Dying Embers

by B. E. Sanderson

  “Devin Thatcher was an incredible human being. So concerned about his fellow man,” she said sweetly. “Not at all like you.”

  Heh. He wasn’t very concerned about you at the end there, Emma. Some incredible person. A rough chuckle tickled her ear. Actually, thinking about it now, he would’ve had to be an incredible man to put up with you for as long as he did. Dumped you and got married within three months. I wonder… How many kids do you think he and his hippy wife have after all these years? I’m guessing a dozen, and they all live off the land.

  Her teeth clenched so tightly she could feel a migraine growing up around them. “Shut up.”

  Will was still chuckling. Maybe he knew ahead of time you’d never give him kids. Barren and frigid isn’t the best combination for a wife, Emma. If only I’d known before I married you, then I could’ve been with Molly. I knew her before she met Miles, you know. She would’ve given me children. All those years... Wasted.

  “Shut up!” Her scream was punctuated by the squeal of tires as she jammed her foot on the brake. Stopping the convertible in the middle of the forgotten stretch of highway, she picked up the urn. Her hands wrapped around its neck as if it were his. They tightened. If she squeezed hard enough, he wouldn’t be able to talk anymore.

  But he was dead.

  He couldn’t be talking.

  Using the utmost care, she settled the urn back into its place and patted it gently. “I’m being silly. You can’t hurt me.” Even as the words left her mouth, though, she could hear the faint rumble of his deep laugh coming from inside the metal canister.

  If Will only knew the truth. Emma wasn’t barren; she just never wanted children. Oh, they were nice enough to look at when she passed one on the street, but she never felt the burning urge to make one like most women. Or most men, for that matter. Birth control was such an easy thing to hide from a husband who worked as many hours as hers had. Maybe if she had allowed him to plant a child inside her, he never would’ve whored around with Molly Jensen…

  She shook her head hard to clear away that train of thought. Nothing would’ve changed Will. It wasn’t her fault. It had never been her fault. The thought strengthened her resolve even as it terrified her.

  Within minutes, she headed north once more. Just another hour until she reached the exit that would take her to Devin Thatcher. Once off the freeway, the landscape would change, and so would her mood. She hated the dryness of Utah. The mountains where Devin worked would provide her with trees and waterfalls, just like back home.

  And it would provide her with the perfect place to give Devin the justice he earned. If she was lucky, his little, woodsy wife would be there with him. Maybe Emma would let her watch, before helping her join him.

  She almost let Arthur’s wife take the trip with him as well. Lord knows, the woman certainly deserved it. In a way, she had been as guilty as her husband. But Nancy Fleming had earned a different sort of death. One more fitting—like Miles Jensen received, but with more pain. Large amounts of antifreeze can kill a person quickly, or small amounts can take a long, long time. If she’d had more time, Nancy’s death would’ve been the slow route. Either way, the results were painful, though.

  Emma stopped her reverie cold. Of all the memories in her head, the end of her relationship with Arthur had been the one she didn’t like to revisit. She much preferred the memory of his screams as the fire licked closer around him. It echoed through the gully where his car lay, and when the final explosion occurred, it sounded like Hell opened a door to greet him.

  For an instant afterwards, she’d felt regret. When she was little, Mama taught her every life was sacred—even if men were the spawn of Satan. By killing Arthur, no matter his crimes, she had committed the worst sin of all. In the back of her mind, she could hear Mama weeping for her soul. But that hadn’t happened again, and she no longer worried about her soul. Their souls were paving the way for her, and if she met them again in Hell, she’d help the devil dole out their punishments.

  Still, she didn’t look at the urn again. For once, it stood silent. To keep it that way, she turned on the radio and cranked the volume. As long as the music stayed loud, she wouldn’t be able to think about what happened. If she couldn’t think, she couldn’t feel.

  And not feeling was the most important thing of all.

