by Flora, Kate;
Her side had more colorful condoms, KY, and a burner cell phone. Together with all the lacy lingerie, it made Burgess wonder if she’d been involved with a man other than her husband. Maybe the records for the burner would answer that question. Maybe they’d find a best friend she gossiped to. A search of the bathroom wastebasket had revealed, among the usual detritus, a wrapper from one of her condoms.
As the night wore on, he wished, as he frequently did, that this were a CSI world, and he could get results in moments instead of however long it took the phone company to move its butt and give them records. Chris had once asked him if he was always this impatient, and he’d said he didn’t think so. But he didn’t have very clear memories of who he’d been as a child or a teenager. He knew concern for his mother and little sisters had played a big role and provided the impetus for doing small jobs and babysitting to supplement their income.
One thing he knew for sure was that he’d had a temper inherited from his father, who’d been a cruel and violent alcoholic. When Burgess was sixteen, the age Dylan was about to reach, he’d realized one night as his father was beating his mother that he was the bigger man. He’d made it very clear, physically clear, that if his father ever laid a hand on his mother again, it would be the last hand he laid on anyone.
The positive effect had been that his mother was never beaten again. The negative? That he’d found out how powerful his temper could be.
“Basement, Joe?” Kyle said.
He nodded. They’d do the living room last, after Wink and Rudy were done and after the ME had come and released the bodies and they’d been sent to Augusta. Then the TV armoire and the drawers in the end tables and the trunk that served as a coffee table would be searched like the rest of the house.
They returned to the kitchen, and opened the door that led to the stairs to the basement. Burgess flipped on the light with trepidation. Going into any basement was a risky business. After the horrors of the other basement associated with Charlie Dornan, they might find anything down here. As the bright overhead light came on, illuminating the room, it looked like they’d find nothing. No cells. No human heads. There were a washer and dryer on raised platforms. A shelf above with laundry products, all perfectly clean on a perfectly clean shelf. A long counter for folding laundry, with a rack above it for hanging clothes to dry. There was a metal rack with out-of-season clothing stored in large zippered bags, with a rack at the bottom for winter boots.
A door beside the washer led to a furnace room, another door opened with trepidation, which was empty except for a furnace and a hot water heater.
Kyle checked inside the washer and dryer. They were empty.
“Where are the garden tools? Lawnmower? Snow shovels? There must be a storage building of some sort,” Kyle said.
“Let’s look out back,” Burgess said. He headed for the stairs.
“Wait,” Kyle said, turning back to the platform the washer and dryer sat on. He bent and fiddled until he’d worked the nearly invisible drawer open.
Burgess bent to look. The drawer held neatly folded yellow towels. He lifted one out. Beneath the towels were six precise rows of CDs in plastic jewel cases. “Bingo,” he said. “The merchandise.”
“I say ‘Oh fuck!’ given the hours we’ll now be spending staring at these things,” Kyle said.
Burgess put on fresh gloves and bent to pluck a few, one from each of the six rows. He put on his glasses and studied the labels. “These all have different labels.”
Beside him, he felt Kyle shudder.
Ignoring the protests from his knee, he knelt in front of the drawer and examined a few more. The same six labels, one title in each row. Like neatly stored merchandise. “Let’s get Dani down here to get some pictures. Then let’s send the whole drawer downtown for cataloging and fingerprints.”
He stood, ignoring the protest from his knee. Kneeling was not its favorite activity. He looked at Kyle, who was staring at the contents of the drawer, realization dawning that he’d made a sexist assumption about the situation upstairs.
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” he asked.
Kyle nodded. “I believe I am. Which makes the porn aspect of it so much uglier.”
“If she hadn’t been so meticulous and precise…” Burgess began.
“It might have taken us a lot longer to figure this out,” Kyle finished. “I’ll get Dani.”
When he came back, it wasn’t with Dani but with Rudy Carr. “Wink has Dani sitting down in the van with ice on her head,” Carr explained. “Even though she insists she’s fine, and he’s staring daggers at Cote, who is still in there watching. At least he’s staying out of the way. Cote, I mean.”
“For now,” Burgess said.
“Dani and I think it’s only a matter of time before Wink arranges for Captain Cote to join the other bodies in the room. Hate to say it, Joe, but we’re all wondering what the hell you and Kyle were thinking when you saved that guy.”
“Brotherhood. Camaraderie. Respect for the rank if not the man. The fact that we’re all supposed to have each other’s backs,” Kyle said.
“Even if it’s not a two-way street?”
“It’s who we are,’ Burgess said. “Not who he is. We were pretty deep into saving Portland cops at that point. Right now, saving the captain feels like a bad decision. But we’re not supposed to pick and choose who we serve and protect.”
“Maybe there should be exceptions to that rule,” Carr said. “So, what do we have here?”
“One of those nifty storage drawers under the washing machine,” Kyle said. “Obviously, we haven’t looked at them yet, but we are speculating, based on our knowledge of the case, that these are collections of child pornography that the nice couple upstairs were in the business of making and selling. We’re in the early stages of this thing, so I wouldn’t share that speculation with anyone.”
“Particularly not with a certain person upstairs?” Carr asked.
