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

by Flora, Kate;

  He tapped his temple contemplatively. “What else have you missed? Wink has Rudy and Rocky out at Ida Mae Wilson’s house, processing the rest of that—”

  “Rudy and Rocky sounds like a kid’s TV show,” Burgess said.

  “This could be a kid’s TV show,” Kyle agreed. “Only it would be—it is—a horror show.”

  Burgess massaged his forehead as though external pressure could wipe away those cobwebs. He was supposed to be in charge of this, and yet, as he slept, the world went right on turning.

  Kyle, reading his mind, said, “No way, Joe. Just no way. They may be poking their way through this, but without you, it’s chaos. And not organized chaos, either. You get dressed. I’ll make the coffee.”

  In the bedroom, Burgess found a note on his bedside table that he’d missed before. Chris had written: Dear Sleeping Beauty, We held a meeting and the kids voted not to wake you. Hope you catch the bad guys soon. We miss family dinner. P.s. Alana Black wants you to call her. Here’s her new phone number. P.p.s. Wear your knee brace.

  Obediently, he put on the brace and got dressed. The brace was an amazing piece of equipment, but like most medical interventions, it had side effects. It supported his knee and kept him from screaming agony. It pinched his leg when he was in the car and made him feel old and pathetic. Pretty much a mixed bag.

  He tied his shoes and went to the kitchen. The coffee smelled great and Kyle was rummaging through the refrigerator. He stepped back with a bag of bagels and some cream cheese. “Breakfast of champions,” he said. “You want some jam on yours?”

  “What am I, eight?” Burgess said.

  “What you are is a grouchy bear emerging from hibernation. When bears come out of hibernation, they’re hungry. It is wise not to cross them until they’ve eaten.”

  “Jam, then.”

  When the toaster popped, Kyle snagged the bagels and spread them with cream cheese and jam, then set the plate, not quite gently, in front of Burgess. “Where do we go from here?” he asked.

  “Go back and take another look at that house and yard in daylight. Finish going over the cars. See what Sage found in those trashcans. There might be some interesting papers. We need to check in with our translator and find out when we can see the girls and see whether they can tell us anything about the other man who was working with Dornan. Follow up with the widow of the man whose plates are on the black town car. What else?”

  “Someone has to attend a couple autopsies,” Kyle reminded him.

  “Right,” Burgess agreed. “Dani and Wink need to finish processing those two houses and the shed. And Alana Black wants me to give her a call.”

  Kyle fanned himself. “Whoo hoo. I wonder what that’s about?”

  “Maybe she’s still plugged in somehow?” Burgess said. “Has friends who are still in the game?”

  “We have to interview Marilyn Dornan’s employer and co-workers,” Kyle said.

  “Go over the results of last night’s canvass and see who we need to interview or reinterview,” Burgess said.

  Kyle refilled his coffee. “We’re gonna be a hundred years old before we put this one to bed.”

  “I was a hundred years old before we started this thing. I’m thinking of changing my name to Methuselah Burgess.”

  “Has a nice ring to it,” Kyle agreed. “What’s your nickname gonna be? Thuse or Meth?”

  “Meth’s probably not going to work in our business, Ter.”

  “Where’s your sense of irony?”

  “Rusted.”

  Burgess realized that his food was gone, his cup was empty, and the day was growing old. “Shall we lumber over to 109 and see what’s shaking?”

  “Not much shakes without you,” Kyle said, “and please note that I am still a young fellow and do not lumber.”

  Burgess did his departure precheck. He had gun, badge, cuffs, wallet, everything except his American Express card. He could leave home without that. As he crossed the front yard to his car, he was smiling. He and Kyle were so busy these days they rarely had a chance to banter like this. But banter and black humor were what kept cops going when the cases were as dark as this one. As he started the Explorer and pulled out of the driveway, already beginning to prioritize the list he and Kyle had made, he wondered if there was any such thing as a light homicide?

