Touching Evil

by Kylie Brant

  After saying very little else, he finally said, “Not a problem. I’ll catch a ride and be there shortly.” Slipping the cell back in his pocket he said, “You might be stuck with me longer than you thought.”

  Wariness surged, mingled with a single, and quickly extinguished traitorous flare of joy. “And why is that?”

  Gavin rose. “That was Prescott. They’re starting a dig at the site where the body was found last night. I need to get a ride over there.”

  Surging to her feet, Lucy went to lock the door again. “I’ll take you.”

  That damned amusement reappeared in his voice. “Hard to figure out if you’re more anxious to get rid of me or to take part in that dig.”

  “It’s a tie.” She jogged down the steps. “In this case, my having to deliver you gives me a reason to void Stevens’ order and to be at the site. As Prescott likes to say, it’s a win-win.”

  * * * *

  “So while I was sweating through the usual pleasantries of a shooting review, you were enjoying a day at the river. Typical.” Tommy Franks leaned down to brush off the dirt on his pants acquired by his ignominious descent down the bluff.

  Cam eyed him with a glint of humor. It had been a relief to hear the agent had been cleared. Not only because it would lend another experienced agent to the case, but also because Franks was a damn fine investigator and a personal friend. Cam valued the older man’s insights. “You know there’s a path down the hill, right?”

  Franks straightened. “I do now. What’d I miss?”

  Since they’d last talked less than an hour ago the question should have been rhetorical. But the buzz of activity in the area meant it was anything but.

  “The HDR handler took the dog to the back entrance of the cave. All along the shoreline.” Cam turned to gesture toward the area. He pitched his voice over the intermittent whine of the power shovel the team was using and tried not to consider that the UNSUB might have used one very like it to enlarge the cave. “The dog alerted so they’re bringing in another handler who will work from a boat while George works the dog on shore.” A dull throb had taken up residence in his temples. He had a feeling before the day was over it’d elevate to jackhammer status. “In the meantime, the dig is progressing slowly.”

  Excavating clandestine graves was a laborious affair. After breaking ground, trowels were used more than shovels and the process was slow. Right now the site was nearly hidden from view, with medical examiner personnel and evidence techs surrounding it. One criminalist was using ground-penetrating radar to direct the parameters of the dig. Although another ME had taken the call, twenty minutes ago Gavin Connerly had shown up with Lucy Benally in tow. Or vice versa. Cam neither knew nor cared how their arrival had coincided. But from what he could see, the two were in the center of things, supervising the activity.

  Franks pulled a fat sheaf of folded pages from his suit coat pocket and handed it to him. Already the man’s face bore a faint sheen of perspiration. Cam had shed his jacket and rolled up his shirtsleeves hours ago, and still craved a long cold shower followed by an icy beer. The likelihood of either in the coming hours was slim.

  “The ballistics report? That’s record time for the lab.” Unfolding the pages, Cam skimmed them rapidly. He’d been briefed on the results by a call from the lab manager earlier that day. The news contained in it represented the first real break they’d gotten in the case. Ordinarily he’d be excited by the possibility. But the grim scene unfolding before him muted that emotion.

  “Ballistics testing matched the offender’s weapon that discharged in Dr. Channing’s home with one used nearly fifteen years ago in a robbery of a convenience store.” Franks pulled a half-full bottle of water from his other suit coat pocket and unscrewed it, taking a long drink. “Kid swiped it from his foster father’s collection. The punk got caught, and the weapon was eventually returned to its rightful owner.”

  “Only to be stolen again six years ago along with the rest of the guns in the collection.” Cam flipped to another page. “Either that guy has incredibly bad luck or he’s a completely moronic gun owner.”

