by Kyla Stone
Jackson Cross felt entirely unprepared.
JACKSON CROSS
DAY ONE
It was nearly ten p.m. by the time they reached the Easton place.
Two hundred acres were split by a single weed-choked gravel road winding three miles through towering pines, maples, and oaks. Dense underbrush scraped the sides of the patrol truck.
The night sky was livid. The colors were so bright that Jackson exited the vehicle with his flashlight in hand but switched off. Everything was bathed in an eerie reddish glow, like shadows cast by an immense fire.
Three county sheriff’s vehicles were parked ahead of him along the edge of the driveway just before the drive expanded into a gravel parking lot. Two Munising Police Department squad cars were parked behind them.
The Munising Police and Alger County Sheriff Departments often worked together, especially on big cases. If it was an important case, the state police would be brought in.
The white farmhouse perched on the knoll of a hill directly ahead, Easton’s salvage yard down the hill to the right, surrounded by tall fencing lined with concertina wire.
Devon had gone silent. This property would do it to you. The sense of menace was palpable. As if Lily Easton’s blood still soaked the very fabric of this place.
Dread knotted his stomach. Jackson took the lead and Devon followed, cursing as she nearly tripped on the uneven ground. Glass, bits of plastic, and debris crunched beneath their feet. It was impossible not to step on anything.
Jackson strained his ears. Subdued voices drifted from the salvage yard. Insects trilled in the woods. A neighbor’s dog barked incessantly.
Three deputies stood around a cordoned off section in the center of the salvage yard, a large area bound by fluttering crime scene tape. They’d set up gas-powered search lights along the perimeter. The harsh white lights blared bright as daylight, deepening the shadows between the rows of junk cars.
Crime scene technicians had been called in, but communication was iffy tonight at best. Even the radios were squirrely. A couple of the cops were grumbling about a GPS system refusing to work properly, directing them to turn right where no roads existed.
One of the deputies was hunting for the sheriff. The medical examiner from Munising had just arrived; a police officer had driven out to Au Train to his home to pick her up.
Various cops and deputies were busy processing the scene, taking photographs, dusting for prints, and cataloging evidence while the ME ducked beneath the perimeter of red tape that secured the immediate area around the victim, or “hot zone” and examined the body.
Venla Virtanen was a stout Finnish woman in her fifties with short white-blonde hair. She wore PPE over slacks and a sweater; “Medical Examiner” was stenciled onto the back of her wind breaker.
Outside the main perimeter of yellow crime scene tape, deputy Randy Hasting smoked a cigarette. Jackson hated the smell of smoke.
Jackson pocketed his notebook and hooked the flashlight in the crook of his arm, then pulled a pair of latex gloves from his jacket pocket. Apprehension thickened his throat. “Has the house been cleared? Easton’s grandkids live with him.”
The rookie deputy, Phil Nash, nodded. “We did. All buildings on the property are empty.”
“No sign of the kids? Are you sure?”
“Nobody’s home,” Nash said.
“Who called it in?” Jackson asked.
“A customer,” Hasting said. “Hart is interviewing him at the station.”
“Okay, good.” Relief flared through him, but it was fleeting. “Shiloh and Cody should be here. They’re too young to drive. Besides, Easton’s truck is still in the driveway.”
“Maybe they’re with friends,” Devon said.
The words rang empty. Jackson’s gut clenched. Dread sank its claws in deep. The possibility that one or both of them might be dead and hidden on these grounds made him sick.
At Lily’s funeral, he’d made a promise to her casket, standing at the gravesite, the sun shining bright and terrible. He’d promised that he would watch out for her children, but especially Shiloh.
Six-year-old Cody had been at a sleepover the night of the homicide. But five-year-old Shiloh had been there, in that house.
No one knew exactly what had occurred that night. Only that the killer had done terrible things, though he’d left the little girl alive and physically untouched. They’d found her with smears of Lily’s blood on her shirt, her cheeks, her hands. She’d been rocking in a corner, mumbling nonsense, mostly incoherent, though she’d said a few things that made Jackson suspect that she’d witnessed the horror.
