Devils Among Us (Devin Dushane Series Book 1)

by Chastity Harris

  “Heavens, no! I don’t want to have these conversations out on the porch where the neighbors can see.”

  Peter Christianson had the look of someone who had been blessed in life. His tall athletic frame was still lean and tan. The golden hair was fading to silver, but was still thick and in place. His wrinkles were from laugh lines and not worry. His children had grown up to be healthy and successful, and his marriage was happy. All in all, his life was peaceful and stable. He burst through the door with his grey suit jacket thrown across his arm, the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up and the Windsor knot of his red silk tie was already loosened. Dropping the jacket and his briefcase by the living room door, he caught Devin up in a hug.

  “Devin, I didn’t know you were coming for dinner!”

  “Well, I’m not really…”

  If Peter was surprised to see Adam, he didn’t show it. He reached out in a firm handshake. “Adam, good to see you.” He stepped back clapping his hands together looking around the room. “Where’s Beth hiding?”

  “Here I am dear.” A tranquil Beth appeared behind him. She had changed her tear-stained cotton blouse for a clean white knit pull over, but kept the pale blue and white striped sear sucker capris and white tennis shoes. Although she had touched up her make-up, there was no hiding her red eyes. Peter leaned in to give his wife a kiss and then gasped.

  “Sweetheart you’ve been crying. What’s wrong?”

  Devin was quick to jump in. “That’s our fault. We’ve had a few breaks in the case, and we needed to pick her brain about that night. I’m afraid reliving it has been difficult for her. I apologize.” She let him have a moment to comfort his wife. “We actually need to speak to you, as well. The more detail we can put together about everyone’s movements, the better timeline we get, and the more faces we can place near Laney.”

  “Sure, whatever you need. Shall we take a seat?” They resumed their earlier positions with the addition of Peter to Beth’s left on the couch.

  “What time did you arrive at the Summit?

  “Seven o’clock. I was anxious to get there and see Beth, so I was early. I ended up standing around with the guys for a half an hour.”

  “What happened after a half an hour?”

  Peter grinned and kissed Beth’s hand. “The royal court arrived. Once Beth and Laney got there, the place came alive. Then I just had to work my nerve up to talk to Beth.”

  Adam interrupted with a statement instead of a question. “But you didn’t talk to Beth next.”

  “No, I didn’t. I was scared to death. Watching her out on the dance floor having such a good time with all her friends, she was just this perfect angel who was going to think I was the biggest jerk. I didn’t know what to say to her.” Beth shook her head and patted his leg smiling benignly. “About that time, I see Laney having it out with Dean, and that creep’s got his hands on her. So I shoot over there to take care of it, but she breaks away before I get there, and I’m thinking ‘this is my chance.’”

  Leaning forward, Adam raised his eyebrows. “Your chance to be alone with Laney?”

  The insinuation was lost on Peter.

  “Well, yeah.” He plunged ahead not hearing his wife’s gasp. “Nobody knew Beth better than Laney, and I’d been friends with Laney for a long time. I was comfortable talking to her. If anybody could help me figure out what to say, it was her.” The tension in the room eased considerably. “There’s a low stone wall on the back side of the pavilion where the restrooms were. We sat on that wall and talked for almost forty-five minutes. She told me the words didn’t matter, that it was all about how you felt, because someone could use the perfect words and quote Shakespeare, but if you didn’t love them, you didn’t love them. Laney said the best thing I could do was to ask Beth to dance and look into her eyes. Whatever I was feeling right then, say it. Then we had to figure out a future for it.”

  Beth was staring in shock. “Laney told you that? After all the sweet poetry and things Michael said to her? Why would she say that?”

  Peter wrapped his arms around her. “I suppose it doesn’t matter now. Laney asked me not speak to you about it, because she wanted your night to just be about us, and after her death, it just seemed cruel to bring it up. Laney told me she was planning on breaking up with Michael and that as much as she tried, she just wasn’t in love with him.”

