A clap of thunder startled her, and heavy raindrops started to splash against the windshield. Christine pulled away from the passenger unloading area and flipped on the wipers. Then she slammed the brakes and jerked the car back to the curb, staring at the wiper blade now stopped in its upright position. A thin line of red trickled down the windshield, then was gone under a hard rain that couldn’t wash away the fact it was real, as real as the evidence they’d uncovered this afternoon. She grabbed her purse on the passenger seat and fished out her pills, then removed a new evidence bag from her forensic case in the backseat and stepped out of the car, oblivious to the torrent. Warily, she scanned both directions of the access way leading to the airport, blinking away raindrops. Then she carefully lifted the wiper blade and with her other rubber-gloved hand gently removed the small blue-green feather caught underneath it and slipped it into a protective sleeve.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The next morning, two hundred and eighty-five miles away in Weaversville, Claremont’s parents posted a $500,000 property bond after a bail hearing, literally betting the farm on their son’s innocence. Afterward, Hilda stood beside her living room window, staring out into a late-morning haze, waiting for Dr. Walstein to arrive. Her husband hadn’t wanted any breakfast and was troubled by a new rattle that had developed in his Chevy truck right after the FBI had removed the seats, looking for evidence they didn’t find.
The Claremonts’ son remained the only suspect in the sensational case. Under the court order, he wasn’t allowed off the farm. Two deputies were to be posted there around the clock, and Deputy Richard Owens and his partner, Jim Boles, of the Weaversville Police Station were standing the first watch at the end of the Claremont driveway after accompanying the suspect and his parents home. Hearing air brakes, the police officers looked up. A local bus came to a stop at an intersection near the Claremonts’ cornfield. Alerted, the deputies watched for anyone getting off—a clever news reporter or photographer hankering for a camera shot of the suspect, but neither deputy could see as the doors opened on the other side. A moment later the bus started up, passing Owens and Boles in a flourish of diesel exhaust. Owens studied the spot in front of the cornfield from which the bus pulled away. No one was there. Maybe some kid on board had gotten woozy and had to puke and then gotten back on board, he thought, and put it out of his mind.
A few minutes later, a jet-black Chrysler Concorde LXi pulled up to the deputies. Dr. Walstein tipped his Irish tweed rain hat and handed Owens his driver’s license. Owens checked his clipboard and then motioned Walstein to proceed down the drive.
The bail release terms required Claremont to submit to a psychological evaluation twice weekly. It also required the Claremonts to pay the doctor’s fees for each visit. Hilda hurried down the front porch steps as Walstein’s car crept down the drive. She handed him a check through the window so he wouldn’t have to get out.
“David’s down at the barn doing his chores, Doctor.”
Walstein followed the well-worn tractor traces around to the back of the barn. A muffled police broadcast sounded off in the cabin of the car. Walstein flipped open the glove box. The scanner’s diodes were flashing. “Jenkins reported that it’s for real—not a ten-fifteen. Claremont’s out on bail.” Walstein knew what the police code meant, confirming that David was no longer in police custody. He slammed the glove box shut, feeling nervous. David had been set free on a technicality, something about a lack of corroborative evidence. Was it more than just troubling visions? Had he missed something in the diagnosis? He drew his coat sleeve across his forehead to blot up the building perspiration.
A wooden ramp led up to a large set of doors that hung wide open. Walstein cut the motor, letting the car glide in neutral the rest of the way. He tapped the brakes, straining to see inside the cavernous barn before slipping out the driver’s side. He checked his jacket pockets. The syringe was in its baggie. He inserted his other hand cautiously in his other jacket pocket, careful not to touch the switch as he ran his fingers over the high-voltage Taser. He had no intention of using the sedative or the stun gun, but he’d promised his wife that he would bring them in order to allay her fears.
Walstein checked behind him one last time. He could see the police car at the top of the drive, just where it was supposed to be. The doctor let out a breath.
A shadow flickered past the ramp through the double doors, catching the doctor’s attention. Adrenaline pumped the doctor up the ramp. He hesitated by the open doorway, sniffing the fusty odors within. Bits of straw that had fallen from the high loft lay strewn about the heavily grooved floorboards.