He cared for both kids, but Cody was reserved, moody, prickly. It was Shiloh who’d stolen his heart. Shiloh who reminded him so much of her mother.
He checked in on them once or twice a month, bringing Shiloh Snickers and Twizzlers, gummy bears and gum for Cody. And books. That girl loved books, especially travel books.
As if that would make up for his inability to protect her mother from the one danger he should have seen coming.
He forced himself to focus on processing the crime scene. That was the best way that he could help them right now. “What do we have on the victim?”
Hasting gestured vaguely with his cigarette. He wore a khaki trench coat. In his mid-sixties, he sported a middle-aged gut and a receding hairline with a shiny, egg-shaped skull. “The vic is Amos Easton. Sixty-nine years old. Caucasian.”
Jackson shone the flashlight across the scene. The corpse lay face-up in a wide circle of hard dirt next to a red Kia Rio with the guts torn out of its engine. He recognized the red handkerchief tied around the neck, the John Deere cap, the silver-gray hair. The caved-in skull and collapsed facial structure were harder to recognize.
“Looks like he got his head bashed in by that crowbar over there.” Hasting hooked his thumb at a long thin shape lying in the dirt. Bits of bone and brain matter clung to the iron. “Blood looks dry.”
Across the victim’s chest, the blood spatters appeared to be smeared as if he’d been touched. There were indentations in the dirt, a couple of red streaks, like maybe someone had knelt beside the body. The perpetrator? Or one of the kids, afterward?
“Who’d have a reason to do this?” Nash was razor-thin and couldn’t grow a full beard yet. His uniform hung off his narrow shoulders like a coat hanger, but his posture was straight, his blue eyes sharp.
“Sure wasn’t robbery,” Hasting said. “His watch and wallet are still on his body.”
“The business could have been the target,” Jackson said, though he didn’t believe it.
Devon made a face as she scanned the salvage yard, taking in the rows of dilapidated vehicles, the piles of scrap metal, stacks of mufflers and tires, and coils of wire and hoses. “Who could tell if something is missing? We’ll have to compare everything here to the inventory. That’s assuming he kept good records.”
“Sounds like a job for the rookie,” Hasting said dryly.
Nash frowned but didn’t argue.
“Who’d steal from Easton?” Nash asked. “What’s worth stealing here?”
One of the Munising police officers approached them. He tipped his gas station coffee cup in greeting without smiling. “Exactly my thoughts.”
Ramon Moreno sported long black hair tied back in a ponytail, bronze skin, and a full beard. He was sarcastic but dependable. “That’s what you all are gonna find out while I go back to my soft, comfortable bed.”
“You wish,” Devon said.
“We all wish,” Hasting said with a sigh.
Devon turned in a slow circle, appraising the property. “How much land did he own?”
“Two hundred acres,” Jackson said. “A good portion of it is waterfront, too. To the northwest.”
Devon whistled. “How much you think that’s worth? Wonder why he never sold it. This junkyard can’t bring in that much. Hell, he probably pays more in taxes for the land than the business is worth.”
Mo
reno slurped his coffee. “It’s a losing proposition, all right.”
“Lots of folks here are in the same position,” Jackson said.
Poverty was endemic in much of the Upper Peninsula, which had lost the copper and ore mining and timber industries which had once thrived here, leaving abandoned mines and thousands of tree stumps.
Jackson zipped his jacket against the rapidly dropping temperature. “Easton would never sell this place. It’s been in his family for a hundred and fifty years, handed down from the old timber barons of the twentieth century. It’s the one thing he has. Or, had.”
Devon shivered. “I’d rather be in Tahiti, sunning myself and sipping martinis handmade by my personal bartender.”
“Amen, sister,” Moreno said dourly.
The ME placed small paper bags over the victim’s hands to preserve trace evidence beneath the fingernails. They’d swab his hands for DNA. She annotated something in a folder and then stood, preparing to move the corpse into a black body bag, which she would transport to the morgue.
