A Bustle in the Hedgerow (CASMIRC Book 1)

by Ben Miller

  41

  A bead of sweat hung on the end of Heath Reilly’s nose, swaying back and forth with each running step. He stuck out his lower lip and exhaled forcefully, blasting the salty drop into the air in front of him. He had been jogging in the neighborhood around his apartment for only about fifteen minutes, and the temperature barely reached 70 degrees, but Heath had already worked up quite a sweat. Clearly he wasn’t in the best shape of his life, but his heavy breathing and profuse perspiration disappointed him. He supposed he hadn’t been as active this winter and early spring as he should have. Today’s jog simply marked the beginning of a healthy jump-start to the spring and summer, he reminded himself.

  His mind then reverted back to thinking about Corinne O’Loughlin. He remembered feeling a physical attraction for her when he first met her during the Hollows investigation; after speaking with her on the phone at length two days ago, he felt an even stronger intellectual and emotional pull toward her. He liked her feisty nature and found her confidence very appealing. While he often chose women with less personality— the Wallflower Type, his mother liked to say in her trademarked polite yet condescending manner— he naturally felt drawn to strong, self-assure women, and Corinne definitely fit that archetype. His thinking about her early today had been the impetus to this jog; he wanted to get into better shape before asking her out. He knew enough about himself to know that he felt much more at ease in front of the fairer sex when he felt confident about his physical self. When he looked in the mirror at home last night, he perceived his insecurity. Within a couple weeks of jogging, sit-ups, and push-ups, he knew he could bolster himself sufficiently to approach her in a more personal setting.

  After rounding a street corner, a beep from his iPhone broke his concentration. He pulled the phone off his hip as he slowed to a walk. The display told him he had an incoming call from the dispatcher at CASMIRC. He pulled off his head phones and slid his index finger across the screen to take the call.

  “Special Agent Reilly,” he answered, still quite short of breath.

  “Hi, Special Agent Reilly, this is Lisa from dispatch. I have an Officer Hanley from the Sheriff’s office in Warren County, Virginia on the line. He called asking to speak with you.”

  Reilly inhaled deeply and let out a slow exhale. He didn’t want to seem out of breath when talking to Gomer Pyle (his adopted name for any member of local law enforcement). He didn’t know exactly why, but he thought this would exude weakness. He finally responded, “OK, patch him through.”

  Reilly looked up at the sky as he waited a few seconds for the dispatcher to complete the connection. A few cumulus clouds dotted the blue expanse: a perfect spring day.

  The faint hum of the static in Reilly’s ear jumped. “This is Special Agent Reilly.”

  “Hello, Special Agent Reilly. This is Hank Hanley with the Sheriff’s Department in Warren County.”

  “What can I do for you, officer?” Reilly tried not to sound annoyed, unsure of how successful he was.

  “The body of a young girl was just discovered here. She was murdered along a hiking trail within the last two hours. I heard about your string of—“

  “Wait!” Reilly’s head snapped down from admiring the bright blue sky to stare at a tree trunk in front of him as he interrupted the man on the other end of the line. “Where are you?”

  “I’m in Front Royal, Virginia. Warren County, about 75 miles west of D.C.”

  Reilly turned and began back towards his apartment at a brisk walk. “Rope off the entire area and don’t let any piece of evidence out, including the body. I’ll be there with my team in less than two hours. Please call back to our dispatcher, give her your exact location and your cell number. I will call you back when we are en route.” He now had quickened to a light jog. “Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” Hanley replied.

  “Great,” Reilly said as he hung up. He kept his iPhone in his right hand as he broke into a full sprint, which, despite his nearly six months of relative inactivity, he sustained most of the way back to his apartment.

  42

  Hank Hanley hung up his cell phone and put it back into the front pocket of his jeans. He surveyed the scene in front of him: two uniformed officers stood silently on either side of the entrance to the hiking trail from the soccer fields to the pond. Yellow tape marked this off and extended along the tree line in either direction. An ambulance sat idly in the grass just to the right of the trail entrance, its back doors ajar and its EMTs sitting on the back stoop, both looking at the ground.

