A Child Shall Lead Them (A Joe Burgess Mystery, Book 6)

by Flora, Kate;

  “Melia coming out?” Kyle asked.

  “Time will tell.”

  “Stan?”

  “I left a message. He’s probably tied up.”

  “Maybe you should call Sage.”

  “Good idea. We’re going to need all hands on deck.”

  The truth, of course, was that they didn’t want all hands on deck. Didn’t want all the department’s own Lookie Loos traipsing through the scene, which could happen, and be immensely destructive, if scene security wasn’t good. The rule for successful crime scene investigation was to keep it small. A tight, effective team who could cover the ground and communicate well. Who were each meticulous about evidence collection. Who were observant and didn’t miss things. Who wouldn’t walk into that room and immediately think murder suicide instead of letting the facts tell them what it was. But they couldn’t do it without enough hands, either, and Stan had already had a physically and emotionally overwhelming day. If he was going anywhere after assisting with the birth of his child, it should be home.

  They stood in silence, in that moment where they could think before the onslaught of personnel necessary at a death scene. It was the moment when someone would smoke if they smoked. The moment for bracing themselves for the hours ahead. For accepting the necessity to be diligent about their observations, about recording everything that needed to be preserved. For accepting that the scene would take as long as it took, and couldn’t be rushed because someone was tired, or, like Burgess, might have a hot date.

  As the first sirens were heard in the distance, Kyle said, “So is this how we’re supposed to read this? Our man Charlie Hooper Dornan Wilson begins to regret his life of crime. Troubled by prostituting and murdering his foster daughter and by the children he’s imprisoned and quite likely sold for sex as well, he leads police to Ida Mae’s house. As the law—that’s us—closes in, and faced with the enormity of what he’s done and challenged by his wife about the disappearance of their foster daughter, he sees only one way out. To silence her, he shoots his wife. Then, recognizing the inevitability of discovery and arrest, he chooses to take his life rather than spending it in prison.”

  After a very still day, a wind had come up. Burgess closed his eyes as it cooled his face. It felt almost silky, like the air was a caress. Overhead, a nearly full moon illuminated the scudding clouds and bathed the world in its eerie, blue-white light. It would have been a lovely night except for this. He inhaled the salt-tinged air, longing to stay out here in the moonlight, just breathing. Just being. Letting someone else handle the mess inside.

  “You believe that’s what happened?” he said.

  “What do you think I am, a rookie?” Kyle said. “Her blouse is misbuttoned. Her slippers are on the wrong feet. There are drag marks on the carpet. I don’t think that’s where she was shot.” Kyle hesitated. “I suppose he could have shot her somewhere else in the house, dragged her to the couch, arranged her, and then shot himself. But why bother?”

  “We know what we’re supposed to think,” Burgess said. “We need to see the rest of the house. We’ll listen carefully and it will speak to us. We’ll analyze the blood spatter. Check his hands for GSR. Look at where the gun fell.”

  “Or was placed,” Kyle said.

  Listening to the scene wasn’t New Age twaddle. Long-time detectives knew that the cop gut was a powerful guide in assessing what was what. It was the thing that told them someone was wrong, a suspect was about to explode, a dark room or a traffic stop was dangerous. The innocent-seeming person was about to produce a gun or a knife. The timid housewife was lying. The menacing thug was innocent. They were like crime scene dowsers, carrying their predictive guts into the situation and finding not water but information.

  Before chaos descended he stepped away and called Chris. “Got another homicide,” he said. “I don’t know when I’ll be home.”

  “People have got to stop killing each other, Joe,” she said. She dropped her voice into a lower register, the one that had captured him when he first met her. “I had big plans for tonight. Did you see the moon?”

  “Leave a light on for me,” he said.

  “And little else,” she said.

  “Thinking of that will get me through this.”

  Kyle was making his own phone call to Michelle. This was going to be another long night.

  Burgess called Sage in. As he was putting his phone away, Stan Perry called.

  “Joe. Consider this a virtual cigar, okay. Autumn Angela Perry arrived an hour ago. She is petite and beautiful like her mother, and busy and restless like her father.”

