Lieutenant Taylor Jackson Collection, Volume 2

by J. T. Ellison

  He didn’t answer, just looked out the window. They were on Twenty-first Avenue, the streets remarkably clear for this time of night. Postholiday letdown; the city was sleepy after their long night on Friday.

  “You called Ariadne?” he asked.

  “I tried. She didn’t answer.”

  “We need to keep an eye on her. She might take it upon herself to try and track him down. You blew her off earlier, and she probably doesn’t trust you anymore.”

  “Listen, I know you don’t put any stock in the occult, McKenzie.”

  “I don’t. But I know enough about it to recognize that some people do. Look at these kids. They’ve been practicing witchcraft. They believe. They think this boy Raven has put a spell on them so they can’t talk. It’s not that they don’t want to talk, they do. But they honestly believe that they can’t. It’s fascinating, the phenomenon. Practically Stockholm syndrome.”

  “You think he has that kind of power over them?”

  “I do. Over the girl, Fane, at the very least. They were all in on this plan, all four of them. I think Raven took it upon himself to hurt Ember’s brother, and that’s where it all went south. He might have thought she wanted him to, but it was a miscalculation anyway. He overstepped his bounds, found the one thing that would break their group apart. You heard what they said about the sex rites. Fane and Raven have been sleeping together. There’s going to be a strong link between them. Incestuous relationships like that are sometimes overwhelming for those in them. She loves him because he’s her family and she’s in love with him as a man. She’s not grown-up enough to separate out love from sex. He makes her feel good and makes her feel ashamed of that at the same time. I’ll bet money that the dad was abusing her, too. She might have turned to her brother for protection.”

  “She doesn’t seem like much of an innocent to me.”

  “Innocent, no. But abused, yes. Looking for love any way she can get it? I assume the boy was mistreated too—look at his bisexual tendencies. He equates sex with love. In someone this young, that pathology is oftentimes learned.”

  Taylor turned on Woodmont, then turned left onto Hilldale Drive. The Merritt house was only a few blocks in, she could already smell the smoke. The usual fall scent of Nashville—burning leaves and rotting grass—was overlaid with the heady stench of gasoline.

  The house was unmistakable—black, sooty smears around the front door, a crowd of vehicles, some with lights flashing, others with doors flung wide. The ladder truck was regrouping, the firefighters rolling hoses, the fire hydrant being set back to rights. They’d contained the blaze quickly, gotten it under control and extinguished. Taylor knew how hard their fire department worked, was glad that they’d been so responsive tonight.

  She and Simari arrived at the Merritts at the same time, from two different directions. She let Simari pull over, waited for her to secure Max. Marcus was waiting for them, brown eyes haunted.

  “What’s up?” Taylor asked.

  The fire chief was behind Marcus, back to her. When he heard her voice, he turned with a huge smile. He took the few steps over to her, shook her hand. She could feel the small bones in her fingers scrunch together.

  “Lieutenant Jackson. Helluva night. You been out here all this time?”

  “No, sir. We just got here. Chief Andrew Rove, meet Detective Renn McKenzie, my newest acquisition.”

  The chief stuck out a meaty hand, grimy with soot. McKenzie shook it, smiled and then surreptitiously wiped his hand on the side of his jeans. Rove looked like a bear in his full fire suit, his hat perched precariously on his round head. His small blueberry-colored eyes were bloodshot and tired, but his smile was sincere.

  “Glad to have you, son. We’re finished in there. We’ve been working the place over with a fine-tooth comb. Definitely arson. Your crime-scene techs are in there, gatherin’ evidence.”

  “Great. Any ideas how the fire started?”

  “No doubt that gasoline was the accelerant. Ole Sniff found the point of origin where the gasoline had been originally spilled. Started in the basement. Amateur hour. Whoever did this thought the whole house would go up if the fire started low. May have been in a hurry, may have just been lazy.”

  He turned to McKenzie. “Ole Sniff’s our combustible gas detector. Best tracker in the business, can tell any kind of accelerant that’s been used. But we did find an empty gas can. If there’s more, we’ll get it.”

