Bleeding Through: A Rachel Goddard Mystery (Rachel Goddard Mysteries)

by Parshall, Sandra

Tom nodded. He told Fagan about the Hadley family’s quarrel with Shelley over her work on Vance Lankford’s behalf.

  “That’s a possibility,” Fagan conceded. “But if she was abducted and murdered in Fairfax County, her killer’s most likely walking around there right now, not down here.”

  “I want to hear what you’ve got on her boyfriend, teachers, school friends.”

  “Yeah, I’ll fill you in.” Fagan gazed absently into space as he tapped an index finger on the wooden arm of his chair. “Why bring her body out here? That’s what puzzles me.”

  “I don’t know, but it makes me think the killer’s familiar with this area. Either came from Mason County or still lives here. But why would he go out of his way to bring his crime so close to home? Why not leave her where she died, or dump her somewhere far away, so he couldn’t be connected to it?”

  “People who do this kind of thing, they don’t think rationally,” Fagan said. “Their behavior’s got its own logic.”

  “I realize that.” Tom stifled his irritation at the other man’s instructive tone. “But he had the presence of mind to either kill her and hide her body for a month or keep her captive for all that time. I think we’re dealing with somebody who’s organized and gives some thought to what he’s doing.”

  “Maybe he got rid of her just because he needed room in his fridge for his next victim.”

  “Are you’re suggesting this is a serial killer?” Tom asked. “What do you base that on?”

  Fagan waved a hand as if trying to erase what he’d said. “Joke, joke.”

  Not a funny one, Tom thought, if you happened to have known the girl when she was alive and well. “There must be a reason why her body was brought here.”

  “You think the killer’s sending us a message?” Fagan delivered the question with a heavy dose of condescension. “You know how rare that kind of thing is?”

  Tom kept his own voice level and neutral. “It wouldn’t have to be a message to the police. All I know is that she was brought back to her home county, and she wasn’t buried. Whoever put her there knew she’d be found. We can’t even be sure she was abducted and killed in Fairfax County. She could’ve gone somewhere with the killer voluntarily, if it was somebody she knew and wasn’t afraid of. After she left the meeting with the innocence project team that night, she never got back in her car, did she?”

  “No,” Fagan said. “It was still parked in the lot, about a hundred feet from the door of the building. She probably never made it back to her car, but we didn’t find any signs of a struggle.”

  “No witnesses?”

  “No. The office is in a strip mall with small shops and a café. There were a few people around at the time, but we couldn’t turn up a single witness who remembered seeing the girl. Whatever happened, it was outside the range of the security camera over the door, and it went down quietly.” Fagan paused. “I believe she was murdered in Fairfax County, but I’ll stick around here for a while and talk to people who knew her, see if I can pick up any useful information.”

  “Sure,” Tom said. “You’ll get more cooperation if you go with me, not alone.”

  Fagan didn’t respond to that. “I want to take a look at where you found her. What kind of physical evidence did you pick up at the site?”

  “Just a lot of trash, and I doubt any of it relates to the crime, but the state lab’s going over all of it. Everything the crime scene guy found and everything the kids collected. The lab’s got the mattress too.”

  “Well,” Fagan said, rising. “Take me out there, will you?”

  Tom was tempted to say he had more pressing things to do and send Fagan out with another deputy, but he thought better of it. He’d reached a conclusion that he hadn’t shared with anybody else yet, and he wanted to see if Fagan, after viewing the body dump site, would come up with the same idea. He stood. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter Seven

  Rachel paused while dusting the coffee table for the second time. Was that a car pulling into the driveway? A jolt of anxiety set her heart racing, but she told herself it wasn’t Michelle and Kevin, they couldn’t be here already unless they’d left home well before dawn.

  But when she hurried to the window to look, there they were, getting out of Kevin’s silver Mercedes. For a second the whole scene felt like such a surreal blending of Rachel’s two lives that she could only stand and stare.

  While Kevin popped the trunk lid and walked around to the rear of the car, Michelle started along the front walk to the porch. Rachel stashed the dust cloth in a table drawer and ran to open the door.

