by Kara Lennox
“Thanks so much for your time, Jerry, Ruth,” he said to a middle-aged couple.
“Of course,” the woman said. “I’m sorry we didn’t find anything useful, but at the same time...I’m grateful we didn’t find anything, you know?”
“Yeah. No cop wants to find a dead body. We haven’t had a murder in years, not since they locked up Kelly Ralston.”
Bree stiffened. “How dare he! Kelly was never even tried for those other murders, much less convicted. That’s slander.” She started to march over and give the sheriff a piece of her mind, but Eric grabbed her arm and stopped her.
“Bree, don’t. I know you hate to hear your friend maligned, but we need to foster cooperation from the sheriff. Right now he’s letting us in, providing information, keeping us in the loop. But he doesn’t have to. We have no legal standing and he could kick us to the curb anytime he pleases.”
“Oh, all right,” she huffed. “I won’t antagonize the jerk. But when this is all over and Kelly is exonerated, I’ll make him eat his words. Ha! He’s up for reelection soon.”
The place was clearing out as one car after another drove off, leaving a plume of dust behind it. After a few minutes, only a handful of people remained—the sheriff’s department personnel, Joe, Eric and Bree. Ian was still milling around with Violet.
“Are we waiting for the diver?” Bree asked Deputy McClusky.
“Actually, we’re waiting for a warrant. Tierney chased us off his property.”
“You’re kidding. Toby Tierney?”
“Yeah. If you ask me, he was acting kinda suspicious. I mean, why wouldn’t you want to help solve a crime?”
“Let me talk to him,” Bree said.
“Your funeral,” McClusky said with a shrug. “He’s pretty bent out of shape over one little dog.”
“Come with me,” Bree said to Eric. “I think he’ll be impressed that Project Justice is involved.”
“Sure.”
Rather than tromping across the farmer’s field, they drove Eric’s car around and came up the driveway. A ferocious-looking German shepherd greeted their arrival with a frenzy of barking and growling. Bree opened her door.
“Whoa, wait a sec,” Eric said. “Do you want to get eaten alive?”
“That’s just Bert,” Bree said. “He’s all bark and— Well, you know.” She climbed out of the car, and the dog stopped barking to sniff her. Then he wagged his tail in recognition and she gave him a pat.
Eric joined her, allowing the dog to sniff him, as well. “You really are just a big teddy bear, aren’t you?” He scratched Bert behind his ears, then hunkered down and wrestled with him for a few seconds.
Bree couldn’t help her reaction—her heart swelled. She’d never seen Eric playful before.
“You like dogs?” she asked as they resumed their path to the front porch.
“Of course. Mom wouldn’t let us have a dog when I was a kid, though. We really couldn’t afford one.”
“Pets are expensive.”
“My wife had a little dog when we got married. Pixie.” His smile was bittersweet. “He was a little Chihuahua mix. Not the kind of dog I’d normally go for, but he was a character. And MacKenzie loved him. He was so good with her, even when she was a baby. You know how babies squeeze too tight and pull ears—they don’t know better. Pixie never once objected.”
“What happened to him?”
“Tammy’s killer let him out. He disappeared and we never saw him again. I can only hope someone found him and took him in. MacKenzie still talks about him.”
“He was in the picture she drew,” Bree said, suddenly remembering. They ended the conversation because Toby Tierney had come out onto his porch to meet them. He was a tall, thin man with a face weathered from the constant sun and thinning brown hair starting to go gray at the temples. He wore overalls—the farmer’s cliché. “I told you folks to get off my— Oh, Doc Bree. Sorry. Thought you were one of the sheriff’s people at first.”
“Actually, I am. I mean, I’m with the searchers. This is Eric Riggs—he’s with Project Justice. You know, the foundation that—”
“Those folks that get innocent people out of jail?” Tierney gave Eric a curious once-over, then extended his hand. “Didn’t know y’all was involved in looking for that missing girl.”
