Devils Among Us (Devin Dushane Series Book 1) (11 page)

Friday morning Devin was pacing long before the sunrise. At
5:00am she gave up the confines of the house and hit the street in her running
gear. Thanks to six solid weeks of running along the James River, she could run
for miles. She settled for six miles around the scenic little town. Much farther
than that, and she would have to start heading out of town into the cornfields.

She showered and dressed carefully because she wanted to
make an impact. With any luck Dean hadn’t been back in town long enough for
anyone to tell him about her. She was hoping for the element of surprise. Her
father kept a padlock on the door to Laney’s room, and Devin toyed with the
idea of busting the lock off so she could wear something of Laney’s. She didn’t
entertain the idea long—not only did Devin have a much more athletic build then
Laney, but wearing the clothes of the dead girl that looked just like you
seemed a bit macabre.

She decided instead on a white tank top and cut off jean shorts
that would have qualified her for a Nair short shorts commercial. Her biggest
challenge was shoes. She had been living in flip flops and running shoes. She
rummaged into the depths of her suitcase and found a pair of strappy straw-wedged
espadrilles she’d brought in case she wore a sundress anywhere. Devin stood in
front of the full-length mirror in the bedroom with her hands on her hips to
assess her look. Usually in this summer heat, she went with very little make-up
and let her hair air dry, but today she needed to work the look so she took the
time to blow her hair out and add a little extra emphasis to her eye make-up. The
hard acidic stare she had patented could usually stop someone in their tracks. Who
knew your eyes could be a whole different kind of weapon.

Devin had timed her arrival perfectly, 8:15a.m. The garage
was open, and all the employees were there but they weren’t busy yet. Without
fail, mechanics are car guys. No matter if they drive rusted Chevy Novas or
jacked up pick-ups, they’d rather be driving snarling Detroit muscle instead.
So the growl of the Mach 1 had their attention before Devin even pulled into
the parking lot. She took her time getting out of the car and unfolded her tall
frame ever so slowly. The first cat call went out before her feet touched the
ground. Devin had to grit teeth, normally she’d put a punk on the ground for
something like that. Sauntering across the parking lot like she had all day to
do it, and right into the garage bay as if she owned the place. It wasn’t hard
to pick out Dean. He still had the greased-backed pompadour from the sixties;
it was just streaked with gray now. He also looked a little green right about
now. When Devin got about a foot from him she stopped to stare up at him with
wide brown eyes.

“Dean Delluca?”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t look as if he could answer.

“I’d wager you know who I am…or at least, who I’m related
to.” She paused, but he only continued to stare. “I’m Bobby’s daughter, Devin,”
she leaned a little closer to whisper. “And I think we should take this
somewhere more private.”

He finally nodded in agreement. “Boss! I gotta take care of
something I’ll be back in a while.” He then took Devin’s elbow and directed her
quickly and none too gently to the back door of the garage. There under some
pine trees was a dilapidated picnic table that had seen better days. He shoved
Devin in the general direction of the table and then reached into his pocket
for his cigarettes and lighter. She leaned up against the end of the table and
crossed her arms and ankles and watched him benignly as he struggled to get his
cigarette lit and take the first drag. The desperation for a smoke disgusted
her. It was exactly why she was trying to cut that weakness from her life. After
he pinched the bridge of his nose and took a few more drags he was finally able
to look at her.

“What the hell is this? Are you here for money? Cuz girlie,
you’re barking up the wrong tree. I don’t work here to stay busy in my
retirement.” He punctuated this little speech with a long drag.

“Now that’s an interesting reaction.” Devin cocked an
eyebrow at him. “Why would your first thought be that I’m here for money?” She
gingerly tested her weight on the table top and when she thought it would hold
she sat down and swung her feet around to the bench.

“Isn’t everybody after money? Nobody from your family has
been in town for years, and you just show up out of the blue?” He looked at the
ground shaking his head. “That spells trouble, and trouble is always expensive.”

She had to grin at his words. “You know, truer words have
never been spoken. I’m not here for money, but what I am here for could cost
you dearly.” He was instantly suspicious, as she knew he would be. She leaned
forward to pull the worn leather folder out of her back pocket and flipped it
open to show him her I.D. and badge. “I’m here for the truth about the night
Laney Bennett was murdered.”

