Linger: Dying is a Wild Night (A Linger Thriller Book 1) (8 page)

MacLean’s face fell. “What the hell are you saying?”

“That as of now, you and Linkenfeld are no longer partners. You’ll be navigating a desk in Traffic while I make the recommendation to Captain Ebersol that you be transferred out of East Division. You’re done, Bob. Now pack your things and get the hell out of my squad room.”

She snatched the bear and phone from the table, then turned on her heels and flung the door open, emerging from the break room to dead silence. The detectives at their desks did their best to avoid eye contact as she threaded her way past them toward her office. The walls in the building had always been thin and it was obvious that the shouting hadn’t gone unnoticed.

Kate had no idea how many of these people supported her decision, although a couple of the females were smiling. She figured the least she had done was send a message loud and clear that she didn’t suffer fools—or asshats—gladly.

There was, to coin a phrase, a new sheriff in town.

H
ER EX-HUSBAND WAS WAITING FOR HER
in her office.

Kate had no interest in getting into another confrontation with him, so she took the civil route this time and kept it low key. “How long have you been in here?”

Dan stood at the window behind her desk, looking out at the parking lot and the expanse of the city beyond. You could almost see a sliver of the Pacific from here, and back when her promotion was announced, Kate had joked that she’d be inheriting Rusty’s ocean front property.

“Not long,” he said quietly. “I left the squad room when all the shouting started.”

Normally Kate would have gotten her back up over a remark like this but she suddenly felt deflated. She sank into a chair in front of her desk and sighed. “They despise me, Danny. They all hate me.”

Despite the walls she had built since the divorce, she still felt she could be open and honest with him. Sometimes brutally, if their exchange in the parking lot was any indication.

He turned. “It isn’t hate, it’s envy. Crabs in a bucket syndrome. They see you ascending and want to pull you back in.” He smiled now, the picture of benevolence. “But once you get your rhythm, Katie, I have no doubt you’ll be as popular as Rusty was.”

She snorted. “I’ll bet that wasn’t easy to say.”

“I’m serious.”

She could see that he was and nodded. “Maybe so, but nobody’ll ever be as popular as Rusty. Which is something I’ll never quite understand. I mean, he’s a great guy, but he was a PR man, not an investigator.”

“He was popular because he never challenged anyone. He gave people what they wanted—quick, easy to digest solutions and a record number of arrests. It didn’t matter that he rarely did the actual work. We’re a society that celebrates personality over substance. Even in the workplace.”

Kate smiled. “Thanks. You didn’t need to do that.”

“Do what?”

“Try to make me feel better. Especially after how I treated you this morning.”

“You react, Katie. That’s how you’re built. But I’m not going to stand here and pretend I’m some innocent victim. I’m not proud of what I did to you. I could have handled it a lot better.”

She felt her hackles rise and raised a hand. “All right, let’s not get too deep into it, before I
do
react. Why don’t we talk about what you’re here for?”

“That suits me.”

He came over and sat in the chair next to hers. When he was facing her, she noticed he looked troubled—an expression she’d seen many times over the years.

“Your boy Christopher is quite the puzzle,” he said.

“So is his so-called guardian.”

“He didn’t respond to my attempts at verbal communication, so an initial interview was next to impossible.”

She nodded. “I had the same problem last night. Is he deaf?”

“No. He clearly heard and understood me.”

“Then you made more progress than I did. The only reaction I got was when I touched his hand, but it wasn’t much of one. You think he’s autistic?”

“Possibly, but I can’t be sure without a specialized behavioral evaluation.”

“Do you think he’s been coached in any way? Emotionally abused?”

Dan shook his head. “I didn’t get any sense of that—although, again, it’s hard to say. He didn’t seem intimidated by me, and he was responsive to my commands, but never in a way that led me to believe that he was the victim of any kind of learned helplessness.”

“And no adverse reactions during the physical?”

“I made it clear what I was about to do and he seemed perfectly fine with it—even the more invasive components. But he wasn’t overly submissive. He was merely cooperating as any patient would.”