  He turned around to face the soccer fields, which had hosted several hundred playful young girls mere hours ago. Now these several hundred kids and their several hundred parents and coaches all sat huddled silently on the bleachers. Most had chosen to sit on the sides of the fields that faced away from the trail leading to the pond, away from the tragedy. Most parents still clutched their children tightly; most of those children contradicted their normal behavior by allowing it. Despite the mass of humanity, it seemed ghostly quiet. The only sounds came from the handful of police officers surrounding the crowd, occasionally making small talk amongst themselves or with the children, trying to perhaps lighten the mood. Earlier a few children had gotten bored and decided to kick a soccer ball around, but they went back to the sullen crowd after their parents chastised them.

  Hank felt awkward wearing his street clothes at a crime scene, certainly one of this magnitude. He had a good excuse, though: he was technically off duty, attending his daughter’s soccer tournament. In fact, his daughter’s team had been slated to play the missing girl’s team when this awful turmoil commenced.

  When Danielle Coulter didn’t show up at her scheduled game time, no one seemed very surprised initially. Her coaches and most of her teammates knew that Danielle only played soccer because her parents made her. They thought that it would be a good way to socialize as well as get some exercise, both of which little Danielle lacked for most of her ten years. Unfortunately, though they encouraged her participation at home, neither her father nor her mother could be bothered to support her in person that Saturday.

  After ten minutes passed, a handful of her teammates offered to go looking for her. She had shown up for the initial head count earlier in the day, so she couldn’t have gone too far. Rather than hold up the game any further, two fathers of her teammates went out searching for Danielle, fully expecting to find her picking wildflowers or skipping stones on the pond. Only four minutes passed before one father, a balding man in a Nike jumpsuit, shrieked from within the woods between the fields and the pond.

  Hank’s daughter had just made an impressive pass across the field to an open teammate when the man’s screams made everyone— players, parents, referees— stop in their tracks. They all turned toward the trail to see the cause of the crying. Though the action on all of the fields had already ceased, one referee inexplicably and unnecessarily blew his whistle. The man emerged from the mouth of the trail in a full sprint, his eyes wide, panting like a greyhound at the end of six furlongs.

  Hank had leapt from his folding lawn chair at the first shriek and began to walk quickly toward the sound. When the man flew into daylight and Hank saw the expression on his face, he too began running headlong at the man. As they neared one another, Hank could see true terror in the man’s eyes. He barely slowed as they approached, so Hank had to put out both hands and catch the man's by his arms. They nearly both fell down due to the man’s speed prior to the collision.

  “What?! What?!” the man screamed.

  “Sir! Sir!” Hank tried to center the man, holding both upper arms firmly and looking into his eyes.

  “She’s… Oh, fuck. Oh, God—” Before he could put the “d” on “God,” the man vomited.

  By now that vomit had time to dry on the left sleeve of Hank’s sweatshirt. He needed to decide what to do next while waiting for Special Agent Reilly and his FBI team. He had called the dispatcher back and provided the information as instruc
ted. He supposed he would walk back into the woods to oversee the goings-on, making sure that everyone understood the explicit instructions to leave the crime scene as undisturbed as possible.

  First, however, he decided to walk to his car in the parking lot, where he removed his soiled sweatshirt and placed it in the trunk. The day had turned warm enough that he shouldn’t need it anyway.

  43

  Corinne O’Loughlin shifted in the uncomfortable vinyl chair in the waiting room outside of the ICU at Georgetown University Hospital; her left butt cheek had fallen numb. She stared at her Droid phone in the palm of her hand, only half paying attention to the word-finding game on the display. She found that this helped pass the time idly while her mind could wander to more important things.

