XIV
“What?” Dent stared up at Sheriff Bobseyn, wondering from where the man drew his conclusion.
Instead of answering, the man stepped to the table, grabbed Fifth by the shoulders, and planted a kiss atop her head. He then began sliding pictures of the crime scenes around, intent on finding one in particular. He picked up a picture, tossed it aside, kept rummaging.
“They used a kid to get in,” he said softly, like he doubted his own words and speaking them louder would make them lose their validity. “Three of the crime scenes had milk, Dent!”
Dent looked from Fifth’s cup of milk to his and the sheriff’s mugs of coffee and then to Bobseyn. “So?” he prompted.
“So ….” Bobseyn straightened up and one, two, three slapped down three photos from separate crime scenes. All three had a picture of a cup of milk in them.
“Milk,” he announced. “Not coffee, not tea, but—”
“Milk!” Fifth exclaimed, finishing the sheriff’s sentence.
Dent tried again. “So?”
“So,” Bobseyn said slowly, but then began shaking his head. “So, I don’t know for sure.” His shoulders slumped momentarily but came back up with a deep breath. “It may be a stretch, but it’s the first real link to all the scenes.”
“Three scenes,” Dent corrected. “Not all.”
“Three,” Bobseyn conceded, but Dent could tell the man was animated over his discovery. And to be honest, Dent thought the man had something with the idea. Small chance of solving the murders, but a small chance was still a chance.
So he asked himself, Why kids?
He looked across the table to Fifth. Why did he stick around the girl? Why did she stick with him? Why did normal people stick together? Loneliness? Kinship? A sense of belonging?
Dent motioned for Bobseyn to sit back down. “Go on,” he said, waving his hand at the pictures the sheriff had placed before him.
Bobseyn’s high cheeks seemed to go even higher now that it seemed Dent had opened his mind to the possibility of the kid-thing being a workable angle.
“Maybe,” Bobseyn started, “they use a child to give the victims a sense of ease, to make the victims more welcoming to a family instead of a single person. A child would present no threat to the victims, even triggering them to invite the perpetrators inside their houses.”
Dent inclined his head at the solid train of thought.
The sheriff ran with it. “A majority of the victims had no close family or friends. I know this from personal experience and also from the lack of contact, either digital or paper, that these victims had with others.”
“And you think that the perpetrators used that against the victims, used it as their way in.”
“Yes, I do.”
Fifth leaned forward, looked at the pictures closely. Dent knew that it was inappropriate for a girl her age to view such heinous scenes, but this girl had seen plenty scenes just like those, and in person.
“Why did they need to get on the victim’s good side anyway?” she asked no one in particular.
“That, young miss, is what we need to figure out.” He looked to Dent, maybe hoping he had something to offer.
Dent looked down at the pictures, ran through variables and possible scenarios. He came up with, “Isolated individuals, targeted for that fact, who were willing to let possible strangers into their houses, possible killers, because they had a child with them. If anything, I suppose we could narrow down the field of future targets.”
Bobseyn put a hand to his chin, picking up where Dent left off. “Something that this ‘family’ offered the victims that the victims wanted.”
This was beyond Dent’s understanding. Needs and wants that weren’t based on primal aspects of living were not his forte. So he asked, “What did the victims want?”
Fifth answered, quickly, and without hesitation. “Friends.”
Dent saw Bobseyn give the girl a look. It was subtle — the slight drop of the corners of his mouth, the gentle lifting of his brows — and then the sheriff patted the girl’s arm softly. Fifth looked down at the table, but didn’t pull her arm away at the contact.
“That may just be it, young miss. We all want to find others we can connect with, don’t we?”
Fifth mumbled an incoherent answer.
One more gentle pat and then Sheriff Bobseyn asked the group, “And what did the killers want in return?”
This was Dent’s area of expertise. Base actions, base results. “Money,” he said. “Power.”
The table went silent, letting the information sink in.
Then it was Fifth that asked the most pertinent question of the night. She tapped the picture of the woman who’d supposedly stabbed herself twice and asked, “Hey guys, if these lonely people die, who gets all their stuff?”
“You mean like a will and trust?” Bobseyn clarified.
A shrug. “I guess.”
He flipped through a few paper-clipped stacks and said, “I really don’t know. Closest relatives, I’d suppose.”
“And if they had no relatives?” she asked. “If they didn’t talk to their family, who then?”
Bobseyn flashed his teeth at the girl. “That, young miss, is a darned good question.”
Fifth seemed to lift herself up higher in her chair and flashed her teeth back. She was obviously proud of herself, Dent surmised.
There was something that the sheriff made no mention of, but Dent knew came up in several places in the investigation reports.
“What about this compound up north?” he asked. “The one that your reports mention a few people seeing some of the ‘devotees’ walking around either before or after the murders.”
Bobseyn’s shoulders tensed and Dent noticed the man’s right hand ball into a fist. Only after his body relaxed did the sheriff answer with, “Bunch of new-age hippies up there. All peace and love and goodwill unto others. Weird lot, but nothing about them screams murder.”
“A cult?” Fifth asked, her eyes lighting up.