Dean squinted into the distance as he flicked the ashes off
his cigarette and shook his head again.

“You got a warrant or whatever?” It was Devin’s turn to
shake her head.

“Nope. I’m a detective with the Richmond P.D. I have no
authority here whatsoever. I’m just looking for answers. I need to know what
happened to her.”

His voice was rough with emotion.

“I knew this day would come, I had just hoped I would be
dead before anybody came looking.” He rubbed his chin, probably thinking about
what he did or did not want to tell her. She waited patiently, studying him
under hooded lids and she leaned back on the table, absorbing the warm kiss of
the morning sun. He hadn’t aged nearly as well as Henry, probably the result of
hard living, but she could see the draw. As a young man he’d probably made
those faded blue Dickies look good, with his name stitched on the shirt and his
sleeves rolled up. He broke into her meandering thoughts.

“Why reopen this wound now? Just leave it alone.”

Her head snapped up, and so did her voice. “Are you kidding?
This wound never healed, and it never will until our family is brought some peace.
My grandmother spent twenty years in a mental hospital because she never
recovered from Laney’s murder. She died there. My father was a train wreck of a
drunk my whole life, still is, as far as I know. I can’t leave this alone; we
haven’t even begun to heal.” It was very unlike Devin to reveal that much of
herself to anyone, let alone a complete stranger, but it worked. Dean sighed in
resignation and came to sit beside her on the picnic table. She was concerned
about it supporting them both, but the creaking wood held.

“What do you want to know?” With the barriers lowered Devin
didn’t hesitate, she jumped right into the direct questions.

“What were you and Laney arguing about at the Summit the night she was killed?” He turned to look at her with wide eyes.

“How did you know…boy, you don’t pull any punches, do you,
kid?”  He took another drag off his cigarette—there wasn’t much left by now.
Devin kept her gaze steady, waiting. “I needed money, badly. I was trying to
support a wife, and we had a baby on the way— a mechanic’s pay wasn’t cutting
it. I was planning to rob a gas station to make ends meet.” He said it like
most people said they were going to clip coupons or cut back on eating out to
save money. She raised her eyebrows, but he was so caught up in his story he
didn’t notice. “Me and a buddy had it all planned out, there was a station
about an hour from here, and back then it was in kind of a remote area. It was
right off the interstate, and the only stop for gas and sodas for miles, they
raked it in.” Dean’s eyes had gotten brighter as he explained the heist. Devin
had seen it a thousand times. He was a career criminal and would never be
reformed. The thrill of the job, the adrenaline rush of breaking the law was an
addiction for him. She interrupted his sweet remembrances.

“Dean! Focus. How does this involve Laney?”

He became a little clearer. “Right, I’m getting to that. It
was an easy two-man job to pull off, but being on the wide-open interstate, it
could be easy to get caught. We needed to map out a good getaway route, and we
needed a good driver. Laney was the best driver I knew.” She was skeptical but
grinning when she interrupted him this time.

“You asked the prom queen to be your getaway driver?” He
shrugged his shoulders and splayed his hands out in front of him. “Hey, you
never saw her drag race! She could drive like nobody’s business.” He grinned at
the memory and finally ground the remains of his cigarette out on the bottom of
his shoe. “I had been asking her for about two weeks, but that night at the Summit was sink or swim. I had to get her in on the deal. I told her that I needed the
money that I wasn’t going to be able to feed my kid, but she refused to help
me. Things got pretty heated. I was basically begging her for help, but she
wouldn’t have anything to do with it. Said I was an idiot for even considering
it.” He tried to smile again, but it never reached his eyes. “I guess she was
right, we tried it without her and ended up going away for armed robbery.”

Devin watched him carefully for his reaction. “So maybe you
were so enraged that she wouldn’t help you that you snapped. You were under a
lot of stress, and the one person you thought you could count on turned her
back on you, so you killed her.” Dean’s denial was on his lips before she had
five words out and his eyes had brightened with a different kind of passion.

