by A. S. French
Astrid had known her for fewer than ten minutes, but already she liked her. ‘I thought most in this town were deeply religious and waiting to be greeted into the next world?’
‘It fluctuates dependent upon mood.’ Jones blew smoke into the air, and Astrid’s lungs grasped at it like a drowning woman reaching for safety. ‘Sometimes, when people come to the morgue to identify a body, in their grief, they ask me if I believe in God and an afterlife.’
‘How do you deal with that, Doc?’ Curiosity gripped Astrid.
The Coroner sucked on the cigarette. ‘Whose God, I could ask, yours or mine or a universal benevolent entity? Is there a benefactor God and another God responsible for visiting suffering in the world? Are they asking me this in the pursuit of validation of their beliefs, or perhaps looking for an external comfort in the most difficult of times?’
‘But you don’t say any of those things, do you?’
Jones blew warm smoke into the cold night air. ‘You’re right, Astrid, I don’t.’ The end of the cigarette sizzled in the dark. ‘I look them in the eyes and determine if they’re trying to catch me out or not, and then if I decide they’re genuine, I tell them yes, I believe in God. If I can provide even a small degree of comfort in a difficult time, I will.’
Astrid admired the woman, but she didn’t want to push her too much about her personal beliefs, so she changed tack. ‘Is your name a homage to a dead Rolling Stone?’
Dr Jones rolled the poison stick around in her mouth, succulent ruby lipstick glistening in the twilight. ‘He had those large, haunted eyes my mother loved. It says Brian on my birth certificate, but people have always called me Bri, so I pronounce it a different way now, so it sounds like French cheese.’ She blew an elegant collection of smoke circles into the air. ‘I could have named myself Indiana, but I wanted something less geographical on my driving licence.’
Astrid lapped in the second-hand fumes. ‘Don’t you get a lot of grief in this community?’
‘Don’t judge the town and its citizens on first impressions, Ms Snow. Most of them are decent people, good Christians, doing their utmost for themselves and those around them. A few fundamentalists who’ve attached themselves to Senator Brady’s coattails are not representative of who we are.’
‘What about the teenagers who’ve gone missing over the years?’
Dr Jones finished her cigarette and flicked its slumbering embers into the gloom. ‘We’re a small community with limited resources and funding. The authorities are not perfect, but we do our best. Some of those kids come back, and some are runaways desperate to be anywhere else.’ She glanced over as her colleagues removed Katie Spencer’s body from the ground.
‘And what about the others, Dr Jones; what happens to them?’
‘We try to find them, Ms Snow, and we keep our fingers crossed at all times.’
‘So, what do you think happened here?’
The Coroner watched her colleagues take the teenager’s remains away. ‘It looks like an accident to me. The girl probably slipped somewhere in the mud and knocked her head on something hard. I’m sure the officers will find evidence of that once they’ve searched along the bank. Then poor Katie likely fell into the river, unconscious while the water filled her lungs.’
‘You don’t think someone hit her, and then threw her in the river?’ Astrid pictured the terrible event in her mind.
‘It’s possible, of course, but I need to examine the wound in the lab to determine what amount of pressure was applied to her skull and at what angle. The Forensic Investigators have to do their work before I can present a conclusion.’
Astrid considered her words and gazed over the vast area around her; any bit of it could be part of a larger crime scene. ‘I look forward to reading your report, Doctor.’
The two women pulled apart and went their separate ways. Briana Jones’s comments echoed inside Astrid’s head as she watched the Coroner return to her colleagues. Grace was at her shoulder as the wind increased.
‘What happened with Fowler?’ Astrid brushed a stray hair from her face and recounted everything from his house. ‘And you believe what he said?’
They strode towards their respective cars.
‘I do for now.’ She unlocked the car and opened the door. ‘At least he confirmed that Senator Brady is more involved in what happened to Alex than he let on. We need to have another conversation with him soon.’
