Winter's Mourn

by Mary Stone

  Their luck at having an empty eating area abruptly came to an end when a harassed-looking mother and her four noisy kids sat down nearby. The echo of whining and bickering siblings put an end to any further questions Noah had planned on asking.

  “You know, don’t you,” Winter cautioned, as they stood up to leave. “You have to tell Chief Miller all this.”

  Benton nodded, resigned. “I should have done it sooner.” He dropped his untouched coffee in the trash. “Listen, I’m sorry I’ve been a dick.” His eyes met Winter’s for the first time, and he looked uncomfortable. “Back then and now. You didn’t deserve it.”

  Winter flinched, in surprise or remembered pain, Noah couldn’t tell. It was only a brief moment. She recovered almost instantly and shrugged, like it didn’t matter. “It’s all in the past.”

  “You guys haven’t been as obnoxious as I figured you’d be.” He smiled a little.

  “Wish we could say the same,” Noah said, but grinned back at him. He still didn’t like the guy and couldn’t wait until they’d wrapped this case up and didn’t have to deal with him anymore. He’d finally come through with something, though, and it wouldn’t hurt to play nice until they left.

  Benton had probably gotten himself in a crapload of trouble so far. It’d be interesting to see if his belated confessions would leave him with a job when his boss found out.

  19

  Winter was glad when Noah suggested they set up shop for the morning at what was becoming their usual coffee shop. She didn’t want to be at the police station when Benton finally talked to Gary Miller. She also didn’t want to be back at the hotel.

  Noah continued to sleep on the floor of his room while she slept in his bed. He insisted that he’d rather have her where he could keep an eye on her. He even regularly swept the room for bugs or hidden cameras. The close quarters were getting to her, though.

  She was uncomfortably aware of him, especially in the middle of the night. She could hear every rustle of the blankets when he shifted. It was too intimate. She’d seen the way he’d been watching her lately. And if Winter was being honest, she’d been watching him back. They were co-workers. Friends, too, but she couldn’t let it go any further than that.

  The coffee shop was mostly empty of hipsters that morning, and they had their corner with the comfortable chairs to themselves. The coffee, too, was better, and there were fresh-baked scones.

  “So, we’ve got a definite pattern forming,” Noah said, settling back with his laptop open, his fingers already moving rapidly over the keys. “We’ll have to check out cause of death for the other former female cult members on the list, but it’s looking like cancer.”

  “Disabled children,” Winter added. “Buried near the property. At least two surviving kids. Jake Benton and probably Alison Collier. Pregnancy is a recurring theme here.” She opened up her file of notes and began to type up a transcript of their conversation with Tom Benton.

  “I’m going to check into environmental concerns in the area. PFAS is a thing now. They’re discovering it in water sources all over the country. Has some health concerns, and cancer’s one of them. So are birth defects. CDC records should show if there’s a higher level of cancer rates in this area of Virginia.”

  “David Benton needs a closer look too,” Winter said. She had done some reading on Perfluoroalkyl Substances and agreed that PFAS was concerning. “He sure acted like a guy with a lot to hide, and I didn’t like the way he talked about Elbert Wilkins. We need to dig there and see if there’s any reason he might have either killed Elbert or paid to have it done.”

  They worked for a couple of hours, Winter finally switching to decaf. It had to be the caffeine that had her so restless. They’d be meeting with Rebekah Archer, but she couldn’t get the face of the girl from her vision out of her mind.

  Noah’s phone rang at about a quarter past ten. Since they were the only customers in the coffee shop and the barista was rocking out on headphones behind the counter, he put it on speakerphone and kept the volume low.

  Florence Wade, the medical examiner out of Roanoke was on the line. Her voice sounded harried, which was no surprise since they’d sent her a steady stream of work. “I’m still knee-deep in all this,” she said darkly. “But I wanted you all to know that I took a look at the older female victim. The female, approximately sixteen or seventeen years old, based on her teeth, had given birth. I can’t tell how long it was before she was killed, but there’s evidence of ligament tears on the inside of the pelvic bones. They show up as shotgun pellet-sized pockmarks and are unmistakable.”

