Walk a Crooked Line (Jo Larsen Book 2)

by Susan McBride

  It was a quarter to five.

  “You were right, Jo,” Karen Rossfeld said, like they were old chums. “There’s been activity this afternoon at the Raines’ place.”

  “Oh?”

  “We’ve been doing a little recon with a drone and spotted someone over at the property, stacking wood for what looks like a bonfire. It’s within the paddock fencing, a ways off the barn. We got a name from the side of the pickup truck, and it’s a local who does mulch and firewood for area residents. We ran him through the system, and he came up clean, so I don’t figure he’s involved except for the delivery.”

  “Anyone else on the property?” Jo asked. “A caretaker, maybe?”

  “No one we could see except the mailman.”

  “Go on,” Jo urged.

  “I checked with the fire marshal, because the Raines would’ve had to file a plan ahead of time. They’re on way more than the required two acres, so it’s perfectly legal for them to burn as long as they notify the marshal. In fact, he’s very familiar with the address. He said they do bonfires and seasonal burning pretty regularly.”

  “Did Jason Raine get a permit for tonight?” Jo asked, feeling her eyelid twitch.

  “He surely did,” Rossfeld drawled. “I guess he didn’t want the fire trucks showin’ up and finding him and his friends breaking bad around the bonfire.”

  Jo felt the flutter of butterflies in her belly.

  “You thinking of heading up with your partner to check on them?” Rossfeld asked.

  “As long as we’re not stepping on anyone’s toes.”

  “Our toes are fine. I heard the chief on the phone a few minutes ago, touching base with your captain. We’re here to back you up if you need a hand. But it’s your call, and we’ll wait on it. Odds are, it’ll all add up to nothing.”

  “We’ll see,” Jo said, mostly surprised that Captain Morris wasn’t putting the kibosh on their little excursion. He could very well have done it, and she wouldn’t have blamed him a bit, not with the mayor breathing down his neck. “What’s your best advice on surveillance?”

  Rossfeld gave her some directions to a patch of adjacent land where she and Hank could park without arousing suspicion. “It’s a property for sale, and I’ve cleared it with the Realtor. I implied we were doing some training.”

  Jo reckoned it was training of sorts, on how to take down a gang of spoiled rich kids.

  When she got off the phone with Rossfeld, she asked Hank, “You want to go to Celina?” and he started to scramble.

  While he went on a mission to round up a couple of walkies, Tasers, and a body cam, Jo made a call to Amanda Pearson. A young woman answered with a sweet, soft voice. Jo identified herself, and the woman said she was Amanda’s daughter.

  She put her mom on, and Jo started out by asking how she was faring. Mrs. Pearson sounded tired, her feistiness gone, although she admitted it was good to have her daughter around. She was even thinking of going back to Missouri with her and spending some time with the grandkids, which Jo thought sounded brilliant and told her so.

  “You are good to be concerned about me,” Mrs. Pearson remarked. “But I’m sensing there’s more to this than how I’m doing. Is there something I can do for you?”

  There was, in fact, and Jo didn’t hesitate to ask for a small favor.

  “Can you keep an eye out for Jason Raine’s truck?” she said. “I know you can hear it when he goes by. You remarked that it rattled your walls.”

  “Has he done something wrong?” Mrs. Pearson asked.

  “He might have, yes, ma’am,” Jo replied diplomatically.

  “You think he took Duke, don’t you?” Before Jo could answer, Mrs. Pearson added, “I remember something that didn’t strike me until now. You’d wondered if I’d seen any cars on the road that night Duke disappeared, ones I didn’t recognize. I told you no, which was the truth. Because I didn’t see any strange cars at all. But I heard a truck, that awful roaring engine, while I was putting on my nightgown. I’d grown so used to it that it didn’t register. He could have tossed Duke right into his pickup, with me being none the wiser.”

  “We’re not letting this go,” Jo assured her. “When you hear that truck tonight, would you please call me on my cell?” She recited her number again, even though she’d left a card at the house days ago. “Hank and I need to know when Jason leaves his house. It’s important.”

