Heartbreak Bay (Stillhouse Lake)

by Rachel Caine

  I check at the shelter and ask about Leonard Bay. The tired young woman on duty checks the register and shakes her head. “Not on here,” she says. “But they don’t usually put their real names, either, and we don’t ask for ID; most of them don’t have any, or if they do, it isn’t their own. Can you describe him?”

  I do, including the damage to his head. That’s memorable.

  She blinks and says, “Oh, him. He did come here last night. Stayed the night. Left early.”

  “What did he say his name was?”

  She looks at the register, then turns it toward me and points. “That’s him.”

  It’s an illegible mess. I can’t make out a thing. He’s far from the only messy writer on the page, but this seems worse than normal, more . . . chaotic.

  “He has some kind of brain damage, he took his hat off and showed me,” she says. “Real sad. I don’t think he’s regularly homeless, though. He dresses too neat, and he’s too clean.”

  I ask for surveillance, but she wasn’t born yesterday; she wants a warrant. The fake one’s in my pocket, but I know better than to serve it on her, or show her the badge. She’s seen far too much of the world.

  “Thank you,” I tell her. I don’t really need anything else. I have Len’s home address.

  I need to get back to Sam and the kids, because I feel it in the air: this is going to get bad.

  14

  KEZIA

  Wednesday starts with problems. Car problems, which are no damn joke out here in Norton; our cabin is a long way from town, and getting a tow truck out could take hours. No Uber or Lyft out here either.

  Luckily, I grew up poor with a dad who knew how to fix things. I find a loose wire and fix it with electrical tape and a prayer. Seems to work.

  I’m half an hour late to the station, and I find Prester there looking considerably better. We nod to each other, and I get coffee, and when I come back Prester says, “You might want to check your messages. Phone’s been ringing off the hook for you.”

  I meet his gaze for a second, then nod. I have a wild impulse to tell him about the baby, but I control that fast. Like telling my father, I want to wait. There’s some strange dread in the back of my mind; I want Javier with me to make this real. Until that happens, I want it to be my secret. Well, mine and Gwen’s. It just feels . . . right.

  I hit the voice mails on the office phone. I have six messages. One’s from a TBI detective complaining to me that one of my friends (that would be Gwen) has been up in Valerie interfering. I ignore it. The next is from his commander. I pay slightly more attention, and make myself a note to kiss and make up. Don’t need that TBI commander crawling up the chain of command. I’m doing a good job, but success is a fragile thing.

  The other four are from different cities I called yesterday about potential matches to Sheryl Lansdowne’s identity. The fact that all four gave me a call back is shocking, but what’s even more concerning is that every one of them leaves me a name and direct number and says they want to talk. Not just “send info,” but talk. Three out of four of these are small towns, granted, but still . . . that’s one hell of a batting average for cases that should have been long gathering dust.

  I start from the top: with the detective from Wichita. She tells me that their missing person fits Sheryl’s description, and I confirm it from prints they’ve sent in. Then the detective starts telling me what isn’t in the missing person’s notice. “Took about two weeks for us to locate a relative of the old lady who passed on,” she says. “He came into town about a week after that to settle her affairs, and found out that she’d been writing a hell of a lot of checks out of her savings account—about ten thousand dollars’ worth—to our gal Mary Hogue here. Who by that time had been reported as missing by a friend from down the block. The old lady kept a good supply of cash at home, and all that was gone, as well as a few pieces of nice jewelry.”

  “And Mary?”

  “Gone like a summer breeze. She left all her stuff behind, but it wasn’t much at all . . . a bank account with just enough to keep it going for another month, rental furniture, an old car that turned out to not be worth what it cost to tow it off. First glance, she looked normal as anything. But when you dig into it, she really had no roots.”

  “Just had to look presentable long enough to find somebody to con,” I say. “Jesus. So, the old lady—”

  “Yeah, getting to that. The son demanded an autopsy and got one. The old lady was poisoned. Antifreeze. A real bad way to go too.”

  I’ve never worked such a case, but I’ve heard how painful that is, and how deadly. It can take days, weeks, months. Poisoners are some of the coldest murderers there are. “Any idea how she ingested it?”