“No, no. Just people trying to spread their way of life as the best.”
“A cult,” Fifth said again, this time a statement, not a question.
“Harmless,” the sheriff came back with.
Fifth opened her mouth, but Dent gestured for her to hush up. She complied, but slit her eyes at him even so.
Just then a call came in on Sheriff Bobseyn’s two-way on the kitchen counter, asking for his assistance in a matter of some disorderly teenagers off in town somewhere. He chirped in his response and turned back to the table.
“I’ve got to get going,” he said. “Murders or not, Graftsprings still has its normal share of policing that needs to be done.” He grabbed some belongings, checked his watch, and made to leave.
“Well, you guys have your rooms already,” he said. “Fresh linens, towels. You know where the fridge is, cups, plates,” he pointed to cupboards. “You get yourselves settled in. Need anything, I’ve got my cell on me.”
Dent thanked the hospitable sheriff.
“Oh, and spare keys to the house are in the bowl on the key table. You need to leave, just lock up behind you. I shouldn’t be out too late.”
“We’ll be fine, Bobseyn.”
“Okay. Well, anything else?”
Dent thought a moment and then asked, “Yes. What’s a key table?”
XV
“You know you have your own room, right?” Dent asked Fifth, who was in her light blue pajama pants and bright pink, long-sleeved shirt. The sheriff had been gone thirty minutes and, after reorganizing the files on the kitchen table, Dent decided it best to try to get some sleep for the night.
The girl was exploring his room, picking up everything that wasn’t bolted down, thumbing through paperback books on the bookcase, opening and closing drawers.
“I like yours better,” she said, with her face buried in a drawer full of neatly folded towels.
“They’re the same,” he told her, speaking of the rooms.
“No, they’re not. You have a TV, I don’t. Your room has a window to the backyard. There’s one more chair in here than in mine, your room is done in autumn colors and trim while mine is—”
“Fine,” he relented, forcing her to stop talking and shoot him a lopsided grin. “They are not the same.”
Satisfied, she bounced onto the queen-sized bed, facing him. “So, what do you think?”
“I said the rooms were not the same.”
“No, Dent. About the murders. What do you think is going on with the murders?”
“Oh.” Spinning it around to face her, Dent sat in the narrow chair in front of the small desk. “Money. That compound.”
“Did you notice the sheriff try to blow me off when I asked about the cult?”
“I did.”
“And I thought it was weird how he wasn’t pressing the investigation on the compound.”
The girl was perceptive. Sheriff Bobseyn was outright blunt about not looking at the compound, but Dent was — What? Proud? — of the girl for picking up on it. The teasing of emotions she sometimes called up in him were about as logical as rain falling upwards.
Getting back to the subject at hand, he told her, “That’s why I want to investigate the compound myself.”
She tucked her legs under herself and leaned forward, whispering, “You think that’s where the eTech connection is, huh?”
“If it is, I don’t know why it would be affecting people outside the compound. Unless they’re carrying a device with them when they leave.”
“Hmmm.” She bounced up and down on the bed in what Dent knew to be her way of thinking things through. “Maybe that’s why the sheriff doesn’t care about the compound. He doesn’t know how eTech really works.” She chewed her lip, thinking.
Suddenly, she blurted out, “What do you think of the sheriff?”
“Good guy. In over his head with these murders.”
She stared out the window in the wall to her right.
Dent leaned forward on the chair, catching her attention. When she looked to him he said, “You tried,” he pointed at his temple, “on him, didn’t you?”
She didn’t look bothered that he called her out on it. She simply stated, “It didn’t work.”
Dent leaned back. The fact she tried manipulating the man was expected. That’s what she did. The fact it didn’t work posed some pertinent questions. But then again, where emotions were concerned, Dent had no gauge on what to base how effective the girl was.
It looked as if she was expecting something from him so he told her, “Like any other muscle, or weapon, you need practice with it to make yourself stronger and competent.”
“True.” She seemed unconvinced, her lower lip sticking out further than the top. “It’s not that it doesn’t work, really. I think it’s more how people react to whatever I try forcing on them. People don’t respond the same way to the same emotion. Like back at that diner where you left your keys in the car? I tried making the waitress like me enough to buy our dinner, but her feelings for her own family overpowered me. Happiness means different things to different people. Maybe with the sheriff, he just had too much on his mind.”
“You can’t always count on it working the way you expect, Fifth.” The waitress back at that diner was case in point.
Her lower lip went back into place and she bounced once or twice on the bed. “That’s why I have you!”
Dent made a low sound that could have been mistaken for agreement. After a short moment, he stood up and put the chair back in its rightful place. He then yanked the blanket from under her, which sent her into a tumbling roll to the head of the bed, and snagged one of the pillows from underneath her tangled body.
Righting herself and running a hand through her mussed hair, she asked, “What are you doing?”
He tossed the pillow onto the sofa chair near the bed and plopped down into it. He pulled the blanket up to his chest and replied, “Making my bed.”
She bounced for a good two minutes on the commandeered mattress, laughing and giggling, and he could swear, with a high probability, that she was laughing and giggling at him.