  “I will sit by the front window and watch for him,” Mrs. Pearson assured her. “If he’s the one who hurt Duke, I want him punished.”

  “I do, too.”

  Jo glanced at the time. It was already close to six.

  Hurry up, she told herself, gently bidding goodbye to Amanda Pearson, who wished her good luck, whatever she was up to. Jo said she’d take it.

  Ticktock, ticktock.

  She got up from her desk, glancing down at her clothes. She had on dark jeans, a broken-in pair of Lucchese boots, and a navy-blue T-shirt. Not a bad uniform for an evening stakeout. The more she could blend into the night, the better.

  She took a few minutes to study the Google photos of the Raines’ property, getting a sense of the lay of the land and where everything sat—the house, the barn, the fenced-in paddock where the bonfire would burn—and how best to approach it. She wanted to be close to the fire, able to quickly intercede before things got out of hand. Hank would be near enough to keep a visual on her and the paddock, but at a safer distance.

  Jo wanted to be in position before the boys arrived. She didn’t want them to see her until she needed to be seen.

  “You got everything?” she asked as Hank returned to her desk. He had a canvas knapsack slung over his shoulder.

  “Everything and then some.” He patted the bag. “You sure you don’t want a vest?” he asked, not for the first time.

  “He’s not going to shoot a cop.”

  “Not on purpose,” Hank replied. “But he’s a hunter. He’s probably got guns up the wazoo. And we don’t have a warrant, so we’re not exactly marching up to the front door . . .”

  “They’re not using guns on the dogs. They’re using baseball bats,” she said. “And we won’t be empty-handed.”

  Hank looked resigned. “All right. I need to go grab us some wheels. Give me a few minutes more,” he told her, picking up the canvas knapsack before he disappeared.

  Going with Hank to Celina, Jo texted Adam, knowing he’d be worried. Be back by midnight.

  He texted back in record time: If you’re not, I’ll call the cops.

  Funny guy.

  Saw Duke’s X-rays, he went on. I concur with Hooks. It looks like severe abuse.

  It was, Jo texted back. It definitely was. She was as sure of that as she was of anything.

  She checked her phone’s battery, which still had a strong charge. She had her sidearm locked and loaded in her shoulder holster, and she’d tossed a few extra plastic cuffs into her jacket pocket. All she’d forgotten was a trip to the bathroom. Once accomplished, she was out the back door, stopping at the curb just as her partner rolled up in a truck from the impound lot: a very dirty late-model Ford Ranger with tinted windows.

  “Nice ride,” she remarked upon opening the door. “It’s from the drug bust two weeks back, yes? Heroin dealer from the Audubon Apartments?”

  “I’m giving the battery a chance to charge.”

  “Right.”

  “I figured that old sedan would stick out like a sore thumb in horse country, but nobody’ll give this rig a second glance.”

  When Jo got in, she noticed he’d made a pit stop at the vending machine, too. A cold Coke and a Mountain Dew sat in the cupholders. Wedged in the well beside Jo’s feet was a plastic bag filled with assorted junk food.

  She buckled her belt, then inspected the items on the menu for dinner. “Nutter Butters, honey buns, and cheese crackers. The three essential food groups.”

  “Hey, don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”

  “Ha,” she said, watching him grin. She
looked around her, spotting some fingerprint dust on the dash.

  “You ready to rodeo, partner?”

  “I guess I am.”

  “Then let’s do it.”

  With that, he put the truck in gear and pulled out of the lot.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  The sun slowly slipped lower toward the horizon as they headed north on Preston Road. With rush-hour traffic, it took forty-five minutes instead of the usual twenty-five to make it to Celina. By then, the dull blue sky was tinted pinkish-purple. The same hue colored the blanket of clouds settling in to smother the stars.

  Despite the predicted full moon, it would be a moonless night, for sure. In another hour, twilight would descend.

  Was that when Jason and the Posse would arrive? Under the cover of impending darkness, when the rest of Celina was eating dinner and watching Wheel of Fortune?

  “Okay, Siri, where are we headed?” Hank asked, and Jo directed him.

  They found the lot for sale easily enough, though the GPS tried to lead them straight into a good-sized pond instead of a barely visible dirt path off the farm road.