  “Thanks, Chief. I appreciate you coming out here for this. One of your guys will send the report over?”

  “Sure thing.” He yawned widely, not bothering to cover his mouth, and ambled off toward his car.

  Tim Davis wandered out of the house with several bags in his hands. Taylor jogged over to him. “Hey, Tim. What’s in the bags?”

  He gave her a tired smile, held up the bag in his left hand. “Soot and ash.” He held up the right. “More soot and more ash.”

  “Great.”

  “This is just the beginning. There are two bodies in the basement. The bulk of the fire was down there. The first floor got some damage, but the fire burned out quickly. It’s more a smoke problem.”

  “Whose bodies?”

  “Middle-aged male and female. That’s about all I could get. ME should be here in a few minutes.” He lumbered off toward his vehicle. Poor man, his night was just beginning.

  Taylor turned to McKenzie. “Wanna bet it’s Schuyler Merritt Senior and his ex-wife, Jackie Atilio?”

  “I’m not going to take that bet,” he said, eyes grim.

  A crowd of people had gathered to watch the fire burn, a few leaking away into the night now that the excitement looked to be past. When the ME’s van pulled up, the crowd got thick again. The vehicle stopped. Sam hopped out.

  “What’s happening, hot stuff?” Sam said, cracking a smile at her.

  “Hey,” Taylor said, surprised. “I figured you’d be home by now.”

  “My turn for night shift. I switched with Dr. Fox.”

  “Well, great. There are two bodies in the basement.”

  “Burned?” Sam asked, pulling protective gear over her clothes.

  Marcus shook his head. “A little singed around the edges. They were buried in the basement in a shallow grave, a layer of thin-set concrete on top of them. The fire burned hot around them, the area looked wrong to the firefighter who was down there. He jabbed it with his pick, it cracked apart easily.”

  “If they were buried, I’d assume the fire was set after they were dead.”

  “I think you’re right. They’re pretty far gone, a couple of weeks at least. Smells pretty nasty down there.”

  “Okay. Taylor, you want to come?”

  “No,” she said, but she’d already pulled on booties and purple gloves, secured her hair back. McKenzie waved her on, motioned toward the crowd. He was going to check what people had seen first.

  Simari excused herself to go run the perimeter of the scene with Max, just in case there were any more surprises.

  Marcus said, “I’ll walk you in. They still have a couple of hot spots, but they were able to get here quickly. I do have one witness, said there was a piece-of-crap car that’s usually around that’s missing. Said the kid who lived here drove it. They can’t remember the last time they saw Merritt Senior.”

  “Be sure you get the registration records for the car so we can put out a BOLO. So Schuyler Merritt was here today. Damn. We were so close.”

  “We usually are. Watch your step here at the front, it’s still a little warm.”

  The inside of the house was a muck of wet, charred carpet, a distinct line of demarcation where the fire had burned, running its course around the rooms from the basement into the kitchen. The smoke damage was extensive—the house would be hell to get cleaned up. Though if the owner were dead, that wouldn’t be an issue, at least not right away.

  The air was smoky still, deep with the scent of burned wood and plastic. Taylor covered her mouth with her gloved hand and coughed, follow
ed Marcus down the sooty staircase.

  She could quickly see why nothing much had been burned—the only thing in the basement was a large gun cabinet. Stone and metal weren’t the best conductors for fire—while the wood in the house had charred significantly, the rest was in decent shape.

  The floor had a hole dead center. The two bodies lay side by side, features destroyed by advanced decomposition.

  “Jesus. Can we ID them?”

  Sam circled the hole, then reached down and touched the wrist of the body closest to her. “Yes, there’s plenty left. Teeth might be the quickest and easiest, if you can find their dentist. They’re missing a finger each, by the way.”

  “From the fire? They burned off?”

  Sam squatted down for a closer look. “No, a straight-edge, maybe shears? They were forcibly removed.”

  “Good grief. Marcus, are there personal effects that made it through?”

