by James Carver
Stevens called Devlin to tell him what had happened and to tell him to get over to the crime scene. Devlin didn’t say much on the phone, but then Devlin wasn’t always exactly Jay Leno when it came to conversation.
Devlin had woken at five. He said prayers, showered, shaved, and dressed the wounds from the fight with Earl. Then he drove to the Sacred Heart in Springfield for morning mass and confession. He told the priest, Father Francis, he was on vacation, up seeing relatives, to avoid any deeper explanation. It was a long confession. Devlin left out a lot of the detail of the fight with Earl, including the strange event of the exorcism, an event Devlin only wished to push to the back of his mind. Even so, he could see Father Francis hadn’t ever heard a confession like it. He did his best to offer advice and for penance gave Devlin fifteen decades of the Rosary for every day of the month. Devlin fancied he wouldn’t get much more for punching the pope, but he couldn’t complain.
Devlin left Springfield and was about to swing by Halton Medical Center and see if Dr. Lazard, the man he had seen meeting with Stein, was working there when he got the call from Stevens. In the grave circumstances, he dropped everything and drove to the address Stevens had given him. The new homicide confirmed everything they had been saying, everything that had fallen on deaf ears. Devlin couldn’t help but feel that Walker and Cutter were partly responsible for Brendan’s death. If they had looked for real leads instead of wishing the first murder away, then maybe, just maybe, Brendan might still be alive.
He drove back from Springfield as fast as he could taking the highway north. The address was in the northeast of Halton, and Devlin used the map on his cell to get there. As he got closer to Brendan’s house, he found himself cruising along very pleasant, very quiet roads lined and bursting neatly with greenery. Clearly, he was in the better end of town. Houses in many different styles built before and between the two world wars were set back at a distance from the grass-covered sidewalk and covered from view by an assortment of hackberry, maple, and ash trees. They were houses that spoke of a particular kind of refined middle-class comfort. Toward the end of the road, Devlin could see police cruisers and several police officers posted outside one of the residences, a large, whitewashed foursquare that had been constructed in sober straight lines with tall sash windows. It was an affluent neighborhood. Lots of space, lots of privacy, lots of opportunity for getting in and getting out without being seen.
He drew to a stop opposite and could see Stevens already in a white crime scene coverall talking to another officer. As soon as Stevens saw Devlin getting out of his car, he broke off his conversation and walked over. As he went to greet Devlin, he was taken aback by the new cuts and bruises Devlin had acquired overnight.
“Gabe, what the hell happened to you?”
“I ran into Earl Logan last night on the way back to the motel. Don’t worry, I imagine this morning he looks worse than me.”
“I thought you were meant to turn the other cheek?”
“I got some work to do on that front. It’s definitely Brendan?” asked Devlin, keen to get off the topic of Earl. Stevens took the hint.
“Yeah, I mean, there ain’t exactly a lot to go on, but he had a Celtic cross at the top of his left arm, which checks out with the victim. So, it looks certain to me.”
“You okay, Greg?”
Stevens folded his arms and looked stubbornly into the distance. He was the commanding officer on site; he would not succumb to emotion.
“It’s just the damnedest thing,” he said after a moment. “I was supposed to go soon, and before him. That’s how I had it down, and that was bad enough. He was seventeen; he hadn’t even found out who he was going to be… There’s just nothing anyone can say to make this better.”
Devlin turned and took another look at the house. “He lives with his parents?”
“Yeah, they were on vacation in Florida. They’re on a flight back. We got a road check on the main highways out of Halton, canvassing for information, trying to catch anything of use. You want to suit up?”
“I’m okay to go into the crime scene?”
“I’m the supervising officer here now. Brendan’s murder has changed everything. Fox’s article didn’t hurt any either. You were right about that.”
“They made you lead?”
“Yeah, don’t worry. I know it’s Walker and Cutter’s way of offloading a headache. Any other officer would see it as potentially damaging to their career. But I don’t have that worry, right?”
