by Adira August
But she knew he wasn’t. Not really. She thought he might be the most profoundly emotional person she’d ever met. Her theory was that this caused him to erect a firewall between his intellect and his feelings. Her mother thought she romanticized him because she had a crush.
She did and she knew it. But her crush was professional as well as romantic and very sexual.
Carol Twee was a smart, insightful woman. Hunter did not have a crush on her, though she was sure the sexual response was reciprocated.
She was pissed that he valued and respected her as a person and professional. That Hunter Dane would never make a sexual suggestion. That she was standing in the midst of a tangible evil possessed of intelligence and well-hidden.
She was furious at reality.
The thought made her laugh out loud. And somehow that made it all dissipate—her resentment and frustration and impotent fury. When this case was over, she decided she was going to get laid. It was time to move along.
It was also time to report to the Lieutenant. But he’d already found her.
“Twee?” Hunter called making his way toward her. “Any luck?”
“Wait there,” she told him. “I’ll come to you.”
He stopped close to the entrance where she’d left her case. Taking a knee next to it, she held up a clutch of evidence baggies. “Six examples of oil.”
“That’s really good work,” he told her.
“I just walked along and used the light. I guess no one comes here, much. They were the only things that glowed. But motor oil doesn’t need a chemical agent to make it glow.” She held up a spray bottle of Luminol. “So I thought I’d see if anything else popped.”
“You didn’t want LCV in daylight?”
“Crystal Violet glows dark. Hard to see on the wood and dirt, except at night. Luminol gives a brighter blue you can see if you use the orange glasses.” She handed him another pair.
Hunter donned the wraparound shades. He’d seen a series of evidence flags sticking up along the accessway. She led him to one of the flags.
“Squat, so you’re close,” Twee told him.
He did. At the base of the plastic rod that held the flag was an elongated blue dot. He looked up at her. “That was deposited in motion.”
“So were those.” She pointed to the other flags marking the location of blood drops. “They’re at the edge of the pathway. It was only the center that got stirred up. I’m not sure how the blood got here if the remains were inside a vehicle.”
He frowned. “The vehicle tracks would be surer footing, all the detritus crushed and compressed. You’d get this pattern if he carried them, walking along the track.”
“You think the oil is from the lawn guy’s vehicle?”
He shrugged. “Maybe. Or maybe the car started here, close to the house and the killer moved it here, among the trees. Hidden from the street until he could move it in the middle of the night.” He looked back at the blood drop. “Do you think after all this time we can DNA test?”
“Probably be fine. But I also found this, so we don’t need that.” Twee pulled another evidence baggie from her coat pocket and handed it to him.
He stood up. “Holy- Did you call yet?”
She shook her head.
He had his phone to his ear. “Cam, do you have dental on the victims? … Are either of the skulls missing teeth?”
He waited, examining the tooth inside its baggie. “Yeah. … Okay, I need tents and warm bodies. … Four. … A dozen. … Everyone they can spare. See if Winkelmann’s available. … Tell Natani I have blood and a tooth on the Hortt property. ... Yeah, bicuspid. I already have an owner’s consent form, but I want a full access search warrant. We’ll be digging and maybe tearing through walls. … No, Farleigh’s been through enough.”
When he clicked off, Twee took the tooth from him and put it into the case, shutting the lid. “I’m going to the shed to collect floor and soil samples.”
“No. You’re with me protecting the accessway until we get reinforcements. No one does anything alone from this point forward. When they get here, you can do the shed while they tent here. It should be dark enough inside to work through all this. You’ll supervise.”
“I’m willing, Boss. But cops won’t listen to me.” Twee almost stepped back as Hunter’s face hardened and the shadowed space seemed suddenly darker.
“I guarantee you they will.”
She believed him.
“YOU HAVE ANYTHING more specific on time of death, Doctor Zee?” Merisi asked as he and Cam walked into the autopsy suite.
“What time did the call come in?” she asked, washing her hands at a deep stainless steel sink.
