Murder Comes by Mail (27 page)

Justin stopped pacing in front of them to look at Hank. “Is he all right?”

“Right as rain.” Hank spoke without opening his eyes. “And they say it’ll make you puke your guts out.”

“What is he talking about?” Justin frowned.

“Lake water,” Michael said. “It makes you wonder how Civil War soldiers made it. They drank anything wet wherever they could find it. Ponds. Rivers. Puddles.”

“They didn’t all make it. They died like flies. History books say more from disease than cannon fire.” Justin glanced at Michael and then back at Hank. “He doesn’t look right as rain, but who could be right as anything with what’s been happening around here lately?”

Justin started in on how Hidden Springs had changed as he took off pacing in circles again. He never used to have to worry about putting people in body bags. He just laid them out on a stretcher with a cover over them and carried them to the funeral home. People died the way they were supposed to, from heart attacks or pneumonia. Nobody went around shooting anybody else unless it was a hunting accident or something. Accidents happened. That was for sure. He’d seen his share of bad things, of course, but those tragedies weren’t something a person needed to dwell on. At any rate, there wasn’t all this crime.

Didn’t Michael think he should do something about it? After all, he was the sheriff’s right-hand man, wasn’t he? Everybody knew, Justin grumbled, that Alvin didn’t have any experience with this sort of thing. He had started out as sheriff not long after Justin took over as coroner. And anyway, how could this car get past Michael’s house without Michael noticing it? Weren’t law officers trained to notice things?

The questions circled with Justin, and it seemed natural when the buzzards appeared overhead to drift in wide, looping circles above their head and then float in a lazy eight on the wind to fly over Michael’s place. That made Michael remember the dead animal or fish he needed to locate and get out of his yard.

Justin went on walking and talking. Hank sat with his eyes closed. Michael had never seen him quiet for so long. But then, wasn’t he sitting there like a lump, doing nothing too? Maybe he should try to come up with answers to some of the questions, whether Justin’s or his own, and start acting like a policeman instead of cowering in his patch of shade as if he’d never seen a dead person. Even in Hidden Springs, dead people weren’t all that uncommon, in spite of what Justin was saying.

Hadn’t Michael been there when they found Ernest Callahan in his shack of a house after the mailman finally reported the old man hadn’t collected his mail for days? Justin had been there too, but that must be one of those things the coroner didn’t like to dwell on. Death visited Hidden Springs the same as any other place, and Michael looked in its face all the time. He took pictures of traffic fatalities for the insurance companies, usually victims he knew. Murder had even come to call on Hidden Springs last year.

But Michael had never felt as if the person was dead because of him. Julie Lynne was dead because Michael took those ladies to her play. Plain and simple. Or maybe not so simple.

He had never been a person to dance away from the truth. He didn’t now, and there was no reason for him to shy away from his duties as a law officer. He should have at least brought his camera with him to take pictures of the scene for the report he’d have to file.

He poked the man beside him. “Hank, can I use your camera?”

Without opening his eyes, Hank pulled the camera loop from around his neck and handed the camera to Michael. “Have at it. I can’t focus on that car right now.”

“I’ll get the county to buy you a new memory card.”

“In our lifetime?”

“Not sure about that, but maybe you can leave it to your heirs.” At least the editor was showing some signs of his old self. “Why don’t you walk on back to your car and go home? You need to get some sleep.”

“What do you think I’ve been doing all afternoon? You don’t think I’ve been keeping my eyes closed because I’m too chicken to look, do you?”

“No, not at all.”

Hank eased open one eye to look at Michael. “It’s my job to be here, Michael, the same as it is yours.”

“Neither one of us doing much of a job then, are we?” Michael pushed up off the ground.

“Shut up and go take pictures.” When Michael started away, he added, “Hold the camera still or they’ll all be fuzzy.”

Michael tried not to see Julie Lynne as he focused the shots. It wasn’t all that hard, since the body in the car bore little resemblance to the woman he’d seen last week.

He was focusing in on the lake water licking the front tires of the car when Buck’s truck burst out of the bushes into the little clearing. Buck braked to a sudden stop, bouncing Whitt and Chekowski forward on the seat beside him. Michael stayed where he was and looked back at the lake.