  Thirty-One

  On the way, he called the number Alana Black had left, but it went straight to voice mail. She was probably with a client. He hoped she was with a client. Burgess had a tangled history with Alana, a former prostitute he and his sister Sandy had struggled to set on a better path. Now she was working as a licensed masseuse. As far as he knew, she was doing well. But there had been some backsliding along the way, and like a parent, he never stopped worrying about her. He hoped she hadn’t tangled with the law or otherwise gotten herself in trouble. He was the first person she’d call if she was in trouble.

  He left a message that he was returning her call, and went back to list-making.

  It was summer in Maine. The streets were clogged with tourists come to sample Maine’s specialness. For tourists, that meant lobster and blueberry pie, boating and sailing, beaches and ponds, and visiting Freeport and LL Bean. For Mainers, summer meant working long hours, trying to earn enough money to make it through the winter. It meant hiding their secret dislike for those “people from away” with their resources and privilege. It meant the roads were crowded and it was difficult to get anywhere in a hurry. And of course it meant the usual crimes committed by those who preyed on tourists, more traffic issues, a new crop of high school graduates trying out adulthood in risky ways, along with the explosive potential of large drunken crowds in the Old Port.

  He liked fall, when the air was crisp and clean and things had quieted down again. But right now, he didn’t have time to pay much attention to which season it was, except that it seemed to be the killing and exploiting children season. He’d always hated that season.

  Stan Perry was waiting for them back at 109, an unusual, smiling, elated Stan Perry, still high from the birth of his daughter. He eagerly showed off photos of Lily and Autumn before settling down to ask what his next assignment was.

  “Give me five minutes,” Burgess said, looking with dismay at his desk, nearly smothered in papers that hadn’t been there yesterday. He was supposed to be keeping the paperwork orderly instead of sleeping in like a teenage slacker. He sorted it into piles. One pile for message slips. One for reports. There were a couple of manila folders from Rocky Jordan. He wished there was a file called “people who’ve called and confessed.” Then realized he didn’t. They sometimes had cases with those files, and it meant interviewing a boatload of crazies. There was the search warrant for the Dornan’s trash, outbuilding, and cars.

  He checked Rocky’s folders quickly. Call records from the phone numbers Shelley Minor had given Kit and DeSpain. When Rocky was done helping to process Ida Mae Wilson’s house, he could see what those phone numbers could tell him. They still didn’t have phones for Marilyn and Charlie Dornan, except for the burner at the back of her drawer, but they’d called it a night before finishing the search of the living room. It was significant that they’d found no purse in the house.

  A note from Sage Prentiss was clipped to a stack of papers. The note said, “Found these in the Dornan’s trash. If you need me, I’m at the Dornan’s, helping Wink.”

  There was the warrant for DHHS records. He reached for it. Then hesitated. He wanted to head out there right now, but Human Services—often such an ironic name—would be there whenever he was ready. First he had to get his case in order and identify the things that needed to be done soonest.

  He started with the thick stack of pink. Alana had called him here, too, but left no message. There was a message from the ME’s office, saying the autopsy was scheduled for tomorrow at nine. Unusual for Dr. Lee. Normally he’d scheduled the autopsies almost before the weary cops could shower off the crime scene sweat. Well, impatient as he usually was,
this time, Burgess was grateful. He had too many things to take care of here to be heading off to Augusta.

  Once again he had the thought that there were so many balls in the air he was bound to drop some. He gathered some papers into a pile and signaled for Kyle and Perry to meet him in the conference room. Then he stuck his head into Melia’s office. “We’re meeting on this, Vince. You want to join us?”

  Melia was slumped in his chair, staring at a nearly empty desktop. He looked up blankly, said, “Wait. What?” then shrugged. “Be there in a minute, Joe.”

  Burgess headed back to his desk, briefly, to print out Patrol’s report on the canvass. Then he went into the conference room.

  Kyle and Perry looked at him expectantly as he set down his stack of papers.

  “Rocky coming?” Kyle asked.

  “He’s out at Ida Mae Wilson’s house.”

  “Oh yeah. I forgot.”