  “Drinks are the easiest method. Iced tea. Pop. Anything like that. It tastes sweet.”

  “Let me guess, Mary was a real good neighbor who had that nice old lady over for a glass of iced tea before she turned up sick?”

  “We think so.”

  “But you didn’t charge her with murder?”

  “Couldn’t,” the detective says briskly. “There was never solid evidence Mary Hogue poisoned the old lady, only that the old lady was poisoned; hell, the coroner wasn’t even sure it wasn’t accidental or suicide. If we’d been able to get Mary in and really press her, we might’ve been able to build a case. But we had nothing—no evidence, no leads on where she’d gone off to. Everything went cold. But trust me, we remember.”

  The Wichita call is a template, as it turns out. Sheryl’s name changes, but the circumstances are always similar. She moves to town, builds up a good reputation, lives a normal but poverty-level life . . . and finds some kind soul to pull her out of her desperate circumstances. Who’s left dead broke, or dies of apparently natural or accidental causes, or just plain vanishes. But there’s never enough to put out a murder warrant on her. Never.

  In every case, the prints match to Penny Carlson / Sheryl Lansdowne.

  I put the phone down, finally, and turn to Prester. He’s waiting expectantly, fingers poised over his keyboard. “Sheryl Lansdowne might be one of the coldest damn serial killers nobody’s ever heard of,” I say. “I figure we can pin at least six prior victims to her easily, and there are likely more. That’s not even counting the number of people she’s stolen from and conned but didn’t kill. She always uses hands-off methods, seems like: poisons, falls down stairs, drownings.”

  We both think about that for a while. What it takes to embark on a career of ice-hearted murder like that and slip away without a trace every single time. She’s never been arrested for anything serious enough to get her into a national database, and by moving state to state, she’s been keeping herself off the radar.

  We may never know exactly how many people she’s killed. Only that it’s probably more than we have found.

  “Best write it all up and send it to TBI,” he says. “They’re going to want to take it federal, most likely, since it’s a multistate investigation now. This goes far beyond our little town, Kez. Let it go. If she’s out there somewhere, she’s going to be found.”

  While I’m finishing the write-up, an email comes in from the TBI. The bones we found on the grid search belong to Tommy Jarrett. He’s been lying up there in those hills since the day he disappeared. He didn’t leave Sheryl and those soon-to-be-born kids. And I sincerely doubt it was any kind of an accident.

  Sheryl. It keeps coming back to Sheryl.

  I don’t want to just trust someone else to do these dead children justice, but Prester’s right: I don’t really have any choice.

  It’s over.

  It doesn’t feel over.

  Gwen calls just as noon approaches, and she’s got a lot to give me, because she’s got the 411 on Douglas Adam Prinker. I’d honestly just about forgotten about him in the rush of revelations about Sheryl, though she’d mentioned the name and I’d intended to get into it. But Gwen’s beaten me to it.

  Turns out Mr. Prinker—who’s alleged to have been do
ing slow rolls past Sheryl’s house, according to the neighbor Gwen interviewed—has a shady record, including multiple domestic violence complaints. Currently newly married with one child, and I feel for that woman; Douglas isn’t likely to change his ways.

  There’s a white van registered in his name, but it’s so old it’s got to be on its last thousand miles. His credit report is littered with unpaid bills, and his trailer is threatened with foreclosure. Breaking four hundred on a credit score would be a really good day for him. To him, Sheryl must have seemed like she had it all.

  Could be it’s just that simple. Maybe Prinker saw an opportunity to grab a woman with money, meant it for a robbery, and something went hard sideways. Given Sheryl’s history, that would be ironic. But if so, why take her? No action on her bank account, nothing on the two credit cards active under Sheryl’s name.

  Gwen’s included Prinker’s employment history. He’s working part time at the Norton landfill, and when I call, he’s at work.

  “Landfill?” Prester leans back in his chair. “I assume you got this.”

  I’m putting on my jacket and wishing I’d worn older clothes. “Yeah, I got this,” I say. “Unless you’re so bored you can’t miss this chance to smell the sights.”

