Fractured Truth

by Susan Furlong

  My cell erupted. I bolted upright, sweat soaked and foggy, my first clear thoughts were of Gran. Please don’t let this be about Gran.

  It wasn’t. It was Pusser. “You up?”

  I pushed a sleepy Wilco to the side. “Sort of.” I flipped my cell over and snuck a peek. It was a little after 5:00 A.M. now. I put it back to my ear.

  “I’m at Buck Road Cemetery. I need you and your dog out here now.”

  “Right now? Why?” My head was swimming. The pills still hadn’t worn off. Why did I take so many?

  “Just get out here. We’ve got a problem. A big problem.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Buck Road Cemetery was a small, private family plot tucked alongside a winding mountain draw. Most of the graves were over a century old, the names and dates barely legible, as was the case in most of these old family plots. Over the years, mourners had joined the buried, leaving few behind to care for the fading tombstones.

  “Took you long enough to get here.” Pusser walked over from the cemetery’s entrance as I opened my car door.

  After Pusser’s call, I’d downed a couple cups of coffee and taken a hot shower, trying to clear the haze in my brain. It’d been almost a full hour since I got the call. I was still only half sober.

  As I got out, I gripped the door, a rush of dizziness hitting me. His hand flew to my shoulder. “Easy, Callahan. You okay?”

  “Fine. Just tired. You find a body?” My words were labored, slower than usual. Pusser didn’t seem to notice.

  “Not yet. Half the graves have been vandalized. Spray-painted. Same type of symbols that we saw at the cave where Maura was found.” He nodded toward an adjacent tree line. “I want you and your dog to work those woods back there.”

  The sound of a car drew our eyes back to the road. A news van had pulled up, followed by another car, a sedan. The sedan driver raised a camera and snapped off a few shots. Pusser frowned. “Local press for now. But what we’ve got here is a damn freak show. Dug-up graves and ritualistic killings. That type of stuff sells papers, boosts television ratings. Hell, I’m surprised we haven’t already made national news.”

  “Is Grabowski here?”

  “He’s on his way.”

  I pointed at one of the techs, who was photographing a spot not far from an overturned tombstone. Another tech wore a mask and squatted over a camp stove, stirring sulfur cement for casting. “You find some tracks?”

  Pusser nodded. “Tire imprint. Looks like they used a motorcycle to push over the grave marker. There’s a good shoe print next to it. The rider probably sat idling for a while with his foot on the ground for balance. The heat from the exhaust softened the ground enough to make deep impressions. We’re working on other prints, too, but this is a public place—it’ll take a while to narrow the field.” He squinted up at the sun. “And it’s warming up. We’ll be screwed if it heats up enough to start melting this snow.” He indicated toward my vehicle. “Get your dog out and get started in those woods back there. I want to know if any skeletal remains are still around, or if this sick bastard carried them home for his own personal collection.”

  I did as I was told. As soon as Wilco’s nose hit the cemetery air, he became anxious. His muscles rippled with anticipation. The smell of death. It enticed my dog like nothing else. And Wilco was capable of ferreting all levels of decay, even ancient remnants. Although we’d never trained on historic human remains, I’d seen his abilities firsthand in Iraq while on a recovery mission. It’d happened in Mosul, at an area outside a Badush prison, sometime after the area was occupied by the Islamic State. Wilco and I were on a recovery mission, but instead of finding a soldier, he hit on something else—over seventy Shias massacred and buried in a shallow mass grave over thirty years ago during the rise of the Saddam regime. Hundred-year-old decay wouldn’t be an obstacle, either.

  Wilco pulled toward a clump of trees off to the left.

  “What’s he doing? The grave’s over there.”

  I gripped the leash tighter. He’s drawn to the highest concentration of odors. Low areas, like the grooves around tree roots, gathered more scent. A sudden jerk on the leash pulled me forward. My knees hit the ground hard. I recovered quickly, stood, and brushed the snow from my knees with my free hand. Pusser stared at me. What’s his problem? I’d stumbled in the snow. Big deal. It was slippery. I was tired. My dog yanked me off balance.