  “Vince?”

  “On his way.”

  Burgess looked at Stan Perry. “You still getting married this weekend?”

  “That’s the plan, Boss. You still standing up with me?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  Rocky came in, moving very quietly for such a big man, and took his place at the table, looking please to be included. “Rudy and I started early. We just got done. You got the files I sent you, Joe?” he asked.

  “I did. Thanks. Now I’ve got another phone for you to search.” He described the phone they’d taken from Marilyn Dornan’s nightstand. “We’ll need a warrant.” He gave the AAG’s name.” If she doesn’t hate us now, she will soon enough. Also, Sage brought back a pile of records from the Dornan’s trash, plus there’s file drawers to be gone through. They were making and selling child porn. Their financial profile should be interesting. You want that job?”

  “I want it.”

  Burgess gave him the stack of papers Sage had left on his desk and the Dornan’s address. “We’ll also need warrants for their banking records. The information is probably in those files.”

  “On it, sir,” Rocky said. Then, “Oh. I haven’t had a chance to write it up for you yet, but I got the info on those implants.”

  They no longer needed to identify their victim, but they were still very interested in who had paid for implants and convinced a surgeon to do the surgery on such a young girl. No way would anyone seeing her believe she was old enough for such surgery to be appropriate. He wanted that one, figured he’d take Kyle with him. “Great, Rocky. As soon as you can get it to me. And text me the doc’s info before you head out.”

  Melia came in and closed the door. “What have we got?” he asked.

  “Not what we’ve got, which is three crime scenes, three dead, including two suspects where the issue is who shot whom, and five raped and abused children. Right now the question is what we need to do, which is process those crime scenes, examine the evidence from them, figure out what the story on Michele Minor and those five girls is. Figure out who the Dornans were working with. Figure out how the Dornans and others got their hands on these poor children, which likely involves the Fed’s Office of Refugee Resettlement. We’ll see if there’s any paperwork in the Dornan’s house, and then maybe you can follow up with the Feds? How did this go on in nice neighborhoods and no one noticed?”

  He thought Melia flinched, but it was the truth.

  He passed over the pages he’d just printed out. “Stan, can you review the canvass reports from last night, and see what needs follow up, then grab Sage from the Dornan’s house and start on that? Anything you can learn about people coming and going from that house. What cars they saw. Their observations about the Dornans. Any information they might have about the foster daughter, Shelley Minor.”

  Perry nodded.

  “Vince, I know you’re slammed with the press and everything else, but can you find someone who can help Wink and Dani process all the evidence. If he gets much crankier, we’ll be looking for Wink 2.0, and there is no such thing.”

  “I’ll take care of it, Joe. Other than that, have you got enough people?”

  Burgess didn’t, really, but the more people who held different pieces of information, the harder it got to put things together. And to stop leaks. Besides, what he needed were more evidence techs, and those were hard to come by. “For now,” he said. “Thanks, Vince.”

  He was already at risk of losing pieces of it. Give more pieces to different people and it would spin out of control. He made a note to himself to remind Sage about following up with that hardware store about who bought the saw. Then he stood.

  “Okay. Everyone has a job to do. Can we meet again at the end of the day, say, around seven-thirty, to touch base and determine our next steps?”

  Stan Perry hesitated, but then he said, “Sure.”

  “Terry,” Burgess said, “you’re with me. Let’s take another look at the Dornan’s house and then go visit a surgeon. Rocky, you’ll text me that info?”

  Jordan nodded, looking delighted to leave his desk and get out into a lovely summer day to help catch bad guys. Little did he know he was going to a hot, smelly house.

  “Sounds like a plan,” Kyle said.

  Everyone trooped out.

  He and Kyle drove back to the Dornan’s house. The crime scene van was there, and the street was still full of Lookie Loos and a lone news truck, complete with a chic, made-up reporter who tried to grab his arm. He knew her. In the past, she’d done him harm and she’d done him good. She thought the good meant they now had a relationship. He thought it meant they were even and anyway, Burgess had no soft spots for the press. All they did was get in the way and misreport.