  “Yes. I’ll go up and see what I can find. The den wasn’t touched by the fire, and it looked like there were some checkbooks and stuff on the desk.” He looked relieved as he walked away.

  McKenzie came down the stairs a moment later, eyebrow raised at the scene.

  “Neighbors say the boy has been coming and going a lot over the past few days. It’s all gossip up there—apparently Merritt kept to himself. The woman left, got remarried, took the girl with her, left the boy here. He was gone for a while—that would be the reform school—but he’s been back for about three weeks. No one had seen the father for about that time.”

  “That time frame fits with the level of decomp I’m seeing here,” Sam said.

  “Any idea how they were killed?”

  “Yep. Come here and take a look.”

  Sam had the head of one of the victims in her hands. Taylor leaned over the grave, she twisted the head to the side. “Gunshot wound. Both of them. Left temporal lobe. Small caliber pistol.”

  “At least we know what kind of weapon he has,” Taylor said. “I can imagine that if a boy with a gun walked into your bedroom and told you to take a pill he was holding, you might be inclined to do it.”

  “I think you’re right,” McKenzie said. “That does make sense.”

  Taylor looked at him. “So where is our boy Raven now?”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  June 19, 2004

  Northern Virginia

  Baldwin

  Baldwin was sitting in Goldman’s office. His personal problems could wait. He was finally focused the way he needed to be on this case. He sent a prayer upward, that the families of the fallen girls would understand. It would be nice to get their absolution, though he’d never forgive himself.

  Gretchen Rice had been gone for less than twenty-four hours. There was hope, a chance, that she was still alive. This was it. Their last attempt, a last-ditch effort to nail Arlen to the wall. Despite the shifts watching him, he’d managed to get another little girl.

  Baldwin had sifted through the files again and come up with the same answer. All the roads led to Harold Arlen. He knew there was evidence out there, real evidence. The thought made a flash of heat burn in his chest—he was still furious with Charlotte. What was she thinking? They could solve this case, close this case, without cheating. And to do that, they had to search Arlen’s house again. Slowly, carefully, methodically. This time, he was going to be in on the search. They’d missed something before, and by God he was going to help them find it.

  Goldman finally walked into the office and handed him a sheaf of papers.

  “The new warrant just came in. You think we’ll find something this time around?”

  “I can only hope. This is merely a formality. But I need to be sure. I want to cover every inch of that house, let my people have a chance to see it all firsthand. We missed something. And another girl was taken because of our negligence.”

  Goldman looked at him, brows knit tightly across his forehead.

  “Dr. Baldwin, you know that’s not the case. You’ve been doing this a long time. You know you’re not responsible for them. Arlen, if it is Arlen, is responsible. This is his fault, not yours. You didn’t kidnap and kill these girls.”

  “Either way, I want to find Gretchen, and I want to be able to get her home to her parents in one piece.”

  “That’s what we all want.”

  “Then let’s do it.”

  *

  Baldwin drove up to Great Falls with Goldman. Geroux, Sparrow and Butler were already outside of Arlen’s house, waiting for them. Charlotte was off the radar, and that was good. She hadn’t called in, and he didn’t care. He didn’t want to deal with her right now, with the bombshell she’d dropped in his lap. He needed to focus on getting Gretchen Rice back alive.

  He’d made an appointment to come in and talk with Garrett Woods late this evening. He’d take Garrett to dinner, expose his secret over steak and whisky, hope for the best. Garrett wanted to know what the meeting was about, knew instinctively there was something wrong, but Baldwin had purposefully been vague, wanting to wait until the search was over today. He had a good feeling about this. He wanted to be able to go in to his boss and lay a victory at his feet before he admitted his actions.

  The affair with Charlotte was a huge mistake, and Garrett would help him decide what to do next. Then, he could take whatever steps he needed to rebuild the trust of his team. Because they weren’t stupid people. He got the sense they all knew what had been going on with him and Charlotte—there’d been enough sidelong glances and whispered conversations. Sparrow had been especially aloof with him for the past couple of days. Yes, this was the right course of action. He’d fall on his sword, and they could all go back to work without the specter of Charlotte hovering around them like a well-dressed, insistent ghost.