  “Congratulations,” Burgess said. “How is Lily doing?”

  “She’s great,” Perry said. “I thought she was going to be mad because Autumn came before the wedding, but she’s over the moon.” He gave it a minute, reluctant to say what Burgess already knew he was going to say. “I know you need me out there, but Joe, I’m beat, and Lily will kill me if I leave her right now.”

  “Stan, of course you need to be there. Don’t worry about it. We’ll be fine. Sage is coming out to help us. Stay with Lily and your daughter.”

  Perry was silent for a minute. He was, after all, letting down his boss and the meanest cop in Portland. And he wasn’t keen on letting Sage take his place. Finally common sense prevailed, and there was a very uncertain, “Are you sure?”

  “Very sure. Autumn’s birth is a once in a lifetime event. Haven’t I taught you that people—live people—come first?”

  “Yes, but…”

  “Why is there a but? Do you want to leave Lily and Autumn?”

  Burgess was quite sure he heard tears behind Perry’s answer. “God no, Joe. This is the most amazing fricking thing that’s ever happened in my life.”

  “Text me a picture. Now go, before I change my mind.”

  Burgess disconnected and went to tell Kyle.

  “That was Stan. It’s a girl. Autumn Angela. Stan’s afraid if he doesn’t show up here, Sage will replace him. He’s afraid if he leaves Lily she’ll never forgive him.”

  “The homicide detective’s rock and a hard place,” Kyle said. “Kid lacks perspective. There’s always another homicide. The day your first child is born is once in a lifetime.”

  “That’s what I told him.”

  They stepped out to the street to meet the incoming cars.

  Twenty-Six

  The first officer on scene was Gabe Delinsky, so he got the job of Log Officer. Remy Aucoin was next. Burgess told him to string up crime scene tape. In less than five minutes, the crime scene van was there. Wink was complaining, and Rudy Carr, their photographer, and Dani had gone quietly to work.

  Before he and Kyle left them to record and measure in the living room, he said, “We have one piece of good news tonight. Stan and Lily are parents of a girl. Autumn Angela.”

  “Autumn,” Dani said as she placed a box of shoe covers by the front door. “I love it.” Then, “Gabe, no one comes in without these, okay. Not even the Chief, or Captain Cote.”

  “Ma’am,” Delinsky said, “Nobody is getting past me.”

  “No, I don’t suppose they will.” Delinsky was as big as Burgess, but twenty years younger and fast on his feet.

  Burgess and Kyle put on their shoe protectors and started their review of the rest of the house. Straight ahead was the kitchen. The room was immaculate. No dishes in the sink. Nothing on the counters except a toaster, a coffee maker, and a small metal dish with two sets of keys. No flyers, photos, clippings or magnets on the refrigerator. Burgess opened the fridge warily. Once you’ve found a human head in there, you open them carefully for the rest of your life. Even in your own house.

  The refrigerator was like the rest of the kitchen. Spotless. Orderly. There was nothing fun to eat in there. Everything was packaged and labeled. He checked the freezer. It was the same way. While there were packages labeled “Lynn” and “Charlie” there were none labeled “Shelley.” Had they cleaned the refrigerator after Shelley was kille
d, or had this household never included food for Shelley? He couldn’t ask Charlie or Marilyn now, but there might be neighbors, friends, or co-workers who could shed some light on the domestic arrangements.

  The cupboards were as sterile as the fridge. Even the area under the sink, which became a catch-all for cleaning supplies, plant food, and oversized pots and pans in most kitchens, was orderly and immaculate.

  “Remind me that we want to see their trash,” he told Kyle.

  “It must have been awful to be a child in this house,” Kyle said.

  They moved back past the small half bath and down the corridor that led to the bedrooms, hugging the wall to avoid stepping where the nap showed someone, or something, had been dragged. Where small dark spots on the clean beige carpet suggested there might be drops of blood.