  Winter’s pulse sped up, and her palms went damp. She leaned forward to catch every word, and Noah did the same.

  “Jane Doe was an anomaly, since we’ve otherwise been dealing with remains of children, decades old. From initial tests, I’d say that she’s only been in the ground two, two and a half years.”

  Noah asked her a couple more questions. He finally thanked her and disconnected the call, but Winter barely noticed. Her mind was spinning with possibilities.

  “We need a warrant,” she told Noah. She was already dialing Chief Miller’s cell.

  Understanding flared in Noah’s eyes as he quickly made the connection. “You’re thinking Jenna isn’t Rebekah’s daughter at all.”

  “Start digging on her,” Winter said, impatiently listening to the phone ring on the other end of the line. “We should have focused more on her to begin with. See if you can find out if Jenna is really hers.”

  She closed her eyes briefly and could see the little girl’s face clearly.

  Winter knew Noah wouldn’t find any birth records for Jenna Archer and she had a feeling it wouldn’t matter. They were going to be too late.

  They could see smoke in the distance almost as soon as they turned off the highway in Linville. It was Noah’s turn to drive, and he had to pull over for a fire truck at one point. Grimly, his hands gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles whitened, he followed it, keeping just a few car lengths behind and passing other vehicles in its wake.

  “I’m sorry.” Winter felt Noah glance at her, but she didn’t want to look at him. “I should have known. I should have been able to figure it out sooner.”

  “Knock it off,” Noah replied. He eased the sedan around a curve, hardly slacking in speed. “You’re not some mind-reading superhero. I’m just as capable at putting two and two together. We had no reason to think that Jenna wasn’t Rebekah’s daughter. Even now, we can’t be a hundred percent sure she’s not.”

  “She’s not.” Winter knew it to her bones. That sweet, uncannily smart kid was the daughter of a teenager who had been locked in a cage somewhere on Rebekah Archer’s property before she was murdered.

  How did this all tie in with the old murders? Rebekah was too young to have been involved. She’d have been little more than a child herself. Were they dealing with two completely different things? Or was Rebekah beginning…something where her father had left off?

  Winter rubbed her forehead. An ache was beginning to throb behind her eyes. Not the vision kind, she could tell, disgusted with her fickle “gift.” The tension headache kind. Jenna, the adorable little girl who had held her hand and told her not to be sad. And Rebekah had seemed like a devoted, proud, protective mother. Would she hurt the child?

  They didn’t speak as they passed the trail to the crime scene on the hill. They could see smoke billowing above the treetops, and smell it, even though the car windows were up. There was no doubt about where it was coming from. The fire truck ahead of them switched off the sirens and slowed, turning left into the driveway of the Archer farm.

  The house was in flames. It was a completely involved structure fire, and there were already several trucks and dozens of firefighters moving around in coordinated chaos, trying to get it under control. Noah parked out of the way, in the long grass in front of the low hill that sloped down to the road.

  They got out of the car and took in the flaming destruction
. The air was choking and thick, reeking like woodsmoke, electrical components, and burning plastic. Underlying it all was a heavy, charred meat scent.

  It wasn’t just the house on fire. The barns, too, were in flames.

  “The cattle,” Noah murmured, horror spreading over his face.

  There weren’t any animals in the fields, Winter realized with a jolt. They were all locked into the burning outbuildings. She felt sick at the realization.

  She and Noah walked farther to the south, and through the heavy smoke, could see that the yurt, the little canvas-sided chapel, was already gone. It was amazing that the long grass around it hadn’t caught like tinder. The rain they’d gotten lately had appeared to at least keep the fire from spreading. They could have been dealing with a wildfire at this point.

