Killer Heat (14 page)

“You're sure about that?”

He rounded the desk. “I'm done talking to you. Get out of my office.”

She stood but refused to back away, even when he stepped right up to her. She had to get him to make a mistake, to give away a detail they could use, or she would've accomplished nothing by coming here. And she had a greater chance of getting him to reveal his true nature while he was upset. “Or what?”

“Or I'll call the cops. I've tried to be nice. I returned your purse—”

“After stealing it in the first place,” she broke in.

“I didn't steal it! It was gone by the time I came back to look for it. I think my freak of a brother-in-law grabbed it. That's all I can figure, because he's the one who brought it to me last night.”

Francesca remembered ringing the doorbell and getting no response. “Dean was home that day?”

“Of course he was. He's usually home. He can't drive because of his meds. Besides, you've seen what he's like. Who'd want to hang out with him?”

“Honestly?” she said. “He seems a lot nicer than you.”

“Maybe you should get to know him better.”

“Maybe I will.”

He shoved a hand through his hair, making it stand up in front. “This was a mistake,” he said, and stalked out, leaving her alone in his office with that air conditioner chugging for all it was worth and his coffee growing cold on his desk.

Could Butch be telling the truth? Francesca wondered. She could see him getting fed up with the actions of some jealous husband. She could even understand how her own fears might've created certainties in her mind that shouldn't have been there. She'd mistaken that mannequin for a corpse, after all….

She could've bought it—if he hadn't acted so strange when she mentioned Bianca Andersen. He knew Bianca; Francesca was sure of it.

“I'm done here,” she said to the men who were listening.

She was about to let herself out when she caught sight of movement at the window and realized Dean was peering in at her. Tossing her newly recovered purse over her shoulder, she headed for the door. She thought he might scurry off, pretend he hadn't been stealing glimpses of
her through those dirty panes, but he didn't. He waited. Then he fell in step beside her.

“What'd Butch have to say?” he asked.

The sun burned so bright it blinded her. Rooting through her purse, she came up with her sunglasses. “Nothing. Why?”

“You two were in there for quite a while.”

Once she had her glasses on and could see him without squinting, she tried to analyze what he was feeling, without success. He held himself rigid, as if he was upset, and yet his voice was as calm as ever. “He apologized for our little misunderstanding the other day.”

“Is that what you think it was? A misunderstanding?”

Stopping, she faced him. “Isn't that what
you'd
call it?”

He glanced around as if he was taking a big risk by speaking out. “He's not a nice person,” he whispered. “You should know that.”

It was Francesca's turn to see if she could catch a glimpse of Butch, but they seemed to be alone. “Give me some specific details, Dean.”

At the gravity in her voice, he shook his head. “No. Never mind. I don't know anything. Butch is a good guy, like I said on the phone. I didn't mean it when I said he wasn't. I swear,” he said and, running with an awkward gait, he took off for the house.

J
onah watched Francesca pull the wire out from under her shirt and place it on the conference table.

“So? What do you make of what you heard?” she asked.

Finch sat next to her, near the blackboard, Hunsacker across from her. Jonah had purposely taken the seat farthest away, near the television stored on a rolling cart in the corner. Now that he knew she was out of physical danger, at least for the moment, he couldn't think of anything except the smooth texture of the skin he'd felt when he taped that listening device to her body. And because physical gratification should've been the last thing that mattered to him, considering the gravity of the situation, he was more than a little irritated with himself. If he was going to do his job the way it needed to be done, he had to overcome his attraction to Francesca.

Why couldn't his body stop craving what his mind was telling him he could never have?

“The brother-in-law knows something,” Finch said.

“That's the feeling I got,” Francesca agreed. “But he's scared.”

Finch tapped his pen on the wooden table. “If Butch is what we think he is, Dean has reason to be scared.”

“Hang on a second.” A yellow writing pad waited in front of every seat, ready for any meeting that took place. Hunsacker pushed his away. “We can't jump to conclusions. Dean seems scared, but it could be unwarranted. He already admitted he's crazy, told you flat out that he can't think straight without his daily meds.” He turned to Finch. “You saw him the other day. He was on his feet but he was completely zoned out. A person like that could imagine just about anything and believe it was real. Until we have hard evidence, I'm not so sure we should focus exclusively on Butch. He could be telling the truth about dropping April at the side of the road.”

“I, for one, don't believe it,” Francesca said.

“Because you made up your mind that he was a killer from day one. I'm just saying we can't ignore the possibility that it could be someone else,” Hunsacker reiterated.

Refusing to look at Francesca for fear his eyes would betray the conflict inside him, Jonah kept his gaze fastened on Finch. “Before we do anything, we need to talk to Dean's shrink or whoever's prescribing his medication, find out what he's diagnosed with and what he's taking.”

