by C. J. Lyons
She fought at the splintered wood that covered his leg until she was finally able to push it off him. There was no blood, but his leg was twisted to an unnatural angle.
Thankfully she couldn’t hear his cries of agony as she dragged him back under the desk. He collapsed in her arms, and they huddled together, TK protecting him with her body as hell rained down on top of them.
Chapter Twenty-Six
It was almost eight by the time Lucy and Valencia reached Beacon Falls. She’d planned to simply drop Valencia off but then decided it wouldn’t hurt to update herself on TK’s case before she headed to Greer in the morning.
As she and Valencia climbed the steps to the second floor where Lucy’s team had their workspace, she was surprised to see the lights on in the conference room.
“Why are you working so late?” she asked Wash, their technical analyst.
He was at his usual place in front of his computers, but he wasn’t tapping keys or swiping touchpads. Instead, he sat extraordinarily still—at least extraordinary for Wash, usually a study in perpetual motion—his wheelchair frozen in place as he listened through his headphones.
Something was wrong, Lucy could feel it. She rushed to look over his shoulder, expecting to find him on a video call with TK. Instead, his screens were blank except for one lonely tab opened to a website that hosted live police scanners.
“What happened?” Valencia asked, joining them. She had her phone out. “I can’t reach TK.”
Wash finally acknowledged their presence, his face stricken. “There was an explosion. And fire.”
“Where?”
“Greer. At the garage where the car they found was housed.”
“Doesn’t mean TK was there,” Lucy said. “Did you try her hotel?” She grabbed her own phone and dialed David Ruiz. There was a good chance he was with TK. No answer—it didn’t even ring through to voicemail.
“She’s not at the hotel, she’s not anywhere that I can find her. The explosion—there were fireworks in the building. The protesters at the courthouse, they panicked, ran. They’re saying at least three people were trampled, dozens more injured.”
“Try the detective she was working with,” Lucy told Valencia who’d made the initial contact with their clients in Greer. “Or the mayor; he should know what’s going on.”
“I’m trying. No one’s answering.” Valencia pulled a seat out from the antique dining table that served as the team’s workspace. The house at Beacon Falls, Valencia’s ancestral home, was filled with delicate, beautiful furniture like it. Too bad, because right now Lucy felt ready to break something.
“It was a body in an old car. Hell, you guys should have had leads on his ID narrowed down before TK ever even got to town,” she muttered as she paced.
“Wasn’t that easy. We couldn’t find any leads on a missing man from that era before TK got there. But she still ID’d them. Well, the man, at least.”
Lucy spun to him. “What do you mean at least?”
“Things kinda got a bit complicated,” he said sheepishly. “Don’t worry. TK had it all under control.”
“Wash—”
“Complicated how?” Valencia asked, her voice encouraging instead of the “tell me before I wring your neck” tone Lucy was about to snap at him.
Wash turned to his keyboards, seemed relieved by the familiar routine. He was the youngest of Lucy’s team, but in many ways, he was their guiding star, keeping them on course through investigations that often grew into tangled labyrinths. “First, they got the car out of the quarry. Then I noticed in the video they were taking before they opened it up that the guy was sitting in the passenger seat, not the driver’s, and he was handcuffed to the seat.”
“Handcuffed?” Lucy started but Valencia silenced her with a raised eyebrow. Handcuffed? What the hell had TK found in that quarry? Greer was nowhere near any organized crime hotspots—but maybe that made it ideal as a body dump?
“Yep,” Wash continued. “And then things got weird. TK opened the trunk and found three more bodies crammed in there.”
As he spoke, photos filled the large screen TV across the table from them. Gruesome images of skeletal remains coated with adipocere, a common part of the decomposition process when a body was immersed in water. Lucy glanced at Valencia, but the older woman was taking the images in stride.
“TK identified the guy in the passenger seat as a Greer police officer, Archibald Thomson. No record of his disappearance. Best we could narrow it down, he collected his paycheck in April, 1954 but not in May.” Photos of a man in uniform appeared. First, as a soldier in the Second World War, then as a police officer. He looked straight at the camera, his face creaseless, someone more excited than fearful of the future.
Then Wash put up photos of a skull and superimposed it over Thomson’s images. “This is what Dr. Madsen, the county coroner, was working on when I lost touch with her. We were running computer facial reconstruction algorithms on the victims’ skulls. Thomson was an easy match because we had photos we could use.”
“What about the victims from the trunk?” Lucy asked.
Why hadn’t TK called for help when she’d realized she was in over her head? No need to answer. If she knew TK, the former Marine hadn’t believed she was in trouble or needed help. Guess Lucy couldn’t fault her too much. After all, the case was sixty-some years old, no urgency.
No urgency. Yet here she was, edging toward the door, her gut clenched with a need to be there, now. Silly impulse. There was no help she could offer during a mass casualty response; she’d be more likely to get in the way of first responders. Still…she couldn’t deny her sense of urgency.
Wash distracted her by sending photos of three skulls to the screen. “It takes longer when the computer has no photos to compare with, has to start from scratch. Basically it loads tissue thickness just like a forensic sculptor would, building a face from the bone out.”