  “Think there’s more since you last talked to the lab.” Interest sharpening, Cam looked away from the report to focus on the man next to him. Franks screwed the top back on the bottle as he spoke. “Three years ago a matching bullet was dug out of the ceiling of a garage in Urbandale. The man who owns the house had reported his wife missing. Family and friends claimed they hadn’t seen her either so a detective Timmons conducted a search of the property. Findings were inconclusive. Her car, purse and some clothes were missing and she maxed out her credit cards in the days following the report before her husband canceled them. Her cell phone was never used again. Absolutely nothing in the house to suggest foul play but CSU did find the bullet. No way to tell how long it had been there.”

  His mind working rapidly, Cam asked, “What’s the owner’s name? How long had he been at the property?”

  “Kevin Stallsmith. And four years.”

  “So the bullet could have been there since before he moved in.” He felt a stab of disappointment. “You talked to Timmons?” At Franks’ nod, he asked, “What was bought on the credit card?”

  Franks took a small notebook from his pocket to consult. “Mostly electronics. A laptop. Large screen TV. Stereo. That sort of thing. Some clothes in sizes that matched the ones in her closet. Gift cards for large amounts.”

  In other words, mostly things that could be easily sold or pawned for quick cash. “What’s her family say?”

  “She was estranged from her mother. They hadn’t talked in several years at the time of Emily Stallsmith’s disappearance. Her two sisters claimed they haven’t heard from her. Word was that all was not rosy in the marriage so Timmons looked at the husband pretty hard. But he was alibied and Timmons never could put together enough answers to close the case. He tends to think Stallsmith fled an unhappy marriage and used the credit cards to finance her getaway.”

  Sophie had disengaged from the group around the dig when Franks had come on scene and joined them in time to hear the other agent’s words. “You’ve got a missing person’s report that matches Vance’s MO?”

  At the sound of her voice Franks did a comical double take, surprise on his normally taciturn features. “Dr. Channing? Almost didn’t recognize you.”

  She smiled. “I’ll take that as a compliment. Although the disguise is mostly Agent Loring’s doing.”

  As Cam filled her in on the conversation her smile faded and her expression went pensive.

  “She disappeared three years ago? Vance was released…what, four years ago from that Nebraska prison?” She didn’t wait for the men’s nods before going on. “And his former cellmate told you Vance had planned his crimes in prison. Stalking wealthy women, kidnapping them and forcing them to withdraw large sums from their banks before the sexual assaults… Even if this woman you’re speaking of was the victim of foul play, it certainly doesn’t sound like Vance’s MO. Unless…”

  When she trailed off, Cam prompted, “Unless?”

  Whatever Sophie might have said was interrupted when there was a shout from the group gathered around the dig. The three of them rejoined the others. Lucy, Gavin and Pete Lerdahl, the first ME on scene, were gloved and on their hands and knees around the deepening hole. Cam stepped around the wood-framed screen they’d been using to sift the dirt for small bone or tooth fragments. The area was littered with their tools. Shovels, trowels, a large white plastic bucket and some brushes lay nearby. An ME tech and a crime lab photographer were documenting every step of the process.

  “Gavin, help me dig from here.” Lucy’s voice was remarkably calm. “Pete, you want to take a turn with the screen?”

  “It’ll give my back a break.” The stout balding ME backed away, making room for Cam at the side of the hole. Once there he saw immediately what had caused their excitement.

  The hole was only about two feet by three at this point. But the partially uncover
ed grimy wizened face with its nest of stringy dark hair was unmistakably human.

  Chapter 7

  “You,” Cam pronounced, as he drove through the light traffic with relative ease, “are a bully.”

  Not raising her head from the iPad screen in her lap, Sophie’s voice was imperturbable. “I prefer the word assertive. And in this case, I was absolutely correct and you know it.”

  “I don’t know it,” he countered, slowing to a stop at a red light on Hickman. Then proceeded to drum his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel. “I could have had Agent Loring come pick you up to take you home for the night. I mean…” The slip was awkward. The correction more so. “…my place.”

