Convicted (5 page)

“Yes. We're investigating that, but at the moment our first concern is for Lexington. What time was it that you saw him?”

“I don't remember—evening, I think. Maybe six or seven o'clock, something like that. I waved to him when he was going into his house. His aunt was over there.”

Frank asked him a few questions about what the younger boy had been wearing, if he had seen anyone else at the house, when he had last talked to Lex. His answers fit those he had heard from others: Lex Toller had been wearing jeans and a white T-shirt, his aunt had been at the house, and he had last spoken to him when they had been playing softball in the street. Jordan had been the umpire for a game played by the younger kids.

“Do you have any idea where he might go if he was scared?” Frank asked.

“No. I mean, you might ask my brother. He hangs out with him. To me, he's just a little pest—you know, always tagging along.”

“Jordan!” Mr. Kendall said, frowning. “Lexie—”

“He's okay, but he's Gabe's friend. You should ask Gabe.”

“Thanks, I will. Can you name any of his other friends?”

Jordan shrugged. “He's kind of shy. Ask Gabe.” He looked to his father. “Can I go now? I have a bunch of stuff I gotta do.”

Kendall looked to Frank. “Sure,” Frank said.

Frank watched the teenager speculatively as he hurried out of the house. He turned back to Kendall. “Did you know Mr. Toller's wife?”

“Oh, gosh, that's been what—three, four years ago now? Barely knew her then—just to nod to. Skinny blonde. Didn't come out of the house much. Guess she was sick most the time.” Kendall shifted on his feet, then said, “I'm sorry about Jordy being so—abrupt, I guess you'd call it. Teenagers, you know, sometimes they're scared and don't want to show it. I know he didn't seem upset, but—”

“Oh, no need to apologize. People take that kind of news in different ways. I think Jordan was upset.” He wasn't sure it was about Toller, but he kept that to himself.

Kendall smiled. “Well, yes. I'm glad you understand.”

BEN SHERIDAN HEARD A TAPPING
sound on the driver's side window of his pickup truck, just a few inches away from his head. His neighbor's fake fingernails, drumming on the glass. For a moment he was tempted to pretend that he didn't hear it. With luck, he'd kill her as he backed out, and get a reduced sentence based on the testimony of his other neighbors. He could claim the camper shell blocked his view, or that the dogs distracted him . . .

Tap-tap-tap. What the hell were those fingernails made of—iron?

He sighed and rolled down the window. She grinned and leaned in, folding her arms over the sill, thrusting her breasts toward him. Despite the fact that the mid-September weather was a little too cool for it, she was wearing her usual ensemble, a skimpy black swimsuit top and pair of tight faded denim shorts that barely covered her ass. It was probably an appealing outfit the first time she wore something like it forty or fifty years ago. She was still slender, but Ben figured she must have spent most of those decades in the sun, because as far as he was concerned, these days she just looked like beef jerky in a bikini.

“I'm in a real hurry, Alice,” he said brusquely, leaning away from her. “Mind stepping back from the truck?”

“Hello, Professor!” she said, as if he hadn't spoken. She flipped her straight, shoulder-length hair—with a slight green tinge from the chlorine in her pool—away from her face and looked back at the bloodhound and the German Shepherd. “Hi, Bingle! Hi, Bool! Going on a search?” He knew where her own searching eyes would look next, and felt himself tense. Someone unaware of her particular proclivities might have mistaken the direction of her gaze. But Ben knew she wasn't staring at his crotch. She was staring at his lower left leg.

He was grateful that he had jeans on today, not because they hid the prosthesis he wore, but because he knew that Alice was hoping to catch a glimpse of the point where his left leg had been amputated below the knee.

“Ben, why don't you come over for a swim?” she said, still not looking at his face.

“Alice!” he shouted.

She blinked and shook her head, as if he had awakened her from a trance.

“I have to leave right now,” he gritted out. “Immediately. I'm in a hurry.”

“Okay. Well, come on by later.” She took one step back.

He wasn't going to waste this chance. He put the truck in reverse, glanced behind him and backed out. He drove off, not looking in the rearview mirror until he was sure he was too far away for her to run after him. She stood motionless in his driveway.