  As Michelle mounted the steps, Rachel barely caught herself before she blurted out her shock at her sister’s appearance. The usual rosy blush of Michelle’s cheeks had faded, and recent weight loss emphasized her high cheekbones. Dark circles under her eyes spoke of sleepless nights. Her blond hair, pushed back over her ears, looked as if she hadn’t thoroughly combed it that morning.

  Rachel stepped onto the porch and Michelle rushed forward and caught her in a tight embrace. Michelle’s hair smelled faintly of apples, the perfume of the shampoo she’d used for years. She had always been slender, but now she felt alarmingly gaunt in Rachel’s embrace, her ribs palpable through her blouse and sweater. She clung fiercely, until Rachel pulled away.

  Sniffling, Michelle blinked back tears.

  “Hey,” Rachel said, then stopped because she didn’t know what she could say that would make the situation easier. Don’t cry? Everything’s okay? If that were true, no power could have dragged Michelle out here to the mountains, the country, where she might actually encounter a wild animal or a bug. Rachel looked past Michelle to Kevin, a big, handsome guy who would have fit anybody’s description of all-American. His face locked into a frown, his eyes haunted by worry, he climbed the steps with Michelle’s blue suitcase and a black overnight bag.

  “Thank you for letting me come,” Michelle said. Her gaze darted around as if checking to see whether anybody lurked nearby.

  Has it occurred to you that this stalker might follow Michelle? Tom’s conjecture popped into Rachel’s mind. But how likely was it that anybody would trail Michelle all the way out here? She was far away from the source of her problem, and she was safe. Rachel couldn’t help Michelle if she gave in to paranoia too.

  “Come in, come in.” Rachel ushered the two of them through the doorway.

  From the long center hallway, Michelle glanced right into the living room, left into the dining room. “What a homey little place.”

  A homey little place? Had she imagined the critical undertone to the comment? “I love it. It’s comfortable, and I like having so much outdoor space.”

  “Well, you always were a nature girl,” Michelle said.

  Kevin stood inside the door, still holding the luggage. Billy Bob bypassed Michelle and headed straight for Kevin, who set down the bags and stooped to scratch the bulldog’s head.

  “Meet Billy Bob,” Rachel said.

  “What a great dog.” Kevin laughed as Billy Bob angled his head to take full advantage of the scratching. “I’ve always wanted a bulldog.”

  “Oh, you have not.” Michelle’s indulgent little smile broke through her gloom. “You just want a dog, period.”

  She sounded, Rachel thought, like a mother who had long ago established that her child was not going to get a dog, however much he begged. “I’ll show you your room,” Rachel said. “Then we can relax and talk.”

  She forced herself to take the stairs at a normal speed instead of sprinting up two at a time. A mixture of excitement and apprehension kept her pulse pounding in her ears. When she reached the second floor landing she wiped her damp palms on the legs of her jeans.

  The door to Tom’s parents’ bedroom stood open. Frank lay curled on the bed, fast asleep, his back against one of the pillows.

  Kevin laughed. “This little guy hasn’t changed much since the last time we saw him. Still enjoying a life of ease.”

  That coaxed anot
her small smile from Michelle. Relieved by the break in tension, Rachel laughed and said, “I’ll dislodge him.”

  As she started for the bed, Frank raised his head and blinked at them.

  “No, it’s all right,” Michelle said. “Let him stay.” With her arms folded tightly across her midriff, she surveyed the room as if she had her own doubts about staying.

  “This room belonged to Tom’s father and mother,” Rachel said. “We’ve been doing some redecorating, but we haven’t gotten around to changing anything in here yet. We don’t normally use it, so…”

  “It looks very comfortable,” Michelle said. “You don’t have to apologize.”

  Rachel almost said she wasn’t apologizing, but she pulled herself up short. Oh, yes, you were. And you will not do it again. She drew a breath and let it out before she spoke. “You have your own bathroom here. Come downstairs when you’ve settled in. I’ll make some tea, unless you’d rather have coffee. If you’re hungry—”

  “Tea’s fine,” Kevin said, giving Rachel a knowing, sympathetic little smile. “Don’t go to a lot of trouble. We had breakfast so early that we stopped for an early lunch on the road. We’ll be fine until dinner.”