  They all sat in silence, processing what they’d just heard. Adam and Devin exchanged knowing looks. Peter may have thought he was sparing feelings in the aftermath of Laney’s murder, but what he’d actually done was withheld evidence of motive. If Michael Leary was about to be dumped, that made him a suspect.

  Devin cleared her throat and tried to get them back on track. “So after you and Laney talked, did the two of you walk back to the pavilion together?”

  Peter looked vaguely uncomfortable. “Well…no. Laney was anxious to get back to the party, but I wanted to get my class ring out of my car to give to Beth.”

  Devin saw the look of surprise, mingled with confusion, that washed over Beth, but decided to let it marinate for a moment. “Did you see anyone talking to Laney or standing in the area she was headed?”

  “There were some girls waiting in line for the restroom, I think. Other than that, I don’t know. We said good-bye and I jogged off. I should have walked her back around, but I was in a hurry and didn’t.” Beth patted his leg again, and he was blindly rubbing her shoulder.

  In an interrogation they called this next bit going in for the kill, but Devin didn’t think of it like that right now. Her voice was warm but firm and her gaze was very steady. “Did you give Beth your class ring that night?”

  Peter swallowed hard, looking at his knees then, lifting his eyes to meet Devin’s, he kept his gaze just as steady and shook his head. “No, I didn’t.” When Devin just waited in silence, he continued. “When I got to my car, I saw Henry Maddox getting out of the back of his car with a girl…it was Beth.”

  Beth’s hand flew to her mouth in horror, and fresh tears started to seep out of the corners of her eyes. “Oh, Peter!”

  “I was so outraged that a womanizing piece of filth like him would touch my Beth. It was bad enough the way he mooned around after Laney, but to…to touch an angel was going too far. I wanted to kill him with my bare hands, to make him bleed and suffer the way I was suffering. Then I watched Beth blow him a kiss as she walked away.”

  Beth was softly sobbing now.

  “And I thought, ‘this is all my fault.’ I should have spoken up sooner. I couldn’t expect guys to stay away from such a beautiful girl. She was human and needed to be loved and appreciated.” He paused and buried his face in his wife’s hair. “I vowed that I would be the one to love and appreciate her from then on, and I stood in that parking lot until I figured out a plan for when we’d get married, how we’d live while I was in college, the whole nine yards. This wasn’t some little high school romance. When I walked in there and asked her to dance, I knew I was going to spend the rest of my life with her. I looked into her eyes and did just was Laney had told me. I said, ‘I’m crazy in love with you and I want you to be my girl.’”

  Beth looked at Devin and smiled weakly through the tears. “Can you imagine? The guy you’re sweet on comes charging over and sweeps you on to the dance floor, staring down at you with these intense eyes and says that to you? I have to say, I went weak in the knees.”

  Adam leaned over and flicked Devin’s shoulder. “If you can’t imagine it, I could reenact it for you later tonight.”

  Devin smacked his hand away and rolled her dark eyes, but she was grateful for the humor. “Well I think we’ve picked at enough scabs for one day, so Adam and I are going to go.”

  “You’re not staying for dinner?”

  “No, we really need to touch base back with the station and follow up on some leads. We’ll be working for awhile tonight.” Devin gave them her sunniest smile. “But I’m sure my arm could be twisted to come back for dinner another night. Oh,
and if you don’t mind, I would like to borrow your photo album. It seems the official file does not have a complete set after all.”

  They said their good-byes and were back in the Mustang after three hours. They would have sworn it had been three days. Adam slid down into the comfort of his bucket seat and looked over at her through half-closed eyes.

  “We don’t really have to go back to the office this evening.”

  “Nope.”

  “You just wanted to get out of there.”

  “Yep. We just surpassed my emotional threshold for, like, a month.”

  “Do you want to get some dinner?” He went to the effort of lifting his head off the seat and opening his eyes.

  “I thought you’d never ask. I hear the Stone House has great wings.”

  While they had waited for a table, she called Bill to update him on the Michael Leary situation, and he agreed that first thing in the morning, they would start trying to track him down. They spent two hours over dinner trying not to talk about the case, but Devin refused to play twenty questions about her past, either.

