Autumn Secrets (Seasons Pass Book 4)

by Susan C. Muller

  Not once had the lawyer asked him to do anything illegal or immoral or even questionable. That was no guarantee the subject wouldn’t come up later.

  Noah had disliked Tom Meyers the moment he set eyes on the dapper lawyer. Why? Because he showed up at an outdoor crime scene at ten-thirty at night wearing a twelve-hundred dollar suit and a ninety dollar silk tie? Or because his air of entitlements allowed him to breeze past the crime scene techs while they stopped Noah in his tracks?

  Those were shallow reasons, but face it, the real one was worse. Tom Meyers helped Conner when Noah couldn’t.

  Shit. Wasn’t self-examination a bitch? No wonder he tried to avoid it whenever possible.

  So, after listening to the guy’s sob story about growing up rich and privileged, did he now like the lawyer, or at least no longer dislike him?

  Maybe. But if Tom pulled anything shady, Noah was perfectly capable of giving the guy the finger and dropping the case mid-stream.

  The whole idea was intriguing. Starting with figuring out which case he wanted investigated. Or was the son-of-a-bitch that sneaky? Hooking Noah with a mystery before he got to the mystery.

  Well, it worked. He was willing to dip one toe in Tom’s polluted pond. He’d at least try to figure out which case kept the lawyer up at night.

  Over his career, the man must have represented hundreds of clients. So how was he to find the right one?

  By the process of elimination.

  Was Tom worried an inadequate defense had doomed an innocent defendant? No, the client wasn’t in jail. Plus, the high-toned lawyer would never admit to being inadequate.

  Whoa, there’s that initial bias slipping in again.

  Was Tom considering taking on a new client who might be keeping secrets? All clients lied to their lawyers, like criminals, witnesses, and family members lied to the cops. That wouldn’t even slow him down. The claim of no charges filed could change by tomorrow, but twice he’d mention something about an old case, so not a new client.

  Okay, how old a case?

  Tom Meyers was one of the top lawyers in Houston. He never said a word without a good reason. But he’d spent half the interview reciting his life story.

  A smile played across Noah’s face. Ten minutes and he’d narrowed hundreds of cases down to a manageable few. He was looking for a client Tom represented in Austin. Not one of his business clients, but one of his fewer criminal cases.

  Noah flipped on his blinker and turned into the parking garage.

  Set Earl Sparks on a computer search and he’d winnow the field further. They were looking for a guy—no, he never said guy. Keep an open mind—who had never been or was now out of prison.

  The smile slipped away, replaced by a clamped jaw. The lawyer was worried someone he got off was now up to his old tricks. And that frightened him enough to call for help.

  Tom was obviously carrying a shit-load of guilt over something and that meant it was worth Noah’s time and energy. However, he’d said himself his case was old and could wait.

  The one Noah was working now came first. That son-of-a-bitch was killing a woman every couple of weeks.

  The blinds on the window between the squad room and Lieutenant Jansen’s office were open, usually signaling his good mood. This time Conner wasn’t so sure.

  He watched as his boss hung up the phone and dialed the next number on his list.

  Conner had started keeping track when the Chief called the Lieu. He didn’t know it was the Chief, but if the big boss came in at his usual time, spoke to his secretary, got a coffee, checked his calendar, and returned calls in the order of importance, 9:37 was about right.

  Add to that, the Lieu sprang up straight, feet square on the floor, back parallel with, but not touching his chair and yes, the call was from the Chief.

  That’s when Conner sent his first text to Noah.

  Chief’s in.

  Not exactly telling him to get his ass back to work, but his partner knew him well enough to decipher his meaning.

  Noah didn’t answer, but that was okay. He wouldn’t if he were in the parking garage, or the elevator, or anywhere close.

  Jansen’s eyebrows weren’t dancing across his forehead, so odds were the Chief didn’t give him an outright No.

  The Lieu’s next call was internal. Conner knew that because he pushed a button on his desk phone. Probably the K9 division. That call lasted longer but wasn’t much more successful, judging by Jansen’s posture. He must have gotten a few leads, though. He held the receiver against his shoulder and jotted down something, nodding occasionally.