“Particularly,” Burgess agreed. He didn’t have time for recriminations or regret in the midst of this mess, but he admitted to himself that he’d hoped Cote’s serious brush with death would have brought him back a better person.
Kyle, who was so good at reading minds, squeezed his shoulder. “We did the right thing,” he said.
“Thanks, Ter. Now let’s get upstairs and look at this with fresh eyes.”
“From which the scales have dropped?”
“From which,” Burgess agreed.
“You two are scary sometimes, you know that?” Carr said.
“We do,” Kyle said. “Cool, isn’t it?”
He and Kyle found Dr. Lee’s new assistant in the living room, examining the bodies. Althea Chartener was young and serious, and unlike her boss, Dr. Lee, who skittered through the job like a waterbug on speed, she moved with the caution of a tortoise crossing a highway. Lee asserted that she was great. Burgess didn’t know yet. This would be the first scene they’d worked together.
He looked at Wink, who gave a subtle nod. So far, Wink thought she was okay. Like him, Wink was an old timer, and one old timer was likely to know what another valued.
With Wink, Cote, the ME and two bodies, the small room was crowded even before he and Kyle came in. Crowded and hot and full of scents. Mostly of blood and death and one of death’s final indignities, the foul smells of feces and urine. Over it, like lighter notes in a musical composition, were Cote’s aftershave or some leathery man-scent, and the light, sweet scent of roses. Burgess figured the roses were from Dr. Chartener, not Wink.
She turned when they entered, and rose to her feet, sketching a wave with one gloved hand. “Sergeant Burgess? Detective Kyle? I’m Althea.”
She had a pleasing, serious face framed by dark hair pulled back in a ponytail.
“Joe,” Burgess said. “And this is Terry.”
She studied them briefly, like they were more bodies in her scene, then turned back to the couple on the couch, pointing to the man. “Staged scene 101,�
�� she said. “We’ll learn more at autopsy, but here’s what I’m seeing. The gun is on the left, but the victim is right handed, which the shooter wasn’t thinking about when he, or she, put the gun down. Also, the location of the exit wound and the pattern of blood and brain suggests his head was tipped up and back…” She demonstrated with her head. “Not a likely position for someone shooting himself. More like what would occur when someone was standing in front of him and slightly above, forcing the gun into his mouth.”
“What we thought, too,” Burgess said. “What else can you tell us?”
“She wasn’t killed here.”
They already knew that.
“Wink will be bagging her hands,” the ME said. “She did not go without a fight. We’ll check their pockets when we get them to our facility.”
Burgess was glad to have his own conclusions confirmed. They would learn more at autopsy, of course. Things like blows to the head, bruises, injured hands, chipped teeth as well as the angle of the bullets. He realized they’d seen no purse anywhere in the house, which was odd even in a place like this, which made the term “sterile” seem flamboyant. For now, he thanked her and he and Kyle went outside. Melia had already done it, but Burgess wanted to check on Dani.
Prentiss had arrived with the search warrant, so Kyle went to search Marilyn Dornan’s car while Prentiss, lucky fellow that he was, got the trash cans.
Dani declared that she was fine and wanted to go back to work.
“Promise you won’t hurt Captain Cote?” he said.
Dani grinned, which was what really told him she was okay, not her words. “I’d say ‘what were you and Terry thinking’ but I bet everyone else already has.”
“You’ve got that right. Okay. You can work, but don’t overdo it, okay?”
“Okay.” Another grin. She liked it that he was being protective.
They were protective of Dani, but not like she was their pet, unless that pet was a brilliant and amazing, highly trained lab or German Shepherd, smarter than most humans, and trained to find evidence most humans never would.
“Wink will look after me,” she said.
He swung by the side of the house, where Sage Prentiss had found an outside light to illuminate the trash he had spread out on a tarp. The trash was as neat as the house, with everything inside the trash bag tied up in smaller plastic bags. It made the whole job less smelly. It also made it slower, as every individual package had to be opened.
“I went through the first can quickly, Sarge,” Prentiss said. “Nothing but papers. This second one is like molasses.”
“Papers like newspapers?”
Prentiss shook his head. “Like old printouts and things. Like someone had cleaned out a desk. And bills and things.”
“You read through them before you moved on?”
Prentiss looked down at his shoes, which Burgess read as no, he had not. He had treated them like his own trash. Old papers were thrown out because they were no longer useful. Often not the case when the players were bad guys and cops.
Prentiss lifted his shoulders in a resigned gesture. “Sorry, Sarge. I’ll look at them again,” he said.
“Never know what might be important,” Burgess said. “Finish that second can, then recheck the first one.”
He headed toward the back of the house, where officers were searching the backyard. In the far corner, his light picked out a wooden shed. Likely where the tools and lawnmower were stored, since there wasn’t a garage. He headed for it, a twinge in his gut warning him it might hold more than just tools.
Just don’t let us find any more bodies, he thought. Three were more than enough for one case. His people would burn out.