  He brushed past her with brusque hello and headed up the walk. Today, now that the bodies were gone and the photographs taken, the door and windows were open, making it a slightly more palatable place to work.

  Delinsky was gone and an officer he didn’t know was at the door, taking names and handing out booties. He and Kyle dutifully gave their names and put on their booties. Then they entered the living room. Dusted with black power to bring up fingerprints, the surfaces looked like kids with dirty hands had been having a field day while mom and dad were out. Today, there were no children, and mom and dad were out for good.

  He and Kyle searched under the cushions, under the couch, and in the various drawers in the room. No more caches of porn CDs, not even in the storage ottoman that served as a coffee table. No sign of Marilyn Dornan’s purse. They found no phones. Unless they were in the victim’s pockets, and could be collected from the Medical Examiner, they had been taken.

  The word “victim” seemed so inappropriate here.

  Abandoning the room as a lost cause, they went to the kitchen, where they found Dani wrestling with a drawer under the stove. The drawer was stuck. They’d missed it last night as they did the kitchen. Burgess wondered what else they might have missed in a small, hot house filled with too many people.

  Finally, with a metallic clang, the drawer opened to reveal neat stacks of metal baking sheets and pans. Everything orderly except for the stack of square and rectangular pans. It looked odd, given her penchant for neatness, so Burgess lifted it out. Between two square eight by eight pans he found two cell phones. He and Dani exchanged triumphant glances. It would have been so easy to miss these. Two more burners. It looked like someone had taken Marilyn Dornan’s purse and both of their cellphones. But these might be a gold mine, if they were used for the business.

  Business was such an innocent word for what these two had been doing. At some point, they would have to sit down with the videos and see what they had. Burgess thought it might take an entire bottle of Jack Daniels to get through them.

  “I’m going to look through every cupboard,” Dani said. “Every jar. Every canister. Every bag of flour or sugar. Who knows what I may find.”

  “Flour and sugar,” Kyle said. “I’ll just bet.”

  “Don’t let Joe rub off on you, Terry,” she said. “One of him is enough.”


  “I couldn’t agree more.”

  They left her doing her systematic examination of the cupboards and walked across the yard to the storage building, where Wink was busy making black fingerprints appear everywhere. Wink was a steady workhorse of a man. He loved to work. Loved to solve puzzles, to find evidence others would miss. Loved to play a part in their journey to catching bad guys and gals and securing their convictions. Like Burgess, though, he hated cases where children were hurt. This case was exponentially worse because so many children were involved. Wink would put more pressure on himself to find evidence and answers.

  “I have a theory, Joe,” he said. “Not one I want to have, but one the room may be telling me. We’re going to have to take this damned mattress back to 109 where I can work on it.”

  “Chief’s gonna have a fit, the way we’re filling up the basement garage. Pretty soon, the brass is gonna have to park next door like the rest of us peons,” Kyle said.

  “Speak for yourself, Terry,” Wink said. “I am not a peon.”

  “True,” Kyle agreed. “You are a unique, talented, one-of-a-kind crime scene examiner, and we worship at your feet."

  “As it should be,” Wink grunted.

  “And regardless of what Mrs. Wink says, you may never retire.”

  Wink Devlin turned his back on them and gave his attention to fingerprint collection. Evidently Mrs. Wink was a subject to be avoided.

  Burgess scanned the room again, wondering what Wink was getting from a barren room, barely five feet wide by twelve feet deep, furnished with only a bucket and a stained mattress. Then he saw it. The house, and the room where they’d stored tools was neat and clean. The floor in here was dusty, like the room hadn’t been used in a while and hadn’t been cleaned. In the dust, he could see the prints of several sets of shoes. Large prints. Likely men’s shoes. Blood on the mattress. Blood on the child. The presence of more than one man. For the second time in less than twelve hours, he had the overwhelming urge to kill two people who were already dead. He would have used a method a lot slower than a gunshot.