  Chapter Eight

  “Dev-in.” Emma’s sing-song whisper melded with the wind in the woods around her. “Oh, Dev-in. Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

  His dreary little house appeared to have been plucked out of suburbia and thrust up against a line of trees. A truck stood in the driveway, and smoke filtered from the chimney. Someone should be here. Emma didn’t care if it was Mr. or Mrs. Thatcher. Both of them would get their turn. If it was Devin, he would die like the rest. If his little wife was home, she would wait patiently while her hubby got what he deserved, and then she’d die, too.

  The sun peeked above the tree line, bathing her in soft pink light. Until that moment, she hadn’t really noticed the time, but the Thatchers must still be snoozing in their cheap-ass lumpy bed.

  “Hello.”

  Emma nearly screamed when she realized the voice wasn’t Will’s and the urn still sat on the front seat of her car. He never came to watch the show. Too hard to carry him and still do the job properly.

  “Who are you?”

  She shook herself from her musings and looked down into the most perfectly beautiful brown eyes. Devin’s eyes, but in a much smaller face. “Waiting for your parents.”

  “Mom and Dad are still sleeping.”

  “Then what are you doing outside?” she said, as if standing in the woods talking to a scrap of a boy was the most natural thing a woman could do right before she killed his parents.

  “Watching the sunrise. I do it almost every morning. They don’t mind as long as I’m careful. Are you here to watch the sunrise, too? You almost missed it.” The words came out in a long string, broken only by his need to breathe.

  “I’m here on business.”

  “Then I’ll go get Dad.”

  “No!” she shouted, and then calmed her voice. “I’d rather wait until later.” Adopting a tone she remembered people using with her when she was a child, she tried to make herself seem normal to the boy. “Shouldn’t you be getting ready for school?” Once he left, she could do what needed to be done. Devin and his wife deserved to die, but this little product of their ill-fated union most likely hadn’t earned their fate. He’d be better off once she ended his parents’ lives, but he didn’t need to see it.

  “Yeah. I don’t want to go to school today, though.”

  “Why not?”

  The boy laughed. “Because then I’ll miss finding out who you are. They never tell me anything.”

  “Well, I have an idea.” She lowered herself to his eye level. “This time, you get to be the one who knows about me first, so when they try to keep me secret later, you can surprise them with how much you already know.”

  His eyes twinkled. “Sounds fun. What’s the catch?” Devin’s eyes always took on a special glint when he got ready to make mischief, and her heart softened more for the child.

  “Well, in order for it to work, they can’t know you already met me. Then when the time comes, it’ll be a big surprise.” Not the best surprise for a little boy, but she’d make sure to get Devin as far from the cabin as possible. Maybe she’d even spare the boy’s mother.

  After all, every child needs his mother—if only to make sure he doesn’t grow up to hurt women.

  In an instant, she decided. The mother would live. Devin, on the other hand, still needed to die. She just had to get him alone.

  #

  “Arthur Fleming. Fifty-seven. Former Army corporal. He worked for a chemical company in Racine, Wisconsin. Three kids—”

  Ben interrupted her litany of the first vic’s statistics. “Spouse?”

  “Deceased. She died about a week after he did.”

  “Murder?”<
br />
  “Suicide. She wrote a lovely note about how sorry she was, and then drank a gallon of antifreeze.” Jace kept her voice as monotone as possible. The whole thing would go much smoother if Ben couldn’t see how each victim left its mark on her. Every death leaves a string of bereaved behind, but in this case, one woman held the responsibility for them all—even in the case of Nancy Fleming.

  “What about the kids?” He tried to lean over and see the file, but the angle made it look like he was trying to see down her blouse. When she caught him, he reddened and sat up straight. “I wasn’t… I didn’t mean…”

  “I’ll let you read it later,” she said, trying not to laugh. “As for the children, they were all interviewed, but none of them provided anything useful…” She paused as the same irritating niggle from those interviews crept up on her.