  “You sure this is it?” Hank said, pulling onto the shoulder.

  “That way.” Jo gestured toward a trail of tire tracks cutting through the bare earth, a lot of weeds in between and everywhere around them. The undeveloped land looked a lot like cow pasture surrounded by brush and trees. It was what Plainfield had been half a dozen years back, Jo thought, before the developers had set in.

  “So we park here and walk over?” Hank asked.

  “That’s the plan.”

  “Hear that, my friends? We’re walking,” her partner said, reaching beneath the steering wheel to pat his knees and sigh.

  Jo ignored him, having no sympathy for any of his bum joints at this point. For the next couple of hours, they both needed to suck it up.

  A billboard to the left screamed, LAND FOR SALE! and touted the 104-plus acres as RAW LAND, CURRENTLY UNZONED WITH WATER FRONTAGE.

  The truck bumped along the uneven path as Hank went in just far enough so they weren’t sitting out in full view of the cars that sporadically passed, zipping along FM 455 like it was a racetrack. Jo didn’t want Jason or his buddies spotting a strange truck on the side of the road near the Raines’ land. They couldn’t afford to tip them off, or the Posse might turn tail and run back to Plainfield.

  The Raines’ place was due west. They’d gone by the entrance a quarter mile back: a metal gate with PRIVATE PROPERTY—NO TRESPASSING signs on either side.

  Jo had been surprised not to see it surrounded by barbed wire, although she couldn’t imagine fencing in a hundred acres of country property for nothing. It wasn’t like they’d lose cattle without it, as it wasn’t even a working ranch.

  “We going over now, or waiting until dark?”

  “I’m waiting on a phone call. We can go once I get it.”

  Jo took off her seat belt, rolling down the window to let in some air. Even hot, it felt better than nothing. She rolled up short sleeves to her shoulders so her skin could breathe. Then she dug into the plastic bag for a Nutter Butter, passing one over to Hank as well.

  They went over her Plan A for the hundredth time, until Hank finally said, “And what’s Plan B, if we need it? You got one of those, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, I’ve got one,” she told him. “It’s called improvise.”

  Hank mumbled as he ate a cookie, “That’s a little too detailed for me to remember.”

  She hadn’t even taken a bite when her phone began to trill. Unlike Hank, she was too nervous to put anything in her stomach, so she shoved the uneaten cookie back into its wrapper, put it in her pocket, and answered her cell.

  “It’s Amanda Pearson,” said a familiar voice. “He just left in that abominable truck of his, and if he had anything to do with Duke, I hope to hell that he doesn’t come back.”

  “Got it. Thanks,” Jo replied and hung up, looking at the clock and then at Hank. “They’re on their way.”

  It was 7:30 p.m. on the nose. Traffic had probably eased quite a bit on Preston Road. Jason and his pals could conceivably reach Celina within a half hour.

  “Okay, partner,” she said. “I think this rodeo’s about to start.”

  They got out of the truck, decently concealed from the busy route by brush and stunted trees. If anyone spotted it, Jo hoped no one would think too much about a truck parked on a lot for sale.

  Hank retrieved the knapsack and set it on the hood, removing the pair of walkies and handing them over so Jo could set the frequency. She clipped one to her belt, and Hank did the same with the other.

  Jo added a Taser to her holster and clipped on the body cam. The camera had night-vision capability, she knew, which was exactly what she needed. She wanted every bit of what happened tonight to be recorded. If what went on was nearly as ugly as that photograph, Jo figured they’d have evidence enough that even the mayor couldn’t protect his buddy’s kid, evidence enough to get warrants for the closed Facebook page and the boys’ cell phones, too.

  Hank offered up a pair of night goggles, but Jo didn’t want them. She wouldn’t need them if she was near the fire. She intended to be close enough to see the boys’ faces. Hell, she wanted to see the whites of their eyes.

  Hauling out a can of bug spray with DEET, Hank doused his arms and the legs of his jeans. “Don’t want to get mauled by bloodsuckers,” he remarked, offering the can to Jo.