  She gave a tiny sigh, the kind he usually got before she told him, in an absolutely civil and concise way, that he was being an ass. “The point isn’t that I’m tired, although I am. It’s that you haven’t slept in almost forty-eight hours. You’re no good to the case if you work yourself into exhaustion.”

  The light changed again and he accelerated. And reflected that she was always at her most irritating when she was right. “The dig will go on all night.” Cam had relieved Seth’s with a new crime scene team. They’d unloaded the generators and large portable lights to ensure that the work continued. The IOSME office had sent more personnel. “Williams—the criminalist operating the GPR—thinks there could be two or three more bodies in that hole.” It was difficult to determine without enlarging the hole significantly. If the UNSUB had used a mass grave to open and dump bodies in before reburying them the victims might be positioned in a pile, and a body could be hidden beneath the others. The only way to know for certain was to continue the dig. And the thought of not being on scene for any future discoveries burned.

  “You’re kept updated constantly on every detail of this case.” Without bothering to ask, she dug in her purse and withdrew a bottle of Tylenol. Shook two out into her palm and handed them to him. “You have that little crease above your brow that you get when your head hurts you,” she explained when he glanced at the pills, then at her.

  The fact that she knew him so well was a little disconcerting. And since the headache had gained villainous strength in the last few hours, he scooped up the pills and popped them in his mouth, ignoring the open bottle of water she offered as he swallowed.

  “How bad is it?” At any other time the sympathy in her voice would have warmed him. But he wasn’t any too happy about having to take time away from the case for minor things like eating and sleeping. “It’s a couple notches down from the headache I get if I have to listen to Taylor Swift.”

  She laughed. He’d walked in on her one morning during their brief time together, making coffee and singing a duet with the country-slash-pop artist and had never let her live it down. “And here I was going to suggest a little easy listening as just the thing to ease your stress.” She reached for the radio teasingly.

  “You’re living dangerously, woman.” But the banter had him relaxing a fraction for the first time since he’d taken Sheriff Feinstein’s call last night. “I need to update the report for the briefing tomorrow.” The headlights of on-coming traffic only worsened the pounding in his skull. The paperwork required to pull the details that had been coming in all day into one cohesive report would take a couple hours, at least. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to shower, put the report together over a cold beer and grab a few hours sleep. Like Sophie had said, he’d know the instant the crew at the dig found anything more.

  And it wasn’t the bodies hidden in that grave that were the most pressing details at this point, anyway. It was the offender himself, who could possibly still be in the area.

  “Warrant came in on the Pinter’s pharmacy a few hours ago.” The drive at least gave him time to catch Sophie up on some of the facts that had been steadily streaming in that afternoon from the rest of the team. “We struck out there. One of the employees recalled seeing the UNSUB in the store before, but none ID’d him as a pharmacy customer. We still might get something on the security footage, but right now all we’ve found is an image of him walking to his car.”

  “Does the vehicle match the one Tommy ID’d leaving my condo?”

  Sophie’s voice sounded remarkably controlled for someone talking about a failed attempt on her life. Too controlled, in fact. Cam glanced at her. She wasn’t the only one who had picked up on a few personal nuances during their time together. “We don’t have to talk about this now. A few hours break from the case isn’t going to kill either of us.”

  “Meaning that it did. It’s all right, Cam. I’ve been in the thick of things all day.” The pills rattled a little in the bottle as she dropped it back into her purse. “I’m not likely to break down over a vehicle description.”

  “No.” It was difficult to keep his gaze on the road and off her. “You aren’t. They didn’t get a view of the license plate number off the car he got into but Tommy says it’s absolutely the one he saw at your place. I’ve got Des Moines Police Department officers going door to door in the area showing Jenna’s initial sketch to employers and residents. But that’s going to take a few days.”