“And he never said a word?”

“We’ll get to that in a moment.”

This was a curious reply, but Dan had his own way of sharing information and she decided it was best to give him room. “What about sexual or physical abuse?”

He shook his head. “Nothing recently.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s no sign of trauma to the anus or perineum, no bruising or scarring of the scrotum or penis, no evidence of bite marks, nothing to suggest to me that, barring his obvious physical problems, he’s anything other than a healthy young boy.”

The echo of Weston’s words startled Kate. “And you know this definitively?”

“No, of course not. That’s only my best guess based on a preliminary exam. But with the child unable to communicate verbally, a definitive finding is unlikely.”

Kate paused. “What do you mean
unable
to communicate? Is he mute?”

“In a sense, yes. He’s certainly capable of vocalizing, but he’ll never be normal in that regard.”

“I don’t understand. What are you not telling me?”

“That there’s a very pronounced physical reason for his mutism. The only real sign of abuse I could find.”

“Are you talking brain damage?”

“No, the injury—if you can call it that—was sustained when he was much younger, probably a good three or more years ago. And despite the healing, it’s obvious it was delivered in the most brutal fashion imaginable. In fact, I’d say it’s a miracle he’s as well-adjusted as he seems to be.”

Kate suddenly realized she was leaning forward. She thought she might know where this was headed, but the idea was too horrifying to contemplate.

“Jesus Christ, Danny, what the hell happened to him?”

It was only then that she noticed that Dan had paled slightly. He was normally a bit detached about his cases, but this one had clearly gotten to him.

“Someone mutilated that child deliberately,” he said. “Somebody cut out his tongue.”

PART TWO

“I will watch my ways and keep my tongue from sin; I will put a muzzle on my mouth while in the presence of the wicked.”

~Psalm 39:1

S
HE DIDN’T WANT TO PUT
him in an interview room. They were small and claustrophobic and smelled of sweat, stale coffee, and (with the possible exception of the one Weston currently occupied) a hint of desperation.

True, Christopher’s surroundings probably mattered less to him than your average eleven-year-old, but considering the circumstances, Kate wanted him as comfortable as possible. So she asked Dan to bring him to her office.

While Dan was gone, she took out her cell phone, crossed to the window facing the squad room and peeked through the blinds, hoping to gauge the temperature out there.

She saw Linkenfeld logging some computer time, but his ex-partner was nowhere to be seen. MacLean had undoubtedly started making phone calls the moment she left them and was now meeting with Captain Ebersol, or a union rep, in hopes of finding a way to stay at East Division. She expected nothing less from a man who had fought hard for this job, and knew all too well that their confrontation in the break room was merely the opening salvo in what was likely to be an all-out war.

But none of that mattered at the moment. Uppermost in her mind right now was her father’s phone call this morning, and the words that had come back to haunt her.

You didn’t find any missing tongues, did you?

Well, yes, Mitch. Apparently I have.

While Kate was the first to admit that coincidences do happen, she wondered if this was more than that. Was it possible that this boy was connected to a mass murder in Tacoma, Washington? The mutilation he’d suffered had happened years ago, but the fact that he was running around with a man who was a victim—and suspect—of a similar crime raised a red flag so big and so bright that Kate could barely see past it.

She looked down at her cell phone, found the number she had called less than an hour ago and hoped the man she’d talked to was still available.

The line rang three times before it was picked up. “Stokes County District Attorney’s Office. How may I direct your call?”

“Lieutenant Kate Messenger for Charles Dillman.”

“Just a moment, please, I’ll see if he’s available.”

She waited that moment, then the line came alive with a cool but gentle North Carolina drawl. “Well now, that was mighty quick. You get our boy to confess?”

Kate huffed. “Getting him to do much of anything is a minor miracle.”

“Don’t I know it. Weston’s got a mind of his own. So what can I do for you this time?”

“I need to know something about the condition of the Weston family bodies. Something that wasn’t mentioned in the news accounts.”

“Something Weston told you?”

“No, but the coincidences are piling up and I don’t like it.”

