The NightShade Forensic Files: Under Dark Skies (Book 1)

by A. J. Scudiere

  “Holy shit. You found something, didn’t you?”

  He nodded.

  5

  He didn’t usually tell people what he could smell. It was the first step down a slippery slope and it was foolish to believe he could stand on the slope and not slide. Unfortunately, it was just as foolish to take a job based on his ability to solve crimes and not use the skills that got him there.

  He’d needed a change, but as he looked at the wide-eyed interest on Eleri Eames’s face, he wondered again if this had been a bad choice. It had seemed so serendipitous when Agent Westerfield showed up at the morgue flashing his badge. Donovan had let the man in, thinking there was more to one of the bodies than the hospital or police had mentioned. The FBI had been in for cases before. The only trepidation he felt was concern that the Feds had come to take away one of his cooler cases.

  But the body Westerfield was there for was Donovan’s. He wanted Donovan working for the FBI. Greater chances to do more, bigger cases. The upside was that he would stay in an insular world again. NightShade was its own unit, with its own agents. They worked in pairs, and ideally stayed in those pairs for very long partnerships. Donovan had immediately thought of black-suited agents mating for life like the penguins they resembled.

  So it would be Donovan and one other agent, both of them reporting to Westerfield. Much like the morgue where he worked in Columbia. Small, few people, everyone in his or her place, Donovan mostly left to do what he did. The travel was a downer, he wasn’t really keen on that, but the rest sounded interesting to a man who had become jaded at his work. The work alone had sustained him in his life; he had few relationships and most of those were by circumstance. He had no true friends.

  Somehow he hadn’t predicted this.

  Somehow he hadn’t been ready for the upheaval.

  Why he hadn’t thought it would be so strange, why he thought he could slide right in and slowly adjust was a mystery even to him. It had been stupid.

  In his morgue, he was one of only three MEs and the only permanent medical examiner on staff. While MEs in general were considered weird to the normal population, he was weird among even that odd group. They plugged their noses against the smells, while Donovan shrugged it away. Decaying flesh didn’t smell bad to him, it just was. It seemed he reacted to a corpse the way other people reacted to raw steak or old flowers. Seasoned MEs barfed at some of the smells that came in, but not Donovan.

  And why would he plug his nose? Why did they? There was so much there that they ignored. “How did you know he was poisoned?” they would ask him. He wanted to ask back, “How did you not? He stinks of arsenic.”

  Donovan would lift organs closer to his face. He could distinguish not only the smells but the layers of them. Like a chef could name ingredients with a sniff, he could name diets from a kidney. Some medications could be distinguished by inhaling near the liver. Accelerants hit him like a brick wall. That was what nearly made him lose his lunch.

  With his new partner, would he be left alone to sniff at things? If he didn’t use what he had, what good was he? Though he was already considering leaving the Bureau, he was not going to wash out. All he had was his work, he couldn’t be bad at it. Not when he could be good. So he reached his toes out onto that slippery slope and didn’t know if Eleri’s relatively positive reaction would turn out to be a good thing or a bad thing.

  The shirt had reeked of blood and sweat. Fear sweat. Infection. Probably from her wounds. The pictures of the body showed that previous cuts she had sustained were not properly treated. She had breaks to her ribs and a crack in her femur that would have made it hard to breathe and to walk. Yet it seemed she made it a decent distance in the Texas heat.

  He wished they’d sealed the shirt in a metal container. Though they should, no one really did that. It was reserved for things with fumes or items that were waterlogged—found rags soaked in volatile accelerants, guns covered in mud. The very fact that the Bureau didn’t have a standardized method of preserving what he could detect put him way out on the scale and he knew it. So he was left with standard operating procedure. Brown bags for biological evidence meant the shirt wouldn’t grow mold, but the scents would fade over time.