  “Kezia Claremont, I searched that damn landfill twice looking for two different murder weapons in my career, and I have done my stinky-garbage time. You enjoy yourself.” He goes back to typing, but then glances up as I pass. “And watch your back.”

  That’s our version of a warm hug.

  I turn back when I hear him make a sound. It’s an odd one, a groan, and when I walk back, I see that he’s sitting hunched over. His face looks ashy, and he’s pressing a hand to his stomach. He grimaces when he sees me back. “I’m all right,” he says. “Ulcer’s acting up, that’s all. I’ll be fine. I made an appointment with the damn doctor, I see him next Monday. Stop hovering.”

  He means it. I don’t like it, but at least he’s actually sensible enough to seek some medical care, thank God.

  I look around, and see Sergeant Porter watching us both. I point to Prester, then to my eyes, and he nods.

  Porter will watch over him while I’m gone.

  I head for the landfill, which is situated far enough out of town that the smell hardly ever drifts to downtown. But it’s easy to know you’re getting there. Between that and the sewage plant situated close by, it’s a full, stinky experience.

  Seagulls circle the dump like vultures, swept-back wings riding the currents. I don’t like the damn things, and I just know I’m going to get crapped on out there by one of them. But as Prester said: you got to put in your garbage time, and this is part of mine.

  The stench is like to knock me over when I get out of the car, but I power through the invisible fog over to the small, yellow-painted office. Incredibly, they keep the windows open. Maybe it’s to keep their tolerance level up.

  I lean in the window to the big man crowded at the desk and show my badge. “Hey,” I say. “Afternoon. Kezia Claremont, NPD. Here to talk to Douglas Prinker.”

  “You mean Junior? He’s up on the ridge driving the compactor. Big thing with the roller. Can’t miss it. Just finished lunch, so he should be back up there by now.”

  “Can I drive up there?”

  “Only if you got a tractor. No cars allowed.”

  He points out on the map where I’ll find Junior, and I go outside. There’s a wide path winding up the hill, pale dirt that’s kept hard-packed by tractors running daily. Not a hard climb, except for the stench. Seagulls shriek and dive into the jumble of white, blue, green, and red bags that litter the slope, ready to be pushed down flat. One man’s trash is a flying rat’s treasure.

  Douglas Prinker is dwarfed by the giant machine he’s driving. I watch him a minute, then get close enough that he can hear my shouts. The roaring engine dies with a rattle, and the cries of birds take over the empty space. He climbs down onto the step of the compactor . . . but not all the way down. I hold out my badge and point at the ground. He jumps and lands two feet away from me.

  He’s bigger than he looked up on that machine. Broader. Wiry strong. He’s sweating, and he takes off his battered, dirty helmet and tucks it under his arm. Beneath it, his blond hair is dark and matted. “What you want?” he asks. “Ma’am.”

  “Detective Claremont,” I say. “Y’all know me, Douglas. Don’t you?” Most folks who live and work around Norton do. And he nods. From the wary look in his eyes, he thinks he’s about to be collared. “I need to ask you some questions. You want to do it here, or come down to the station with me? Either is fine with me.”

  Nobody chooses the station.

  He says, “Go on then. I’m on the clock. They’re gonna dock my time.”

  I think about clever approaches, but doesn’t seem like it’d be worth it. “You acquainted with Sheryl Lansdowne at all?”

  “Sheryl who?” I see a vein start to throb in his temple. I wish there were about two more feet between us, but I’m not about to step back either.

  “Lansdowne. Married Tommy Jarrett a while back?”

  “Don’t know her.”

  “Then why do we have video of your van cruising by her house on several occasions at night, Douglas?” We don’t, of course. But he doesn’t know that. I see him shift uncomfortably. “You sweet on her, maybe?”

  “She was pretty, that’s all,” he says. “I didn’t do nothin’ to her. You can look at that video. I never even stopped at her house for long. And I damn sure never went inside.”

  Just sat outside in his van long enough to get off, I suspect. That doesn’t surprise me. It does disgust me a little. “You happen to be there on Sunday night, early Monday morning?”