  And he could decide what path he wanted to take with his own future.

  Goldman and Baldwin exited the vehicle. Goldman did a press check on his weapon—force of habit. The sun beat down on them. It was only about seventy degrees and very clear, a nice change from the past few days. It had been especially muggy for June in D.C. this week, their searches tempered by tendrils of humid oppressiveness. The violent rains had washed away the heaviness in the air.

  Geroux was the first to hail them. “We just got here. We don’t know where he is.”

  “What do you mean? Where who is?” Goldman asked.

  “Arlen. He’s not answering the door. We knocked about five times, and nothing.”

  “That’s impossible. My people have been on him all night. The power was off until early in the morning—there’s no way he could have gotten his car out of the garage. Both doors, front and back, are covered.”

  “Well, I’m telling you, no one’s answering the door.”

  Baldwin rushed up the stairs to the door. “We need to make entry now. I bet the bastard offed himself.”

  “That’s what we’re thinking, too.”

  Baldwin knocked once, hard, then tried the knob. Locked. He drew his weapon, lifted his leg and kicked, hard. Luckily, the dead bolt wasn’t thrown. The door swung open with a crash, the wood splintering from the frame. They filtered into the house carefully. Baldwin’s heart was pounding so hard he could barely hear the others calling out from the lower floors.

  “Clear.”

  “Clear.”

  “Garage is clear.”

  Baldwin was in Arlen’s bedroom now. Nothing was missing, nothing out of place. The closet held only clothes. He shouted, “Clear,” then went back downstairs.

  “We got nothing,” Geroux said. “It’s like he disappeared into thin air.”

  Baldwin could hear Goldman in the kitchen giving one of his detectives a major dressing-down. Arlen had obviously slipped out during the power outage. Though there were no open windows and the back door was locked, the front door’s bolt hadn’t been thrown. It was within the realm of possibility that Arlen had simply waited for the perfect moment and slipped out the door unnoticed.

  The detective kept insisti
ng that there was no way that could have happened; he and his partner were on the house all night, the only person who’d been in or out was the FBI chick, yesterday, during the storm. Goldman wasn’t hearing any of it.

  Baldwin shut his eyes for a minute, both to tune the shouting out and to will his adrenal gland back into submission. He took a deep breath, then another. A thought hit him. Oh, my God. Why hadn’t he considered that before?

  “The basement. We need to look in the basement again.”

  Goldman cut off his diatribe. “Why? We’ve been through it.”

  “Because there’s a tunnel,” Baldwin replied.

  *

  The basement was quiet as the grave. Baldwin went first, inching slowly down the stairs. If he was right, and he was suddenly sure he was, Arlen could be most anywhere. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it before.

  He felt the breeze before he saw the opening, smelled the damp, musty air. Old air.

  He had a small Maglite in his pocket. He turned it on, splayed the light over the far wall. There. The light spilled into a hole in the wall, a dark entrance to somewhere. The shelving unit was pulled back, the drywall along with it. In the light, it would have looked like seams in the mud, just what you’d expect from an unfinished basement. Baldwin tamped down his anger at the Fairfax crime-scene tech and his own team for missing it. My God, they might have been able to save Kaylie if they had seen this.

  He had just turned to signal to Geroux when the shooting started.

  He whipped back in a flash, saw Sparrow go down. He trained his weapon on that trajectory, saw Butler fall out of the corner of his eye. He started shooting, moving quickly to the mouth of the tunnel. He butted up against the edge, Geroux took the opposite side. Goldman and his detective had taken cover.

  Baldwin started to signal Geroux, but he whipped around into the mouth of the tunnel just as a fresh load of bullets winged through the cool air. Still firing, Geroux took one right in the neck and went down in a heap.

  Baldwin squeezed the trigger again and again. The returning shots stopped. There was a gurgling noise coming from about fifteen feet away. He’d hit the shooter. His training took over, he acted to neutralize the threat. Another shot fired, and the gurgling stopped with a strangled sigh.