A Bustle in the Hedgerow (CASMIRC Book 1)

by Ben Miller

  “OK,” Reilly nodded.

  Hank then pointed to his right, toward a break in the tree line less than twenty yards away. “The body is back this trail. It was discovered at 12:52 pm today.” He began walking in that direction, expecting the pair of FBI agents to follow. Camilla came with him, but Reilly instead turned to face the crowd of spectators and soccer players.

  “How do you know the perp isn’t sitting in that crowd?” Reilly posited.

  Hank stopped and walked back toward Reilly, leaning in because he hadn’t heard the question. “Excuse me, sir?”

  Camilla stayed back where she was. She had heard the question the first time and considered it an honest possibility. She also knew Reilly well enough to assume that he had posited the question only to regain control of the situation: he would go to see the crime scene when he felt ready, not when a local sheriff told him to.

  Reilly turned to face Hank once he came even with him. “How do you know that this little girl’s killer isn’t sitting on those bleachers over there?” he repeated.

  Hank pondered this question genuinely for several seconds. “I guess I don’t,” he shrugged. “But that’s one of the reasons I’ve kept them all here.” He looked up to meet Reilly’s eyes. Satisfied that he had given a sufficient answer, Hank turned back toward the trail. When he met up with Camilla, she began walking with him.

  Hank began telling her the story of Danielle Coulter’s brief stint as a missing person and her discovery by the Nike track suit guy, who turned out to be a struggling realtor named Timothy Yongauer. Hank had questioned him personally before an ambulance took him to the local hospital; Yongauer continued vomiting so much that he began to feel light-headed. An officer stayed with him in the Emergency Department and had phoned in minutes ago to inform Hank that Mr. Yongauer felt much better after getting an injection of an anti-nausea medication and a liter of IV fluid. Reilly caught up with them a few yards into the trail, about halfway through the story.

  “I get the impression that you don’t think this Yongauer had anything to do with the murder?” Reilly asked.

  “Absolutely not,” Hank replied without hesitation. He looked sideways at Reilly without ever breaking stride. “I saw the terror in his eyes first hand. That man won’t sleep for a week.” He looked back toward the trail ahead of them.

  “Any clues or leads thus far?” Camilla asked him. She possessed much more faith in the ability of local police officials to conduct investigations than Reilly did.

  “Maybe.” Hank stopped in his tracks, and the other two followed suit. “Let me be very honest and apologize to you folks up front: this has not been an easy crime scene to control. News of this spread fast. Within twenty minutes we had over two dozen officers here, both local and county. Staties came fifteen minutes later. We quickly roped off the area, but we probably had five-to-ten officers down these various trails—myself included—in the first thirty minutes. Now, no one’s removed any evidence. But identifying footprints, broken branches, so-on, so-forth… that might be a significant challenge.”

  Camilla nodded understandingly; Reilly briefly shook his head with pursed lips, as if trying unsuccessfully to hide his disgust.

  Hank took a few steps forward until he had to duck under the strip of yellow tape strung across the trail. Camilla and Reilly shuffled under the tape as well, and stopped on the other side along with Hank.

  Hank pointed to the ground beside Camilla. “That’s just how I found her.”

  Camilla looked down to the ground on her immediate left. Startled by the site of the dead body up close so suddenly, she exhaled forcefully, almost a grunt. Reilly leaned forward to glance at the corpse.

  “Over here…,” Hank pointed to the ground to his right, about a foot-and-a-half away from the girl’s outstretched legs. Three small yellow flags stuck out of the mud. “And over here…” He pointed to the left of the body, where another three flags had been planted. “…We found footprints that we think belong to the perpetrator. Yongauer swore that he never got within a yard of her body, which checks out.” Hank pointed to the ground immediately in front of the three of them; a clear half-footprint was visible with the trademark Nike Swoosh.

  “After Yongauer, I was the first on the scene. I noticed those footprints on my arrival, and tried to avoid them as best as I could. I crouched down beside the girl on her left to feel for a carotid pulse.”

  “Which way did those footprints come in, and how did they leave?” Reilly asked.