  But she didn’t need the stuff. Mosquitoes didn’t like her blood much. Adam had once jokingly told her that it was because she was a type A through and through. It seemed that bugs preferred O.

  Jo checked her weapon, a .38 that fit her hand like a glove and that she was reluctant to part with despite the prevalence of 9mm on the force. If she’d been a rookie anytime sooner than she had, she would have had no choice. But she wasn’t giving up her trusted revolver, not for a semi that could jam. Besides, she hadn’t used it once since joining the Plainfield force. She hoped she wouldn’t need it tonight.

  “We’re good to go,” Hank said and slung the knapsack over a shoulder, following after Jo as she trudged through shin-high weeds toward the trees that continued onto the Raines’ property.

  She used her phone’s compass app to move through the wooded landscape. The house was due north. The barn was slightly west of that, beyond a large pond. That was where the drone had seen the bonfire being built. That was the spot Jo was aiming for.

  She heard Hank breathing hard behind her, twigs snapping underfoot. Cicadas hummed in the air around them, growing louder as the sky turned dark. Frogs began their melodic croaking, and somewhere off in the distance, a coyote howled.

  “Hey, Dorothy, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore,” Hank muttered from behind her, between his huffing and puffing. “I’m used to hearing sirens and car alarms going off, not all this nature racket, which is pretty loud, by the way.”

  “It’s not the only thing that’s loud,” she said, and he got the message, piping down.

  A vague light loomed ahead through the trees, and Jo kept moving toward it. In another few minutes, she came to a clearing, keeping tight against the trunk of a tree as she peered out, spying the back of the house. A floodlight had come on above the steps to the rear porch. A few seconds later, it went off.

  Her heart pounded, thinking someone was there, manipulating the switch. Then a breeze picked up, blowing a tree branch so that it swayed near the porch, and the light went on again.

  Ah, she realized. Motion sensor.

  She skirted the yard, spying the pond in the darkness, so flat and black without the moon’s reflection. The dirt drive snaked around it, leading up to the house. Another hundred feet, and they were in the woods beside the barn. She waited for Hank to catch up with her, then motioned him forward, toward a spot in the trees where he could view the fenced-in paddock and see the barn, yet still remain concealed.

  Jo paused to check the time on her phone. It was almost 8:00 p.m
. The Posse should arrive at any moment.

  She found a tree stump, brushing it clear of debris so her partner could take a seat. If he used the night-vision goggles, he’d have a decent visual, kind of like sitting in an orchestra-level box to the side of the symphony. Except no pretty music to hear.

  Hank settled down eagerly, dumping the knapsack beside him and rubbing his knees. “You sure you want to be in the barn?” he asked in a near whisper. “What if they decide to go in there?”

  “I’ll be fine,” she told him. “I’m the po-po, remember?”

  Hank didn’t seem to think that was funny. “They rape underage girls. They beat dogs with bats . . .”

  “I’ll be fine,” she said again. “And if things get nasty, then you call the Celina PD. Ask for Detective Rossfeld.”

  Jo thought she spied a flash of light beyond the paddock fence. Headlights?

  She figured it was time to get in place.

  “Keep radio silence unless it’s absolutely necessary,” she told Hank, and he nodded, the whites of his eyes looking blue in the dark.

  “Be safe,” he told her.

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Jo took off, sticking with the trees and skirting the fence line until she came up behind the side of the barn. By then, the faint glow bumping along the horizon had turned into a bright glare.

  The Posse had arrived.

  She hurried across the open terrain between the woods and the structure, hugging the walls of rough-hewn boards until she’d reached the barn doors. They weren’t closed, much less padlocked, and she slipped through the opening into the darkened interior just as she heard the rumble of Jason’s truck approach. The bass beat of music thumped loudly for a minute, pulsing through the night air and drowning out the cicadas before it stopped.

  Jo tried to calm her fast-beating heart, breathing in the smell of dust and hay as she let her eyes adjust and looked around her. There were empty stalls, partitioning the space, and a storage area beyond, housing a large riding mower, three or four ATVs, and some dirt bikes, attesting to the fact that the country property was used mostly for recreation.