“We also need to check with the staff at the Rio Grande and make sure Butch and April really came in that night,” Finch said. “If we poke around the area enough, maybe we'll find someone who saw or heard something that'll either corroborate or refute his story.”

“Butch has more to hide than what happened to April,” Francesca warned.

Hunsacker scowled at her. “What are you talking about now?”

“You should've seen his face when I mentioned Bianca Andersen.”

Telling himself she was no different to him than any other woman, Jonah allowed his eyes to rest where they'd been tempted to go all along. “He recognized the name?”

Obviously agitated, she rewound the tape and played it for them again. “Listen.”

Have you ever heard of Bianca Andersen?

Who? Bianca Andersen.

No.

Aren't you going to ask me who she is? Or why I'm mentioning her?

I'd like you to leave. Now.

“That isn't particularly revealing,” Hunsacker said the moment she hit the stop button.

Francesca's eyebrows shot up. “Can't you hear the tightness in his voice? And what about his refusal to even talk about her? If it was true that he'd never heard of her, he would've responded with more curiosity. He would've wanted to know why I was asking about her, what connection I thought she might have to him.”

“Not necessarily,” Hunsacker argued. “Not everyone would react the way you would. Maybe he was afraid you were trying to drag him even deeper into a mess he knows he's better off avoiding. He sure as hell understands that you're not his friend. You've made that clear to all of us.”

“I wonder how much you'd like him if he stood outside your car holding a baseball bat as if he was going to bash in your window?” she said.

Hunsacker frowned. “He already explained why he did that.”

“And I'm explaining that I saw fear in his eyes when I brought up Bianca,” she said. “He doesn't want to be
connected with another dead woman. He knows what that'll mean.”

Hunsacker persisted. “Even an innocent man wouldn't want to be connected to a dead woman. No one wants to be falsely accused. Besides, a guilty look, fear in his eyes, none of that can take the place of forensic evidence. Why do you have such a hard time understanding that we can't just act on your gut instinct?”

Hoping to derail the conversation before it could turn into another argument, Jonah jumped in. “Don't start on her. She's telling us what we couldn't see because we weren't there. She's not saying it's proof. Sometimes gut instinct is what determines the direction we should take. You know that.”

“How about if you quit defending her?” Hunsacker snapped. “I can think for myself. It's not as if you're my boss. You're the hired help here.”

Jonah drilled Hunsacker with a meaningful glare. “You want to go over that again?”

Hunsacker adjusted his position, putting even more strain on the buttons holding his shirt together. “You're a consultant, okay? That's all I'm saying. You're here to give advice. I'm reminding you of your role.”

“My ‘role' is to provide your department with the benefit of my experience and to help solve these murders in the most efficient manner possible. You got a problem with that, you need to talk to the sheriff, because if you remind me of my ‘role' again, I'll see to it that one of us gets kicked off this case, and it might not be me.”

When Hunsacker didn't respond, Jonah leaned forward. “In other words, forget whatever it is you're holding against Ms. Moretti. Got it?” He knew he was probably being too much of a hard-ass. It wasn't his style. But he was hoping to provoke Hunsacker. If Hunsacker told
him to go to hell, he'd have a good excuse to approach the sheriff and have himself replaced with someone else from Department 6. One second, all he wanted to do was return to California and forget he'd ever seen Francesca again. The next, he was eager to prove that he wasn't as bad as she thought. Regardless of his feelings, however, he had enough to do without tolerating a belligerent investigator, especially one as mediocre as Hunsacker.

Finch nudged his partner. “Come on, Hugh. I know you're stressed. We all are. But fighting among ourselves won't help.”

“We're just as important to this investigation as
he
is,” he grumbled, jerking a thumb at Jonah. “Maybe we're not getting paid the big bucks, but we're local. We're the ones who know the area and the mind-set of the people living in it.”

“What are you after?” Jonah asked. “An ego boost? Are you not feeling
valued?
”

Hunsacker's watery eyes lifted. “I know Butch, okay?”

Silence engulfed the room, a silence that stretched until Finch murmured, “What'd you say?”

Releasing a heavy sigh, Hunsacker rubbed his forehead. “He goes to my church.”

“And you didn't think to mention it before now?” Jonah asked.

“I didn't want you to assume I was biased, that a previous…affiliation would get in the way of the investigation.” He glowered at all of them. “Because it won't. I've just been trying to point out that Butch is innocent until proven guilty, and we currently have no proof that he's done anything wrong.”

“We've got to start somewhere, Hugh,” Finch said.

“I have a slightly different perspective on Butch.” He hesitated. “I've seen his good points.”

Francesca slid the wire she'd put on the table to one side. “Which are…”

“When Peggy lost her job at the supermarket last year, we went through a hard time financially, okay? It happens to the best of us.” His tone challenged any one of them to disagree. “We assumed she'd have no problem getting on somewhere else so we didn't start saving soon enough. And then she didn't get a job for several months, and we began to fall behind on our mortgage. We were about to lose the house when some of the people at my church took up a collection.”