  “And how did you get here so fast?” Camilla asked, somewhat pointedly.

  Hank answered Camilla’s query first. “My daughter participated in the soccer tournaments this morning. I was technically off duty.”

  He looked up at Reilly and signaled for them to walk a few steps further down the trail, careful to take a wide berth around the corpse. He pointed down a trail on the other side of Danielle’s body. “We found two partial footprints heading this direction on this trail, so I assume that’s how the perp got here. We haven’t found any that point away from the scene.” He swept his hands in front of him, motioning to bordering trees and weeds in all directions. “We carefully surveyed the brush and didn’t find any sizable disturbances.” Hank then turned and pointed a hand down the continuing trail, toward the pond. “My best guess is that he left in this direction.”

  “What’s in that direction?” Reilly asked.

  “There’s a small pond just to the northwest, but there’s also several short trails that lead to side streets.”

  “Have you questioned the people living on those side streets? Maybe you have witnesses there,” Reilly pointed out.

  “I have about a half-dozen officers in the process of going door-to-door right now.” Hank lowered his head for a brief moment before looking back up, almost apologetically. “Problem is this damn soccer tournament. We have well over two hundred out-of-towners sitting out there, not to mention the several dozen locals. People parked their cars all over these side streets because parking here at the fields was limited to buses only. Asking people to remember if they saw any strangers today won’t be too helpful.”

  “But remembering any strangers who drove off in a hurry between 12:30 and 1 certainly would be,” Camilla offered.

  “Right,” Hank agreed. “So, we’re going through the motions. I’m hopeful, I guess. Just being realistic.”

  They turned back around and came back towards the body. Reilly pointed down the trail to their right, the one Hank indicated earlier had brought the killer to the scene. “Where does that trail go?”

  “It starts at the corner of the soccer fields, about twenty-five yards south of the entrance to this trail.” Hank pointed to the trail on their left, the one they had walked down a few minutes earlier.

  Without saying anything, Reilly walked quickly down that trail, paying attention to avoid the yellow flags in the mud marking the suspicious footprints. Camilla and Hank shared a glance before following him. They caught up to him at the mouth of the trail, where he has stopped to look out at the fields.

  “He stood here,” Reilly declared. He turned toward Hank and Camilla to further elucidate. “He stood here where he could watch the games, looking like an average spectator. He even probably picked a team to cheer for, trying to blend in. Then he saw the victim walk down that trail by herself, probably the first one to go down there in a while.” Reilly turned back down the trail they had just traversed. “He hustled down this trail to head her off at the pass.”

  “Makes sense,” Hank agreed.

  Camilla looked back out at the fields, then down the trail behind them. “He knows this place.” Both men turned to face her as she continued. “He’s been here before, studied the trails. He knows this layout well.”

  Hank nodded. “And he probably knew that the side streets would be filled with cars, making his escape much less noticeable.”

  Reilly squinted, considering the possible implications of this hypothesis. “Are we dealing with a local?
”

  Camilla began shaking her head. “I don’t know.” She wiped her face, as if trying to manually clear away the confusion. “I don’t think so. Why would he strike as far away as York and Frederick only to then murder someone in his own back yard?”

  “Drawing us in?” Heath suggested.

  Camilla looked at him quizzically, indicating her need for clarification. Hank became more confused as the conversation progressed, but he kept quiet.

  “Something hasn’t felt right this entire time. He obviously wants something greater than just to kill. He has some kind of message…” His voice trailed off, and his eyes met Camilla’s. Almost simultaneously they began running back down the trail, toward the body. Hank followed not far behind them, having no idea why they were running.

  Upon arriving back at the crime scene, Reilly knelt down beside an open CSI kit and pulled out four latex gloves. Still kneeling, he turned to face the Hank Hanley as he put on his gloves and extended the other two to Camilla.

  “Is your investigative team done with the body? Photographs, et cetera?”