Moreno mopped his brow with a handkerchief. It was forty-five degrees, but they all felt it. The pressure building. The heat of an unseen forest fire about to overtake them.
“What can you tell us, doctor?” Jackson asked.
“From my preliminary examination, death appears to have been caused by blunt force trauma. The position of a depressed fracture on the posterior right side of the cranium is consistent with violent assault.”
“From that tire iron right there?” Hasting asked.
“Could be. I still have to conduct the autopsy and tox report.”
“Estimated time of death?” Moreno asked.
Dr. Virtanen pointed to various body parts as she spoke. “Alger mortis can be quite unreliable, of course. Liver mortis can take up to twelve hours. The process is still incomplete. Here and here, rigor mortis has appeared in the small muscles of the face, followed by the muscles in the upper and lower limbs. However, the abdominal muscles are still soft. Approximate time of death between four and six this afternoon. He died here. Judging by lividity, the body does not appear to have been moved.”
Jackson nodded to himself, working his jaw as he considered the angles, the odds.
He turned to Devon. “What do you see?”
Her eyes narrowed. She scanned the scene again, taking her time.
“Definite signs of a struggle.” She walked around the perimeter of the crime scene tape, careful not to disturb the ground, weaving between several half-disassembled vehicles.
“We’ll have to cast every footprint. We’ve got lots of fingerprints and footprints from customers.” She paused, looking down, and frowned. “There’s something dark over here. Looks like blood.”
Jackson tagged it and they kept moving.
She circled the crime scene like a wary creature sniffing for danger. Once, twice, three times. Expanding with each circle.
Her flashlight swept back and forth. The glow from the aurora tinged everything crimson. Her shadow moved ahead of him, wavering with the sweeping flashlight beam.
Jackson followed, looking for evidence, saying nothing.
Past the perimeter of the fence line, the trees reached for the sky, trunks lined up like sentinels. Metal gleamed. The shadows deepened. The vehicles seemed to crouch, as if they were living machines made of flesh and blood rather than steel and glass.
Devon halted and pointed. “Another set of prints.”
He came up beside her and saw what she meant. Smaller footprints. Deep indentations, like the treads of work boots or combat boots.
“Looks like it.” He squinted. “Maybe a size nine. A small man.”
“Or a teenage boy.”
Devon nodded. “Could be Cody Easton’s prints. You likely wouldn’t have customers coming out to the back of the fence on a regular basis. But these prints could have been left at any time.”
Jackson squatted and shone the light on the ridges in the dirt. A few specks of something dark red drew his attention. “If that’s blood inside the print, then the suspect got blood on his shoe as he left. The prints are spread wide, like he or she was running.”
“Running away. Fleeing the crime scene,” Devon said. “Witness or perpetrator?”
“Either way, a person of interest.”
“We’ll get the crime scene techs on this right away.”
She pointed the flashlight. “They head northwest, right to the fence line—wait, what’s that?”
The beam landed on a broken section of fence hidden behind a tall stack of bumpers. They approached, skirting the footprints, careful not to damage potential evidence.
Jackson squatted a few feet from the fence without touching it. He pointed at the slice in the fence that started at the ground and cut upward approximately three feet. “This was cut with wire cutters. And not recently. You can see rust here on the ends.”
“The ground is scraped clear like the fence has been pulled back frequently.”
“Someone’s used this as a way to get in and out.”
“Cody?”
“We’re going to find out.”
He wiped his palms on his pants as he stood. Jackson headed back toward the crime scene, Devon on his heels.
JACKSON CROSS
DAY ONE
“Suspects?” Devon asked. “Who’d want to kill the old man?”
Moreno snorted. “Where do you want to start?”
Easton had been universally disliked. He was something of a hermit, an isolated survivalist-type. He loved his spirits and gambling. Over the years, he’d gotten in his fair share of fist fights, alienating neighbors and friends.