  “Did Rebekah burn all this down? Tell us to come back for a tour to buy herself some time, and then set fire to everything?”

  Noah was still staring toward the biggest barn, where firefighters in heavy gear were attempting to knock back the worst of the flames, but it looked like a futile effort. “I don’t know. She could just as easily be a victim. I can’t imagine anyone who works with animals doing something as cruel as locking them in and sentencing them to death like this.”

  She was going to make a snarky comment about his rose-colored glasses when it came to Rebekah Archer, but the words wouldn’t come. She remembered instead the way she’d gone back and forth with the woman the day they’d been caught on the property.

  Rebekah had actually seemed like someone she’d like under different circumstances, with her obvious devotion to her daughter and her quick sense of humor when they’d negotiated about the tour.

  She found herself hoping the woman wasn’t capable of what they were seeing here. But more, she hoped that someone else was responsible and that Jenna and Rebekah weren’t next on their growing list of homicide victims.

  “Let’s go see if we can find someone who can tell us more.”

  They found the incident commander easily. He was outside of his red SUV, a phone between his cheek and shoulder, yelling into it and giving orders to the people who swarmed around him at the same time. They waited for him to get off the phone before approaching him.

  Noah briefly introduced himself and Winter, and they held out their identifications. The chief wore a beleaguered frown but shook their hands.

  “A woman and her child lived here,” Winter said without preamble. “Were you able to get anyone in for a preliminary search? See if there were occupants inside?”

  Kurt Leggitt shook his head in the negative. He was in his forties, with the weathered look of a man who spent a lot of time in the sun and wind. At the mention of occupants, he appeared stricken. “God, I hope no one was in there. By the time we got here, things were raging. I wasn’t willing to risk a man, sending him in to look around.”

  Winter nodded. “It’s okay. There likely wasn’t anyone inside. Were there any cars here when you arrived?”

  Kurt shook his head but was obviously still troubled. “I just took over when the last chief retired. I was a volunteer fireman for fifteen years, so I’m not inexperienced, but I haven’t had to oversee anything bigger than a brushfire until this.”

  “You’re doing fine,” Noah assured him. And they were. Smoke still billowed up sullenly from the roof of the farmhouse, but already, the flames had been beaten back to a large degree. Both the house and barns would be a total loss, but enough would remain to investigate.

  “Who called this in? Was it someone who lived nearby and saw the smoke?” Winter asked the question, suddenly intent.

  “That one I can answer.” A young woman in full gear came up in a hurry, her face streaked with soot. “A woman named Becky Fletcher talked to our dispatcher. She claimed she was driving by and saw flames.” She gave a little salute and headed back to the structure.

  Winter could tell that Kurt was itching to get back to work, so she stuck out a hand. “Great, thanks. Go ahead. You’ve got your hands full.” The fire chief turned away and Winter looked at Noah, relief washing through her. “Becky Fletcher? Rebekah Archer? Isn’t that a little obvious?”

  “Archer. Fletcher. Someone who shoots arrows and a person that makes arrows? I guess I can see it.” Some of the tension left Noah’s shoulders and Winter knew he was just as concerned about little Jenna’s welfare as she was. They now had a possible suspect, at least in the teenager’s killing, but at least there was no reason to believe that Jenna might be in immediate danger.

  Noah’s phone rang, and he pulled it out and checked the display, raising one eyebrow. “It’s Tom Benton. I hope he doesn’t want to invite us bowling after work, now that we’re copacetic and all.”

  He answered and listened briefly. Winter could hear yelling on the other end of the line, but by the look of concern on Noah’s face, she didn’t think Tom was angry. A chill shivered through her that had nothing to do with the cool breeze that fluttered the leaves of the oak tree above them.

  Noah hung up the phone. “Samantha’s gone.”

  20

  “What do you mean, she’s gone?”

  Noah didn’t get visions or see things, but his gut was telling him right now that this was not a coincidental development. Winter stared up at him, waiting for a response. She already looked like she had the same feeling.