  Hank looked at the group of officers standing nearby. One man came forward, holding a sophisticated digital camera. “I think so,” said the middle-aged officer without much confidence. He turned a knob on the camera, switching to “view” mode rather than “camera” mode, then handed it to Reilly. In one fluid motion, Reilly took the camera from the officer and passed it to Camilla. She quickly scrolled through the nearly three dozen photos and nodded to Reilly. “Looks adequate.”

  Reilly nodded in return and moved forward toward the body, staying hunched over to kneel easily again once beside the dead little girl. He palpated the front of her shorts, but found no pockets. He visually surveyed her top, looking for a breast pocket in her T-shirt, finding none. He looked back a Camilla.

  “Back pockets,” she said, as she knelt down beside him. She slid her hands under the girl’s left shoulder and Reilly cupped his under her hip, and they rolled the body onto its side. Rigor mortis had not yet set in, so this task proved more difficult than they had expected.

  “Nope,” Reilly announced. They gently let the body rest back on the ground. Reilly began looking around the body in concentric circles, beginning to branch out to survey the ground surrounding her. As he did this, Camilla scuffled down to the girl’s right ankle, reaching into her sock. Her eyes lit up as she extracted the piece of paper and held it up in front of her face.

  “Bag,” she commanded, not lifting her eyes from the clue that dangled in front of them. A younger officer who stood beside the camera man scurried over to the CSI kit and removed a plastic evidence bag. He handed it to Camilla, who placed the slip inside of it.

  She looked at Reilly with a hint of sadness. Though they both obviously suspected as much, this scrap of paper confirmed that this little girl had fallen victim to their killer, The Playground Predator, now having struck for the third time. Reilly concurrently made the same revelation, but he returned her glance with the wide-open eyes of an excited little boy.

  45

  Jackson Byrne had spent much of that afternoon working outside in the yard. Jonah had come out for almost two hours to help his daddy. His “help” mostly consisted of kneeling beside Jack in the grass, staging an innocent little inquisition with a barrage of mundane questions, as Jack painstakingly removed one weed after another from his lawn. Despite spreading granulated lawn treatments with some regularity, he could never seem to eradicate all of the dandelions and other photosynthetic vermin from his property. Jack professed this as a source of much frustration in his life, though in actuality he found all aspects of yard work—even pulling weeds with a spade—a nice break from his often stressful days.

  Earlier that morning, while Jonah watched cartoons and Vicki closed herself off in the spare bedroom to do a little Yoga, Jack had tried once again to return Melissa Hollows’ phone call. Again it went straight to voicemail, and again Jack did not leave a message.

  After he pulled enough weeds to satisfy his perfectionism, Jack had mowed the lawn and spread yet another lawn treatment. He had showered off the dirt from his knees and under his fingernails, and now he stood out on the back deck, drinking a bottle of beer and waiting for the grill to warm up. He looked out over their modest-sized property, silently admiring his day’s work.

  Jack set his bottle of beer down on the railing beside the grill and went inside to get the burgers from the kitchen. Jonah knelt on a stool at the island as he tore leaves of romaine lettuce into small pieces and put them into a large serving bowl. “Careful there, Tiger,” Jack warned to his son.

  “Tiger?” Jonah asked, looking somewhat disappointed.

  “Yeah.” He looked at Jonah and read the expression on his face. “What’s wrong with ‘Tiger’?”

  Jonah hung his head dejectedly. “Daddy… I was a lion, not a tiger.”

  Jack tried to hide his smile, remembering Jonah’s proud performance in the school play this past week. “I know you were, buddy. ‘Tiger’ is just a nickname. Tiger. Sport. Champ.”

  Jonah looked up at him with his puppy dog eyes. “Can ‘Lion’ be a nickname?”

  Jack smiled the endearing smile of a proud, loving father. “Sure it can.” He turned around and walked back outside. As soon as the screen door closed, Jack twirled 180 degrees and came back through the door into the kitchen. He looked at Jonah, and, trying to use the exact some intonation as he had one minute ago, said, “Careful there, Lion.”

  Jonah grinned from ear to ear. He then deliberately pulled his knees a little closer together to firm his balance on top of the stool. “Yes, Daddy.”