  Leaving the receiver in place, Jansen disconnected and dialed a number from the list he’d been given. His left eyebrow began to twitch.

  Conner sent a second text in case Noah thought he had more time.

  Any minute now

  Jansen crossed off the first number and held the pencil between his teeth as he dialed the second number. Both eyebrows were dancing now. Good news or bad, the Lieu’s mood barometer was set for the day.

  Conner absently took a sip of cold coffee and almost spit it out. Where the hell was his partner? If Noah thought he’d cover for him, he was dead wrong.

  Maybe he was tired. Maybe it was the stress of a colicky baby. Or maybe he’d had it with a partner who kept a trunk-load of secrets and liked to play Lone Ranger, but Internal Affairs was looking mighty good.

  The third call went better. The Lieu hunched over his desk and took copious notes, then leaned back and put his feet up, nodding as if the person on the other end of the line could see him.

  Two minutes later he hung up and stood, shoving his chair back. He crossed to his door and leaned his head out. “Crawford, Daugherty, my office.” He glanced around the squad room. “Where the hell is Daugherty? He drops this pile of shit in my lap and disappears?”

  A voice answered from the back of the room. “Right here, sir. Just getting a cup of coffee.”

  The knot in Conner’s stomach eased, but the pin-prick of anger in his brain didn’t.

  Jansen slapped a slip of paper on the edge of his desk, in front of Noah. “It’s not what you asked for, but it’s what you got.”

  The aroma of the hair product Jansen used in a failed attempt to stop his advancing baldness swept over Noah and he lifted the paper and took a step back.

  The paper contained almost illegible chicken scratches. Noah had worked with Jansen for years. He could decipher his boss’s handwriting.

  A name and phone number.

  The Lieu liked to make a guy guess, but Noah could out wait him.

  “This is a group from Colorado who’ve been in Mexico training a new batch of search and rescue dogs before avalanche season starts. Apparently, sand and caves aren’t the same as snow and ice so they left early. They’re stopping in Houston for a few days—their van needed new brakes—before heading back to Colorado. They’d love a chance to work their dogs here.”

  “So we don’t even know if these dogs are capable of finding bodies?”

  “It’s what I could come up with. Take it or leave it. But with four unidentified bodies, if I were you, I’d take it.”

  “Three bodies. The woman in the apartment building belongs to Lefty Bob.”

  “Not anymore. You think they’re connected, you got ‘em all.”

  Shit. Exactly what he didn’t want. One more murder to study. One more family to notify. One more creep to hunt down.

  There was a time when he’d have wanted another notch on his belt. After Betsy died, he feared he wouldn’t be allowed to join her in Heaven unless he atoned for his sins. And he had plenty of sins requiring penance.

  He’d misremembered an old Sunday School lesson about forgiving not seven times but seven times seven and set his sights on putting away forty-nine truly evil bad guys.

  Lately, he’d realized this was nonsense which was good because he Googled the quote and it was seventy times seven. Four hundred and ninety was more than he could handle in a long lifetime. Ce
rtainly not in the fourteen months he’d originally allowed himself to decide if life was still worth living.

  At any rate, it didn’t matter now. They had Lefty Bob’s case and an untrained pack of dogs. They’d have to make the best of it.

  Noah reached into his pocket, pulled out a quarter, and slapped in on Conner’s desk. “I’ll pay you to call Lefty Bob.”

  “What, you don’t want to be the one to tell him we stole his case?”

  “I’ll take the dog handlers. They’re likely to be a little on the woo-woo side anyway. Coming from Colorado, smoking weed.”

  Amusement flickered in Conner’s eyes and was gone. He dropped the quarter in his pocket. “You’re on.”

  Good, he didn’t have to deal with Lefty Bob and Conner was letting go of the mad he’d been carrying around since he slipped out to see Tom Meyers.

  When he heard footsteps behind him, Noah realized Conner had put one over on him.

  “Good thing this is Homicide instead of Burglary. I’d have to arrest you two for stealing my cases.” Lefty Bob held out a thin manila folder. “Have fun. Her prints aren’t in the system and no one’s reported her missing. Bruising says she was raped but no semen, hair, or trace evidence. Good luck to you.”