She was conscious that having Grace with her wasn’t going to last long, which meant getting access to certain people might evaporate quickly. She climbed into the car and followed Grace back to her place.
It was one o’clock in the morning when she took the glass of bourbon from Grace’s hand as she sipped at her drink.
‘We should rest and start again refreshed in a few hours.’
Astrid shook her head, knowing she wouldn’t get much sleep any time soon. ‘What did you make of the crime scene?’
‘It looked as if Katie drowned further up the river from where they found her. There were no signs on that side she or anyone else had been on the ground there. But, the Forensic team had only just started searching the area when I got there.’
‘Who found Spencer’s body?’
Grace finished her drink and poured herself another. Astrid noticed that this one, unlike the last, was a double. She drank half of it before replying.
‘It was one of the town’s oldest residents, Manny Burns. He lives in a ramshackle place on the edge of the woods. He was walking his dogs when he discovered her. He doesn’t have a phone, either a cell or a landline, in his cabin, so he had to go to Brady’s compound and get them to ring the police.’
It appears as if the Senator’s fingers are everywhere in this town.
‘Burns isn’t a suspect?’
Grace shook her glass, so the ice rattled against the sides. ‘I’m sure Cope and Wylie will grill him all night but, even if it wasn’t an accident, I can’t see him involved in anything criminal. He’s lived here for seventy years without any brush with the law; not even a parking ticket.’ She bit through an ice cube. ‘Manny isn’t a murderer.’
‘Is he tall with shaggy grey hair?’
‘That sounds like him.’
‘I saw him when I broke into the Senator’s compound, wandering in the woods. If he lives close by and walks his dogs there regularly, perhaps he noticed Alex when they let her go.’
Grace finished her drink with a gulp. ‘I guess it’s worth having a word with him.’
Astrid ran her finger around the top of the glass. ‘And ask him about Katie Spencer at the same time.’
‘You think they might be connected?’
‘One teenager disappears, while another suffers an apparent accidental death close to where the first girl was last seen. That’s very coincidental, and I don’t believe in coincidences. Did you get the list of missing kids from your station?’
Grace stood and grabbed her laptop. She flipped the lid open and went online. ‘I emailed everything to myself just in case things disappear again.’
‘Are you allowed to do that?’ Astrid would have been detained and interrogated for a week if she’d done something similar while at the Agency.
‘It’s my work email, so it’s okay. I can copy the data into my Cloud account.’
Grace appeared to be unconcerned about any potential reprimands she might receive from her employers. She handed the computer to Astrid, who scanned the details.
‘This is all the info for children up to the age of eighteen reported missing for the last two years; is that as far back as the police records go?’
‘Only online; there are more paper-based ones stacked in the basement. I thought this would do us for now.’
Astrid wiped a piece of dust from the screen. ‘This doesn’t include those classed as runaways or kids who’ve disappeared from the town, but haven’t been officially reported as missing?’
‘No. I’d have to search through a lot of other paperwork to get ev
en close to those numbers.’
Astrid noticed the tiredness in Grace’s voice as she opened another browser window and searched for missing persons data across the United States. She twisted the screen towards Grace.
‘Around two thousand children go missing every day in the US. That’s eight hundred thousand a year.’ She did a quick calculation in her head. ‘That’s roughly nought point three per cent of the population. How many people live in Angel Springs?’
‘I think the last census was just over thirty thousand.’
‘On this data, you’ve got twelve kids reported missing over twenty months, one every two months. Twelve out of thirty thousand is…’ Astrid scrunched her eyes into an unpleasant position. ‘That’s a lot less than nought point three per cent of the population.’
‘And your point is?’ Grace said.
Astrid pushed her drink away without finishing it. ‘Well, we’re ignoring many factors here to do a swift analysis of the statistics, including separating the data by age groups and population density, but I’d expect higher numbers for a place this size, even with runaways and kids who eventually return.’
‘I’m still not sure what you’re getting at, Astrid.’