“I guess.”
“You remember how to be a detective? Suit up, sign in, and let’s get on with it.”
Devlin zipped up into white coveralls and goggles, and his name was jotted down in the crime scene entry log. They walked passed Brendan’s Honda Civic parked on the driveway and up to the front door. Stevens pushed the door fully open so Devlin got a view down the long, dark hardwood floored hallway. There was a thick stripe of dry blood starting from about halfway down the hallway floor and leading into the kitchen where he could see the same crime technician that had attended up at Long Pine busy going over the countertops inch by inch.
Stevens walked ahead and stood by where the red trail began. As he spoke, although his words were dry, clipped, and factual, they sat on a perpetually moving sea of grief.
“Here’s where he fell initially. There were two shots to the back, possibly as he ran from the intruder down the hall toward the kitchen. One of those bullets would likely have been the cause of death.”
“Did you find either of them?”
“That’s the good part, yeah. We’ve found one lodged into the nick between the floor and wall. It’s a .22.”
“A subsonic round. Quiet. Did the neighbors see or hear anything?”
“No. It’s a comfortable neighborhood, the properties are spread out and away from each other. If they used a .22, then they could be pretty confident the sound wouldn’t have traveled.”
They walked toward the kitchen, and Devlin caught sight of one corner of a gourmet island, an object sitting on top of it. At first, he thought he was looking at a joint of pink, uncooked meat. He quickly recognized that he was actually looking at a raw and bloody stump. He also realized he was looking at the body from the neck end. The glossy granite countertop of the kitchen island had been used as a dissecting table.
They entered a large well-lit room with tall white cabinets and a wide arched window throwing light directly onto where the body lay. The skin was pale and static; suppleness and elasticity had departed. Dense red mass extruded from the neck and limbs. In truth, the corpse resembled nothing so much as an incomplete mannequin. Brendan had long departed; he was not here anymore. The white-tiled kitchen floor was a grotesque pattern of whirls. The blood that had drained and gushed off the table had been moved around into great concentric wheels like a work of abstract expressionism and had hardened in the daylight warmth. In the opposite corner of the kitchen below the window were a pile of sheets. What color they once were, it was not possible to tell for now they were a heavy, dark pile, crusted and soaked in blood with a broom standing on top and balanced against the wall.
“The dismemberment occurred postmortem, like Long Pine,” said Stevens. “But there was still plenty of blood. Bed linen was taken from the washer and used to wipe away any trace of footprints. The murderer exited out the back door onto a gravel path, leaving some trace of blood but no prints. Then they must have fled by car. We’re checking for tire marks to compare with the family’s cars. It’s all almost exactly the same as Long Pine. But there is one big difference: the murder weapon. It looks like they used a cleaver from the kitchen.” He pointed to a bloody item that had been tagged and was lying where it had been discarded on the floor.
“What’s the estimated time of death?” asked Devlin.
“Based on body temperature, about 3:00 a.m.”
A voice hollered from upstairs.
“Hey, Greg!”
“That’s Sergeant Taylor.” Stevens and Dev
lin followed the voice upstairs into what looked like Brendan’s room. The bed was unmade, curtains closed, and sneakers, pants, and socks lay strewn around the floor. On the walls were posters: Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Radiohead. Taylor’s broad and stout figure covered in a white CSI suit was standing over Brendan’s desk on which sat a MacBook and a collection of chargers and cell phones. He had an iPhone in his latex-gloved hand and was scrolling down the screen looking concerned.
“What you got, Keith?” Stevens asked.
“I think I found something. Kid had Grindr on his phone, the gay dating app. He’s got eight favorites but only one he was chatting to last night, someone called ‘Browneyes.’ Here, that’s the profile.” Taylor handed over the cell, and Stevens and Devlin studied it. The profile had a background photo that was a pair of cowboy boots standing in grass. The text in the foreground said, “6 foot two inches, 30 yrs, 2.5 miles away.”