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. Something they weren’t telling us.” She tapped the file like it would cough up information it didn’t have if she just coaxed it hard enough. “The daughter in particular seemed… I don’t know. Off. Like she was playing the part of grieving daughter, but not really giving it her best performance. One of the sons almost seemed relieved his father died. The other treated the whole incident as if we were talking about the plot of a movie. Interested, but not really part of it.”

  “Daddy wasn’t wonderful?”

  “Something like that. But their reactions could’ve been shock.”

  He flipped through his own notepad. “It says here you didn’t tie the Fleming murder in until after you’d found the third body, right? Doesn’t sound like shock to me.”

  Pushing her bangs away from her forehead, she let loose a frustrated breath. “I know. I’m making allowances I shouldn’t.” The faces of too many bereaved families paraded through her mind. “It can be like that when you lose family members in a horrible way. Years later, it sneaks up and slaps you in the face.”

  Ben tilted his head and waited, but she couldn’t go there. Not yet. He seemed like a good man. He probably could be a good friend. Maybe more. But right now, he was a Colorado cop, and she was a federal agent. Getting too close never worked out in situations like theirs.

  “I think we should go to Wisconsin,” he said when she didn’t provide any further insight. “Interview everyone surrounding the Fleming murder again, and see if we can figure out what they’re hiding. It could be nothing more than Arthur was a cross-dressing acrobat in his spare time, but I think with the right encouragement, we’ll find something nasty hiding in his closet.”

  She’d already let him in too deep—flying off to the Badger State together would only make things harder when it came time cut him loose. “I can’t ask you to—”

  “You’re not asking,” he said, standing to look into her eyes. “I’m telling. I know I don’t have jurisdiction, and you can’t officially ask for my help. But it’s like I said, you’ll either accept my help, or I’ll be your hindrance.”

  “Why?”

  The steely look came back into his eyes, making the subtle lines more pronounced. “Because I want this killer. She murdered someone right under my nose. Let’s just say I don’t take kindly to anyone shitting in my backyard and leave it at that.”

  Jace took a hard look at the detective. Behind his eyes burned a fire she recognized. It flickered back at her every morning from the mirror above her bathroom sink. Some driving force motivated Ben Yancy, and he wouldn’t let go of it without a fight. Whatever drove him, she understood the feeling.

  Giving him a nod of acceptance, she said, “One of these days, you’re going to have to tell me the truth, you know.”

  “Not without a lawyer present.” His eyes twinkled with something more deadly than humor. Whether the twinkle meant justice or revenge, she couldn’t tell.

  Shaking off the thought, Jace laughed at herself. If she delved too deeply into ‘Yancy the man’, she would lose sight of the job. She couldn’t afford even a slight shift of focus—not until they’d caught this lady-murderer, and maybe not even then. A new killer would always be there after this one.

  If she’d learned one thing at the S.C.I.U., there was always another killer.

  “So what do we do now, boss?” Ben said, holding onto the light tone. Apparently, he wasn’t exactly jumping at the chance to delve deeper into his own motivations either.

  “If you really insist on sticking with this case, then ‘where to’ is Wisconsin. Racine to be exact.” Behind her back, she crossed her fingers, hoping she’d still have a job when Graham found out what she’d just agreed to.

  #

  Dawn sent soft fingers over Lake Michigan by the time they reached Racine. Still too early to make any headway with their investigation, the two weary travelers trolled the city in their rental car, looking for the first real meal either of them had eaten in almost twenty-four hours.

  “An associate sent me the best pastry I ever ate, and if I remember correctly, it was made here in Racine. Look for any place advertising something called a kringle.”

  Ben cast a sideways glance at her. “As in Kris? This isn’t one of those Christmas towns is it?”

  She laughed, and the sound surprised her. The last man who’d made her laugh… Well, she couldn’t remember one, it’d been so long. “Not as far as I know. It’s some kind of Danish delicacy. Just trust me, and keep your eyes peeled.”