“No. No way. I was upset she wasn’t going to help, but deep
down I knew she wouldn’t go all along. Laney was a little wild, not stupid. It
was more of an excuse to talk to her again anyway. Angie was a real shrew when
she was pregnant, and Laney was always a lot of fun, you know what I mean? I
missed the old days. I would never cut off my only chance to have a taste of
that, even if it was just in arguments.”  Devin sized him up for a moment. He
looked sincere, and she was very hard to fool, but that was far from a guarantee.

“Where were you when she went missing?” It was best with
this type of suspect to keep the questions rapid-fire so he didn’t have time to
think about his story, you could gather more truth that way.

“Geez, you’re direct, aren’t you? Laney would have loved
you, hardcore, cool and unshakable. She would have been very impressed.”  She
gave him a sideways smile and laid the eyes on him again.

“Alibi?”

It took a few seconds, but he was finally able to breathe
again. “Right, I left as soon as Laney stormed off from me and I drove into
town to pick up Ricky Dennison. I got a speeding ticket at nine o’clock on
Water Street two blocks from his house, so I was cleared.” He clapped his hands
down on his knees and started to get up off the table, when she put her hand on
his arm to stop him.

“Wait, nine o’clock? You could have easily gotten back there
in time to have killed her and slipped out again. That ticket doesn’t alibi you
at all.”

Dean chuckled. “Trust me. You could hear that engine two
miles out. There is no way I could get in or out of the Summit without getting
noticed, it was a car that stood out. Flames shot out of the tail pipes, for
Pete’s sake. Plus it was about ten o’clock that Laney’s pansy boyfriend called
the Sheriff on us for driving by the school ‘harassing’ him.” He stood up fully
now and tucked a fresh cigarette behind his ear for later. “My alibi was solid.
It was Henry that never had any alibi at all. He’s the one you ought to be
talking too. If you ask me, that level of obsession is never healthy.” He held
his hands up innocently expressing his opinion of Henry. “Well, princess,
memory lane has been real fun this morning, but I’ve got to get to work. So if
there’s nothing else…” He was already backing towards the building. She jumped
off the table and followed him a few steps, cocking her head sideways to look
up at him.

“Just one more thing, what were you doing to harass Laney’s
boyfriend that night?”

Dean snickered like the punk kid he had been. “We eased the
car up next to the shop on the backside of the school where he was working that
night, and right when we got under the open windows behind where his car was
parked, I wound the engine up till the flames were flying and then peeled out
of there. The little twerp probably peed in his pants.”

“Nice.” Juvenile male behavior was always beyond her. “Get
to work, Dean. I’ve taken enough of your time. Thanks for indulging me this
morning.”

He gave her the smile that Laney had probably liked.

“I owed it to Laney. You come find me if you need anything
else.” He was holding the back door of the garage for her as she slid her
sunglasses on.

“I think I’ll go around the side so some work actually gets
done in there this morning.”

Dean was still laughing when the door swung shut.

There were several large holes now in the story of the night
of Laney’s murder. Not only were different accounts not matching up, but the
case file was not matching up. The timeline for the night of the murder in the
case file did not add up. What happened during those missing minutes? Henry was
supposed to have been the lead suspect, but the file on him was practically
barren. Was there never anything there, or had the file been cleaned out? Devin
wanted to take another look at the files before she had dinner with Henry,
because she had some hard questions planned for him. It wasn’t that she
believed he was guilty, more that she believed he was hiding something. All of
the holes kept bringing her back to him. Even though she was only a few blocks
from the Sheriff’s department, there was no way she was going to show up there
in cut-off jean shorts and a tank top, Shane might actually fall out of his
chair, so it was back to the house to change.

Once she got home Devin decided to water the hot pink and
white wave petunias she had chosen for the planter boxes before the heat of the
day set in. The elderly couple that ran the greenhouse assured her that with
daily watering they would be exploding with blooms in a few short weeks, and
would “bring her porch to life”. Time would tell; she’d never even owned a
cactus. After that she put a load of laundry in the washer, called to check on
Marcy, and then sat down to write out her notes from talking with Dean this
morning. By the time she actually changed into jeans and a fitted cap-sleeved brown
t-shirt and got back downtown, it was lunch time. Devin parked by the Sheriff’s
office but strolled over to Maggie’s Diner across the square. Sure enough Adam
was in the last booth in the back corner, eating by himself. She slid in across
from him.