He searched around the shed first. Nothing but grass that needed mowing. No strange mounds. No signs of recent digging. No flat cement pads that might hide an underground bunker. He’d seen all of those things. Underground bunkers gave him the creeps. Satisfied that there wasn’t anything suspicious around the building, he pulled on gloves and reached for the latch. Unusual on a backyard storage shed, there was also a lock. Not a padlock, but a genuine lock. The door didn’t open.
Twenty-Nine
Remembering the keys he’d seen in a dish in the kitchen, Burgess returned to the house, slipped on some booties, and went to the kitchen to find them. If he got lucky, one of the keys would open the shed door.
He stepped carefully around Dani, who had gone back to photographing the drag marks and possible blood spots on the hall carpet, and snagged the keys. Then he let himself out through the back door and recrossed the yard.
Between the two sets, there were more than a dozen keys on the two rings. He got it on the fifth try, opening the door with trepidation and shining his flashlight around. No cells, no chains, no bodies. Everything looked normal. There were shovels and rakes and a lawnmower. All of the equipment was clean and rust-free. A neatly coiled garden hose. Bags of fertilizer and bug dust arranged on shelves in order of their size. A spare propane tank for a grill. A stack of folding plastic lawn chairs topped by a stack of cushions. The room was hot and smelled of dust, fertilizer, grass clippings, and a funk that might have been from mice.
He exhaled slowly, realizing he’d been holding his breath, fully expecting to find more bad stuff here. Cases like this, with multiple crime scenes, were rare, but sometimes shoes dropped like the perp was a centipede. Still, something here didn’t feel right. He had the nagging sense that there was something here to find. That the order in this building, like the order in the house, was a deceptive neatness that hid horrible secrets.
Remembering his long-ago training officer’s admonition to always look up, he checked the ceiling and the rafters. No blood stains. No photographic equipment for making pornography. No chains or handcuffs for restraining victims. No trunks or bins or boxes that might hold more of the Dornan’s vile wares.
He paused, realizing that he hadn’t seen any photographic equipment in the house, nor at Ida Mae Wilson’s.
As he turned back toward the door, he saw a light switch he’d missed, and snapped it on. Nothing changed. It was still just an ordinary shed holding everyday garden tools. The only thing unusual was how neat and clean everything was.
He’d stepped out and was closing the door when he had a thought. Something about the dimensions seemed off. He paced the length of the building on the outside, then stepped inside and paced the length of the room. There was a five foot discrepancy. He went back inside and checked the end walls. The wall on the left had a window through which he could see flashlights leaving the yard and moving toward the house. The one on the right held sets of shelves and various racks for holding gardening tools. In the space between them was the stack of folding chairs and cushions. He focused his flashlight on the wall behind the chairs and could just see spaces around a flat plywood panel that suggested the chairs might be hiding a door. The devil on his shoulder, the devil that wanted to go home and sleep, whispered, “Leave it.”
Burgess tried to listen to his angels and not his devils, though the devil sometimes won. This was not one of those times.
Setting his flashlight down, he shifted the chairs and cushions. Yes, there was a door. Not a proper door with a doorframe around it and a knob, just a hinged panel of plywood that opened with a leather thong threaded through a small hole. Just above the thong was a sliding bolt to hold the door shut.
Keep the door shut or keep someone in?
This all might be nothing, but people rarely went to the trouble of building a false wall and hiding a door if there was nothing worth hiding on the other side. He could hope that, given the excessive neatness of the house, this was Dornan’s man cave, where he could escape to messiness and indulgence. Hope sprang eternal, right? But Burgess was used to his gut leading him to bad stuff, not a recliner and a TV or a stack of girly magazines.
Before he opened the door, he had to get all of this photographed. He wished he’d left the chairs and cushions in place so the effort to hide the
door could be recorded, but it was too late now.
Once again, he crossed the lawn, went around the house, and entered through the front door. Dani was done with her photographs and was consulting with Wink.
They both looked at him warily when he came in.
“I need to borrow Dani for a minute,” he said.
“No, you don’t,” Wink said. “I don’t care if you’ve discovered a dungeon full of torture implements. We’re tired. The ME’s van will be here in a minute. Then we’re going to call it a night and come back in the morning to process the rest of the house.”
Burgess wasn’t waiting until morning. “It’s just a couple shots of a wall, Wink. It won’t take long.”
“Just a couple of shots of a wall,” Wink mimicked. “And the wall has a door, and behind the door there will be another crime scene and then we’ll be here for the rest of the night. Well, sorry but I don’t care what you find out in that shed. I’m sending Dani home. See if Rudy can do it.”
Rudy could do it, and was more than happy to get out of the hot, foul-smelling house. The two of them crossed the back yard, where moments before officers had been searching with their flashlights, looking from a distance like giant fireflies. No finds had been announced and now the yard was dark. If you turned your back on that small cape with the two bodies inside, on the street full of flashing red and blue lights, it looked like a peaceful summer night topped by a waning moon and a sky full of stars.
Burgess wanted to follow Wink’s lead and call it a night. But if they’d called it a night instead of checking out Ida Mae Wilson’s house, one or possibly two helpless girls would have died. It seemed unlikely that the Dornans would have held someone hostage here, instead of keeping all the girls at the Wilson house, but his message from the translator had been that another girl was still missing.