and the information.”
“Uh-huh. A few days,” he reminded her. “And I’d suggest you don’t send any more requests in the meantime, because a new one’ll cancel the process and we’ll have to start over again. You know how it is with the red tape.”
“Of course.”
She ended the call, hung up, and stared at the phone like it was a bomb that had gone off. Because that’s what it was. And now she’d have to hunt down all the fragments, put them back together. Find out who’d lit the fuse.
She stood and grabbed her jacket, headed for the back door. As she passed the open door to Kratt�
��s office, the lieutenant called out, “Hey, Clarke, where you headed?”
“County records,” she said. “Why?”
“Damn. Hoped you were going over to Daisy’s.” He shot her a faint frown. “Aren’t you gonna wait for North?”
She schooled her features carefully. “Nah, this won’t take long,” she said. “I’ll probably be back before he gets in.”
Kratt glanced at his watch and gave her a dubious look. “If you say so. You doing okay, Clarke?”
“I’m fine. Back soon.” She forced a smile and a wave, then headed out to her car.
The best way to find out about anything was to start at the beginning.
So she’d look into the beginning of Donovan North.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Marco
I’d ended up driving around for hours last night, the way I used to in the city when I had a lot on my mind. Only this time I’d damn near gotten myself lost in the sticks. I wandered back into the hotel around four in the morning, earning an odd look and a careful greeting from Bethy on my way to the stairs, as if she was worried I wouldn’t get enough sleep.
I figured she was right and I’d end up dragging through the day, but after a long nap and a shower, I still felt refreshed. Not a bad feeling, after what’d seemed like weeks of sleeping in snatches between the endless parade of nasty surprises.
Today, I had it together. I was ready to roll with the punches.
By now the girl at the Dunkin drive-thru knew me enough to smile and make small talk about the weather when I pulled up to the window. I got my coffee and kept going to the station, thankful for the absence of rusty green trucks that might try to put more dents in my Jeep. So far, so good.
Then I slowed to turn into the parking lot and had to slam on my brakes as a squad car flew out in front of me, lights flashing and siren screaming while it accelerated past, headed north.