“Dispatch called the Lieutenant around oh-eight-thirty,” Cam said.
“Around? That’ll sound good in court.” Heather Zee was not impressed by Olympic medals.
Cam checked his cell. “Dispatched logged the call at oh-seven-fifty. Homicide redirected them to the Unit at oh-eight-twenty-seven. Dispatch logged the call to Lieutenant Dane at oh-eight-twenty-nine.” His brows came together. “One second. … It says ‘Forward text Lieutenant Dane Unit oh-seven-oh-three.”
“That’s the one from the meeting?” Merisi asked.
Cam shrugged.
“Does this have anything to do with what I asked?” Zee almost barked at him.
Merisi colored, but kept his voice even. “Not possible to say at this time. It may prove the victim was alive at seven o’clock. I’ll need to confirm.” His head went back and he eyed her coldly. “Would it change your findings in any way, Doctor?”
“You’re a Great Dane protégé, alright.” She threw a wad of paper towels into the trash and leaned over the counter to consult a clipboard.
“Her core body temperature at ten-oh-three was 94.5. Assuming her core temperature alive was 98.6, she’d been dead two hours, placing TOD at zero-eight-hundred.”
She straightened and crossed her arms, facing them. “But she was pregnant and her core temp while alive could easily have been 99 instead of 98.6, which doesn’t seem like much difference. However, it would push TOD back an hour to seven aye-em.”
Merisi scribbled in his notebook, thinking of what Hunter would ask. “What’s your official finding?”
“Death occurred between six-thirty and seven fifty in the morning.”
“And when do you think she died?” he asked, looking up from his notes.
“I don’t speculate. Dane should have warned you.” She moved off toward the refrigerated drawers. “I’ll get the pufferfish.”
“How long?” Merisi called after her.
She hesitated.
“How long did it take her to die?”
Zee shook her head.
“Less than twenty minutes.” It was Cam who spoke, Cam, whose eyes had gone arctic gray and whose mouth was a hard line.
Zee turned to face him.
Cam walked toward her. “It’s the deadliest of all the puffer fish. She ate it with purpose, far more, a hundred times more than anyone would ingest accidentally.” He stopped in front of her, eye-to-eye with the tall, bony woman. “How long? How long was she in agony, paralyzed, unable to speak or move or fight for breath, Doctor?”
Heather Zee didn’t soften in the face of youthful rage at the inhumanity of life. “I don’t know, Cam. There are no cases to compare it to. Onset would have been faster. But the neurological shut down still takes time. Your answer is probably as accurate as we can be.”
“Cam?”
Merisi was next to him. “Go on back to the office. Make a timeline, figure out what the earlier message was.”
Cam frowned and glanced over at the camera set-up.
“My case, Snow.” Merisi reminded him. “The lieutenant was right. Rivers left it so all I do is push power. He’s going to need you. He’s the only cop out there.”
Cam nodded. “Don’t do anything but turn off the power when you’re done. Bring it all back and I’ll do the uploading.”
&n
bsp; Merisi grinned. “You kidding? I’d probably erase it.”
“Be nice if that worked.”
Cam walked out. He’d always hated the morgue.
THERE WERE A LOT of uniforms milling about, a lot of marked police vehicles parked along the streets and a lot of crime scene tape marking the boundaries of the Hortt property. All of which meant many cars slowing down to look and people gathering at the edges of tape.
Diane Natani used her connections to get a couple dog cars to the scene. It was impossible to get enough uniforms to keep people from breaching the tape boundary. But two attack-trained police dogs and blank-faced uniformed handlers garnered sufficient respect to secure the large property.
Nothing could stop the press from setting up and shouting at Hunter from the tape line. And nothing could make Hunter respond to them.
Hunt had Cam arrange for someone from Victim Services to go to Candace Farleigh’s home. She would be kept generally informed so she wouldn’t be shocked at the media coverage.
Adams County had a representative at the scene as they technically held jurisdiction until DNA and other evidence confirmed the victims were killed in the City and County of Denver.