Back when he was married, the police were regular visitors for domestic dispute calls. The charges were always dropped by his wife. She’d died of cancer when Jackson was ten.
Easton had been a difficult man. He had his own reasons for everything he did or didn’t do. Most people passed him off as a degenerate drunk, but he was a cunning s.o.b. Or, he had been.
The suspect list was a long one. It’d take legwork and resources to winnow it down. Jackson had a suspect in mind. No one would like it. Hell, he hated it himself.
“You thinking of something? Or someone?” Nash asked Jackson.
Jackson gave a weary sigh. He wished he was fly fishing along the Pere Marquette River, his favorite pastime. Hell, he wished he was anywhere but here, facing down the black hole of his past.
“Spit it out,” Moreno said.
“Eli Pope.”
Devon shot him a confused glance. Hasting and Nash looked troubled. Moreno scowled through his beard. The veteran cops and deputies knew. No one needed to say it aloud.
Eli Pope would have a good reason for wanting Easton dead. Eight years ago, Easton had fingered Eli Pope as the suspect in his daughter’s homicide. He’d viciously smeared Eli’s name in an infamous television interview with CBS Evening News.
In part because of the media coverage and Easton’s public accusations, the investigation had quickly narrowed the suspect pool to one—Eli Pope.
Eli wouldn’t forget something like that. He was a man who nursed his grievances. He did not forgive. And now he was free.
“Maybe,” Hasting allowed.
“The Broken Heart Killer is still in prison,” Moreno reminded them. “Maybe he’ll get shived on the toilet. A man can dream.”
“They released him,” Jackson said. The warden had alerted the sheriff in case Eli headed home. Jackson knew he would.
Moreno let out a colorful curse. “What time?”
“I don’t know yet. We’ll look into it.”
“We’ll add him to the list,” Hasting said.
No one wanted to think about Eli Pope back in the world, prowling their community, on the hunt for more beautiful young women to steal away.
Or seeking vengeance against the town who’d turned on him.
Something dark and ugly slithered behind Jackson’s breastbone. His breath quickened as a memory f
lashed through his mind. He shoved it down deep. This grisly homicide couldn’t be related to that. The sin he’d committed all those years ago was dead and buried.
Except that the corpse had just resurrected itself in the form of Eli Pope. Evil was coming home to roost. And Jackson knew that he would have to do something about it.
Across the clearing, an owl hooted. Jackson swept the flashlight back and forth, the beam glinting off metal, piercing dark corners.
There were a hundred places to hide. A thousand.
Something snagged his eye. A tiny flash of color.
Skirting the crime scene, he approached the object and squatted. A half-crushed green Ford Taurus sat approximately five yards from the corpse, at the edge of the clearing between a row of vehicles. Its front windshield was busted out, the metal frame twisted.
A small square of fabric was caught on a tooth of glass. Gray cotton. He placed an evidence tag on the ground beside the Taurus and gestured for one of the deputies to take pictures. He pulled out a small manilla envelope and carefully tweezed the fragment of fabric from the jagged windshield frame.
“What did you find, boss?” Devon asked.
A small enough space for a thirteen-year-old girl, if you were trying to hide. Maybe you heard the shouting. Or you knew the perp was trouble as soon as he appeared. Or Amos did, and he told her to hide. You go through the window, crouch down in the footwell. Easy enough for your shirt to snag right here, while you were squirreling your way in.”
“It would suggest they knew the perpetrator,” Devon said.
“That’s a big jump to make,” Hasting said. “I don’t see it.”
“This is from Shiloh’s shirt.”
“How do you know that?” Moreno asked.
Jackson examined the small square of fabric. It was two inches by an inch and a half. Dark gray, nubby, with a corner of ironed-on yellow print. The edge of a letter.
Not much to go on, but it was enough.
He’d seen her in it enough times. Hell, he’d bought it for her. One of the only gifts she’d bothered to wear or use. He could visualize the faded image of Yoda, the yellow print: Do or Do Not. There is No Try.