  “Someone will have seen him.” She leaned against the headrest for a moment and gave a nearly imperceptible sigh. And he was reminded that she had gotten almost as little sleep as he had last night. “I honestly think this line of investigating will be our best…”

  His cell rang then and Cam mentally cursed as she straightened expectantly beside him. Drawing it from the pocket of his suit coat folded over the console beside him, he brought it to his ear. Answered tersely. It was John Samuels. The agent sounded as tired as Cam felt.

  “I’m at home but DMPD just reported a tip that came through. Got a guy who claims to have seen our UNSUB. Says he bartends over on Franklin in the Riverbend neighborhood at a dive called Screwball’s. He took a picture on his cell and sent it to the officer manning the line who forwarded it to me. I sent it along to you for a look. I don’t know if it’s our guy or not. It’s hard to say. If he shaved his head maybe, yeah. Something about the shape of his face could be a match. Want me to give it a look yet tonight?”

  “No, I’m in the car. If I think it’s worth it, I’ll go. What’s the address?” The Riverbend neighborhood was slowly being transformed with the renovated historical old Victorians and a few new businesses sparkling gems set alongside crumbling buildings and low-rent tenements. But its crime rate was still among the worst in Des Moines. Although the city had poured funds into restoring the area, it would take another few years of determined TLC to offset the rampant prostitution, drug deals and gang activity reported there.

  Signing off, he handed Sophie the phone and waited for the telltale alert of an incoming text. When the photo arrived, he took a hard look at it before handing it to Sophie. “What do you think?”

  She glanced at the photo of the man and then reached up to turn on the interior light. “Is that…who is that?”

  “Some bartender. At a bar that would be…” He did a quick mental calculation. “About eight blocks south of the Pinter’s where our UNSUB was seen.

  After several more moments she said, “I don’t know. The features aren’t quite as regular, and with that scruff of a beard and shaved head…but there’s something about the shape of his face.”

  “Yeah.” Cam turned at the next corner and headed east. “It’s probably close enough to be worth checking out.”

  Screwball’s was aptly named and all eyes turned in Cam’s direction the moment he walked in the door. The interior was dimly lit, neon beer signs providing most of the atmosphere. He was definitely overdressed. Most of the patrons were wearing wife beaters or tees, with ripped jeans or shorts. The dress code, he noted as he made his way through the scattered customers, was unisex.

  And everyone in the place immediately made him as a cop.

  He saw a couple men sidle not quite nonchalantly to the hallway leading toward the back of the bar which probably housed either a restroom of questionab
le sanitation or an exit. After a hard look he dismissed both of them. They didn’t match the photo he’d been sent and right now he didn’t care about the source of their guilty consciences.

  His focus was on the bartender. Who was definitely not the man in the picture.

  Choosing a spot at the bar for its proximity to the door, he leaned against it in a position guaranteeing him the best visual access of the place. With the exception of the two who had gone to the back, after that first inspection the customers had returned to their drinks and their pool games.

  The lone bartender fluffed her jet-black hair and sauntered in his direction. She leaned toward him over the bar, giving him an up-close-and-personal view of her ample cleavage, which was spilling from the skimpy top she was wearing. “What can I get you, tall, dark and cop-like?”

  “You have me all wrong.” There was an argument escalating between two pool players, and what looked a lot like a drug deal going down in the corner booth under one cracked plate glass window. “Me, I’m an accountant.”

  She flashed a smile that was likely supposed to be sultry. “Me, I’m really a nun. My disguise is better than yours, though, ain’t it?”

  “It’s masterful.” He pulled out his cell and brought up the picture Samuels had sent. He turned it around so she could peer at the screen. “Know this guy?”

  After a long moment she shook her head. “Uh-uh. Should I?”

  Cam speared a look at her. “I’m told he bartends here.”

  “Lots of guys have tried that. None stick around though. How long ago did you say he was here?”

  “I didn’t.”

  Lifting a shoulder the woman half-turned away to grab a bar rag to wipe down the nicked and graffiti-scrawled bar top. “I’ve been here eight months and never seen him. Think someone’s giving you a line of shit.”