  About an hour ago she got a phone call from one of the staff nurses in the ICU. The nurse informed Corinne that the parents of Allison Branford, the Georgetown Lacrosse player and hit-and-run victim from almost a week ago, decided to withdraw life-support. Unfortunately, Allison’s tests run by her team of doctors the past two days had shown that she had no brain activity left. Her parents called in her extended friends and family to say their final goodbyes this morning. After the parade of loved ones came through, Dean and Eleanor Branford sat alone with their only child and asked that the doctors remove the breathing tube connecting her to the ventilator.

  Corinne had arrived shortly after that. According to her nurse contact—whom she paid fifty bucks for her helpful information—Allison took a few shallow breaths on her own, but then stopped. Two minutes later she was pulseless. She died in the arms of both of her parents.

  Over the course of following this story, Corinne had become familiar with the Branfords and had actually grown quite fond of them. They expressed great appreciation for her journalistic efforts, fighting on their daughter’s behalf to publicize the accident in hopes of catching the hit-and-run perpetrator. The things she learned about Allison by talking with friends and classmates seemed too good to be true. Numerous times in her work Corinne has observed this “positive recall bias”— people tend to remember only the good things about victims of tragedies. However, after spending time with the genuine and truly nice Dean and Eleanor Branford, she began to believe what she had heard about their daughter. Their kindness had drawn her to the hospital this Saturday. She could write about Allison’s death from home; she came to offer condolences to her family in person.

  Corinne had gone through three games on her phone when the Branfords emerged from the ICU doors into the hallway that joins the waiting room, their faces pale and their eyes puffy, haggardly bloodshot. Friends and family flooded them immediately. Eleanor, the more outspoken of the two, swam through the crowd to make a beeline towards Corinne. Corinne, surprised, put her phone down and hurriedly stood up. She opened her arms and began to lean in to hug her.

  “Eleanor, I am so—” she began, but Eleanor interrupted the hug by grabbing her by both shoulders and gripping her tightly. She looked straight into Corinne’s eyes intensely, her pupils fully dilated.

  “You find him,” she commanded. A previously shed tear escaped the well of her left lower eyelid and streamed down her face. “You find the son-of-a-bitch who did this to our daughter.”

  Corinne tried to meet her eyes, but it felt like staring straight into the sun. She instead looked at the wet vertical track down Eleanor’s left cheek that the tear had created. She nodded and opened her mouth to speak. On the chair behind her, her cell phone rang, but she focused on the shattered woman in front of her. “I will,” Corinne confirmed through the din of her phone.

  Eleanor’s eyes never left Corinne’s. She squinted, as if focusing her vision could help discern the veracity of Corinne’s assertion. She began a barely perceptible nod, almost like a fine tremor.

  The phone rang a second time. Eleanor then relaxed her grip and pulled Corinne in tightly for a hug. Corinne shared the embrace. “Thank you,” Eleanor said, a little too loudly for the close proximity of her mouth to Corinne’s ear. “Thank you.”

  Eleanor stepped back and put her hands back on Corinne’s upper arms, much more lightly than seconds before. Her face had softened and even offered a small smile. She dropped her arms and walked back to her husband and their group, who enveloped her with open arms.

  Corinne watched her walk back then sat back down. She let out a deep sigh, realizing how much that short conversation had drained her emotionally. She then picked up her phone and navigated to her missed calls, finding the most recent name on the list: Heath Reilly. Corinne felt a bolt of excitement shoot to her toes. Her mental energy returned just as quickly as it had been sapped by Allison’s bereaving mother.

  As per their phone conversation two days ago, Reilly and Corinne agreed to share information about the Playground Predator case. (Though she couldn’t use the moniker in print, she still gave the case this label in her mind as well as her document files.) His call likely signaled a breakthrough in the case. At least she hoped it did. She picked up her laptop bag, threw her phone in the side pocket, and quietly exited the waiting room. She took the elevator downstairs, paid for her parking (and asked for a receipt—she full expected reimbursement for this as a job expense) and walked to her car. She drove out of the parking garage and then parked on the street, leaving her car idling as she called her voicemail to retrieve Reilly’s message.