‘What I’m saying is, I think your town has a lot more kids missing than you realise or that people would like to admit. I’d guess those numbers we don’t have, those kids who are missing even from your unrecorded data, probably come from communities or homes where there isn’t someone to report them missing, or they don’t care.’
She remembered the local push for Senator Brady’s re-election and all the advertising dotted through the town. ‘And in some places, certain crimes, or possible crimes, go unreported so as not to promote a negative perception of the town. A few missing teenagers is hardly unusual in a place the size of Angel Springs.’
Grace slumped against the wall, ashen-faced and grey. ‘But, if your numbers are correct, we’d be looking at… at…’
‘Around one hundred a year,’ Astrid said. ‘Which is ridiculous because any town would know if a hundred kids a year were vanishing from their communities, right?’
‘I’d hope so,’ said Grace.
‘And that’s why all those other factors we’re not including come into it.’ She ran the numbers through her head. ‘If we say teenagers make up around fifteen per cent of the population, it still leaves many missing kids. Plus, it’s easier to disappear without anyone noticing if you’re living in a big city. Still, you’ve got to admit that, regardless of the size of the population and the spread of geography, two thousand missing kids a day is a hell of a lot for any country.’
Grace grimaced. ‘It doesn’t bear thinking about.’
Silence engulfed the room. Astrid stared at her new partner. ‘But we have to, Grace. I think there’s more at stake here than Alex Sanchez.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Sometimes, some of the most violent crimes go unnoticed, even to law enforcement, because the perpetrators are clever enough to keep their actions from the public eye. Take Katie Spencer’s death, for example.’
Grace narrowed her eyes. ‘You’ll have to explain it to me because I’m confused now.’
‘If the person who found her body, this old man, had taken her to his place and buried her or disposed of her remains in some other way, we’d never have known. And since she’s a runaway who few people appear concerned about, including your colleagues, it probably would have stayed like that forever.’
Grace scowled at her. ‘I told you, Manny’s not a killer.’
Astrid shrugged off her partner’s annoyance. ‘At some point, Grace, you’ll have to tell me why you’re so convinced about his innocence, but that’s not what I’m getting at. All I’m saying is that if a criminal is clever enough and has the means, they can keep their crimes undiscovered. And in this modern age, with virtually all knowledge easily accessible online, more and more criminals understand how forensic countermeasures work.’
‘You believe we’ll never find Alex because her killer has concealed her body somewhere?’
Astrid didn’t want to think that and wouldn’t admit it. ‘I’m so tired, Grace, I don’t know what I’m saying.’
Grace went to the window, closed the curtains, and then locked the door. ‘I’ll take the sofa, and you have the bed.’
Astrid grabbed a cushion and dropped it on to the end of the couch. ‘You’ll barely fit on this, Grace; there’s no way you’d get any sleep on here. I find it hard to believe you even have a bed you can stretch out on in comfort.’
Grace moved towards her bedroom. ‘Okay, you’ve convinced me, and I had the bed custom made. It cost me a fortune.’ She checked her watch. ‘I’ll set the alarm for seven; then we’ll go and interview Manny.’
‘Sweet dreams, partner.’ Astrid flopped on to the sofa.
Officer Crowley’s hand was on her bedroom door when she spoke. ‘You think more kids have gone missing, don’t you, and nobody knows about them.’
Astrid shut her eyes and prepared to switch her mind off. ‘Someone knows about them, Grace; someone always does.’
11 She’s Lost Control
She got to sleep around four o’clock, only to wake three hours later covered in sweat and with the image of her father gazing at her. When Astrid swept the daze from her eyes and her mind, Grace was standing over her.
‘I think you were having a nightmare. I heard you from my room.’
Astrid crawled from the sofa, bones aching as her brain struggled to deal with the interrupted sleep. ‘I’m sorry if I woke you, Grace.’ She pushed her arms into her sides in an attempt to control the trembling.
Why was this happening now?