  Two seconds later, he was gone. Talk about hit and run.

  Conner had a full-out grin. “I’ll go get a sandwich while you call the dog handlers. I assume you got something to eat during the hour and a half you were gone.”

  Well, shit. Conner was mad at him. The Lieu was mad at him. Lefty Bob was mad at him. Sweet Pea would be mad at him if he came home smelling of other dogs. And what had he done except try to do his job and look out for his partner?

  This was going to be a long, hungry day. Good thing he’d accepted two of the melt-in-your-mouth chocolate chip cookies Tom offered him.

  Yellow crime scene tape still marked the two graves, but on the first, one end of the tape had come loose and waved like the tail of a kite.

  Noah watched as the afternoon breeze lifted and shook it before dropping it in the dirt like the discarded body it represented.

  What a depressing sight.

  The only thing worse was the worry the two marked spots might soon have company.

  “They’re here,’ Conner muttered.

  A dirty, beat-up van pulled in behind him and parked. Two people got out. Judging by her determined swagger as she trudged through the tall grass toward him, the woman was in charge.

  She was short, five-three or five-four, and dumpy. More muscular than fat. Her skin was leathered from days spent in the sun. Salt-and-pepper hair puffed out around her face and hung down her back.

  Add a slight tinge of green and a hat and she could be mistaken for the Wicked Witch of the West.

  “You the men want to borrow my dogs?”

  Noah held out his hand. “Detectives Noah Daugherty and Conner Crawford.”

  She gave Noah a quick glance and didn’t smile.

  Conner stepped past him and nodded her direction. “Thank you for coming, Ma’am.”

  Her eyes warmed as she shook his hand. “Gracie Hanks. This is my assistant, Haskel Rhoads. Good to meet you.”

  What the fuck? He’d been nothing but polite to the lady and she treated him like he wasn’t there. Women always seemed at ease with Conner. They trusted him implicitly. They were right to, but that didn’t make it any less annoying.

  Haskel was about Gracie’s height, early twenties, and appeared to have Downs Syndrome. He didn’t speak to either man, but went to the back of the van and unloaded three of the ugliest dogs Noah had ever seen. They were healthy and well cared for, but a mish-mash of parts that didn’t seem to belong together.

  All were mid-sized, hefty dogs with thick fur coats. The first, Tag, was a reddish-blond and, except for stubby legs, looked to have some German Shepard in his ancestry. He held his head high, sniffed the air, wagged his tail, trotted past Noah and Conner without a glance, and sat beside Gracie.

  The second dog, Elway, had one blue eye which made him look a bit creepy, but hinted at a husky somewhere in his distant past. He followed Tag to Gracie’s side. His tail didn’t exactly wag, but made circles in the air.

  The third dog, Sierra, was slow to disembark. Not one thing about her resembled any breed Noah had ever seen. If her sire was a handsome stranger, he forgot the handsome part. She strolled through the high weeds beside the road as if trudging through deep snow. She ignored the passing traffic, any smells in the air, Noah, Conner, her two dog-mates and stood beside Gracie, yawning with indifference.

  It might have been wishful thinking, but Noah thought he saw a small spark of intelligence in Tag’s eyes. Elway, however, reminded him of the kid who ate snot in elementary school, and Sierra’s eyes were cloudy with cataracts.

  If this was the best Jansen could come up with, they were in trouble.

  Gracie turned her attention on Noah as if he were the enemy. “Let me go over the rules.”

  He didn’t know there were any rules, but he was willing to listen.

  “Nobody touches the dogs but Haskel and me.”

  Fine with him. Tag looked like he might bite. Elway was already slobbering. And he wasn’t sure if Sierra was a dog or a pig with hair.

  “I’ll work one dog at a time. Haskel will stay here with the other two. You.” She pointed at Noah. “Come with me. While you.” Her eyes stopped on Conner. “Will bring us anything we need.”

  Noah was prepared. He’d changed into jeans, a polo shirt, and knee-high waders, then liberally doused himself with bug spray.