  44

  Reilly sat in the passenger seat of their black Ford Expedition. He had met Camilla in Quantico; she drove to Front Royal due to his need to make phone calls. They had just merged onto highway 66 West, only about thirty-five more miles to Front Royal.

  After he had left Corinne a voicemail, Reilly called Lisa at dispatch, who connected him to Officer Hank Hanley in Front Royal. He barked instructions to Hanley, most of which Hanley had already accomplished. Halfway through the conversation, Corinne beeped in, but Reilly waited until completing his call with Hanley before returning hers. He filled her in on his limited knowledge of the findings in Front Royal, and then he finished the call by suggesting that she drive over there to report directly from the scene. After he hung up, he looked over at Camilla, who briefly broke her intense focus on the road in front of them to shoot him a sardonic glance. He caught a glimpse of it.

  “What?” he asked.

  Camilla shrugged. “What?” she replied in turn.

  “What did I do?”

  She shook her head and looked back at the road. “Nothing.”

  Reilly wasn’t satisfied. “Really, what?”

  Camilla knew Reilly well enough to know that he likely would not let this go, much like a three-year-old who needs to know why he’s not allowed to go outside to play in the rain. She took a breath, pausing to choose her words carefully. “You spoke very differently during those two conversations.”

  “What do you mean?” Reilly leaned forward, as if in an interrogation. He glared at her, but she didn’t look away from the road again.

  “When you spoke with the officer from the crime scene, you spoke in a very… commanding manner. Very business-like. And a little condescending, to be honest.”

  “And in the second?”

  “More like… you were talking to a friend,” Camilla said, though she held back what she had wanted to say: that he spoke as if he were wooing a woman. She decided to throw in a little jab that might hint toward her true observation. “Except your voice was a little higher.”

  “My voice was higher?” Reilly repeated, consciously lowering the register of his voice, trying his best to land in bass but still ending up in mid-baritone.

  “Yes. Like… you’re talking to a child, trying to get him to climb down out of a tree,” she answered. That should keep him guessing, she thought, and to think twice before asking me these kinds of questions again.

  Neither of them spoke for the rest of the short drive. Camilla did not use her emergency lights, but she maintained a speed between 80 and 85 miles per hour while on the highway. Their dashboard navigat
ion system guided them straight to the soccer field complex on the west side of Front Royal.

  As the Expedition pulled into view of the soccer field, Reilly and Camilla could see the two sets of bleachers filled with people. They stared sullenly at the Expedition, their heads turning in unison to follow the oversized vehicle as it passed by, as if watching a tennis match in super slow-motion. Farther down the fields, between the bleachers and the bordering woods on the west end, a muscular man in a white T-shirt and jeans with a polished badge on his belt walked toward their car. He signaled for them to park at the curb in front of him, at the south end of the soccer complex. Camilla eased the large SUV to the designated spot. The plain-clothed cop stood watching them with his hands on his hips, accentuating his angular physique. Both Reilly and Camilla got out of the car and walked toward the man at the edge of the fields.

  The man extended his hand to Reilly. “Special Agent Reilly?”

  Reilly grasped his hand and shook it gently. “Yes,” he replied, almost as more of a question than an answer.

  “Hank Hanley, Warren County Sheriff. We spoke on the phone,” Hank replied, releasing the weak grip of the FBI man. He turned toward Camilla and also offered her his right hand.

  “Special Agent Camilla Vanderbilt,” she said as she firmly took his hand and gave it three confident pumps. “Nice to meet you, Sheriff.”

  “Call me Hank, please.” He turned his shoulders slightly as to face both of them. He sensed that Reilly was in charge, but his early impression of the two made him prefer Camilla. He wanted to include both in this brief orientation. “We have all of the potential witnesses over there—,” he pointed to the sets of bleachers in the distance to his left, “—and have begun questioning them as you had asked.”