  He puts some thought into it, then shakes his head. “I was at the Low Dog until about closin’ time. Then I got myself pulled over on the way home and was in the Valerie jail until mornin’. You can check that.”

  “I will,” I say. It sounds depressingly likely and true. And he wouldn’t give an arrest as an alibi unless he was confident it would hold up.

  “I heard what happened to her girls . . . ,” Prinker says. I look up. “I got a little girl. That’s just plain evil. I’d never do a thing like that. Never.”

  He’s got a record of battering one ex-wife and one ex-girlfriend, but somehow, I believe him on that one. Even bad men have limits, and that’s his.

  He puts his hat on. “Hope you find Sheryl,” he says. “And I sure hope you catch that asshole what did this.”

  I nod and thank him, and he climbs back up in his machine and fires it up. The rumble shakes the ground I’m standing on, and I back away and head down the hill.

  I’m convinced already that Douglas Adam Prinker is a waste of time, but I’ll close the loop and check the box. And that doesn’t leave a whole lot of room to keep moving forward. Maybe Prester’s right. Maybe I should let the TBI take this one.

  But maybe there’s one more distant possibility to run down.

  Instead of heading back to the office, I stop off at home and shower to get the reek of the dump off me; I can’t stand it, and can’t imagine anyone else could either. I find there’s a big fat seagull dropping on my jacket, and scrub it off and curse the damn sky rats. Fresh jeans, shirt, suit coat, shoes. I feel much, much better.

  I turn to Boot, who’s been watching me run around with great interest and a good deal of satisfaction at having me home. I rub his head, and he looks up at me with big, brown eyes and pants softly. He can smell something coming. He gets to his feet and trots to the door, looking at me expectantly.

  “Absolutely right. Road trip, boy,” I tell him. I get the leash but don’t put it on him; he doesn’t need it on the property. I open the door and say, “Car.”

  He bounds out and straight for it, and pauses by the back door of my plain black sedan like the good boy he is. One foot in the air, polite as you please. “Go pee,” I tell him, and point at his favorite tree. He looks at me, then the tree,
and then his ears go down and he snuffles his way there, circles it three times, and does his business. By that time I’ve got the back door open, and he launches himself into the car at a dead run. The car bounces on its springs as he lands.

  Boot is about seventy pounds of solid muscle, and as far as backup goes, he’s better than most of the local officers I know around here. Listens better too. I have a twinge of worry as I start up the car, and I pay attention to that. I call my pop. He’s gruff and fine. Talking to him, even in a mood, makes me feel better.

  Boot puts his head through the gap between the headrests and rests his chin there.

  “Such a good boy,” I tell him, and he grunts deep in his throat. I laugh. “Should have named you Prester, you sound like him.”

  Another doggie grunt, and I hear the slap of his tail against the upholstery.

  “Okay, partner. Let’s do this.”

  I put the car in drive.

  My plan is pretty simple: follow the track laid down by the 911 caller’s burner phone as traced out by Gwen. I know this is probably a huge waste of time, but since Sheryl Lansdowne’s case is being tossed up the food chain well above my reach, this is the last lead I can follow. I call Prester to let him know where I’m going; he tells me it’s probably a boondoggle. I don’t care. I keep driving, since there’s nothing more urgent demanding attention from me.

  I hit the spot of the hidden pond. Yellow crime scene tape flutters and flaps in the wind, but the place is deserted now. TBI’s long gone, and FBI hasn’t yet arrived. I expect I’ll be requested to face-to-face once the feds hit town, so I figure I should make use of what time I’ve got. I check the map Gwen emailed and start driving the route.

  Boot changes to staring out the window; I roll it down so he can stick his head out, but not enough that he can jump if he gets excited. He seems content. We pass the broken-down wreck of the two abandoned houses. Then the crime scene of the McMansion; this one’s still active. I don’t stop. A couple of deputies eyeball me as I drive past, and I don’t acknowledge them. They don’t know me, and the closed expressions tell me they’re not giving me any benefit of the doubt.