  Focus, Brynn. You can handle this. I sucked in the cold air, willed my head to clear. I knew better. I could tolerate my liquor, it was the pills that always got me. Or the pills with the liquor. A deadly combination, some doc had told me. Not for me, apparently. Straighten up, girl. Get a grip, smile. I frowned. No, that’s not right. Nix the smile. Never smile when you look for bodies. I shook my head, tried to look . . . what? Serious? In control? Right.

  I turned my focus back to Wilco and gave him some slack. He zipped toward the trees, doubling back here and there, scooping up scents and gulping at the odor-laden air. Nothing here. Nothing there. A little something here. Another fifteen yards and he hesitated again, flipped back on himself, raised his snout, and beelined for an old hemlock.

  There was a hollow spot at the base of the hemlock’s trunk. As a kid, I went through a stage where every nook and cranny in a tree would become a fairy house: A piece of flat bark was the bed; a spent spool of thread became a table; Popsicle sticks were for the door. But that was back before a bed was a lumpy cot, tables served for impromptu autopsies, and Popsicle sticks became tongue depressors that peered down dead men’s throats to determine new enemy poisons. So much for the innocence of childhood fantasies.

  Wilco ran his nose along the rough edges of the bark, more enthusiastic with every sniff. I bent down and peered closer at the snow-encrusted leaves and twigs that’d gathered in the cavity. Nothing. I straightened my knees. My head spun. I pitched forward and caught myself against the tree.

  And dropped the lead rope.

  I bent to get it, but Wilco had moved on, his snout sniffing a frenzied line toward the crime scene techs. The leash slithered away like a retreating snake. “Stop.” You idiot—he’s deaf! I motioned my command. He was too engrossed in his task to notice. I went after him, struggled to move in a straight line, got close, tried to snatch his fur, but fell again.

  By the time I fumbled to my feet, Wilco had penetrated the crime scene. Several deputies jumped into action, yelling and grabbing for him. Wilco darted from their reach, trampling over the scene area, then back toward me.

  Pusser’s voice cut through the chaos. “Get your dog, Callahan.”

  Harris got into the mix. Running at Wilco and waving his hands like an idiot. “Git! Git, dog!” Wilco dodged out of the way, shimmied sideways, and ended up in the print casting, his feet trampling away any semblance of prints below the casting goo.

  “Damn it, Callahan. Get your dog!”

  I reached him and clipped his lead, ripped off my scarf and started frantically wiping the mixture from his feet. Anxiety over Wilco’s feet vanished as I wiped off the goo, swished his feet in the snow and realized he’d be okay. My relief also vanished as hot stares burned into my back. What to do? What to do? Embarrassment blazed inside me, but with everyone’s eyes glued on my next move, I forced anger to swell and erupt. I snatched Wilco by the back of the neck and got in his face. “Bad boy, bad boy!” My words were for the onlookers, not for my deaf dog.

  Wilco lowered himself, his brown eyes darting about nervously. I let go, stood erect. My heart sank. The casting, perhaps the only solid lead we’d take away from this scene, was ruined. Compromised because of me, not my dog. I was the one who’d lost control of the leash. Wilco was only doing his job. Following the scent.

  This was my fault.

  And Pusser knew it. He drew me aside. “You’re frickin’ stoned out of your mind, aren’t you? Aren’t you?”

  I couldn’t answer.

  “Damn you, Callahan. Do you realize what you’ve done?”

  “I’m sorry.
I’m—”

  “You’re sorry? Not good enough. That print may have been our best chance to track this perp. It’s gone now. A murderer may get off because of you. Or worse yet, he may murder again.” His head snapped upward, his eyes narrowing in on one of the reporters and his cameraman, whose lens had taken in every action at the crime scene. “And guess what? This whole fiasco is going to play out on the evening news.”

  CHAPTER 14

  January 4

  School sucks. The settled kids think I’m a freak. Only a few of them will talk to me and that’s only because they’re bottom-feeders like me. I can’t wait for us to get out of here. I almost have enough money now. Just a little more and I can take Nevan someplace far away where we can live happily ever after. . . .