  Haskel handed him a fistful of five foot long sticks painted yellow. “Tag’s markers,” he said. The only words he’d uttered since they arrived.

  Gracie glanced over her shoulder as she and Tag started for the field. “Each dog has its own color. When a dog alerts to a spot, we stick a marker in the ground.”

  She gave Tag ten feet of lead and the dog raced down the ditch and up the other side into the field, dragging Gracie behind him.

  After four days of sun, the ground had dried, leaving only pockets of mud in low or shady spots. Mosquitoes buzzed around Noah’s face but didn’t bite. That expensive spray was worth the extra money if it kept working.

  Tag yanked Gracie to the left and made a beeline for the nearest open grave. He gave one sniff and started howling like a wolf that had lost his pack. Noah was sure he saw tears in the dog’s eyes.

  Gracie ran up to the dog and threw her arms around him. He buried his face in her chest and whined. “That’s what I was afraid of. These dogs are trained to find survivors. They know the difference when the subject has died and it makes them sad, like they failed and the death is their fault.”

  Why hadn’t she said so when he called her? What goddamn use were they going to be to him now?

  “Let’s take him back to the van and I’ll get Elway. He’s not as sensitive.”

  Noah planted a yellow stick near the grave out of spite. He wasn’t going to let this day pass with the field as barren as when they arrived. The crime scene techs weren’t due to come unless they had a hit and he wasn’t sure that would happen.

  Elway had blue sticks and a weaker nose. It took him five minutes to find the open grave. He sat beside it and whined, but didn’t carry on the way Tag did. After Gracie gave him a treat, he left the grave and spent twenty minutes searching the field.

  In three spots he sniffed and circled and sat and stood and sniffed again and sat and got back up. Noah marked the spots with a blue stick but didn’t hold out much hope.

  Sierra was asleep when they returned Elway. She wrinkled her nose in disapproval at being awakened. Noah grabbed a handful of red sticks from Haskel and followed across the ditch for the third time.

  She wasn’t in any hurry, strolling through the field as if smelling daises. She hit on the two open graves, whined but moved on after a head scratch and a treat. She made an unmistakable hit on one of Elway’s marks but ignored the other two.


  After forty-five minutes, she’d given a firm hit on eleven sites. They ran out of red sticks and Conner had to bring them the leftover yellow and blue markers.

  Noah’s heart couldn’t decide if it wanted to speed up or slow down, so it alternated, jumping from one rate to the other. Logically, he expected to find other graves, but deep down, he didn’t believe so much destruction was possible.

  Conner stood beside the road and watched as Noah, Gracie, and Sierra worked the field. Every time Noah drove another pole into the ground, it felt like a stake in his heart.

  He’d been skeptical at the start, and the sight of that bedraggled van and its misfit occupants did nothing to change his mind.

  Tag’s reaction to the open grave, while sad, didn’t instill confidence. After Elway’s indecisive is-it-or-isn’t-it signals, he was ready to give up. Call it a day. Admit Noah’s hunch was just that. A wild goose chase based on nothing but gut feelings.

  After Gracie and Noah started off for the third time, Haskel had turned to him and nodded. “That Sierra’ll do you right. She’s like me, don’t let nothing fluster her. Does her job and ignores everything else.” His eyes gleamed with admiration for the homely dog.

  Still, Conner had been skeptical.

  When Sierra sniffed for several seconds in one spot, then sat determinedly as if saying, “This is it,” Conner secretly suspected she was pulling Gracie’s leg in order to gain extra treats. He was sure of it when she hit on one of Elway’s spots.

  Then she ignored the other two of Elway’s marks, which was interesting. She went forward ten more feet, and signaled another find. After two more hits, Conner had to admit, Sierra was one smart dog.

  She was either hitting on spots the other two dogs missed, or she was playing them all for fools. After three more hits he didn’t have a choice, it was time to notify the big brass, let them decide.

  Lt. Jansen was as skeptical as Conner. “Are you sure those dogs know what they’re doing?”

  Might as well be honest. “No, sir, I’m not, but the handlers are confident.” He glanced at Haskel, who’d staked Tag and Elway in a shady spot and given them water. He was busy checking their paws for thorns or cuts.