  “So how crazy did you think I was when I called a breaking and entering over the curtains being open?”

  Adam twirled his empty beer bottle. “I’m still not convinced you aren’t completely crazy.”

  “Gee, thanks!”

  The waitress brought out her chocolate lava cake. “Did y’all want two spoons for that?”

  Devin gave Adam a smug grin of victory. “Absolutely not.”.” She closed her eyes and savored her first bite. Not speaking again until the waitress was gone. “You were saying?”

  “How incredibly beautiful you look tonight…”

  “You’re not getting any of my cake.”

  “Fine. I think you’re nuts. Nobody was in your house, and I think Henry’s fire was nothing more than a terrible accident.” He glanced up from twirling the longneck bottle. “There, are you happy?”

  Devin cracked into the center of the cake and warm chocolate oozed out. Scooping up a gooey a bite, she took her time sucking every drop off the spoon.

  “Mmmm, this is so delicious.”

  Adam smirked. Pushing the bottle aside, he leaned forward placing his elbows on the table. “I don’t think the fire had anything to do with what was left at your house, and I see you’ve gotten a lot of movement in the case with your unorthodox style, but I don’t see how your luck can hold. We could be way off base on a wild goose chase as it is.”

  He had been easing forward across the table as he was speaking and was so close when he finished that he was able to swipe one finger through her dessert. He was already leaning back in his chair sucking chocolate and ice cream off his finger when she gasped.

  “I’m sure I could kill a man with a dessert spoon.” She pointed the spoon at him overtop her melting chocolate. “Hey, that could be number twenty-eight.”

  Adam’s smile was wide and boyish, the long day and the beer making him very laid back. “I’ll take my chances.”

  “We know whoever left that little present on my doorstep had been watching me. Why is it such a stretch to believe they would start a fire as a distraction? They wanted plenty of time with me out of the house and all eyes focused across the street.” She paused to take two large bites of cake and quickly melting ice cream. “As far as being on the wrong path, look at the psychology of the five murders. They tell the story. The first is violent, fueled by an emotional connection: rage. The next four are planned and mechanical: there’s no bloodlust or passion to those kills. In fact they found traces of sedatives in two of the girls, so they were knocked out before they were killed.” She scooped up another spoonful. “Plus, the locations are too purposefully random, as if someone took out a map of the state and strategically picked scattered spots. A true serial killer would have some pattern based on a roadway, circuit or home base.”

  Adam was already shaking his head. “I respect how hard you’ve worked on this, but you have no physical evidence. This is all just psycho babble.”

  “Care to make it interesting?” she asked. He just arched an eyebrow in response and remained quiet. “I’ve got a hundred bucks that says we’ll have a piece of physical evidence and will have identified the killer within two weeks.”

  “You seem awfully sure of yourself. Do you know something I don’t?”

  “Let’s just say that my intuition is starting to buzz, so it’s a pretty safe bet that we’re closing in.”

  Adam leaned his elbow on the table covering, his mouth covered with his hand to hide his smile. “Great, more hard facts.”

  Chapter 23

  It was after nine o’clock when Devin pulled into her driveway. She got out of the Mustang and glared at the patrol car across the street. The deputy just gave her a little salute of a wave, which she returned grudgingly. Adam had lingered when she dropped him off at his truck. If he had been hoping for a warmer good-bye, he went home disappointed.

  Unlocking the front door, Devin was glad she had stopped by after her spa visit to put Bo in the backyard. Otherwise it would have been a very long day for the pooch locked in the house. She imagined he was pretty hungry, though. She eyed the Styrofoam box containing her leftovers from dinner. The box was balanced precariously on top of Beth’s photo album in the crook of her left arm. If she made it all the way through the house, Bo could eat on the back stoop, if not, he could eat wherever the scraps fell.