“David?”
There was no answer.
Walstein ventured into the shadows, his shoes making hollow thuds, though he tried to keep his steps light. At the end of a long row of metal stanchions where cows had once stood to be milked, he saw light coming from behind a door cracked slightly open. An old rock tune was playing on a radio somewhere in the back.
“David?” Instinctively Walstein’s fingers entered the flaps of his jacket pockets. He walked past the stanchions, called out David’s name again.
Still there was no answer.
Something behind him bumped. Walstein spun on his heels, his hands in the ready position. He strained, blinking at the dark recesses, but saw no one there. A breeze caught one of the outer doors, slapped it back and forth. Overhead, there was a hay chute. A few wads of straw hung from its edges. A draft of cooler air found Walstein’s brow. He relaxed his grip a little in his pockets.
“David, this is Dr. Walstein. I’ve come for the required checkin, remember?” The doctor walked slowly forward. The doorway to the lit room was not twenty feet away. “If you’re busy, I can wait outside the barn in the car.”
Both barn doors crashed shut at once, consuming the doctor in sudden darkness. He aimed the Taser gun in the direction of the closed doors. The distinct tip-tap of rapid footsteps whirled him to his left. He thumbed the power button on. Six green lights glowed, registering full-strength voltage.
“Why, David.” Walstein sucked in a breath. “I…I didn’t hear you coming.”
The doctor took a step backward and tripped over a roll of baling wire, landing hard on the floor. Gasping, he struggled to pull his left hand out of his pocket. Rolling onto his side, he managed to free it. The hypodermic syringe hung from the doctor’s palm. Holding it closer, he focused on the measuring lines along the cylinder. The stopper was flush with the end of the cylinder, but somehow it didn’t disturb him that he’d injected himself with what was for him an overdose of sedative, given his slighter build than David’s.
A spear of sunlight cut through a loose barn board, highlighting the endless passage of dust particles. It wasn’t at all bad lying in the dark, only a little harder to breathe. Lethargically, Walstein blinked a few times, fumbled at the needle with fingers growing too numb to extract it from deep in his left palm. His arms went limp as a marionette’s, and he stared unfocused into space. The dimness above him shifted. Two eyes were gleaming down from the dusty vacuum of the barn—David Claremont’s face.
Or not.
Walstein couldn’t process the thought. A minute later he couldn’t even recall he’d had a thought. Suddenly he was rising with the dust onto his feet. How nice it was to be carried.
“David…you…shouldn’t…”
Walstein’s words came out not sounding like his, but that was because his mouth was squashed against the man’s shoulder. The doctor relaxed his chin into the well-worn cloth of the man’s jacket, like a baby does as it falls asleep. The lights went out.
Thirty minutes after Dr. Walstein had been cleared to enter the Claremonts’ residence Deputy Owens waved the sedan back out the driveway, recognizing the doctor’s Irish tweed hat, which was pulled down low over the driver’s brow. The other deputy, Boles, glanced inside the car as it passed by him and turned onto the blacktop: no passengers. Owens checked off the doctor’s name on his clipboard and watc
hed as the automobile slowly accelerated down the county road.
Neither deputy noticed the small swatch of fabric from Dr. Walstein’s jacket that had been caught in the trunk lid as it had slammed closed. And although the window glass was tinted, the appearance of a rumpled blanket across the backseat registered something in Deputy Boles’s mind. Whatever it was that registered, though, was lost when his cell phone chirped. He saw his new girlfriend’s number flash on the display, flipped open the phone, and gave her his full attention.
Shortly after the lunch hour Prusik got the call from the lab that she’d been waiting for. She now had the goods on the killer: the canning jars recovered from the Delphos tenement clearly contained human viscera. She had hoped preliminary DNA testing would be completed, matching the remains to one of the victims before giving Thorne the full details, but that would take another seventy-two hours, and she didn’t think she should wait.
Entering the managing director’s office, Prusik was surprised to hear Howard’s voice on the speakerphone. Beside Thorne’s desk stood a security guard.