“Will you calm down and relax?” he finally said, trying to get her to settle down so he could get some sleep.
“Relax, huh?” She bounced a few more times on the bed then her body went completely limp. She fell in a heap and lay there, staring at him, her tongue lolling out the side of her mouth.
He adjusted his blanket and commented, “Not funny.”
Drawing her tongue back in, she laughed and said, “Not to you, maybe. But trust me, that’s classic comedy, Dent.”
“Well, I prefer silent movies over comedies,” he said.
“Yeah,” she rolled her eyes. “It shows.”
XVI
Lunch, the next day. Moonphase Parlor and Restaurant.
Dent had an iced tea in front of him, Fifth, a soda — a diet soda. And between the plastic glasses, a heaping pile of what should have come with the Surgeon General’s warning.
Mashed potatoes, mac’n’cheese, french fries, all smothered in white sausage gravy. And beneath it all, though not yet excavated, three homemade biscuits. The fork Dent had stuck in it had literally stuck where he had stuck it. The conglomerate of food held the silver utensil in place at a sixty-degree angle. This was what happened when he let the girl order their food.
And on the other side of the mountain of unappetizing food, Fifth was doing her best to dig into to it, possibly searching for the fabled biscuits that were rumored to be at the bottom.
Their plump waitress, barely out of her twenties, sauntered over and filled Dent’s tea to the brim.
“Not a very healthy meal for the girl,” she pointed out, jutting her chin in the direction of either the plate of food or the girl, or both.
“I made her get a diet soda,” Dent replied, defending his guardianship skills.
The waitress — Pearline, her nametag read — blew out a laugh. Then, to Fifth, “A refill of your diet soda, sweetie?”
“Yes, please,” Fifth answered, and Dent questioned the laws of physics as the mass of masticated mush managed to stay in the confines of her small mouth. Pearline the waitress left with a wink and a promise to be back shortly.
“What?” Fifth snapped at him.
“What?”
“You’re staring at me again.”
“I’m not the only one.”
Quick glances left and right and she came back with, “Liar! No one’s looki—ooohhh, you tried making a joke, didn’t you?”
He shrugged.
Around a mouthful of yellow and white, she declared, “Wasn’t funny.”
He shrugged.
“You not hungry?”
He looked at his gravity-defying fork. To make her happy, he took a small bite. His tongue and teeth said it was mac’n’cheese, but his taste buds screamed sausage. He swallowed and opened his mouth to show her it was empty.
“Okay, first off, gross. And second, gross.”
He shrugged.
The diner was empty for this time of day. Well, he assumed it to be empty. Only four other tables were occupied in a place that had a dozen tables and a long serving bar facing the kitchens. Since he didn’t know what empty was for this establishment, he had no control to base it off of, and he guessed it was incorrect to assume the place was empty. In fact, maybe it was full, maybe—
“Hey!” Fifth hissed across the table, drawing his eyes to her. “You’re staring into space.” She leaned in close and whispered, “Are you assessing the threat level of the restaurant in case we have to shoot our way out?” Her tone of voice led him to think that she may have wanted that sort of situation to ruin their lunch.
“No, Fifth,” he said, keeping his voice level so she would know he was serious. “I was just wondering if this place is always this empty.”
She leaned back into her bench seat, pleather material squelching as she did. Her shoulders slumped and she chewed with les
s energy. “Oh.”
Her tone told him he should apologize for something, but for what, he had no idea. Instead, he took another small bite of the mess between them.
Breaking the silence, Fifth asked, “So, any new leads?”
He and Bobseyn had talked again that morning while the girl still snored away upstairs. Nothing solid came of their early morning chat, just more confidence that the perpetrators traveled with a child, could possibly be a family of three, and that three of the victims did indeed have no close relatives. The only one that had close family, a brother, was the one killed by said brother.
“Just more of the same,” he told her. “Bobseyn still isn’t hot on looking into the compound, though. I need more information on what goes on there before I pay a personal visit. But, besides that, we’re thinking of going the financial route like you suggested. That may have the highest chance of getting our next lead.”
The girl smiled wide at hearing this. Whether it was from seeing her so proud of herself or perhaps from her mood affecting him, Dent smiled back at her.
“Now that’s a sight to bring tears to my eyes,” the waitress announced as she came back to their table and grabbed Fifth’s cup to refill it with the pitcher of soda she’d brought over.
Dent abruptly straightened his mouth back out, but the girl continued to beam up at Pearline.
When Pearline handed Fifth her refilled cup she said, “That smile of yours in mighty infectious, sweetie.”
Dent saw something flash in Fifth’s eyes, and he knew what was going to happen.
Before he could stop her, Fifth asked in that puppy dog type of voice, “Hey, Pearline, we’re working real close with Sheriff Bobseyn, looking into the recent murders, and we’re looking for anything that might help us narrow down on what’s really happening.”
Nothing to do but let the scene play out, Dent manufactured something close to a smile as Pearline looked to him for confirmation.
“I don’t know if I should …,” Pearline said.
“Come on, Pearline,” Fifth urged, scooting closer. “It would be a big help ….”
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