“Ray Peat.”
“Hunter Dane.”
The two men shook hands. In his fifties, Peat had been one of the first black deputies in Adams County. His face was lined, his short Afro mostly white, his countenance grim.
They were out of sight the press inside the tented accessway watching tiny Carol Twee dart from cop to cop, answering questions, giving instructions and solving problems.
“You got a dynamo there,” Peat said. “One of your detectives?”
“Crime scene tech. Best on the job.”
Peat looked impressed. “The men seem to respect her.”
Peat hadn’t yet arrived and Twee was still working the cider press when Hunter left little doubt with the assembled uniforms that giving his crime scene tech less than their complete cooperation would disappoint him.
“You were lead on the disappearances last May?” Hunter asked Peat.
“Yeah. And I was here for the Evelyn Hortt murder. Phil Locke and I. He’s retired for a long time now.”
Hunter checked his cell on a text alert. “That’s coincidental.” He led Peat out of the tent toward the cider press.
“Not too much,” Peat answered him. “They always did like me on the Denver border.”
“Because you work and play well with others?” Hunt stopped near the ditch and waited for Merisi, who trotted toward them.
“Nope. Because Denver gives us shit and I don’t take any.”
Hunter grinned. “That a warning?”
“Just answering the question.”
Merisi reached them and Hunt made introductions. He moved them closer to the deepest part of the cut, as far as possible from everyone else.
“There’s someone in the house,” he said without preamble. He told them what happened with Cal Derricksen. Merisi’s lips pressed, but he didn’t ask.
“Can you tell us anything about searching the house that you remember from last time?” Hunt asked Peat.
“Well,” he began, taking out a cigarette and lighting it. “You can’t see unless you go down the cellar, but the basement windows? Screwed shut from the inside. After somebody shot old John Hortt in his kitchen, Mrs. Hort got to hearing noises. Thought someone was coming in and out the cellar making off with her canned goods.”
He took a long drag and gave the house a dark look. “So you got two doors only, front and back. Both got double cylinder deadbolts. So does the door to the cellar.”
”That means you need a key for both sides,” Merisi said. “That’s a dangerous setup unless you have extra keys nearby. People panic in a fire, can’t find their keys.”
“So I told Ev,” he said. “Evelyn Hortt,” he explained. “She hung a set in the kitchen pantry. A broom closet, really. She called it that ‘cause she moved the canned stuff in there from the cellar. I stood by while she did it. Wouldn’t go down the cellar alone anymore.”
He stubbed out the cigarette in the dirt and stripped it, sticking the filter into his pocket. “Twenty years we got calls. Noises at night. Little thefts in the neighborhood, too. We searched. Nothing. You’ll see. Candy, the daughter? She grew up. Married Farleigh.”
He stuck his hands in his pockets, looking down at his shoes.
“Mrs. Farleigh comes over after work one night. Couldn’t get Ev on the phone. Uses a key to unlock the front door. She was sure it was locked, she says. It was a little off center, see? You could always feel the tang scrape when you turned it.”
He coughed.
“Mom’s facedown on the kitchen floor. Beat to death. But we found a round in the side of a cabinet. Same gun as killed old John. Caved her skull in with the butt of the gun. Opened her right up.”
He spit in the dirt and shook his head.
“Here’s the tricky part. The doors also have chains. All of ‘em. Locking up was so ingrained in that girl when she came inside she just automatically put the chain on behind her. Didn’t think twice. Then she saw her mom and had some kinda flashback or something. Felt like she was tiny. But those kitchen and pantry doors did have chains on. Clear as anything, maybe clearer she saw them. Said she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to reach the front door chain. Then she’d be trapped inside with it.”
Merisi looked at Hunt, but Peat had his undivided attention.
“She remembers screaming. Just screaming and screaming. But it was all so much a habit from all her life. She unchained the door and used her key to lock the deadbolt from outside. Screaming. Still screaming. Ran to her car at the curb. Screaming. Neighbor on the way home from work saw her. Stopped. Police got called.”