“Brendan had broken up with some guy just recently,” said Stevens. “This could be him. In which case we got a suspect and a motive.”
“I think you’re gonna want to take a look at the last messages he got,” said Taylor ominously.
Stevens scrolled through Brendan’s short chat history. It looked like he’d wiped everything up until last night, and he probably would have wiped his last conversation if he’d lived to make the choice. There were two messages. The first was sent at just after midnight by Browneyes: “I’m in a terrible way, I’m lost without you…” Brendan had replied two minutes later: “Hey Earl. OK. Mom and Dad away. Come over.”
Stevens handed the cell to Devlin to read.
‘What do you think, Greg?” asked Taylor. “It can only be one Earl. The ranch has got to be exactly two and a half miles from here.”
“I think I better call Walker,” replied Stevens. “Looks like we’re going to pay the Logans a visit.”
22
“Where the hell is he?” Clay glanced at his watch. “Jesus, I said two o’clock on the dot.”
“Not like Earl to be late,” said Packer, his low voice rumbling through his huge barrel chest.
Packer was sitting in front of Clay’s desk, making a spacious leather armchair look like it was constructed for a child. His giant frame obscured the back of the chair, his huge thighs were pinned between the sides, and his ham hands flapped over the armrests. Packer was a disconcerting presence and not only due to his size. His left eye was bright blue, but his right eye was cloudy and much paler with no discernible iris or pupil. It was the product of a fall from a bucking horse when he was a young ranch hand. The horse was one of a dude string that hadn’t been ridden all winter. Packer had been called in to calm the horse down but ended up having his head stood on instead. But the fall was nothing compared to the intense pain he’d felt from a kicked-up stone that wedged between his eyelid and his cornea, causing blood and tears to weep from his eyes, leaving deep and lasting scarring. It had little effect on his vision except for a hypersensitivity to very bright lights. The effect on his appearance, however, was startling. When he looked down on someone, as he invariably did, his left eye was outward-looking, but his right eye seemed to be looking inward or, even more arrestingly, had the effect of possessing a spiritual, otherworldly quality. Generally speaking, nobody fucked with Packer.
“I haven’t got all day to sort this out. Listen, Packer, maybe we can do this another time—”
“I’d rather it got done now.” It was said in a matter-of-fact way, but even so, everything Packer said sounded like an ultimatum. Clay paused. He wasn’t particularly looking forward to this conversation with Earl, but Packer was right; the sooner it was done the better.
There was a knock at the door. Clay walked over to the door and swung it open. “Earl, where the hell have you—” He stopped midsentence when he saw Earl’s busted face. One of his eyes was bruised and grotesquely swollen, his nose broken and his lip split. Even Packer raised an eyebrow.
“Shit! What happened to you?” asked Clay. Earl said nothing. He sat, crossed his legs, and said without emotion, “Let’s get this done.”
Clay sat behind his desk eyeing Earl anxiously. “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” said Earl.
“The other guy?” Clay asked.
“He’s not dead or maimed or anything else you have to worry about.”
“Right. Right. Well, if you’re okay to go on...?”
“I told you, I’m fine. Let’s get this done.”
“If you’re absolutely sure?”
“Get on with it, Clay.”
“Okay. So, as we discussed, Packer is to come work for the lab full-time helping to manage the recipient herds. We’re going to bring in another foreman—”
“Fine.”
“Good for me,” growled Packer.
“—who I want to eventually take over your position, Earl.”
“What the fuck?” Earl exclaimed, his gaze flicking between the two men.
Clay was expecting a full-pitched outburst, and even Packer was uncertain about where Earl’s reaction might go. Clay gave his best shot at soothing a bear that had just had its lunch taken off him.