“She’s an important witness,” Eric said.
“Toby,” Bree began, getting to the point, “it’s incredibly important that we get access to your tank.”
“No way. Word gets out there’s a body in my tank, no one will buy my cows. Plus, I don’t want all those people trampling my broccoli.”
After Bree explained about the warrant, Toby finally agreed to the search.
“But I want you there to supervise,” he said.
“Me?”
“Yeah, you. I know you’ll look after my interests. I’d do it myself, but I got work to do. Just came up to the house for a bit of lunch. You can bring four people with you. That’s it. More than that, you’ll need that warrant.”
“Thank you, Toby. I’ll do my best. But if they do find a body—”
“Then I’m screwed.” He shrugged. “Then we’ll have the coroner and CSI and a cast of thousands tromping around. I guess I can’t get around that.” He turned and disappeared back into his house with Bert.
“So which lucky four people ya gonna bring with you?”
“The diver, of course. You and Joe and...the sheriff, I guess. He’ll be insulted if I don’t.”
“You were good with that guy.”
“Sometimes being nice goes a long way toward getting what you want.”
“And sometimes you have to be mean. Luckily, you can do both.”
“I wasn’t mean.”
Eric opened her car door for her, then just looked at her.
“Okay, maybe I did go off on you a little bit.”
“Threatening to rat me out to Daniel. That was cold.”
“I guess I do what’s necessary.”
* * *
JUST WHEN ERIC thought he was getting a handle on Bree, she showed a different side of herself. Her warm and gentle way with the cranky farmer was a far cry from that avenging angel she’d shown him on their first meeting.
They were standing next to Tierney’s livestock tank. The sheriff, of course, wanted to be in charge, and Bree let him think he was. But the diver and even Kinkaid were quietly deferring to her, he noticed. She had this quiet authority about her that was compelling and sexy as hell. She had asked everyone to walk between the rows of planted broccoli, and amazingly, even the sheriff had complied.
The diver was in the water now. It was a big tank, not some little puddle that could be searched in thirty seconds. It was more like a very small lake. The diver, a guy named Niko, surfaced every few minutes to give them a thumbs-down.
Bree worried her lower lip with her teeth, causing Eric’s stomach to swoop as he recalled all the talented things those lips and teeth could do. “Do you think the dog was wrong? I really don’t want to find her, not like this. I mean, I’m the one who pressured her into coming clean about her misidentifying her attacker. If I’d just left her alone—”
“Bree, you can’t blame yourself for this. If Philomene has come to harm, it’s the fault of whoever hurt her.”
“Realistically I know that. But still, if I hadn’t pushed her...”
“He’s got something!” DeVille yelled.
Bree whirled around to look. Niko had surfaced, and he pulled off his mask. “There’s something down there. The water is so murky, it’s hard to tell. But it looks like something wrapped in a blue tarp.”
Eric’s stomach sank. That sounded as if it could be a body. “Can you bring it up?”
“It’s pretty heavy. I think it’s a two-man job. If I d
o it by myself, the package might come apart.”
The sheriff snorted. “Well, let’s get you a helper, then.”
“I can call in a buddy, but it might take some time.”
Eric raised his hand. “I can do it.”
The sheriff looked at him skeptically. “You gonna swim in your skivvies and hold your breath?”
“I got extra gear in my van,” Niko said. “Keys are in my bag. You certified?”
Eric nodded. He and Tammy had honeymooned in the Bahamas, where they’d both taken a scuba certification course. He didn’t have a lot of experience, especially in low-visibility water, but he could make this work.
Because everyone had waited around long enough, Eric jogged across the field to the road, where Niko’s van was parked. He found the wet suit, mask, flippers, regulator and fully charged tank without any problem. He tried to remember if Niko had been wearing a weight belt, because he didn’t see an extra one. But in freshwater, with his low body-fat ratio, he probably would sink like a stone with just the tank.