“You never said a word to me about any of this,” Finch said.

Hunsacker shot his partner a self-conscious glance. “You knew Peggy lost her job.”

“But I didn't realize you needed help, that you weren't making ends meet.”

“You have your own problems.” He spoke into his chest now. “And I didn't want you to know. I guess…I guess I was embarrassed. It's not easy to talk about.”

“Don't tell me Butch contributed,” Jonah said.

Hunsacker's double chin wagged as he lifted his face. “He did. He lent us a thousand dollars, much more than anyone else. And you can tell he doesn't have a lot. That says something about a guy, doesn't it? That he'd help an acquaintance who was down on his luck—without asking for anything in return?”

When no one answered, he added, “Sociopaths aren't supposed to feel empathy.”

“That doesn't mean they can't ever be kind,” Francesca said. “Maybe he liked the ego boost of being able to help you, a cop.”

“If so, he never rubbed my nose in it.” Hunsacker shrugged. “He never spoke of it at all. Treated me just the same as he ever did.”

“Still, we know Butch is no saint—” Francesca began, but Hunsacker cut her off.

“He might not be faithful to his wife. He might not be all that nice to his mentally impaired brother-in-law. But maybe he has reasons for what he does that we know nothing about. Maybe his wife is frigid and won't let him near her. Maybe his brother-in-law is such a pain in the ass he can't stand living with him but does it because Dean has nowhere else to go. Who can say? I can't believe he's a killer. I need proof. But so will a jury,” he said, as if that justified his stance.

“We aren't going to charge him without proof,” Jonah said.

“I realize that. I'm just…asking you to keep an open mind, to understand that this guy is a decent person, at least some of the time, and that maybe there's someone else out there, someone we're overlooking.”

“Like Dean?” Francesca said.

“Like Dean,” Hunsacker replied. “If he's somehow following Butch around, he could certainly have come across April after Butch left her.”

“He can't even drive,” Finch pointed out.

“Legally,”
Hunsacker clarified. “That doesn't mean he never gets behind the wheel. I've seen him at church and other places by himself, plenty of times. I've never wondered how he got there, but I'm telling you he seems to get around okay.”

“Question is…does he have the presence of mind to hide his crimes?” Jonah asked. “Because whoever's doing the killing is pretty damn good at covering his tracks. Look how long he's been active. Some of the
remains we've unearthed at Dead Mule Canyon have been in the ground for five years. Going undiscovered for such a lengthy period isn't typical of someone who kills due to hearing voices or some other mental problem. Those killers act out and move on and generally don't do a good job of cleaning up, if they even try.”

“Maybe he's not good at hiding what he's been doing,” Hunsacker said. “Maybe it's just that everyone already assumes he's incapable, so they look past him.”

Jonah's eyes locked with Francesca's. “That's possible.”

Covering her face for a second, she tried to imagine Butch as a benefactor. “Whether it's Butch or Dean doesn't make much difference to me. They both have my address.” She dropped her hands. “They have the addresses of all my friends and family, too.”

 

Standing back, well out of reach, Adriana peered through her partially opened front door. A man with a slight build and a heart-shaped face, made pointier by a patch of beard growing on the end of his chin, stood on her stoop. With large blue eyes and fine blond hair, he appeared to be no older than twenty-five, and he looked innocent, completely unthreatening. But she knew his baby face could hide more than his age. “
Who
are you again?” she asked.

“Dean. Dean Wheeler.”

That was the name she'd thought he said, the one Francesca had mentioned with Butch Vaughn's on the phone last night. Knowing this man was connected to someone Francesca believed had murdered quite a few people, Adriana tightened her hand on the door handle in case she needed to slam it fast, and was glad she'd been cautious enough to leave the chain in place. Fortunately,
she'd put the boys down late for their nap, so they were still sleeping, although it was close to dinnertime. Otherwise, if they were up, they'd be running around, maybe even playing in the front yard, making it very difficult for her to feel she could protect them. “Butch Vaughn's brother-in-law?” she said.

“That's right.” He smiled broadly. “You know Butch?”

“Francesca told me about him.”

His smile dimmed a bit. “What'd she say?”

“Not much.”

“They don't get along,” he explained.

She let her breath ease out. “Right. She told me that.”

“Did she tell you she thinks he's a murderer?”

How should she answer this? “Is he?” she asked.

“Oh, no. My brother-in-law can seem formidable, but he's really not what Francesca thinks.”

The heat was beginning to overpower her air conditioner. Adriana wanted Dean to go away so she could close and lock her door—then call her husband and ask him to come home early. “I hope you're right.”

“Did she mention me, by any chance?”

This question surprised Adriana. Why would he suppose Francesca would mention him? “Um, she said you had her purse, if that's what you mean.”