  In the kitchen, Rachel put a kettle of water on the range, grabbed cups from a cabinet and placed them on a tray. She popped open the plastic container where she kept tea bags and surveyed the selection. What would Michelle like? Tom didn’t drink hot tea, so all Rachel had were several of her own preferences. Michelle used to prefer Darjeeling, but did she still drink it?

  Oh, for god’s sake, don’t worry about every little thing. Rachel gripped the edge of the counter with both hands. Tom was right. She was a nervous wreck. They still had to get through the evening. Would Tom and Michelle liked each other, or at least be able to accept each other? Any tension that developed between them would make it harder for Rachel to give her sister the emotional support she needed.

  “Rachel?”

  Kevin’s voice made her spin around. He stood in the kitchen doorway, brow furrowed, hands jammed into his pants pockets.

  “Could you go up and talk to her now?” he asked. “She says she just got one of those phone calls, and she’s pretty upset. I’ll get out of the way. Can I take a look around the farm, maybe take Billy Bob with me?”

  “Sure, of course.” Rachel brushed past Kevin and ran upstairs to her sister.

  Chapter Eight

  Tom handled the steep incline easily in his boots with ridged soles, but Fagan’s dress shoes sent him sliding into the ravine like a skier making his first wobbly run down a slope. Every time Fagan collided with a rock, root, or scrawny bush, Tom grabbed him to keep him from tumbling head over heels the rest of the way.

  “You okay?” Tom asked when they both made it to the narrow strip of flat land at the bottom.

  Fagan leaned over, hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. “Man,” he gasped, “you must be part mountain goat.”

  Tom grinned. “Among other things.”

  Straightening, Fagan wiped beads of sweat off his upper lip and surveyed both sharply angled walls of the ravine. The one they’d just descended was a challenge but not impossible. The other side would require rock climbing skills. Fagan scanned the narrow area at the bottom, then looked up again. Tom guessed what he was thinking but didn’t press him. Somewhere nearby a pileated woodpecker pair exchanged cluk cluk calls.

  “Any other way to get in and out of here?” Fagan asked.

  “No. If there was, we’d call it a hollow. Over here’s where we found the body. Watch your step in all these vines.” Tom walked over to a rectangular spot free of vegetation. “The mattress was laying here long enough to smother the vines and weeds under it. But I believe the body was brought here in the last few days.”

  Joining Tom, Fagan studied the space. “The plastic she was wrapped in was clean?”

  “Spotless,” Tom said.

  Fagan looked upward again. “If the body was rolled or dragged—”

  “The plastic would have been dirty, probably torn too.”

  Fagan was silent a moment, frowning. “If she was wrapped in a blanket, a sheet, something that protected the plastic—”

  “It would have snagged in a dozen different places.” Tom waved a hand at the wild rhododendrons and other stunted shrubs that clung to the slope like barnacles on a ship’s hull. “There would have been plenty of fibers left behind, especially if a blanket was used.”

  “And the crime scene tech didn’t find any fibers?”

  “He picked up a few, but they probably came off the kids’ clothes yesterday.” Tom paused, then added, “You couldn’t roll a body straight down, with all the vegetation in the way. Dragging it, yeah, that’s possible—if the body was wrapped twice, then dragged carefully, weaving around a lot to stay clear of the brush, then the outer wrapping was removed and carried away.”

  Fagan stuck his right hand in his pant pocket and jingled his keys. “Lot of trouble to go to, out in the open where you don’t know when somebody might drive by.”

  Tom hoped that thing with the keys didn’t turn out to be a constant habit. He could get tired of it fast.

  “How’d somebody get a mattress down here?” Fagan asked.

  “Two guys standing at the top could throw a mattress, and it could make it all the way to the bottom before it hit. Two guys with enough muscle. The body wasn’t tossed, though. It was carried.” Tom cleared his throat and asked Fagan, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  Fagan’s eyebrows went up. “And what are you thinking, Captain?”

