by Adira August
He wondered why no one had torn it down and put up a Starbucks.
Only he didn’t wonder. Because as prosaic and almost quaint as it was in an It’s a Wonderful Life way, he was certain the house held something. Something more than field mice sheltering from coming storms. Something dank and decaying. He just wasn’t sure if it was alive.
His text alert sounded. Hunt automatically pulled the cell from his pocket. “Dane. … Okay. Five minutes.”
Hunter put the phone away. “Merisi says Gordi found something. We need to head back.”
“You want to take a quick look at the back porch when we go by?”
“No.”
He didn’t explain.
“WHEN YOU PUT THE APP in my phone, I think you used your old password.” Avia held her cell out to Cam, who she’d found perched cross-legged on a desk in his bullpen, as if meditating with his eyes open.
He nodded and took it from her. She looked about her. “This is pretty nice. Impressive.”
“Put your password in,” he told her holding out the phone again.
“Oh, you do it. It’s-
“NO!”
She jumped.
He was on his feet, eyes blazing. This was the Dom who’d taken Hunter Dane. “You do not ever take security lightly. Ever. People’s lives are on the line.”
She went to him and took her phone, entering the sixteen digit code. “I click c-o-n-t now?”
“Right.”
She did and a new screen appeared. She handed him the phone back. “I’m sorry. I’m having a little trouble adjusting to—” She hesitated.
“I understand.”
She was surprised by the compassion in his tone. It occurred to her how complex a man he was, and how perfect for Hunter who lived to solve puzzles. Cam returned her cell.
“Thanks,” she told him. “So what's first?” She gestured at the room.
“I’m trying to figure that out. I know what it looks like at the end, but I’m not sure what I do in which order.”
She leaned on the desk he’d vacated. “Ben would say first you get your people in place.”
“Benedict Hart is a billionaire,” Cam told her. “He hires people to hire people.”
She shook her head. “He wasn’t always. He was a kid on a baseball scholarship who lived in the back of his uncle’s hardware store off campus. He told me his first executive desk was bales of hay with a tarp thrown over them. Soon as he put that together, he got his people in place.”
He smiled. “Bales of hay?”
“Maybe straw. So what people do you need?”
“I need an I.T. guy. But I can’t pay one. So I need to hire a fundraiser. But I can’t pay them, either. I could pay them myself, but I’m pretty sure that’s not how this is supposed to work.”
“How about a grant-writer? They work for a percentage of the grants received.”
He rubbed his face with both hands. “You know of a place that gives grants for ghost-hunting?”
Camden Snow was focused, disciplined and tireless. But he’d always had a fixed goal, a defined routine. He’d always known what thing should happen next. Creating a self-sustaining system from the ground up had almost overwhelmed him.
Avia could see how lost he was at that moment.
“Ben has a foundation. Lots of rich people do. You’re a little bit rich, right? And a lot famous. I’m sure if you research it—keeping in mind every damned body I’ve met thinks you’re megaparsecs better than I am at research—you’ll find people who’ll fund you.”
He still looked uncertain.
“I’d fund you,” she said.
That puzzled him. “Why?”
“I’m an identical twin.”
His face cleared. “I think Hunter mentioned that. Do you have anomalous communication?”
She laughed. “Never heard it put that way before but yeah, I guess. Sometimes we know things. Feel things about each other.”
“You mean like feel the other’s emotions?”
“Kind of. Sometimes we feel actual things. Like before she told me she was pregnant I knew. I felt like I was holding a baby. But we get emotions. But mostly thoughts. I always wondered how it worked.” She slid off the desk. “That’s what you’re going to find out, right?”
“That’s the idea.”
“So how’d you get interested in all this?” Avia wandered toward the front.
“A case. You can read it if you want. It’s filed under ‘Tussey’.”
“You got any coffee in this place, yet?” she called back over her shoulder.
He hesitated. “No, just got the stuff for it.”
He followed her into the break room where the new coffeemaker still sat unplugged on the counter. A shopping bag of coffee and filters and things to put in coffee waited to be unpacked. Avia swiftly set up the pot, unpacked and arranged.
“You have hot chocolate packets!”
“Hunt mentioned you liked it. You don’t have to do all that.”
“It’s little enough after you spent so much time with me, saving my ass this morning. Or the case’s ass, I suppose.”
Cam tore down the box the coffeemaker came in. Avia rinsed the pot in the small sink.
A series of low tones from her phone surprised her.
“That’s your non emergency signal for incoming Unit texts or data,” Cam told her.
She dried her hands. “What’s the emergency one sound like?”
He grinned. “You’ll know.”
DAN GORDI CROUCHED next to the remains. He was all poking elbows and protruding knees in his coroner’s office jumpsuit. Gordi was Hunter’s favorite pathologist. He knew as much about investigating a crime scene as most detectives did.
“You have something for me, Gordi?”
The pathologist swiveled on his toes and blinked up at Hunter through black-framed glasses. “Dane. Join me.”
Hunter entered the old cider shed, carefully keeping to the two-foot wide strip of heavy brown paper that protected the floor. He squatted next to Gordi.