He noticed Bingle watching him from his crate. The dark, longhaired shepherd (shepherd and some other breed—no one was quite certain of the mix) was cocking his head to one side.

“I don't know what to do about her, either, Bingle,” Ben said.

Bingle—whose first of three owners had named him
Bocazo,
Spanish for “big mouth”—began to answer at length with a series of sounds that Ben was convinced were an attempt to imitate human vocal tones.

Bool thumped his tail against his own crate. The bloodhound was an amiable fellow, not half as bright as Bingle, but nevertheless excellent at his work. Together, there were few search situations they couldn't cover.

That was thanks to David, he knew. Ben had taken over the handling and training of the dogs after his close friend and colleague, David Niles, had been murdered by the same man who had left Ben an amputee. Ben was adjusting to life with a prosthesis—he had returned to work, was active, was in a great relationship with a woman who also trained search dogs. But David's death still haunted him.

No day passed without a reminder of him. The dogs were the strongest reminder, of course. David had survived a childhood of physical abuse—in part, he had told Ben, because the aunt who raised him after his abusive father's death had interested David in training dogs. David used his knowledge of dog training and anthropology for volunteer search and rescue work, and for cadaver dog work—to search for the missing, or their remains.

Ben never started a search without thinking of David, and of all the work David had put into these dogs, all the affection he had given them. Ben didn't believe he had David's capacity for forgiveness, but continuing David's work was important to him, a way of saying David's work had mattered. And despite the inherent stress in trying to find missing persons before they came to harm, Ben found he enjoyed the search and rescue work.

He glanced at the directions Frank Harriman had given him and forced himself to concentrate on the job at hand. Frank Harriman and his wife—Irene Kelly—were among Ben's closest friends. Frank had called a few minutes ago to ask Ben if he would bring his search dogs to a neighborhood about seven miles from Ben's home.

“We've got a homicide, a male in his late thirties,” Frank had said. “Turns out he was a widower, raising a kid on his own. We're just starting to work here, but we can't locate the boy. There are some indications that he might have been taken from the home, maybe even injured. We want to find him as soon as possible, of course, and I thought you might be able to help out.”

“YOU SAID HIS NAME IS
Alex?” Ben asked, studying the boy's photograph.

“No,” Frank said. “Lexington. Neighbors call him Lex or Lexie. Think you'll be able to help us out here?”

“Hope so,” Ben said absently, not looking up from the photo. A skinny kid with straight blond hair, a crooked smile, and dark circles beneath his blue eyes looked back at him. “You have anything more recent? In this photo, he looks as if he's younger than eight—five or so, maybe.”

Frank shrugged. “Neighbors say he looks like that one, that he's small for his age. You know how it is with searches for kids—they change quickly, but the parents don't take as many photos once the kids are school age. And it doesn't look as if Toller was exactly staying on top of things here, does it?”

Ben looked toward the body of Victor Toller, which lay facedown on the living room carpet, in a north-south position, so that his head was not far from the front door. Toller was a little over six feet tall, big-boned, with thick arms and broad shoulders. And a skull that had taken several crushing blows during a struggle that had left its mark on the living room.

Ben noticed a shotgun propped near the front door. “I take it the gun hasn't been fired?”

“No, not recently. It's loaded, though. Neighbors say that was always there.”

“Christ, with a kid that young in the house?”

“He wasn't anybody's idea of Mr. Responsible, it seems.”

Ben glanced around the room. He doubted it had been orderly even before Toller met his fate. It reeked of booze and cigarette smoke, mixed with the rancid scent of cold greasy food. Empty bottles could be found on almost every flat surface. A quick glance at their labels showed that Toller's tastes seemed to have varied from vodka to beer and cheap red wine.

Crumpled paper wrappers, plastic foam hamburger boxes, and other scattered “to go” containers made up a monument to meals purchased at drive-up windows. A chair not far from the body had been knocked over. There were bloodstains on it.