  Somehow she made it to the kitchen and dumped everything on the kitchen table and hit the light switch as she pulled a diet soda out of the fridge. She popped the top to the can and threw her hip into the heavy antique door. It slammed shut with a thud, and was echoed by the sound of the soda hitting the floor, dumping its contents across the linoleum. Devin’s intuition had been tingling since before dinner, but now she just felt an icy cold that swallowed her in the instant before a surge of adrenaline and power took over. The outside of the backdoor window was streaked with blood, a lot of blood.

  She reached into her bag and got a secure grip on her Glock before killing the lights in the kitchen. Briefly it crossed her mind to go back out front for the deputy, but the thought left her as quickly as it came. She had no desire to lose any time backtracking for help when the possibility of catching the perp could be right beyond her back door. Easing along the cabinets Devin tried to scan the yard through the streaked bloody window, but seeing very little she, hit the switch for the floodlights and cracked the door open. Cooling congealed blood ran thickly down the steps as if it had been dumped out of a bucket. Bo’s lifeless body was laid out at the bottom of the steps, the white fur of his chest stained scarlet, and the grass around him a liquid black. Scanning the fenced in yard and finding no one Devin hurtled the steps.

  “Bo?! Come on, Bo!” Landing beside him, she didn’t hesitate to drop to her knees in the darkened grass and reach for the dog’s head to check his condition, but his throat had been slit wide open, and his body had already grown cold and stiff. Her voice came out as a raspy whisper and quavered slightly. “Ah, Bo, I’m sorry, boy. You didn’t deserve to get caught up in the middle of this.” She stroked his head in her lap for a moment before laying him gently back on the grass and then rose to go through the gate to the front.

  The deputy on duty nearly broke his neck getting out of his car when Devin stepped out into the streetlight in front of her house, covered in blood and carrying her pistol. He thought to radio in before he sprinted across the street. “Officer needs assistance and possible officer down.” The echo of sirens could be heard across town before he made it to the backyard.

  Devin had gone to bed before all the deputies had even left. Processing the scene took hours, and she had been emotionally and physically drained—not that it would be a restful night. The nightmares came fast and furious.

  She was running as hard as she could, the stained concrete walls of the alleyways flying by. Sweat streamed down her face, and her lungs burned for oxygen, but she couldn’t let up, not even a little.
I have to save her. There, beyond that chain link fence! Oh my, God the screaming!

  If I jump from those crates to the dumpster I can clear the fence without slowing down. I’m here! I made it, I see her! No! No Don’t! There’s so much blood!

  Devin bolted up in bed, drenched in sweat and gasping for breath. It had been so real. She’d felt sixteen again. She got up and went into the bathroom to splash her face. The chill of the water had nothing to do with her shaking. Looking in the mirror, she could see the window in the reflection behind her. She made a decision against her better judgment. Returning to the bedroom, she picked up her cell phone and then stood on tip toes, reaching in the far back corner of the closet shelf for the lighter and pack of cigarettes she’d stashed there. Back in the bathroom, Devin shoved the ancient rattling window pane up and stepped out onto the back porch roof.

  Unfortunately, her secret shame was not destined to be kept a secret, as soon as her bare feet touched the tin roof, she was engulfed in the beam of a flashlight.

  “Freeze. Show me your hands!”

  Devin couldn’t see anything past the light shining in her eyes, but she knew enough about cops to know that there was a gun drawn on her right now and that tensions were high, so this was not the time to be cute. She stood still and splayed her hands out where he could see what she was holding.

  “Easy deputy. It’s Detective Dushane. I live here. I’m just coming out for a smoke.”

  The spotlight was instantly jerked off of her. “Sorry, ma’am, I didn’t expect it to be you coming out of a window.”

  If her nerves weren’t so wrecked from the nightmare, Devin would have laughed. She managed a weak smile instead. “No apology necessary. You were just doing your job. Most normal people don’t climb out of their windows in the middle of the night to smoke. I’m just ashamed of my dirty little habit that I can’t kick, and I should have known there would be an officer in the yard. My fault.”

  Her eyes adjusted to the darkness and she could now make out the deputy’s silhouette in the moonlight as he holstered his gun.