“What in God’s name is the meaning of this!” Thorne slammed his best inkwell pen—the Montblanc—on the desk so hard it bounced. Veins bulged on either side of his shirt collar.
Thorne sailed a fax over his desktop. Prusik scooped it off the floor: the signed directive.
“What were you thinking, Christine? That you’d wait until Howard was out of the office before springing this?”
Prusik kept her eyes down, concentrating, trying to formulate words that wouldn’t come.
“No, Roger, sir, not at all. My actions were predicated on late-breaking information and forensic evidence discovered at a condemned building at thirteen seventy-one Hawthorne Boulevard in Delphos, apartment 3C. I called you. I tried to tell you on the phone, sir, at the time of the discovery.” She spoke louder to address Howard, who was still on the call. “Bruce, if you want to check out the apartment, we can—”
“Check it out?” Thorne tossed another paper her way. “Why don’t you check this out first? Please explain, Christine.”
Prusik scanned the face page of the Weaversville District Court’s stipulated bail order, which was dated earlier that morning.
“You mean the terms of Claremont’s bail release?” Prusik’s heartbeats ratcheted up.
“You know damn well what I mean!” Thorne’s forehead bunched up. “Howard has confirmed already that you were instrumental in this. That you assured Prosecuting Attorney Gray he had the full backing of the bureau to release the suspect. For God’s sake, Christine!”
“Roger, if you’ll give me a moment to explain, I can. We’ve uncovered critical new information on a Donald Holmquist, Claremont’s twin, that will answer all your—”
“Then you’ll have no trouble explaining this to me!”
Thorne flung a third document over the desk edge, which Prusik snatched midflight. It was an APB for David Claremont, now at large, who was wanted for three murders and the kidnapping of Dr. Irwin Walstein, a court-appointed psychiatrist who had gone missing from the Claremont farm following a scheduled medical appointment earlier that same day.
Prusik gasped. She took a chair, speechless.
“Since you’re at such a loss for words, I’ll talk. Effective immediately you’re relieved of duty. I’m suspending you. Consider yourself on paid leave for now. Be thankful—I could have your badge for this, permanently. The lab team is being notified as I speak that you are off the case. They don’t follow your orders anymore.”
Thorne removed his glasses. “Whatever your reasons, they’re unimportant now. Save them for your administrative discharge hearing.”
Prusik swallowed hard and then somehow found her voice. “The reason for Claremont’s release on bail—there’s a perfectly logical explanation if you’ll let me. It’s important that I explain.”
“Explain?” Thorne shook his head and snorted in disgust. “You had no business pulling a stunt like this, Christine. Signing a directive, speaking on behalf of the department on such a high-profile matter. Releasing a suspected murderer? Really, there is no explanation that will suffice.” His face was red with heat. “‘The complete backing of the FBI’—have you gone mad? You’re lucky I’m not firing you on the spot. As it is, my hands are tied now. There’s nothing more I can do for you.”
He meant Washington knew. He was following their orders.
“For your information, your Sheriff McFaron is part of the dragnet combing the southern Indiana area for Claremont right now. Am I correct, Bruce?” Thorne spoke directly into the speaker pod on his desk.
“I just got the call,” Howard’s voice came back. “He said he’s checking out someone down his way that identified Claremont from the police sketch.”
“Your hands may be tied, sir, I grant you that,” Prusik said, steeling herself, “but that still leaves open the matter of Donald Holmquist’s being at large. Eisen and Higgins ran background checks on his history.”
Prusik planted both hands on the front edge of Thorne’s desk. “I’ve got the goods, Roger. The physical evidence is an eye-opener from hell. David Claremont is no more responsible for Dr. Walstein’s disappearance than he is for those girls’ deaths. Holmquist is our man, sir. And…” She stopped short of telling him about the feather under her windshield wiper, realizing how ridiculous that would sound to Thorne. “And he’s on the move.”
“An interesting theory, Ms. Prusik.” Howard’s voice over the speakerphone was grating. “Especially since we’ve already obtained a set of Claremont’s prints from the doctor’s syringe that was found on the barn floor at the Claremont farm.”