  Nothing about high school ever changes. The same sounds, the same smells, the same gray lockers and off-white linoleum floors. A trophy case, classrooms, a squeaky-floor gym with side bleachers caked with dried chewing gum under each bench seat. The kids were the same, too: the geeks, the jocks, the thespians, and the mean girls. The preps in their cardigans and the Goths whose black garb expressed their inner angst. Then there were the fringers—on the outside, whether by choice or from being pushed out of the normal clique groups. They walked alone, kept their heads down, dressed to blend in, and worked hard to get through each day unnoticed. Their route through high school was the most difficult and loneliest to navigate. I’d been a fringer. Maura was a fringer. All Travellers, by default, are fringers. And because we don’t conform to the norm, we’re easy targets.

  Had Maura been an easy target? Or did she go down fighting?

  The journal entry brought back buried emotions for me. I knew how Maura felt. A Pavee girl in a public high school was no easy deal. I’d suffered the same angst in high school, worked hard to escape this place, all of Bone Gap, actually.

  Yet, here I was again.

  My eyes roamed the hallway. Nothing had really changed. “I hated high school.” The words were out before I could stop them.

  Grabowski looked my way, a slight curl playing along the edges of his lips. We sat outside the high-school counselor’s office on a hard bench, waiting to do an interview. Wilco was on lead and seated at my feet, sucking up the attention thrown his way by passing students. “Let me guess,” Grabowski said. “You didn’t quite fit in with the popular crowd.”

  I closed my mouth. Great job, Brynn. Misfit, fringer, loner . . . just one more tidbit of information for Grabowski to use in his profile of me. Right after druggie and all-around screwup.

  Pusser had tasked Grabowski with babysitting me after my all-too-public destruction of the cemetery crime scene. I would have objected, but Pusser clearly didn’t want me in his sight anymore that morning. Maybe never again. My primary job was to act as handler of a human-remains tracking dog and I’d failed Wilco miserably. Not to mention the department. And in front of cameras that could—

  “. . . something’s missing,” Grabowski said.

  “What?”

  “Anger.”

  “Oh.” I tried to wrap my head around what he’d been talking about—and what I should be thinking about—the case. We’d just left the same fast-food joint we’d eaten at the other morning, and a stack of hotcakes and a gallon of hot coffee later my leftover pill buzz had worn off. Only my misery over screwing up my job still had me distracted. Get it together, Brynn. Find a plausible lead and you just might save your drunken ass yet. “So, what could be angrier than stabbing someone’s heart out with a sticking knife?”

  Grabowski paused. I glanced sideways, studying him. He sported a two-day growth on his face, which was more hair than he had on his head. On certain guys, bald was sexy. Not on Grabowski. His skull was speckled and rippled with wrinkles like an overly ripe cantaloupe. Besides the crappy bluegrass music he’d foisted on me and Wilco in his Crown Vic driving over here, I knew little about him. Married? Had a family? Mr. Profiler had my full number, especially after this morning; I didn’t even know his first digit.

  Finally he said, “I assume most of what you dealt with in the military were casualties. The motive is usually obvious.”

  “Yeah. Kill or get killed.”

  “Exactly. I’ve investigated a lot of homicides. Some stand out as angry. Repetitious wounds like multiple stabs to the heart, mutilated genitals, gouged-out eyes . . . those are the types of wounds that indicate anger. A single, well-placed stab wound to the heart seems deliberate, not angry. That’s why I don’t think the Anderson kid is our guy.”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “Hatch’s motive would be anger, right? She was pregnant. She’d trapped him.”

  “Maybe Hatch wasn’t so much angry, just running scared. Trying to cover his tracks. A smart kid could figure the occult angle as a cover-up. Plan it out.”

  Grabowski shook his head. “He lives an entitled life, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Gets away with everything. Mommy and Daddy make sure of it.”

  I agreed.

  “That type of kid is used to being in control, or being able to manipulate his way out of things. But a pregnancy is the woman’s deal. If she wanted to have the baby, she would, and she could tell the whole world it was his kid, prove it even, and tie him up for years with child support payments. For the first time in his life, he’d have lost all control. He’d be angry about that, believe me.”