“Well don’t keep me in suspense.”

“The victims tongues,” she said. “Did Anna Weston and her daughters have their tongues cut out?”

There was a long silence. Too long.

“Mr. Dillman?”

“Are you saying that
your
victims had their tongues cut out?”

“No. They were brutalized but not like that. I don’t think there’s any connection between the two cases at all, other than Weston’s presence at my crime scene.”

“Then I don’t understand. If there’s no connection and Weston didn’t say anything, where are you getting this from?”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

He was silent again. Then he said, “The answer is yes. They all had their tongues cut out with what our forensics people believe was a three-quarter-inch bimetal bandsaw blade—the kind you find in saw mills the world over.” He paused. “Weston owned a saw mill. One of the biggest in Stokes County.”

Kate felt a chill run through her. “Did you find the blade?”

“Not a sign of it anywhere. But we withheld all these details from the press, redacted it from the forensic files. And since Weston claimed to have found the bodies, it seemed reasonable that he might know about the tongue cutting, but we made a point of never mentioning the specific weapon involved, in hopes he’d slip up in one of the interviews. He never did.”

“He doesn’t strike me as a guy who slips up very often.”

“All it takes is once,” Dillman said. “Are you sure there’s no connection between these two crimes?”

“I’m sure. We already have a person of interest. It may be a dead end, but my gut tells me it isn’t.”

“Then I still don’t understand. How do you know about the tongues?”

Kate crossed to her desk. “Because of a case up in Tacoma three months ago you might not have heard about if you weren’t watching the bulletins. I don’t know if it involves bandsaw blades, but it’s my understanding from an inside source that the victims also had their tongues removed.”

She opened Weston’s file, took out the sketch book, and began flipping through the pages, studying the drawings.

Damn, they were good.

“Now that
is
interesting,” Dillman said. “But I’m still a little confused. If your case isn’t connected, what on earth compelled you to ask about our victims’ tongues?”

Kate spotted a drawing that grabbed her attention and stopped on the page. “You remember the boy I mentioned? The blind one, who’s traveling with him?”

“Oh, yes I do. Weston never struck me as a kiddie diddler, but I suppose a man who’s capable of murdering his entire family is capable of just about anything.”

“Well, my guy from CPS tells me the boy’s also had his tongue cut out.”

Kate was greeted with the longest silence yet, and she had a feeling the cool, unflappable man she’d been dealing with up until now had just had his foundation rocked. She looked down at the drawing in front of her and saw a detailed sketch of a wooden post with a sign that read
WELCOME TO TACOMA
.

“What’s strange,” she went on, “is that it looks as if the boy was hurt several years before the Weston murders. So I can’t quite figure out how he fits in.”

When Dillman found his voice, he said, “I can see why you’re concerned about coincidences. It’s obvious I’ve got a bit of work ahead of me.”

She studied the sketch. “We both do.”

“I take it you haven’t identified this boy?”

“Not yet. But I’m having him brought up for an interview, and if we can find a way to communicate, I’m hoping I can fill in some missing details.”

“And I’m hoping you’re right,” Dillman said. “Let me know how it goes.”

Kate told him she would and was about to hang up when Dillman stopped her.

“When you talk to Weston again, mention those tongues and see if you can get him to bring up that bandsaw blade. I want to nail this guy something bad.”

Maybe a little too bad, Kate thought, then bid him goodbye and hung up.

W
HILE SHE WAITED FOR DAN
to return with Christopher, Kate got on her phone again and called Curt Clark, one of the juniors she’d sent to chase down Chucho Soriano. According to Soriano’s file, his last known address was a walk-up apartment building in an area of West Santa Flora that wasn’t known for its easygoing lifestyle. It didn’t quite qualify as a slum, but you wouldn’t want to be strolling around there at midnight.

Even noon was iffy.

“You having any luck?” she asked Clark.

“The LKA was a bust. But the woman next door used to hang with Soriano sometimes and says he’s got a brother lives near the Greyhound station, so we’re headed that way.”