  “That one person might have managed it with a lot of time and effort. But it makes more sense to think two people carried Shelley Beecher’s body down here.”

  ***

  Michelle sat on the edge of the bed, a hand pressed to her forehead. Frank, sitting up on the bed and tensed to bolt, watched her with wide eyes. When Rachel walked in, the cat leapt off the bed and trotted out.

  Dropping her hand, Michelle watched Frank retreat. Emotion brought some of the color back to her cheeks, and tears rose to her eyes. “Even the cat doesn’t want to be around me.” She followed the words with a choked laugh.

  Rachel sat next to her sister. “Kevin said you got a call that upset you.”

  “He didn’t believe me.” Michelle plucked a tissue from the box on the bedside table and dabbed her eyes with it. “He doesn’t believe any of it.”

  “He knows you got a call,” Rachel pointed out. “He was right here with you.”

  “No, he was in the bathroom, with the water running. And my phone log says the caller’s number is blocked. I told him the caller spoke and used my name, but still—” Michelle blotted her eyes again with angry jabs. “I’m getting tired of my own husband looking at me like I’ve lost my mind.”

  “Mish—” Rachel searched for the right words. She didn’t think Michelle would invent such things, but she hoped her sister wasn’t in real danger. The harassment could be a prank, a nasty one that had gone on too long and had to be stopped. “Maybe Kevin just doesn’t know how to handle it.”

  “Well, neither do I. Who is this person? Why is he doing this to me?”

  “Are you positive it’s a man?”

  Michelle nodded. “When I first started getting calls, I couldn’t tell. For a while he didn’t say anything, he just…breathed, then hung up. When he started speaking, I knew it was a man. He whispers, a soft, creepy whisper, but I’m sure it’s a man.”

  “What did he say on the phone just now?”

  “He said, Are you enjoying your little vacation, Michelle? He knows where I am.” A tremor ran through Michelle’s body.

  “That’s what he wants you to believe. Maybe he’s just angry that you’re not at home and he can’t find you.” But what if he guessed where Michelle had gone and came after her? To reassure herself as much as Michelle, Rachel placed an arm around her sister’s shoulders, the way she had so many times when they were girls, and automatical
ly spoke the old, familiar words of comfort. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. You’re safe now.”

  Michelle jerked away from her and jumped up, an angry flush coloring her face. “Don’t treat me like a child! You’re just indulging me. I thought you’d understand after what you went through with Perry Nelson.”

  “The two situations aren’t exactly the same,” Rachel said, “but believe me, I do know how scared you must be.” Nelson had been a charming, blandly handsome young client who brought his dog to Rachel for treatment and grabbed an opportunity to steal her prescription pad. When a pharmacist alerted her that Nelson had presented orders for narcotics in amounts not normally prescribed for dogs, Rachel had pressed charges against him. Nelson retaliated with a campaign of harassment and, ultimately, by shooting her. “I still dream about it sometimes. So please don’t think I don’t understand.”

  Michelle wrapped her arms around her waist and stood rigid as a statue. Her face displayed every emotion she was sorting through, as if searching for one that suited her. Stubborn anger gave way to grudging acceptance of Rachel’s apology, only to be displaced by a fresh wave of anxiety. “I knew it was bad for you, but I had to experience it myself to really understand.”

  “I was lucky in a way,” Rachel said, “because I knew Perry Nelson, I understood why he wanted to hurt me.”

  “The police knew who he was too, and they knew what he was doing, but they didn’t do anything to keep him from hurting you,” Michelle said, her voice rising. “He almost killed you, while the police stood by and let it happen. I can’t even identify the person who’s harassing me, so what hope do I have of getting any protection?”

  Oh, god, Rachel thought, weary with tension. She felt helpless. Was there any right way to deal with this? Rubbing the knotted muscles at the back of her neck, she said, “Maybe Tom can help somehow. I promise he’ll take you seriously. Come sit down, please. If you need to talk, I’m here to listen.”

  Michelle returned to sit on the bed beside Rachel, but kept her arms clamped around her waist. She rocked slightly, back and forth.