“What do you see?” Gordi asked. He pointed to sections of the long bones just above and below the knees.
The areas were covered with teeth marks where some kind of rodent had been. A thin dark line emerged from the gnaw pattern. “I see rats getting at the bodies and a line of dirt.”
“Right. A groove that’s filled with dirt. Underneath the teeth marks.”
He stood up, bending over and jiggling his knees. “I have pads in the van, someplace,” he muttered.
Hunt stayed down, looking over both sets of remains. At the bottom of the femurs and the tops of the tibias, he could make out other lines of dirt. Grooves. Under the teeth marks. Across the bones. Side-to-side.
Hair on the back of his neck stood up.
“Gordi?”
The pathologist bent low so Hunter didn’t have to raise his voice.
“Are these what I think they are?” His throat was dry.
Gordi squatted again. “Yeah. Those’re cut marks. These kids were butchered. You’re looking for a cannibal.”
THE TUSSEY CASE had happened back in March. It fascinated Avia to read a police report without having most of the investigation withheld because she was press. At the end was a medical report on Mike Merisi, whom she hadn’t met, yet, detailing his injuries in a firefight he and Hunter had been in with the suspect. She hadn’t met Merisi, yet, but she was already impressed with him.
Having nothing to do until Hunter made a request, she decided to read through all the Unit’s case files. It would help her be more part of the team if she understood references to things that happened before she came. She could also see just what things Cam did for them.
Starting at the beginning took her to a year ago November. As she read through, she realized this was the case before the Unit had been formed. She found the Farleigh name. She also found out that the exclusive club Ben’s brother Nicky and his husband belonged to, was a BDSM club.
She stopped reading, feeling like a window peeper spying on her own family. Cam was right, though. The names she saw were those of prominent people. Lives—in terms of reputation and career—were at stake. This—this knowing so many intimate things, was part of her job.
Avia Rivers was beginning to understand how critical the work was that Hunter’s Unit did. She went back to the case file.
At the end, she scanned down the page quickly to see if there was anything else before moving on to the next case. Attachments at the end included evidence logs, autopsy findings and a medical report on Cam’s injury. Under “diagnosis” she found his leg injury classified as a “comminuted femur fracture.”
A short black line masked part of the text. One of the redactions, she assumed. She highlighted and right-clicked.
Huntington’s Disease.
There were no details.
Diane Natani came out of her office. “I just uploaded the warrant authorization to the case file. Make sure he reads it—Avia?”
“Hey, Diane.”
“What’s so mesmerizing?” Natani came around to look at the screen Rivers had been staring at so intently. “You’re reading the Tussey case?”
“Cam suggested it. I’m fascinated with the references to secret CIA experiments. I’m sorry, what did you need?” Avia picked up a pencil and held it poised over her notebook.
“The warrant is up. But it’s limited in scope. Very limited. Make sure Lieutenant Dane reads it.”
“I will,” Avia said. She called up the file to forward to Hunter’s phone. Diane was still standing there. “Something else?”
Natani gave Avia’s monitor another look, but shook her head and went back into her office.
MIKE MERISI WAITED with Carol Twee at what was left of the entrance to the cider press. Hunter Dane and Dan Gordi had walked away and were speaking quietly.
“Do you think it’s weird that the smell from the cider press shed makes me hungry for apple pie?”
“Everything makes you hungry,” Merisi said, eyes on the meeting.
“You look like a bully took your lunch money,” Twee told him. “What’s going on?”
“It doesn’t piss you off? Like he doesn’t trust us?”
She shook her head. “He probably doesn’t. Did you ever work a case with Gordi?”
“Not him. Dane!” he hissed. “He should have included us; this is our investigation.”
She sighed. “You know, at least once every case you threaten to go back to patrol.”
He picked up a small rock and threw it toward the ditch. It fell very far short.
“What happened?” she asked gently. ”Is it the Maki case?”
“No. That’s major suckage but all cases have that.” He sighed. “I just hate change.”
“He’s right down the hall and we’ll all be helping out on our down time,” she told him.
They heard the text alert faintly from thirty feet away and saw their boss reach for his phone. Merisi smirked at Twee, her gaze fixed on Hunter Dane running a hand through hair that immediately flopped back over one eyebrow.
“You have just as big a thing for him as I do for Cam, you know.”
“You have a crush on Cam.”
“Uh-huh. What do you call what you have for the Lieutenant?”
She cocked her head and considered the question. “Hunger. I want to climb him like a tall tree and take a big bite.”
He hooted with laughter. Carol Twee always made him feel better. Their boss turned at the sound. Gordi moved off toward his van and Hunter came over to them.
“Here’s the deal,” he said putting the cell away. “The M.E.’s office will tent the cider press. Dispatch will send a couple uniforms to secure it until tomorrow when we can get access in daylight to the area under the remains.”
“Did we get the warrant?” Merisi asked.
“We did. It’s limited to the grounds outside the house and only that which can be easily removed or destroyed by the elements. Did Twee tell you what we’re looking for?”
“Yeah, she filled me in.Twigs with motor oil.”