She’d shoved those memories into the shadows a long time ago. She stumbled into the bathroom and buried her head in the sink, submerging herself into the running water, letting the chill return her to the present. When she lifted up, she’d missed Grace speaking to her.
‘What?’
She dried her face. Her teeth were held together by grit, the back of her throat resembling sandpaper. She spread a thick line of toothpaste on to her finger and used it to cleanse her mouth before spitting it into the sink. An aroma of mint surrounded her as she returned to the lounge.
Grace stared at her. ‘I said I was up anyway, so there’s no need to apologise. Do you want to go out for breakfast, or I’ll make eggs and toast?’
Astrid stretched her shoulders. ‘I’ll watch you cook, and we’ll discuss tactics for today.’
‘Great; let’s crack on.’
She slid into a chair as Grace sprayed oil into a pan. She smelt at her armpit, narrowing her eyes as she watched the food fry.
‘I’ll need a shower and a change of clothes.’
‘No problem, partner. How do you like your toast?’ Grace dropped bread into the toaster.
‘Well done without being burnt. Do you know if those Detectives, Cope and Wylie, took Burns in for questioning?’ Astrid reached for a glass of orange juice. It was cold against her lips and sent a shiver through her throat.
‘Knowing them, I’d guess he’ll still be at the station. They’ll make him wait before interviewing him.’ A dark shadow crossed her face. ‘Do you want to go there and speak to him before they do?’
‘You could arrange that?’
‘If we can avoid those two. I think Tanner is wary of you, which means he’ll be wary of me while we’re together.’
Astrid enjoyed the smell of the fried eggs. ‘Cope and Wylie didn’t seem too enamoured about seeing us at the crime scene. How well do you know them?’
‘Down by the river was the first time they’ve acknowledged my existence.’ Grace couldn’t hide the disappointment in her voice. ‘When the other officers talk about them, she seems to have many admirers, while everyone avoids him. He’s a bit intense, from what I gather. Do you want to see Manny before they do?’
Astrid considered the idea as she finished her juice. ‘No; let them soften him up fi
rst. We’ll speak to him when he goes home.’ She wouldn’t feel awake until after a shower. ‘We’ll stop off at the station on the way there after breakfast.’
Grace poked at the yellow of the eggs. ‘What do you need there?’
‘If you can find out what time he’s due to be released, we’ll follow him home.’
Grace flipped at the food in the pan. ‘Why not talk to him there?’
‘If Manny is guilty, he might give something away on his journey home.’ Astrid’s stomach grumbled. ‘Maybe he’ll visit someone of interest.’
A large frown consumed Grace’s face as she fiddled with her phone. ‘I told you before: there’s no way he could hurt anyone, let alone a kid.’
‘I heard what you said, and I don’t doubt your belief in him, but let’s not take anything for granted. We’ll watch what he does after the interrogation, and then speak to him.’
The bread popped out of the toaster as Grace finished the eggs and placed them on to plates. She handed two slices of toast to Astrid before sending a text. The reply was instantaneous.
‘The desk sergeant says our suspect will be out in an hour.’
Astrid grabbed a slice of toast before heading to the shower. ‘That leaves me plenty of time to get ready.’
Fifty minutes later, they were in the car and sitting outside the police station. Grace pushed the seat as far back as it could go to stretch her legs.
‘I wonder how hard they were on Manny.’
Astrid sensed a connection between her and the old man. ‘Why don’t you think this guy could be a suspect in our case; or for the death of Katie Spencer?’
Grace lifted her hands on to the steering wheel, gripping the thick plastic as if she wanted to snap it in half. Astrid watched her regain control and steady her breathing.
‘When I was eight, Manny saved my life.’ She peered through the windscreen at her colleagues entering the station. ‘I was all alone in those woods, no idea how I got there when I fell down a well. I was there for hours, only the rats and the damp to keep me company. The town sent out a search party, but he found me, him and his dogs. He threw a rope down and pulled me out. I knew then what I know now: he couldn’t hurt any kids.’