  Jack walked over to the refrigerator and removed the plate of freshly made hamburger patties covered in plastic wrap. He glanced at the small TV in the corner of the countertop, which played the local news. He put his free hand around Vicki’s waist and gave her a kiss on the cheek as he passed by. She smiled.

  He went back out on the deck. As he placed the last burger on the grill, Vicki called out from the kitchen. “Jack?”

  “Yeah?” he replied.

  Vicki had walked over to the door to talk to Jack through the screen. “Heath Reilly is on the news.”

  Jack turned to face her with a puzzled look on his face.

  “Yep,” Vicki confirmed as she turned back to the TV.

  Jack followed her inside, looking across the room to the small flat screen. He could make out Heath’s image with a few microphones in front of him. Jack moved into the nearby living room and turned on their large flat screen, quickly navigating to the same channel then turning up the volume.

  “…Likely the same perpetrator of the two murders in York, Pennsylvania, and Frederick, Maryland, that the FBI is currently investigating,” Reilly said into the microphones. A text banner across the bottom of the screen identified Special Agent Heath Reilly, FBI; below that, in a smaller font, it revealed Front Royal, Virginia, as the locale. Jack could also see half of Camilla Vanderbilt’s face in the background.

  The news then cut to another taped interview, this one of a thirty-something woman in a windbreaker. “It was terrifying,” she proclaimed. “They kept us all on the bleachers for, like, ever, until they could talk to each one of us. Meanwhile, my kids are scared out of their minds, and I’m trying to keep them calm. We just came here to play a soccer tournament!”

  Then the broadcast cut to a live shot of the reporter on the scene, a confident, fast-speaking Latina woman, standing in front of a tree line decorated with yellow police tape in the waning sunlight. “The identity of today’s victim is still being withheld by police until all family can be notified, though authorities confirm that she was a nine-year old girl, just like the other two victims in York and Frederick that Agent Reilly mentioned. Police are not releasing any other information tonight. However, it seems clear that The Playground Predator has struck again, and he remains at large.”

  Jack turned back to the kitchen. “The Playground Predator,” he muttered.r />
  “Catchy,” Vicki commented. “Do you know anything about this one? Did you work on this at all?”

  “Yeah. Info about the first two came in this week. I sat in on the first debriefing on Wednesday. Pretty awful stuff.”

  “It’s all pretty awful stuff, Jack,” Vicki reminded him.

  “Yeah,” Jack agreed somberly.

  Vicki studied his face. “Do you miss it? Do you wish that you were there?”

  “No,” he answered quickly, more because he knew it was the answer he needed to say than because it was the truth. He didn’t want to take the time to think about how he felt; that seemed moot given that he had essentially resigned. Jack had never found offering second guesses very productive.

  He looked down at the remote to hit the Power button, when Vicki said, “Oh my gosh, look.” He looked up at her to see her pointing at the little TV across the kitchen. He then turned his attention to the screen in front of him to see a photo of Melissa Hollows in the upper right corner behind the news anchor.

  “Melissa Hollows, a former model and ex-wife of Washington Redskins wide receiver Lamond Hollows, was found dead in her Georgetown home today of an apparent suicide,” the anchor announced.

  Jack’s face went white.

  The newscast cut to a uniformed man behind a podium, identified by text as Justin Jones, Chief of Police, District of Columbia. “Nine-one-one received a call at 2:48 this afternoon from a friend of Ms. Hollows, who came by the home when Ms. Hollows failed to meet her for a scheduled racquetball game early this morning. She likely died sometime yesterday afternoon. At this point, her death is still under investigation, though it does appear that she may have taken her own life.”

  Back in the studio, the anchor continued the story. “Ms. Hollows first entered the national spotlight when she married the NFL star, who at the time had a reputation as a partying playboy, among other things. Of course, she is most famous as the mother of Lamaya Hollows, who was abducted from their affluent DC neighborhood last spring and found murdered several days later. Lamond Hollows’ publicist has denied any comment at this time. Melissa Hollows was thirty-six years old.”