He stretched his neck. “We were close, me and Locke. Just coming from a known dead. We got her in the car and I checked the perimeter. Denver and the county covered each other back then if it was, you know, hot.”
Hunter nodded.
“House was secure, windows locked. No signs of forced entry. I could see the body. Didn’t need to break in, could see the livor, dried blood, brain matter.
“Denver showed up and took over. We stayed to cover ‘em on the house search. Candy gave us her keys, wouldn’t go near the place. Empty. Nobody. No gun, no one inside, cellar empty. No monsters under the beds. Just nothin’ but an empty house locked up tight.”
He stopped.
“But?” Hunter asked quietly.
Peat turned haunted eyes to Hunter Dane. “I could feel him.”
Hunter nodded.
They were silent for a moment, but Merisi wasn’t satisfied. “Detective-”
“Sergeant,” Peat said.
“Sergeant Peat, you said the cellar and the house were empty. You didn’t mention the attic space.”
“No way up there. Second story is kinda set toward the front. You can tell if you look”—he pointed—“from this side. The only access panel’s in a closet in the main bedroom. Painted shut a long time. Besides, you couldn’t get up that way. Too small.”
Hunter took out his notebook. “Seven by fifteen?”
“Sounds right. You been inside?”
Hunter shook his head. “But I think it’s time. I take it you want to come along?”
“You take it rightly.”
“You ain’t gonna find it.”
Peat whirled around, stumbling, falling. Hunter caught him by the arm. He could feel the man trembling through his suit coat.
Merisi squatted by the edge of the cut, looking down at a boy about ten on a bicycle. His backpack was thicker than he was. His Black Ops 4 cap came down to his ears.
“You don’t think so?” Merisi asked.
“You can’t find no demon, man, don’t you know?” He cocked his head and eyed Merisi with the smug contempt the young reserve for their egregiously ignorant elders. “You could trap him, though.”
“How’s that?” Merisi asked. He took out his not
ebook, as if ready to write down the answer.
The boy eyed the notebook, and sat back on his seat, arms crossed. “You gotta pay me.”
“I do?”
The boy rolled his eyes. “Yeah. ‘Course. You gotta pay a confident info man.”
Merisi shook his head. “That’s only when they saw something. You can’t see a demon.”
“Saw the skinny guy havin’ sex on that girl.”
Merisi didn’t falter. “Bull.”
“Did so. Right in that porch thing! There was candles.”
“I didn’t see any candles.” Merisi had eased his cell out of his pocket, recording the kid.
“Man, you stupid? It was way back before summer.”
Merisi sat down at the edge of the cut, legs dangling. “You must be a pretty good spy if they didn’t see you.”
The boy grinned, teeth bright against dark skin. He pushed the bike close to Merisi who leaned over. “You know how I did it?” Merisi shook his head. “I didn’t go close, ‘cause I could see ‘em in the door glass. Like in a mirror.”
He sat back on his bike, looking disappointed. “Couldn’t see anything good, though, ‘cause he was layin’ right on her.” He shrugged. “Then my mom called.”
“Too bad, man. Musta been late.” Merisi held his breath.
“Nah, just supper.” He looked across the field toward the road. “It’s okay now, she’s at work.”
“You always ride along the tracks to get home?” The boy looked down and away. Merisi knew being bullied made you ashamed. Cal told him. “Smart. Good way to see without being seen. Like being undercover.”
Merisi jumped down beside the boy and held out his hand. “Detective Mike Merisi.”
The boy took his hand. “I’m Bernard.”
They chatted for a while giving Peat time to make his way into the cut. Merisi handed Bernard five dollars from his pocket and took down his information since he was now an official informant. He gave the boy his card.
“You call if you need something. Sergeant Peat will take you home, because it’s his jurisdiction. He’s a good guy.”
“He gonna tell my mom?”
“Don’t see any reason for that right now,” Peat said.
“Okay,” Bernard agreed.