The water was a lighter blue now than earlier, as if the bright afternoon sun had faded its color. A bird flew down to kiss the surface of the lake a couple of times before it rose back up into the sky. Michael raised the camera up and focused on the water touching against the white blue of the sky on the horizon. He clicked the shutter a few times, then slipped the memory card out and into his shirt pocket. Hank would be out of luck if he didn’t carry another memory card with him.

He pulled in a breath and squared his shoulders. Time to go hear what Whitt had to say.

“I think we are officially in the boondocks, Chekowski.” Whitt put his hands on his hips and looked around.

“It’s definitely country, sir.” Chekowski took a peek toward the car as the color drained from her face.

“Well, let’s look at what you’ve got, Deputy.” Whitt acknowledged Michael’s presence for the first time. The detective moved toward the car and peered in the window for a long minute. “Not a pretty sight.”

Michael watched him without saying anything. Instead he kept his eye on Chekowski, who had gone even paler. She looked ready to faint.

Whitt straightened up. “You or any of these other country bumpkins touch the car, Keane?”

“No. We thought you might want to bring in techs.”

“Yeah. They’re on the way, but I guess we’re in your jurisdiction now. Leastways your state cop buddy says so.” He glanced around. “A place like this seems too far out for any jurisdiction.”

“No way to know where she might have been killed, but little doubt the same guy is responsible. Makes it still your case.”

Whitt settled his gaze on Michael and a corner of his lip went up in something that approached a smile. “Good that you’re seeing things straight.”

Michael met his stare. He refused to let the man intimidate him. The sight of Julie Lynne was intimidating enough.

With a bark of a laugh, Whitt turned back to the car. “No telling when the techs will get here or even if they will. They’re not used to the boonies. So we might as well get it over with. They can go over the car after we tow it out and sweep the area for a murder weapon if it isn’t conveniently in the car. ’Course if I’d been Jackson, I’d have pitched it in the lake.” Whitt frowned and looked around. “The million-dollar question is how he dumped the car and then got out of here. It’s got to be twenty miles or more back to the interstate.”

Michael didn’t offer an answer. Let the man come up with his own theories.

Opening the door was even worse than they’d imagined. First off, all the doors were locked. Michael smashed a hole in the back window with Buck’s tire jack handle in order to reach in to unlock the door next to Julie Lynne’s body. He was thankful the lock was easy to reach on the door ledge and that his stomach was empty.

Justin’s face went a funny shade of gray and beads of sweat popped out on his forehead as he positioned the body bag on the ground. He pulled on rubber gloves and held out a second pair. “I’ll need help,” he said to none of them in particular.

Michael took the gloves. It was the least he could do for Julie Lynne. Besides, nobody else stepped forward. Buck was on his knees by the lake, dousing his head in the water. Hank was on his feet hugging the tree they’d been sitting under. Chekowski had her notebook over her nose, her eyes wide and fixed.

“Don’t forget to breathe, Chekowski,” Whitt ordered without a look back at her. “This isn’t one of the better ones, but it may not be the worst you ever see if you stay in homicide.”

Whitt stepped nearer the car to watch as Justin and Michael carefully maneuvered the body out of the seat and onto the body bag.

“Different weapon.” Whitt leaned over the body for a closer look. “Not as neat a wound. My guess is she was a victim before the reporter woman. Body might have been stashed in the trunk when the perp delivered those pictures to the girl yesterday. Then he must have brought the car out here to plant it in your backyard, Keane.”

Whitt paused, maybe to see if Michael had anything to say. He didn’t.

“Quite a trick—getting her positioned like that with decomposition and all. Not something I’d want to do.” Whitt straightened up but didn’t back away from the body. “Officer Garrett said she was an actress. Name Julie Lynne Hoskins, and that you knew her. That she was from around these parts.”

Michael didn’t bother answering as he helped Justin pull the bag up until it entombed Julie Lynne. He stripped off the gloves and dropped them into the plastic bag Justin held out to him. Then he went over to the lake, knelt down, and plunged his hands into the water. When he dug his fingers down into the cool lake bottom, mud swirled up to cloud the clear water and nearly hide his hands.