“I’m sorry, Earl, but I’ve had a rethink since yesterday. After the incident with Alvarez, I’ve had to promise the other guys that we’d get someone else in. I’ve given this a hell of a lot of thought, and I know it’s hard, and as your brother I will make damn sure that you’re looked after. I want you to know I would never, never abandon you.” Clay hadn’t expected to get this far without being shouted down, so it was already going far better than he’d expected. But Packer had noticed that Earl wasn’t actually listening to Clay any longer. Clay, who was by now completely absorbed in his speech, his set piece to his younger brother, kept plowing on. “I mean that. But you have to understand, I cannot keep you working here managing the men. It is not an… Earl? Earl? Are you listening to me?” Clay had now also noticed Earl’s complete lack of attention to what he was saying. He noticed too that not only was Earl not listening to him but instead was looking directly at the TV on the wall which had CNN on with the volume turned down.
Clay had never seen Earl like this before. His face had transformed. Clay had spent most of his life looking away from Earl, trying to ignore him. But for the first time in his life, he couldn’t help staring at Earl. He was transfixed by Earl’s face. Earl’s bruised eyes were full of pain and vulnerability. The scowl that had almost scarred his brow had vanished, and his small brown coffee-bean eyes were wide and brimming with feeling. He almost looked angelic. A single tear had formed and was rolling over his fractured, bruised cheekbone. Clay finally tore himself away and looked around to see what had grabbed Earl’s attention. A news headline about a murder in Halton was up on the screen. A photo of a teenager flashed up, and a chyron along the bottom read, “Young man decapitated in Halton Springs, Ohio.”
There was a sudden loud slam. Clay and Packer turned their attention back from the TV to find that Earl had gone.
23
Stevens’s cruiser pulled up in front of the ranch house, and the three men got out. Taylor made a beeline for the calving barn where some of the men were doing a cleanup. He shook hands and high-fived with a few of them and powwowed for a while. Stevens had deliberately taken Taylor along for the common touch, to ease their way onto the ranch. He’d been in Halton all his life and knew everyone there was to know. He had an everyman quality about him that put people at ease, and for a cop, he was fairly popular.
Devlin was stood apart and had a good look up and down the barns and trailers, but there was no sign of Earl. Not particularly surprising—twenty thousand acres was a lot of places to hide.
Stevens and Devlin approached the ranch house as Clay Logan came out to greet them flashing a smile.
“Gentlemen. I saw your car coming up the track and was awful curious to know what brings a priest and a deputy up to this far, far end of town.”
“Nice to see you, Clay,” said Stevens, and they shook hands w
armly, despite the circumstances of Stevens’s visit. Devlin could see there was a fair bit of familiarity between them.
“And I believe you’ve met Father Devlin.”
“Hi, Father. Nice to see you again. I really should have called you up. I meant to, I’m sorry. I checked with the men here, and unfortunately I couldn’t turn anything up on Ed.”
“Thanks, and don’t worry. I got another iron in the fire on that one.”
“Glad to hear it. Any help you need, you just let me know.”
“I will.”
“Clay, we’re actually here to see you about a very serious matter. Can we go somewhere private?”
“Sure, sure. Come on up to my office.”
Clay perched on his desk with his arms folded, and Devlin and Stevens sat in two leather chesterfield armchairs facing him.
The flat-screen television on the wall flashed up Brendan McKenzie’s face from time to time as they rolled out pretty much the same bulletin with the same information that they’d had this morning when the story broke.
“Terrible. Just terrible,” said Clay solemnly. “This town is going mad. It’s like a Greek tragedy. You got anywhere with this, Greg?”
“Actually, I think so. I’ve brought Father Devlin with me because he’s been invaluable in helping me with this investigation.”
“Well, of course—OSI, it’s an elite body. I know that. And hey, he must be doing good; it turned out you were right about the traveler folk. Does a lot of good for your reputation, Greg. Especially with Walker heading for retirement in a few years.” Nobody else would have noticed, but Devlin registered Stevens flinch at the mention of “in a few years.”
Clay studied Devlin’s new cuts and bruises. “You got another door slammed in your face, Father?”