As he spoke, the faces slowly began to take shape. An African-American man, woman, and boy stared out at Lucy and Valencia. “That’s as far as we can go for now. Dr. Madsen is going to examine the bones, try to find more distinguishing details.”
“A family?” Lucy was surprised. “And the car came from DC? So, if the police officer was from Greer, maybe the family was visiting someone there as well?”
Wash shook his head. “No missing persons reported match their description from either DC or the entire state of Pennsylvania. Not for the three people in the trunk or Officer Thomson. At least nothing that made it into the databases or the records TK could find in Greer.” He shrugged. “Small towns, even big cities, sixty years ago…”
“No computers, you’re talking hand-written police blotters and paper reports,” Lucy said.
“If they were even reported missing,” Valencia put in. Both Wash and Lucy stared at her. “You’re both too young to remember how things were back then—I was just a girl myself, but if you were black and in trouble, you could vanish without anyone reporting it.”
“An entire family? I mean, we’re not talking criminals on the run here,” Lucy protested.
Valencia shrugged. “If you got the wrong people after you and yours, it was easier to disappear, start over fresh. But also easier—”
“For someone else to kill you, and your loved ones would be too intimidated to report it to the authorities,” Lucy finished for her. She frowned at the photos on the screen, unable to abandon her previous argument. “But an entire family? Why would anyone want to kill an entire family?”
“Not to mention a police officer,” Wash added. “How’d they get away with that?”
Lucy had had enough of speculation. “Only one place to find the answers. I’m headed to Greer. Call me right away if you hear anything from TK.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Time lost all meaning as the fireworks continued their bombardment. TK’s hearing became useless, and every time she closed her eyes, flashes of bright color stabbed at her vision. Smoke chok
ed her, sulfur and black powder, burning like hellfire.
All she could rely on was her sense of touch, gripping David tight. Then the rain began. Lashing, driving rain coming from all directions. Until finally a man’s arms pulled her away from David, and she realized it wasn’t rain at all, it was pressurized water from a fire hose.
Everything became a blur. At first she fought, until she was certain they weren’t abandoning David. Then she was out of the building, random fireworks still whizzing and blaring across the night sky.
The firemen carried her to the town square. The barricades had fallen, splintered on the ground. People from both sides of the protest, some crying, some with blood on their faces, staggered through the space in front of the courthouse where the night was crisscrossed by the lights of police and fire trucks. Others huddled on the grass of the town square, once so pristine and manicured, now torn up as if it had suffered a stampede.
From the shocked looks and the ambulances streaming back and forth, people being helped into the back of any vehicle available, taken away, she realized that the crowd must have run for their lives when the explosions began.
As her hearing slowly returned, she heard someone say that people were dead. A part of her wondered where they would put the bodies now that the morgue was destroyed—that was the part of her that couldn’t decide between hysterical laughter or uncontrollable tears.
Then they carried David out on a stretcher. She pushed away from the medic trying to force oxygen on her, losing most of the bandages he’d applied to her assorted burns and lacerations. They were nothing compared to the anguish that cast David’s face into a mask of pain.
She ran to him, grabbing his hand and refusing to let go until she was with him in the ambulance. One leg was twisted, shorter than the other, and he howled as they attached a splint and ratcheted it like a medieval torture device. She almost hauled off and hit one of the paramedics, but then David’s morphine kicked in and he fell back, blissfully unconscious.
The rest of the night was a blur. The hospital over the mountain in Altoona went into disaster mode as the casualties swarmed their ER.
TK blocked out everything except David, allowing herself to be separated from him only when the orthopedic surgeon took him away to operate on.
She sat stunned until a kind nurse took pity on her, cleaned and dressed her wounds, got her cleared by a doctor, and put her in David’s room to wait. She even let TK keep her weapons, although it was against hospital policy, once TK explained who she was and showed her carry permit. Good thing her wallet and phone had been in her pockets. She’d lost her computer in the carnage along with everything in her messenger bag.
Finally, they wheeled David back in, now on a large bed, one leg swathed and placed on a machine that kept it elevated. He was asleep, his body wired with monitors and IV tubing. The nurse assured her he was fine, so TK had scraped her chair close enough to take his hand in hers and did what any good soldier did after the battle was done and there was nothing left to do except prepare for the next one. She slept.
When she woke the next morning, it was to the irritating beep of a monitor, the invigorating scent of coffee, and the intriguing sound of Wash’s voice. “I know, you gotta love amateur enthusiasts, right? They come through every time.”
TK pried her eyes open. David sat upright in bed, his laptop—the source of Wash’s voice—open on a table. Before she could say anything, or find her voice through the scratchy, smoke-scented, sleep-thickened cotton that filled her mouth, Lucy walked through the door, carrying two cups of coffee in a cardboard carryout box along with a white bag stained with grease.
“Morning,” she said, setting the bag onto the windowsill and handing TK a cup of coffee. “You doing okay?”
TK took a sip of coffee. “I am now. David, are you all right?”
“Yep,” he said absently, peering at his computer screen. He held up a small button attached to a wire. “They let me regulate my own pain meds. All I have to do is push.”