Whitt followed him over to the lake’s edge. “You can’t wash that kind of thing off.”

Michael pulled his fingers out of the mud and swished them around before he lifted his hands out of the water and gave them a shake. He stood up and kept his eyes on the lake. “I hadn’t seen her since we were juniors in high school until the play last week in Eagleton.”

“Yeah, that’s what Garrett told me. That you and your church ladies were headed to the city to see her strut her stuff when you so fortuitously kept our psycho from ending it all.”

Michael turned to look directly at Whitt. “What else do you want to know?”

“Everything.” Whitt’s eyes narrowed on Michael. “Only everything.”

“Like what?” He tried to sound like he cared, but he didn’t. He just wanted to be away from this place. Away from Whitt.

“Like how come this guy has decided to draw his bead on you? Like are you sure you never met him before? Like how has he managed to kill three women pow, pow, pow?” Whitt made a gun with his thumb and finger and pretended to shoot it off. “That fast. Three women he picked out because you knew them.”

“I didn’t know Hope.”

“Victim one,” Whitt corrected. “You say you didn’t know her, and yet her earring ends up in your washing machine. Not only has this killer offed three women in little more than a week, he’s stirred you right in the middle of the mix. He has to be a pro.”

“A pro?” Michael frowned.

“Right. Jackson’s my name. Killing’s my game.” Whitt raised his voice in a little singsong chant.

“That doesn’t sound right. Pros don’t kill unless money is involved.”

“You might think that, but could be this guy was having a slow year.” Whitt shrugged. “The whole thing defies any kind of logic, if you can ever apply logic to murder. Maybe the biggest question of all is, how come we’ve never seen anything about this guy before if he’s such a killing machine?”

Whitt looked at Chekowski when she stepped up beside them, no longer looking like she might dump her breakfast any minute. “What do you think is the most important question to answer, Chekowski?”

“How did he get out of here?” She looked around as if that seemed an impossibility to her. She let her gaze fall on Michael. “What do you think is the most important question to answer, Deputy Keane?”

“Where is he now?”

28

When the afternoon shadows began lengthening, Whitt gave the nod to T.R. to drag the car out, even though the crime scene technicians hadn’t shown up.

Whitt shoved his phone back in his pocket after trying to call them for the tenth time. “No telling where they are. Probably made a wrong turn and ended up in the next county. Maybe the next state.” He went on in a mutter that was almost a growl. “How anybody can live in a place without a phone signal.”

Chekowski looked down at her own phone and then rubbed off the screen as if that might make the signal come in. “We did go over the whole area already, sir. Inch by inch.”

“Without finding anything but bugs and blasted beggar lice.” Whitt picked a few of the sticktights off his pants leg. “And no wonder, after everybody and his brother tramped around in here before we came on the scene. Guess protecting a crime scene is not one of the deputy courses.”

Michael let him talk. It didn’t matter what the man said. There hadn’t been anything to find except the car. He’d walked the lake edge. No sign of any kind of canoe or boat being slid out into the water, but the ground was hard or the killer could have slid the canoe off the top of the car directly into the water. If that’s how he got back out to civilization. Where phones worked. Where murders happened.

Whitt and Chekowski rode in the cab with Buck back to their car parked at Michael’s house. Hank, who quit hugging his tree long enough to fish a new memory card out of his pocket and take pictures of T.R. attaching the tow lines to the car, climbed in T.R.’s truck to ride out with him. Michael and Justin climbed into the back of Buck’s truck with poor Julie Lynne. Before he closed the truck’s tailgate, Michael motioned for Jasper to jump up with them, but the dog whined and backed away.

The dog loped along happily behind the truck and Michael wished he could jump out of the truck bed and walk along with him. Instead, he dodged low-hanging branches that whipped out at the truck and tried not to think about the body in the bag at his feet. He and Justin didn’t talk. Perhaps in respect for the dead or perhaps because there was nothing to say.

Michael glanced back at the lake before the bushes swallowed them up. Blue water lightly kissed the bank where the car had sat. A heavy rain would completely rid the place of any sign of what had been there. For some reason, that made Michael feel better.