He was glad to make some material contribution to this investigation, too. He was honest enough to admit he wanted to impress Bree. He hoped she would see him as something more than the lawyer guy who had spent three years in prison.
As he waded into the water holding his fins, he could almost feel her gaze on him. He looked over his shoulder and met her gaze, gave her a thumbs-up, pulled the mask over his face, slipped on the fins and swam out to the middle of the pond where Niko waited for him.
“The package is about six feet long and two feet wide,” Niko said. “I’ll take the leading edge, and you can take the trailing one. Try to put a hand at each corner, and we’ll keep it as level as possible. I think the easiest way to do this in a body of water this small is just swim it nice and gentle to the edge, rather than try to lift straight up to the surface.”
Not that they had much choice. They didn’t have a boat. “How deep is this thing?”
“About ten feet. Surprisingly deep for a little puddle like this. Ready?”
Eric nodded, put the regulator in his mouth and made sure it was delivering good air, and they went under. He cleared his mask, took a couple of trial breaths. It had been years since he’d dived. The first thing that struck him was how little he could see. He caught a glimpse of the yellow stripe on Niko’s fin and followed it, fighting the slight sense of claustrophobia as the light faded.
Niko had a flashlight, at least. When they reached the tarp-wrapped bundle resting on the sandy floor of the tank, Niko pointed the beam of light first at one corner, then another. Eric took his cue and grasped the corners, trying not to think of what might be hidden inside. Whatever it was, it was heavy.
A few moments later, Eric felt a tug. He lifted his end of the bundle, which resisted slightly as it struggled to break free of the muck. Finally it did, and he guided it like a wheelbarrow, barely twitching his flippers as they made their slow, gentle way up and out to the shore. It took only a few seconds and their heads were breaking the surface. The floor of the pond was closer than Eric thought; his knees hit first. Somehow he got his flippered feet under him and stood. Kinkaid, barefoot and with his pants rolled up to the knees, had waded out to help with the burden, as had one of the sheriff’s deputies.
The crowd at the edge of the water had grown well past the original four; all of the deputies, the coroner and a couple of his helpers. Bree had obviously ceased to care about the farmer’s field; her eyes were glued to the mysterious package coming out of the water.
It was heavy—had to be at least a couple of hundred pounds. Moving awkwardly with his flippers, Eric literally duck-walked out of the water. The air was chill, but he was so filled with adrenaline he hardly noticed. The atmosphere seemed to be pregnant with anticipation as they laid their burden gently onto the ground.
Dr. Gentry stepped forward at the exact same time as the sheriff. “Bobby?” Gentry said in a genial tone of voice. “Body’s my domain.”
“Well, we don’t even know if it’s a body yet, do we?” the sheriff said, just as friendly, though perhaps with a bit more of an edge. If he was the guilty party, he probably wanted to be the one to unwrap the package and obliterate any possible evidence while he was at it. Also, if he put his own fingerprints on everything, any found by CSI could be explained away.
Eric pulled off his mask and flippers. Someone handed him a blanket, but the wet suit was pretty good insulation.
“Thanks for stepping in, man.” Niko held out his hand, and Eric shook it. “Good job.”
“No problem. I like diving—except for the dead-body part.”
Bree and Kinkaid joined them. Bree offered an admiring smile. “I had no idea you could do that.”
Kinkaid laughed. “Better not let Daniel know you can dive. He can get a lawyer any day, but not a certified diver.”
“How often could a situation like this possibly come up?” Eric asked.
“You’d be surprised how often we look for evidence in bodies of water—just a few weeks ago we found a murder weapon in Buffalo Bayou.”
“You must be freezing,” Bree said. “Why don’t you go get dried off and change back into your clothes?”
“In a minute.” An evidence guy with a camera was taking video as the sheriff slowly unknotted the ropes holding the tarp around its contents. “The sheriff doesn’t seem to be struggling with the knots very much.”