  The first bedroom was evidently used as an office. There was a desk and filing drawers, a calculator and a jar of pens and pencils. Some reference books on the shelves. A small stack of manila file folders on the corner of the desk. The drawers held neatly labeled files. Mortgage. Insurance. Cars. Taxes. Investments. They would need to go through these files at some point, but that could wait.

  The second bedroom was tiny, with a single bed, a small desk and desk chair, and nothing else. The desk didn’t have any drawers, not even a pencil drawer. There was a faded tan spread on the bed. Nothing on the walls and nothing on the desk. No pictures on the walls, and none of the tape marks, empty nails, or faded spots to indicate there ever had been. There was a small closet but the closet was so empty there wasn’t even dust. Kyle got down on the floor and lifted the bedspread. The space under the bed, like the rest of the room, was empty. He flattened himself on his stomach and reached in, feeling around. He got up, shaking his head, and moved the bed away from the wall. At the back, caught between the carpet and the baseboard, was a glittery pink barrette.

  “Looks like they tried to eliminate all traces of her,” he said. “But somehow missed this.”

  “So painful to think the child is murdered and they eliminate any trace of her. It’s like she never existed in the world,” Burgess said. “But we’ve got the mate to this. And the broken one at the crime scene.”

  He held the barrette up to the light. “There are some hairs trapped here.”

  So far, except for the barrette, there was no evidence a foster child named Shelley Minor had ever lived in the house.

  The medicine cabinet in the bathroom continued the theme of stark organization. Everything was arranged by size and use. The shelves were perfectly clean. There was no makeup and few grooming products. Just cough medicine, peroxide, mouthwash, Band-Aids, aspirin. No prescription medicines.

  The only clutter they’d seen in the entire house was in the second drawer of the vanity. There a collection of make-up, skin products, nail polish, and some scrunchies and elastics were jumbled together like they’d escaped a control freak’s notice and gone to frolic in the drawer.

  “Maybe he shot her because he couldn’t stand being yelled at for getting things out of order?” Kyle said.

  “If,” Burgess said.

  “Yeah. If.”

  They moved on to the bedroom. Here, at least, there was a story about something other than compulsive neatness.

  They stood together in the doorway, staring into the room. The signs of a struggle were small. But small displacements in a neatnik’s house stand out. The bedspread was slightly askew. The clock on one of the bedside tables had been knocked over. The lampshade was tilted. There was a minute streak of what might be blood on the wall beside the closet. The pillows were misaligned. Dents in the carpet where the legs of the bedside table had been showed it had been moved. There was a scrape on the wall where one of the bedposts had banged it. All little things, but in a house where nothing was cracked, chipped, dented or dirty, they stood out from the obsessive cleanliness and order.

  Burgess checked the closet. Very clearly his and hers sides, with everything arranged by length. There was nothing in any of the pockets. Shoes on the closet floor were lined up neatly. There was no dust. On the shelf above the clothes, more shoes were stored in plastic boxes. Extra bedding was zipped into a plastic bag. A few clear plastic bins held belts, scarves, and sweaters. None of the bins held anything except belts, scarves, and sweaters.

  “I wouldn’t last a day here,” Burgess said.

  Kyle was down on the floor again, peering under the bed. “Balled up cloth here, Joe,” he said. “We’ll want them to photograph it before we drag it out to see what it is.”

  Burgess checked the tall dresser drawers while Kyle checked the low dresser. He worked his way down through drawers that were the same as the rest of the house. Perfectly neat and orderly. There was nothing hidden under, or behind the clothes. No small slips of paper, or mismatched socks, or random dollar bills or change. He’d almost reached the bottom when Kyle said, “Wow. Here’s a surprise. Look at this, Joe!”

  He stepped carefully over to where Kyle was standing. Kyle had a large, deep drawer open. Burgess looked at the contents. The entire drawer was filled with sexy women’s lingerie in all the colors of the rainbow. Carefully folded. Push-up bras and balconettes and strapless bras, with matching panties, mostly thongs, all carefully organized into sets. Only one bra was out of order. A black lacy one tossed carelessly on top. Kyle left that one there—something else for the techs to photograph—and took another one out and checked the size. 34E. Mousy little do-gooder indeed.