  The dirt ground into the fabric was a red clay. It was hard to see against the color of the cotton, but he could smell it. He didn’t tell his partner about the sweat or the infection, but he did tell her one other thing. “Oil. She lived near oil, probably a well, given what’s around.”

  Eleri frowned. “That doesn’t narrow it down much. You mean like very close? People do have the occasional backyard well.”

  She was thinking. He interrupted.

  “And burning. It’s natural gas. They burn it off the oil wells.”

  “They add that smell so people will know when there’s gas in their home. It doesn’t come out that way.”

  “I know, but when it burns off the wells, the burn has an odd scent of its own. And she was around it. A lot, I think.”

  “Like work over a gas stove?”

  While she watched, he lifted the shirt and gave a subtle inhale again. “I think more than that. A lot of gas burning and untreated—unscented—gas. For a while. It’s really in the fabric.”

  “You can smell that?” She was shaking her head. “One day I searched my purse for peppermint gum and didn’t find it. When I scratched my face I smelled the mint on my fingers. That was a big deal to me.”

  He laughed. “You have mint gum in your purse right now.”

  “No. I have it in there a lot, but there’s none now.”

  In spite of her initial odd reaction, she was taking him at face value—which was good. He couldn’t afford for her to see any further. Instead, against all his past training where his oddity was concerned, he smiled and told her, “You have some in there.”

  Squinting sideways at him, she peeled her gloves and turned away from the dead girl. She was digging through her purse for only a moment before she held up the partially empty pack of gum. “Well, I’ll be damned.” But she laughed.

  He didn’t tell her the rest of it. He never told anyone. But step one was okay.

  “Do we head to Zion’s Gate or out looking for oil wells?”

  MR. AND MRS. BAXTER sat looking at Eleri as if they had no idea why she was there. The pink couch where they perched was exactly what Eleri would have expected of them. The home was small, white with white trim, and very much like all the other houses around.

  Zion’s Gate seemed to have no issues opening their literal gates and letting the two agents in. Pastor Jim had smiled wide and offered them a tour, happily answering many of their general questions about the church, the grounds, and the occupants. In fact, the place was more of a commune than just a church, with all the members putting money and food in a central store and all getting what was doled out by Pastor Jim and “the committee.”

  “Any adult member can apply to be on the committee, but selfishness is not tolerated. Nor is laziness. We’re here to do God’s work and no other.” He pointed to the buildings one by one, but to Eleri’s mind only the church was distinctive. The spire reached up to God, the cross high in the air, easily the tallest structure on the land. All the other buildings were like the houses, white on white. Apparently their God was not fond of color.

  Then again, when it came to the people, their God did seem to appreciate a diversity of color. Eleri was impressed. She expected to be confronted with white-bred middle-American church life, but Pastor Jim’s skin was a deep ebony. Young children of at least three identifiable races and a variety of mixes played in a fenced playground area. No one seemed to notice skin color except for her; she filed the thought away and went back to cataloguing the activities she saw.

  People moved from one end of the compound to another, always with a purpose. They functioned more like a village from the late 1800s but dressed in jeans and loose shirts. They looked like any modern group, minus those few women in too-tight jeans and those few men in grubby T-
shirts with sexist comments on them. They all said hello as Eleri and Donovan followed the pastor around on the brief tour.

  While he pointed out TVs in the common areas, there were no communication devices allowed in individual homes or possession. The school taught only the basics for state requirements but covered every aspect of the Bible. They looked in on a class in session, and all the students waved while the teacher seemed to not mind the interruption at all.

  Everyone was friendly, but it was the children Eleri looked to. Children were smarter than adults about accepting the truth, and though they could lie, they didn’t know enough to perform the task truly effectively. While she immediately assessed Pastor Jim as a possible child molester—he was in the best possible position if he wished it—none of the kids responded to him in any way other than as a beloved leader. Those not in class for whatever reason threw themselves at him, hugging his legs; one small boy came up and apologized for some minor infraction. Pastor Jim set the two FBI agents on hold for a moment to kneel down to the child’s level to discuss what happened. Before he left, the kid nearly tumbled Pastor Jim with a big embrace.