There were bloodstains consistent with Toller's head injury, apparently delivered by the heavy fireplace poker being photographed by an evidence technician. Ben could see blood and hair on it. He glanced across the room, and saw the rest of the set of tools near the fireplace. There were no ashes in the fireplace.

Ben said, “You think his attacker probably dropped him where he stood?”

The evidence technician looked up, first at Ben, and then at Frank.

“It's all right,” Frank said to the technician. “He's authorized to be here. This is Dr. Ben Sheridan. He's a forensic anthropologist, but he's also a search dog handler. He's going to help us look for the boy. Ben, this is Mark Collier, one of our crime scene specialists.”

Collier nodded. “Good to meet you. Look up on the ceiling and this nearest wall—judging from the spatter patterns, someone swung hard, connected, then stood over him here and made sure he was a goner. You should show him the boy's room, Frank. Dr. Sheridan, if I can be of help, let me know.”

“Who found the body?”

“Toller has a hunting buddy who came by for him about five this morning. Got a little worried when he saw the car here but didn't get an answer, so he looked in the window and saw this.”

Frank carefully led Ben down a hallway—both of them doing their best not to disturb another technician, who was trying to raise prints from the hall door. “Note that there are no visible bloodstains leading away from the body or on the hall carpet up to this point,” Frank said, as they reached a bedroom door. “So, my guess is the same as yours—Toller didn't get up again after he received that blow. But what worries me is that there are some bloodstains in the boy's bedroom, and some blood drops leading from here.”

Ben saw crime lab markers near a few blood spots on the hall floor. He bent closer, and saw that they were slightly elongated, as if whoever was bleeding was moving. He looked toward the end of the hall, where sunlight came in through the barred window of a door. “That leads to the backyard?”

“Yes.”

“Why the bars? Is there some treasure in the kid's room?”

“Far from it. Take a look,” Frank said, gesturing to a doorway to the left. “At first glance, I wondered if this room was some sort of guest room. Didn't seem lived in. Especially not by a boy. Toller had a gun collection in his own room. I suspect that's what the bars were for.”

When he looked in Lex's room, Ben agreed—it didn't look like a child's room at all. No toys were visible, just a few school books, aligned with the corner of a small desk. No posters or pennants on the walls. No radio, no CD player. No computer or electronic games. Not so much as a teddy bear. Another crime lab worker was photographing the two exceptions to the orderliness—the shattered glass of a picture frame and bloodstains on the pillow of the otherwise neatly made twin bed. Some of the shards of glass from the frame were bloodstained, too. In the photo, a thin, dark-haired woman held Lex in an affectionate hug. “Is this the boy's mother?” Ben asked.

“I don't think so. Neighbors say the mother was blonde, and died about four years ago. When I described the woman in the photo, they told me she's probably his aunt—his mother's sister. She was over here last night, and two of the neighbors heard loud arguing.”

“You've tried to reach her?”

“Pete just talked with her.”

“So does your partner think the boy could be with her?”

“She says no, but Pete's still not sure about that. With the blood you see here—you can understand why I'd like to have Bingle and Bool go through the place.”

“Yes. I'll start with Bool. Is there a laundry hamper here?”

There were socks and underwear in the hamper, along with a pair of pajamas. “Anybody else touch these clothes today?”

Frank asked Collier, who said, yes, there was a preliminary look through the hamper—the outfit the kid was last seen wearing was not with the other laundry, so they were assuming he was still in his jeans and T-shirt.

“Why don't you pre-scent the dog with that bloody pillowcase?” Collier asked.

“Because I don't know that the blood is the child's.”

“Oh.”

“Maybe the bathroom—”

“Looked like somebody had washed up in there,” Collier said. “Towels were a little damp. May have bandaged a wound—there were fragments of gauze in the wastebasket.”

Ben raised a brow and turned to Frank. “Toothbrush or fireplace poker—you want the child or the suspect?”

“Both, but the boy is our first concern.”

“Toothbrush it is, then,” he said, and went into the bathroom. He used gloves to take the child-sized toothbrush from its holder and placed it in a plastic bag. They walked out to the shady spot where another officer—a dog lover who had worked with Ben on previous cases—was keeping an eye on the crated dogs.