His tone was much too mellow—didn’t he realize how close they’d come to dying?
She blamed it on the hit of caffeine as she bounced out of her chair, the events of the night pummeling her. “You’re not pushing yourself too hard, are you? Why are you talking with Wash? You just had surgery—Wash, he just had surgery!”
All eyes pivoted to TK—including Wash’s through the webcam. She clapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh, my God, I think I’m channeling my granny’s ghost.”
“Even your West Virginia hillbilly twang got worse. Did you hear it? You called me ‘Warsh.’ I was waiting for you to say something like holler or ain’t.” Wash laughed.
“Yeah, you all,” she purposefully clipped it into two distinct words, “can just forget that ever happened.”
“Right, like that’s gonna happen,” Wash answered. “Don’t worry about David—he’s already had a free consultation with Tommy.”
“Not that he was acting like a child,” Tommy put in from off screen. As the Beacon Group’s resident MD, the former ER pediatrician was their go-to for all things medical. “Valencia is here, too.”
“Good morning.” Valencia’s face tilted in above Wash’s shoulder. “Tell her the good news, Wash.”
“Right. Well, thanks to the fact that Washington DC totally changed their license plate design in 1953, and a search of Mopar along with several classic car databases that narrowed the original car dealer to one in Alexandria, Virginia who happened to specialize in selling cars to African-Americans—a niche customer base back then—”
Wash paused for breath and David took over. “And my suggesting he reach out to vintage car aficionados as well as searching the personal columns of the DC black dailies from May, 1954…we think we’ve found your victims.”
“I still need to confirm them,” Wash put in. “Hopefully the facial reconstruction software will give us enough to make a positive ID, but it’s a solid lead.”
TK was barely listening; she was too busy searching David’s face. He was lit with excitement, no pain that she could see, despite his leg and the multiple smaller lacerations and superficial burns that matched her own.
She shifted her weight, releasing a new wave of aches and pains and wished she also had access to a magic button that whisked pain away. But really, most of what she felt was sheer relief. They’d been lucky…so very lucky.
For a moment, the image of Madsen’s decapitated head filled her vision, but it was quickly replaced as Wash filled the computer screen with the breadcrumbs he and David had followed. “And here they are…the Mann family. Last seen leaving Cleveland on May 17, 1954, headed back home to Washington DC. Father was a surgeon, mother a schoolteacher. Neither was ever seen again. Or their four-year-old little girl, Maybelle.”
That caught her attention. “Dr. Madsen said it was a boy in the trunk with the two adults. She thought from the size of his skeleton he was at least ten to thirteen years old.”
Wash’s face reappeared. “Sorry, I couldn’t find anything about a boy. Maybe he was a hitchhiker they picked up?”
“But then where is Maybelle Mann?” Lucy asked. She’d been so quiet, TK had almost forgotten she was there. “She’d be in her late sixties now, if she’s still alive.”
“Wait,” TK said, her mind still cloudy. She took another gulp of coffee. “Are you saying we might actually have a witness?”
“We won’t know what we have until we find her.” Lucy’s tone was somber, but it did little to erase the grin from Wash’s face.
“Don’t worry, boss. I’m on it.”
“Me, too,” David added. “Seeing as I’m kind of worthless for much of anything else.”
TK bent down to kiss his forehead. “Not to me you aren’t,” she whispered. “I kinda like you tied to a bed.”
His blush was her reward. Before she could say anything more to totally embarrass him, her phone rang. She was amazed it still worked after the beating it had taken last night, gave credit t
o the waterproof, supposedly unbreakable case she’d invested in.
“TK, are you all right?” Grayson’s voice was hushed, almost reverential. As if he’d expected her to be dead or something. “What were you doing there? That building was supposed to be empty.”
“I’m fine, Grayson. Good morning to you.”
“Hey, so, my grandfather asked me to call.”
“The judge?”
“Yeah. He wants to see you. Says it’s about the case. That he remembered something from around the time the car would have gone into the quarry.”
Interesting that the old man hadn’t said anything yesterday when they’d met in the mayor’s office. But even then, she’d had the feeling that Philip Greer had known more than he’d let on in front of his son and grandson. “What’s his address?”
“Oh, I’m happy to drive—”
“No problems, just text me his info. I can make it there in half an hour.” She wrinkled her nose as she realized that the stench of smoke and sulfur that she couldn’t shake came from her own scorched and stained clothing. “Well, maybe—”
Lucy grabbed TK’s rucksack from the floor and held it before her. She must have retrieved it from the hotel in Greer. TK nodded her gratitude, the thought of a hot shower too tempting to ignore. “No, strike that. We’ll be there in forty-five minutes. Thanks, Grayson.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Lucy drove—Lucy always drove, but TK was okay with that; she liked being free to scan her environment.
They took the interstate from Altoona to Bald Eagle and then hit the back roads that wound around the mountains to Greer. TK navigated them to the address Grayson had supplied. Turned out it was on the river, between the quarry and the college, an elegant white colonial with enough square footage to definitely qualify as a mansion.