  “Benton says that he was suspended from the department. Two weeks without pay, and he’s on probation when he gets back. Apparently, the conversation with his wife afterward didn’t go well. Come on.”

  He headed for the car, Winter close on his heels.

  “My turn to drive,” she said, and he handed her the keys without argument. “Did he check with her family? Mom? Sisters?” She slid into the car and adjusted the front seat, cranking the ignition almost before he even opened the door.

  His foot had barely left the ground before she had the car in gear. “Yeah, they haven’t seen her. Benton said that tempers were running high. Sam got on him about his drinking. He snapped on her for losing another job because of her attitude, and she started saying she was having cramps. She locked herself in the bathroom, and he went nuts, convinced she was starting to miscarry again. He heard her talking to someone on the phone, then she came out and threw some stuff in a bag and left.”

  She pulled a U-turn in the front yard of the farm and headed down the driveway. “Could she have been calling her doctor?”

  “Benton said no. That was the first call he made after she took off, but the receptionist said she hadn’t even been into the office in months. Sam claimed she’d confirmed the pregnancy and her doctor would be watching her closely, but that apparently wasn’t the case, after all. He checked the emergency room, too, and they didn’t have her registered.”

  Winter usually kept to the speed limit, but right now, she was pushing eighty in a fifty-five mile per hour zone.

  “What are you thinking?” Noah asked.

  “We need to find out more about Rebekah. Former friends, classmates, hell, even her college transcripts.”

  “We’ll be lucky not to get kicked out of the coffee shop,” Noah commented, cracking the window. “We smell like a bonfire.”

  He knew she’d been avoiding the hotel room, and he couldn’t blame her. It was getting harder and harder to pretend he was okay with sleeping on the floor next to her bed like a guard dog. He’d rather be on top of the bed. On top of her.

  “It’s fine. We’ll go back, hit the laptops and take showers. We don’t want to give David Benton any excuse not to talk with us.”

  “You think we’ll get anything out of him?”

  “I know we will.”

  Noah didn’t miss the steely glint in her eye and didn’t doubt her for a second.

  For the first time, Winter wished she could bring on her visions at will. She’d take a raging headache right now if it meant somehow seeing the connections in all these seemingly random occurrences.

  Babies buried in the woods deca
des before, murdered in cold blood.

  The Bishop: disillusioned by war, bent on molding a new generation in the name of peace.

  A teenager killed in the last few years, but not before giving birth.

  Rebekah Archer, Wesley Archer’s daughter. Either a victim or murderer.

  A retired reporter killed supposedly at random, his files ransacked.

  A prominent member of the community, lying through his teeth.

  Women, dead of reproductive cancers.

  Disabled children.

  She half-heard the shower shut off as she crossed items off a list. She’d checked before, but looked again, unable to find a record of Jenna’s birth, either in or around Harrisonburg. She did find Rebekah’s college transcripts, and as she’d told them, Rebekah’s college major had been in animal husbandry. She had a Facebook page, but didn’t appear to have updated it in a long time.

  She scrolled through the friends list and past posts, looking for leads. There was one possibility that caught her eye—a former boyfriend. His profile was public and when she went back a few years, he’d listed himself as in a relationship with her. She scribbled down his name and began a records search for a current phone number.

  “Winter. Take a break.”

  Noah’s voice startled her, and she jolted, nearly dropping her pen.

  “Take a break,” he repeated. He’d changed out of his earlier jeans, pulling on a white button-down shirt and black slacks. He smelled like some kind of woodsy aftershave. “Shower.” He pointed in the direction of the bathroom. “I’ll pick up where you left off. I’m starting to be able to read that chicken scratch you call handwriting.”

  When she slid toward the edge of the bed, Winter realized she likely hadn’t moved or changed positions since she’d sat down. Her legs were stiff, and her shoulders ached. “There’s a name there—”