  It was hard to fake that—to get that many kids to lie that well, at least in Eleri’s opinion.

  In her admittedly simple inspection, Zion’s Gate seemed legit. People worked diligently and stopped to pray at seemingly random intervals. No one complained.

  This man was proud of his work here, proud of what they accomplished. He tempered it with the necessary, godly humility. The gardens were a thing of beauty. Pastor Jim invited them to stay for lunch, though Eleri refused, visions of poisoning dancing in her head. She imagined their bodies buried beneath the tomatoes, fertilizing the veggies. She was at least polite about it.

  Their refusal to stay rolled off Pastor Jim’s back. He answered every question, managed to convey the odd practices of the church without sounding legitimately crazy, and he didn’t seem to have boundaries about what the Feds could see. When Eleri asked to be shown where the kids were, or pointed out a specific building, he easily led them around, showed them inside. No outward appearance of deception. She’d have to investigate him more, later.

  After the general tour, he took them to sit with the elder Baxters. Though they seemed unclear about the reason for the visit, like the good pastor, the couple had no qualms answering questions. They had the smaller house because Joseph was their only child, though he no longer lived with him, and they no longer claimed him since he left the church.

  That was when it got interesting.

  Mark and Lilly Baxter believed their son was God’s punishment on them.

  Lilly’s voice crackled from both old age and grief. “I always thought Joseph was our one chance—our first chance. Maybe because we did so poorly with him, we weren’t granted a second chance, another child.” Her head hung; clearly she deeply believed that her son was her fault.

  Eleri was more of the mind that children came randomly. She only needed to point out loving couples who remained childless and mothers on the street doing crack and leaving their children unattended. She did not believe anyone was watching over the children of earth. Biting her tongue, Eleri reminded herself that this was not about her beliefs, even if she might have soothed the older couple.

  Mr. Baxter beat her to the punch anyway. “I think maybe Joseph was punishment for past sins.”

  Next to her, Donovan tensed. She could feel it and hoped the Baxters couldn’t see it. She wasn’t ready to ask them what they thought their past sins were. Honestly, it wasn’t important, so she focused on Joseph. “What did he do that made you think that?”

  Mark Baxter looked to his wife, waited for a not-so-subtle nod, then looked Eleri right in the eye. “He was eight when I first saw the coincidences. He was a good kid. Great. When he was little, he tried our patience and tried to get away with things. But we talked to him about trust in God, about trust in his parents. He seemed to understand. We punished him when necessary. By age twelve he’d calmed down. Seemed everything was going to be fine. He was a good kid. Solid grades, did his chores mostly.”

  “But?” Eleri pushed and wasn’t surprised when Mr. Baxter changed his focus to Donovan. Churches like these seemed to be male-centric. Never mind that she was the senior agent.

  “When he was with his friends he was always the leader. At first it seemed like a good skill for him to have. Then I caught him getting the other kids to break the rules. We talked and it didn’t happen again. Later, when other children would get caught at something, it would sound like Joseph put them up to it.” He sighed, weary at the telling.

  “Like what?” Donovan pressed, knowing specific examples would help their assessment.

  “One of his best friends, Katie, got caught stealing, but she hadn’t stolen anything she would want for herself. She’d stolen for Joe. She got in trouble, returned the item and worked it off. But I found the same item in Joe’s room later. Joe had a lot of things, material possessions that he said the other kids just gave to him. Kids who hung out with our Joe wound up in trouble, they broke their arms and legs. But Joe never got in trouble.”

  Mrs. Baxter spoke, this time talking to Eleri, as though she would be the sympathetic ear when talking about a child. So Eleri put on her concerned face—not hard to do as she was getting actually concerned.