“Fingerprints prove what? That Claremont may have been present? He lives there. And, besides, by my estimation, those are most likely his twin’s prints on that syringe, not Claremont’s. The friction ridges and whorls of Donald Holmquist’s are a very close match. Too close to exclude without running a bilateral print comparison of them both.”
Prusik held up the APB fax Howard had sent Thorne. “I challenge you, Bruce, to show me one bit of corroborative evidence that you’ve taken from the Claremont farm incriminating your suspect. So far, nothing you’ve sent to the lab even remotely ties Claremont to any of these crimes.”
“Excuse me,” interrupted Thorne, “but there’s an outraged community calling for my hide, demanding an answer from the FBI for authorizing Claremont’s release. The fact is, Special Agent Prusik, you’re officially relieved as of this moment. End of discussion.”
“You should know, sir,” Christine said, holding her ground, “that on the night of Claremont’s arrest, a report was filed with our Indianapolis field office by a Mrs. Henrietta Curry. The woman saw Holmquist riding on a bus bound from Chicago to Indianapolis. She sat next to him for over three hours, sir. We lost track of him once he arrived in Indianapolis, but I’m sure that very soon we’ll be able to confirm he subsequently traveled to Weaversville. He’s within our reach, sir.”
Thorne smiled bitterly, shaking his head. “You’re really something,” he said. “You don’t know when to let it go, do you? You never have, Christine.” His expression turned dead serious. “The local deputy charged to watch the Claremont farmhouse saw Walstein’s car leave,” he said. “He logged in the doctor when he first arrived at the Claremont farm, nobody else. A half hour later he noted the doctor’s car leaving. And now Claremont’s missing, just like that. The prints on the syringe corroborate more than mere presence at the scene, Christine.” Thorne thumped his forefinger on the desk. “You should have known better than to pull this kind of stunt! His prints are all over the hypodermic!”
Thorne’s secretary poked her head in. “Deputy Commissioner on line one.”
“That’ll be all.” Thorne shooed Christine away.
The security guard shadowed her as she walked back to her office and stood conspicuously outside her door while she collected a few personal things. She moved as slowly as she could, trying to sort things ou
t in her mind and formulate a plan. The true killer remained at large. In spite of present circumstances, she must find a way to navigate or another girl would surely die. She had to get in touch with McFaron.
She closed her briefcase and tried to phone Eisen and Higgins but with no luck. No doubt they were all down in the conference room being filled in by Howard over the speakerphone there.
Margaret stuck a pained face in the doorway.
“I’m so sorry, Margaret. I had no right getting you involved like I did. None. Please don’t tell me you’ve been put on leave, too.”
“Oh, pooh.” Margaret waved it off. “This will blow over, and I need a good vacation anyway.”
“I’m so, so sorry.” Prusik ducked her head and futzed at her desk.
“Oh, I almost forgot.” Margaret stepped into the office and closed the door. “Your flight to Crosshaven—it leaves in ninety minutes.” She held out a plane ticket.
Prusik looked up, puzzled. “You don’t understand. I’ve been taken off the case.”
“Don’t you remember? I reminded you after Sheriff McFaron flew back. Mrs. Greenwald, the scout leader, called to confirm. It’s all been arranged, Christine. The Brownie troop is expecting you to speak to them at their Echo Lake State Park outing this afternoon.”
Prusik flopped back in her chair. “I can’t go now.” She massaged her temples. “I’ve been put on administrative leave, probably on my way to being fired. I can’t very well show up as an example of professional success.”
“So you’re not going to honor your commitment to those little girls?”
Prusik raised her head, caught off guard by the older woman’s crustiness. “I’ve been relieved of duty, Margaret. Even if I wanted to go, I couldn’t. They’ve practically fired me, for Christ’s sake!”
“Woe unto you—flustered FBI agent cancels speaking engagement to a group of hopeful Brownies.” Margaret’s scorn was unmistakable. “Aren’t you forgetting that I was actually the one who signed your name to that directive?”
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