  Not another block went by before he pulled the car into a parking space along the road. “Mademoiselle asks and she receives.” He pointed toward the sign above them.

  “Perfect. You won’t regret this.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  After sitting down with a couple large slices of the buttery, gooey treat, they ate in companionable silence punctuated only by the groan from them both when they finished too soon.

  “Well?”

  “You were right. Those things are incredible.” He patted his stomach. “Good thing I don’t live around here. I’d ruin my girlish figure.”

  She couldn’t imagine him ever having a girlish figure. Not exactly the expanding waistlines of many men his age, he still had enough meat on his bones to keep from blowing away in the wind. Broad and well-proportioned—he represented the kind of man Jace would’ve enjoyed getting to know, if this wasn’t business.

  “Speaking of girlish figures,” she said, moving back onto firmer footing, “Frank has us meeting with Fleming’s daughter first. Her name’s Elizabeth, but she goes by Liza.” She pulled out her smartphone and went over the notes Frank had e-mailed. “Late thirties, never married. Until their deaths, she lived with her parents. She found her mother’s body.”

  “Does this Liza have any kids?”

  “Nope. The stereotypical spinster daughter. At least before her parents died. Who knows what kind of trouble she got into after she was free?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “I’ve seen it before. The daughter, always under her parents’ thumb, decides to break loose when they’re out of the picture.” She pulled up a photo and slid her phone across to him. “This was taken a year before their deaths. Click over to the next pic. That’s her last week.” The photos could almost have been of two different women—young and dour versus older and full of joy. All Ben could say was ‘wow’ before he handed the phone back. “She may not be happy to talk about what happened,” Jace said. “From the looks of it, the past is the last thing she wants to dredge up.”

  “Whatever happened, she can’t just forget it,” he said. “If she knows anything that can help us, she has to talk about it.”

  “Whether she wants to or not?”

  “Something like that.” He folded his napkin and laid it across his plate. Rising, he grasped one of her hands and pulled her to her feet. A warm tingling sensation came so suddenly she almost jerked her hand away. “Shall we go?” he said, releasing her hand and taking her elbow to guide her through the restaurant.

  #

  Liza Fleming lived in the house her p
arents had raised all their children in, but from the looks of it, not much remained of the house little Elizabeth had played dolls in. A new roof and new windows hinted at recent remodeling, and judging by the building permit taped in the front window, work hadn’t been finished.

  Before they reached the door, the new version of Ms. Fleming stepped out onto the porch. “Hello. I’ve been expecting you.” She didn’t bother to look at their IDs, which made Jace wonder just how naïve a women in her thirties could be. Then Jace remembered she wasn’t in Dallas any more. This part of Wisconsin was probably a lot more relaxed than the DFW metroplex.

  They walked into the new foyer of the old house, while the woman apologized for the mess. “This house needed so much work for so long, but Daddy—God rest his soul—was never one for spending money on domestic things.” For a woman who’d just lost both her parents to tragedy, Liza seemed way too chipper for Jace’s liking. “Would you like to see… where she…?” Her voice trailing off showed the first sign any of this affected her.

  “That won’t be necessary,” Jace said. “We just have a few questions.”

  “I don’t know if I can tell you anything more than I told the police at the time.” Liza lowered herself onto a drop-cloth covered sofa and waved them into chairs. “Or the agents who came by here after those poor other men were discovered. I wasn’t quite myself at the time, but I don’t think I have anything to add.”

  They sat and opened their notebooks. “We understand,” Jace said, silently thanking Ben for letting her take the lead, “but I’d like to ask some questions my fellow agents might not have thought of. We’re just touching all the bases here.”

  “Certainly.”

  Jace looked at a few hastily jotted notes. Even though she’d gone over this meeting in her head several times since they left Utah, she still wasn’t quite sure how to broach the subject. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you some things about your childhood.”

  “I really don’t see how my childhood can help you catch who did this to Daddy.” The woman’s smile faded to a thin, tight line.