“Because he’s the one who tied them in the first place?” Bree whispered.
“Maybe. Those knots look pretty complicated.”
Kinkaid chimed in. “The kind of knots someone ties can be a signature. I already asked the CSI guy if we can get a copy of his video—if this turns out to be what I think it is.”
Finally the ropes were off. Then there was duct tape to contend with. The CSI guys collected it carefully. Eric knew that convictions could be based on matching duct tape samples to a roll in a suspect’s possession or finding fingerprints or saliva stains on it. The last two were no doubt obliterated due to the water, but the tape could still be analyzed and identified. Beth could do it. She had all the appropriate testing equipment and databases at her disposal.
Finally the tarp was ready to be folded open. The farmer’s field got very quiet as everyone seemed to hold their breath. Sheriff DeVille whipped his hand back in a flourish.
A fetid smell wafted up, engulfing everyone within twenty feet. Bree took one quick look, then turned and hastily walked some distance away. There was no doubt as to what was inside that tarp, though it bore little resemblance to a human being at this point.
Eric looked at it long enough to ascertain that it was, or used to be, human. A woman, if the strands of green-tinged blond hair clinging to the partially skeletonized skull were any indication. In her current state of decomposition it wasn’t easy to recognize the features from Philomene’s photograph, which he’d committed to memory. But the hair was right, and the fingernails. Bree had described long, elaborately decorated acrylic nails. Most of the dead woman’s nails were broken, possibly in her struggles with her killer. But enough remained that Eric could make out a crazy red-and-white zebra pattern and one rhinestone that glinted in the sunlight.
He turned away and tugged his running shoes onto his bare feet, then followed Bree, who had moved well away from the crowd of people around the remains. She had her back to everyone, her head bent low and—God help him—her shoulders were shaking.
“Bree?” he said softly, leery of intruding on her moment of grief. “You okay?”
“I knew she was dead.” Her voice was thick with tears. “In my heart, I knew. So I don’t know why this should come as some big surprise.”
Eric’s thoughts flitted back to the day he’d come home from work to find his wife lying on the kitchen floor with seventeen stab wounds. Even the memory made his throat
tighten and his eyes burn.
Bree dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. “I guess some little part of me still believed I might be wrong, that she would turn up, surprised that everyone made all this fuss.”
Eric wanted to draw Bree close and comfort her, but he was wet and cold. Hugging him would be about as pleasant as hugging a six-foot frog. He settled for taking her hand and squeezing it. “I’m sorry it didn’t turn out differently.”
“At least if we’d found her alive, she could have told us who she was afraid of.”
“She’ll be able to tell us a lot. There’s a whole truckload of evidence in that tarp, starting with the tarp. The cord, the knots, the body itself.”
“Yeah, but after it’s been underwater? Fingerprints and DNA—gone. Plus, even if there is evidence, look who’s investigating the crime.”
“Those evidence techs seem to know what they’re doing. Plus, Project Justice will offer the services of our lab and our experts. They’re the best money can buy.”
“Unless DeVille destroys all the evidence. You know, almost nothing was recovered from the serial killer’s victims. And even if we find Philomene’s killer, that doesn’t help us with Kelly. I’m afraid she was our last hope for proving his innocence.”
“I have an idea about that. Those murders, the ones you were just talking about—how many were there?”
“Three for sure. Four if you count the one over in Hollings County, but it occurred several years earlier, and it didn’t seem to exhibit the same care and attention to detail.”
“So maybe it was our perp’s first murder, and he was less sure of himself. Murderers do learn from their mistakes. They evolve.”
Bree thought about it. “As I recall, there was some DNA recovered from that crime.”
“So if we come up with a suspect in Philomene’s murder, we can compare his DNA with what they collected at the Hollings County murder. That’s one way the crime could be solved. There may be others. Don’t lose hope. I may be new to Project Justice, but they have an enviable track record. Daniel has a knack for picking cases that can be won.”