  “Maybe.” What he was saying made sense, but I liked Hatch for this crime. Period.

  The school counselor’s office door opened and a secretary ushered us inside. We were searching for a link between the killer and Maura, and the best way to do that was to dig into her life, especially the time leading up to her disappearance. If we could piece together a timeline, we’d be one step closer to finding the perp.

  But we got zilch from the counselor. Maura was a mediocre student, he’d told us. Never a behavior problem, but not academically motivated, either. She was quiet, kept to herself, a bit of a loner, one of those kids who flew under the radar. We’d heard the same from most of the school staff. Some hadn’t really considered her much until her death. Like she was simply a shadow, slipping in and out of their days, visible but not really noticed. Maura the wallflower.

  Until she wasn’t.

  * * *

  Most of these kids hated cops. Evident by the cold stares we got as we moved through the hallways and out to the crowded parking lot, packed with kids heading out for lunch. High schoolers, especially minority youths, mistrusted the police. I got that. I was a minority, of sorts, and had grown up constantly exposed to that sentiment of mistrust. Pavees had always viewed the police as more of enforcers than protectors, and many cops had earned that negative attitude. But not all. Stereotypes. I’d lived with them my whole life and I’d come to understand that, whether propagated by skin color, age, affluence, or ethnic background, the need for superiority over others was an unabashed universal truth. Cop or civilian, black, white, brown, settled, gypsy, straight, gay, Jew or Christian, it didn’t matter. Bigotry transcended all divisions. Haters were going to hate. Get used to it. But a few students reached out to pet Wilco as we walked toward the car. Wilco would be all Mr. Happy, getting his pats and soaking up any “pretty boy” cooed his way. He was, by far, the department’s best public-relations tool.

  We cut through a row of parked cars to avoid the crowds. A mistake on my part. The temptation proved too much for my dog. Three cars in, he stopped, turned his backside on an old Buick’s rear tire, and peed. I yanked his leash. Two feet later, he turned again. I yanked again.

  Grabowski fidgeted with his keys. “Is he going to hit every tire, or what?”

  I gave Wilco another impatient tug. He ignored me, straining instead to reach another tire. I gave up and let him pull me that way. He’d eventually run dry.

  While he left his pee-mail behind, I scanned the lot. My eye caught some movement off in the distance by the football bleachers. I craned my neck and squin
ted. Just some kid messing around. But something made me look closer. Not just some kid, but Winnie Joyce. She was talking animatedly to someone, but a bank of bleachers obscured my view. Who was she talking with? “Hey. You see that? It’s the Joyce girl . . . ,” but Grabowski had already moved on, didn’t hear me.

  I looked back. Winnie had shrunk down into her puffy coat, her blond braid swinging back and forth as she shook her head. She was scared. Something isn’t right. What’s going on? I headed across the lot and toward the field, pulling Wilco with me. He resisted, reluctant to leave any dry tires behind, but I reined him in and dragged him along. I was about fifty yards away when Hatch Anderson popped into my view. He loomed over Winnie, his gestures exaggerated with anger. I picked up my pace. People around me were busy going about their business: talking, laughing, getting into their cars . . .

  Hatch grabbed Winnie by the collar. He was in her face, his features twisted with anger as he shook her. My blood boiled. Years of encounters with abusive men—in the Marines, in the clan, in my own home, even—worked their way to the surface. Breathe. That’s what my VA docs told me to do. Control your inner monster.

  Screw them. I moved faster, ready to put the little jerk in his place.

  Ten yards away. He squeezed her throat. “You crazy bitch. How could you?”

  I dropped Wilco’s leash and charged in. “Stop!”

  He turned, his fist raised. I grabbed his arm and twisted it backward, reached for my cuffs. He resisted, yanking me off balance. I fell against his car, rammed my elbow, and dropped the cuffs. Wilco scurried under my feet, snapping and snarling, ready to tear into the guy. I recovered and reached for Hatch again.

  Out of nowhere, Grabowski appeared and jerked Winnie out of the way before coming after Hatch from behind. Hatch anticipated his move, threw an elbow, and connected to Grabowski’s jaw. He went down hard.