  Burgess wondered whether Marilyn Dornan, like her foster daughter, might have had implants. He also wondered where the money for all this came from. Unless they were top management, people working for nonprofits didn’t make that much, and Shirley Evans had suggested Charlie Dornan didn’t work, except to work scams. Maybe those scams were lucrative?

  Kyle went back to searching through women’s clothes while Burgess went back to Charlie Dornan’s dresser. The bottom drawer, which held a man’s carefully folded polo shirts, didn’t move as easily as the others.

  Burgess wrestled it out, removed the contents, and turned it upside down.

  Fastened to the bottom of the drawer with duct tape were two thick manila envelopes.

  Before he detached them, he wanted pictures with the envelopes in place.

  “Got something here, Ter. Can you get Rudy?”

  Rudy Carr was up to his ears in the process of carefully recording every angle and detail of the living room from a distance and close up, so Burgess got Dani instead.

  “You guys doing okay?” he asked.

  “Be better if we could open a window and turn off that damned TV, but rules are rules, and textbook Crime Scene 101 is do not disturb anything. By the way, Joe, I am so grateful you broke that rule the other night in that laundry room. The stench was horrible enough with the windows open. Here’s how we’re doing. Rudy’s in his element, the Annie Leibovitz of crime scenes. He’s loving the subtlety of it—the way in a house this impeccable the small nuances stand out. Wink is just happy to be away from Mrs. Wink, who seems to always be developing ailments lately so he’ll have to stay home and take care of her. He’s also getting into the small details. I’m getting good at this, but Wink is a master. By the way, he wants to know if you’re going to do the cars and the trash.”

  When she said “cars,” it reminded him that the car that Dornan had been driving, the one that was parked out in the driveway, didn’t belong to Dornan. In the “better safe than sorry” world of crime scene investigation, he figured they’d better get a warrant for it. They’d want the records for any cell phones they found, too, if there were any cell phones, but the AAG could take care of that.

  He said, “Excuse me,” and stepped into the kitchen. Sage Prentiss hadn’t shown up yet. Now he could make himself most useful getting a warrant to search the car. He figured he’d put both cars on the warrant, just in case there was something hinky about the ownership of hers, too. And any outbuildings and the trash.

  Sage started to
apologize, but Burgess cut him off. “You still at 109?”

  “Uh. I can be.”

  “Good. I need a search warrant.” He gave Prentiss the particulars. “As quick as you can, please.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Bring it here as soon as the judge signs it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Burgess disconnected. Something had held Prentiss up. He didn’t care what it was. He just wanted the man to jump now. It made him miss Stan, though. Stan Perry could be a pain in the ass, and he’d come perilously close to getting fired more than once, but Burgess appreciated the way Perry could follow his instincts and suddenly pull some case-changing rabbit out of his hat. And Perry knew the job, so he didn’t need much direction.

  He and Kyle waited while Dani took her photographs, and since she was there, figured she should finish photographing the room, getting the displaced furniture and other things they’d spotted. While she was doing that, they carried the drawer with the mysterious envelopes into the small barren room that they presumed had been Shelley’s. They set the drawer on the bed and Burgess pulled the tape loose. He kept one envelope. Handed the other to Kyle. He dumped his out on the desk, fishing out his glasses.

  Once his glasses were on and he stared at the photographs, he wished he could unsee what he was seeing.

  Kyle didn’t say anything for a long time. There was only the sound of his breathing. Then he said, “They’re children, Joe. How can anyone?”

  It was the question they came back to again and again in their work. They saw horrific violence and profound evil, yet things still had the capacity to disturb them. Burgess wouldn’t have it any other way. No one should get used to this.

  Another long silence, while Burgess wished he hadn’t eaten any dinner. While he wished Charlie Hooper Dornan Wilson or whatever his real name was wasn’t dead so Burgess could kill him in some drawn-out, painful way. While he imagined these photos on the internet, and the vile men who traded them. Got off on them. Indulged their sick pleasure in watching children being sexually abused.