“Good. You’ll be with me on the path. Twee, take all those pictures you didn’t take before. Get interiors through the windows as you document the condition of the sills showing they couldn’t have been opened.”
“Images are consistent with the warrant?”
“Yeah, I read it. All photos and video as long as we don’t ingress the main structure, garage or other outbuildings.”
“Wait. What about that?” Merisi pointed to the cider press shed.
“According to Rivers, it’s on railroad property.”
Twee sighed. “I wish we could ingress a bathroom.”
“We’ll take a break while Gordi does the removal and secures the scene. I could use some food,” Hunter told them. “Let’s go.”
HUNTER BANNED WORK as a discussion topic during meals. They found a fast food place close by and sat around a cold orange plastic table discussing the Tussey research. Since it wasn’t crime-related, it was allowed.
“We should get Cam out here,” Twee said. “That house is supposed to be haunted.”
“No use,” Merisi said. “He runs the thing, he’s not psychic, himself.” He took a huge bite a of a triple decker bacon cheeseburger.
“Be cool if it was something you could learn, you know? Like playing the piano.” Twee speared grilled chicken and lettuce with a spork. “What say, you, Boss? You’re the intuitive one around here. You think dead people hang around their old haunts?” She grinned at her own wordplay.
“No work talk,” he reminded her. He pushed away the remains of a veggie burger and stirred sugar into his coffee. “But supposedly there’s no distance in the afterlife. As if all things were in a single place.”
“Nonlocality,” Merisi said around another bite. He stopped chewing at the looks from the other two. “What? I took physics in college. Once you get to the quantum level all the rules are out the door. The only thing we know, or think we know, is there’s energy. That’s it. The vast majority of the universe is hidden, except it’s right here.”
He shrugged, about to shove the last bite into his mouth. “Why can’t some consciousness be any place at any time if any place is every place?”
Twee made sure all their trash was on the tray and took it with her to toss out on the way to the ladies room. Hunter regarded Merisi thoughtfully. “They’re hidden and don’t need doors?”
Merisi nodded. “If there’re real individual people over there.”
Hunter was on his cell. “Yeah, what time does Permits open? … Get sewer schematics for the Hortt property and any building permits for the farmhouse and grounds. … Right. Then get Natani to research city code violations for broken sewer pipe on private - that’s it. Yeah. … I want them for the morning. … Maybe a couple hours.”
He got up. “Let’s get back and collect the evidence. We need to wrap up. I have a feeling tomorrow’s going to be a long day.”
Merisi followed him to the men’s room. They didn’t speak while they pissed. At the sinks, Merisi caught Hunt’s eye in the mirror.
“What?”
“That dump site is a lot closer to the access road and the railroad ditch than it is to the house.”
“You think I’m too fixed on the house?” Hunter looked around and found paper towels as well as two of the nuclear air blowers so popular now. He used the paper. Merisi nuked.
“I’m thinking Adams County didn’t focus on the road or the nearby houses or businesses when those kids went missing and the remains were dumped. We need to do house-to-house.” He held the door open for Hunter. “And you might be a little too focused on the house.”
“It’s a suspect I’m eliminating,” Hunter told him as they left the bathroom.
“The house is a suspect? Shades of Shirley Jackson?”
Hunter stopped in the entrance vestibule. “The bodies weren’t dumped right away. The victims were butchered first.”
Merisi’s usual olive complexion had gone pale. “Fuck.”
“Exactly.”
“So, the house is a suspect location for—that?”
Hunter nodded. “I want it thoroughly investigated and eliminated asap. With you on Maki, I’ll be doing the house-to-house with the deputies, myself.”
Merisi chin-pointed through the glass wall. Twee waited outside by the Bronco.
“No,” Hunter told him. “Gordi wants it kept quiet until he confirms at autopsy. And even then, this is something we keep to ourselves.” He pushed through the door.
Mike Merisi knew that his Lieutenant’s emphasis had always been on the team acting in concert. But he also knew, as did Hunter Dane, that they were the unit inside the Unit. And the worst of the depravity, the choice to kill and the willingness to die, belonged to them.
“WHAT IS THIS, ANYWAY?”
Merisi put down the crime scene case at the end of the straight swath of treeless ground that led to the farmhouse yard. He handed Hunter and Twee nitrile gloves, pulling on a pair, himself.
“Might have been access to the railway and the cider press,” Hunter said. “Forty-fifty years ago, trains stopped to load at private business, farms and ranches. There would have been barrels of cider and apples, I suppose.”
“Okay. So how do we do this?” Merisi asked.
“Twee? How do you want to proceed?”
“Find the traces of oil. Flag them all. I’m going to measure the width of the crush strips. When you’re done, I’ll get shots of the line of markers to show where the relation to the tire tracks.”
Hunter squinted at the sun hanging just above the top of Mount Evans. “You’d better photograph the house, first. You’re about to lose the light.”
The men put evidence markers in their pockets so they had a hand free for their flashlights. The accessway was an indistinguishable strip of black in the fading light. But their flashlights were powerful and would bring the deadfall into sharp detail and full color as they walked along.