  “The whole church raises the kids together. So other parents kept their eyes on Joe. They didn’t keep their kids away from him. When they caught him, they confronted him, they punished him But it was only minor infractions. William Anderson overheard Joe telling the other kids how to sneak out of the house at night. When he pulled Joe aside, he was contrite, said he wanted the kids to know how to get out if there was a fire. Will couldn’t prove anything, couldn’t get him to confess to a lie. So he let it go.” Tears streamed from her eyes in silent memory of something Eleri didn’t yet understand. She was grateful when Mr. Baxter patted his wife’s hand and continued the story.

  “Three weeks later, Tom Anderson, Will’s boy, died. He fell from the roof of the school, at two a.m. Everyone scrambled, the kids with him said he was pushed but no one saw who. When we started looking around, Joe was home, in bed. The only kid in his group not out that night. None of the other children would tell if he’d been there or not, but they all seemed to be lying.”

  Keeping her expression nonjudgmental was difficult, but it wasn’t as hard as not looking over at Donovan to see if he was managing the same. She wasn’t ready for Mark Baxter’s next words.

  “Sarah Keller disappeared two years later. No one ever found her. She was one of Joe’s best friends. Everyone fretted and grieved over the disappearance, but Joe told us to have faith in God, that maybe she was with Jesus now. Then Mrs. Murphy, his teacher at the time, died. She was strangled. By then we openly suspected Joe.” His voice hitched at the belief his son could do something so outside his belief system. But Eleri had seen worse. She nodded.

  “Three days later, Joe left the church and we never saw him again.”

  Mrs. Baxter’s head was low. Eleri almost didn’t hear the words. “I’m ashamed. I’m his mother. But we didn’t try to find him.” Then she looked up, eyes wet but clear. She stared right at Eleri, brooking no lies, no evasions. “Is that why you’re here? Did he hurt someone?”

  6

  Eleri sat on her bed, papers and pictures spread before her, her laptop open and lit up. The timelines didn’t match. At least not to her suspicions.

  She wanted Joseph Hayden Baxter to be the man who was running City of God. She wanted him to be the one. It was the name they’d been given to investigate, a name that had come up several times in sifting other cases, and it was up to Eleri and Donovan to put it together. But it wasn’t fitting together.

  Ruth was at least twenty-five years old—that was the age she gave to the hospital. But the nurse recalled it was not really believed. There was even a note in her chart. The nurses estimated she was closer to thirty-five. But they also thought it was possib
le she was a hard thirty. There were no cultural references to go by. Ruth didn’t recognize TV shows or comment on any current happenings. She didn’t react to references to older things. And the nurses tried. It had become a game to find out Ruth’s real age. But it was a game no one won.

  Still, the age created a mismatch. There was no way Ruth was twenty or under. Baxter had disappeared from Zion’s Gate at age sixteen. Even if he’d founded City of God as a near kid, within days of leaving home, there was no way he could have been there for Ruth’s childhood. Thus, Ruth’s lack of vaccination was not due to Baxter’s city or preachings. Had Ruth changed cults midstream? That would be odd.

  What Eleri knew was that certain personalities were attracted to cults, cult life, and zealous worship. Thus, if one cult folded or was disbanded, this person might easily end up in a second cult or even actively go searching for one. Research pointed to the idea that zealots didn’t need particular beliefs; they just needed to have something to rally around. But generally they didn’t leave. So where had Ruth been that she wasn’t vaccinated as a child?

  When she considered Jennifer Cohn, it became even more of a mess. Both Jennifer and Ashlyn Fisk had the same man’s fingerprints at their abduction sites. But if it was Baxter, then he’d been very young when he started, before he even left Zion’s Gate. It wasn’t out of the question, but it was unlikely.

  The problem was that the middle of Texas was a great place to hide. Plenty of open space where gunshots wouldn’t be heard. The neighbors wouldn’t mess in your business because that was Texas culture, and besides, there were no neighbors. When lush weather was factored in, it was enough to keep even the brownest thumb alive off the land.