The gravel on the side of the road crunched loudly under the truck’s tires as the detective pulled to a stop in front of the array of law enforcement vehicles. She sat still, staring out at the sight while he slammed the truck into park, pushed open his door, and stalked around to her side. The passenger’s side door flew open and he unbuckled her seat belt before grasping her elbow to encourage her out of the car. Under any other circumstances, she would have been defiant, but it was as if she could feel the earnestness in his entire body, the nervous energy of a deep-seated fear, all concentrated in his grasp on her arm. Maureen almost felt sorry for the young detective and decided to just cooperate. For his sake.
They walked down a gentle slope for several yards until they were a few feet below the level of the road, out of the crowd of vehicles, looking out at the crime scene. No more than two hundred yards out into the field, she could see what looked like a heap of burned wood surrounded by a wide square of yellow police tape. A dark-haired woman paced around it, followed by a young man scribbling furiously on a notepad. Two officers were flanking them at two of the corners of the yellow square. The whole area was dotted with little orange flags.
As Maureen continued to scan the faces in the assembled mass, her eyes fell upon Agent Layton standing to one side, speaking closely with the female agent. She’d barely met the woman yesterday on her way back to her holding cell after Layton had finally ceased with his relentless questioning. The fact that he’d tried so hard—and failed—to break her made her smirk at seeing him again. She turned to glance to her side at Detective Benitez. To her surprise, he was looking at her, expectantly.
“What?” she asked, unnerved by his stare.
“Well, are you getting anything from the crime scene?”
You’ve got to be kidding me. That’s what I’m doing here? Maureen thought to herself. She might have laughed if she hadn’t been so annoyed and offended by his presumption. Did this man honestly think that she was some sort of a psychic? Did he think she was going to pick up on some aura of the scene and solve the whole case for him using only her mind? Clearly, he’d seen too many bad movies. She decided to mess with him, to give him what he deserved for the indignity.
Maureen closed her eyes, raised her handcuffed hands to her temples, and began a monotonic hum. She paced back and forth, acting as if she was a divining rod, changing direction as she pretended to narrow in on a supposed mystical force. It only took a few seconds, however, before she was tired of her little game, and she stopped in her tracks and gave the detective her best annoyed stare.
“It doesn’t work like that, boss,” she chided when it was clear he still didn’t catch on to her teasing.
Detective Benitez let his chin fall to his chest. She could tell he felt foolish for even asking her to do something like that. “I should have known you wouldn’t be any help.”
“Hey, I’m not the one who brought me here, out of that nice comfy cell, to perform little tricks because he can’t solve this case himself,” she shot back. “I mean, what did you expect to happen?”
The detective opened his mouth, but no words came out. Fortunately for him, the approach of footsteps saved him from trying to stumble his way through something stupid. A tall, young man in a firefighter’s uniform came up to meet them.
“Manny, I thought that was you,” he said. “Can you believe this?”
“Hey, Ben,” he greeted the fireman before turning toward Maureen. “Maureen, this is Ben Naismith. I went to high school with him and his wife.”
“It’s just like the scene on Thursday morning,” the fireman told him.
“Why don’t you give me the details.”
“Well, we got the call around—”
“Hang on a second,” the detective interrupted, looking around. He seemed to find what he was looking for and called out, “Yancy, can you come over here?”
Maureen had remembered seeing this man walking through the hallway of the police station once or twice while she was being herded back and forth from her cell to the interrogation room. As she recalled, he really didn’t say much, and he only made brief eye contact with her once.
“Hey, Carl,” the detective said as the officer came up to stand next to her, “can you please keep an eye on Ms. Allen here while I go talk to Mr. Naismith? Thanks.” He and the young fireman walked away before an answer came.
As Yancy’s eyes looked her up and down, Maureen could sense his indignation at having to babysit her. She didn’t blame him. Where could she go? She looked at him and they exchanged shrugs, a silent pact to endure each other for a few minutes.
Maureen turned her head to watch the detective and the fireman speak in hushed tones next to a cadre of police vehicles. She could see two vans with the county name on them and three more behind these, which must have belonged to the Sycamore Hills Police Department. Further down the road, apart from the others, a plain, black sedan was parked. The Feds’ car, she thought bitterly.
As her gaze continued to scan the field, Maureen felt a light tug on the hem of her shirt. She looked down to see a little boy, maybe three or four with sandy-colored hair and big, blue eyes, standing at her feet and staring up at her.
“What’s that?” He was pointing at the handcuffs on her wrists.
Maureen didn’t know what to do. She didn’t have any experience dealing with children. Should she make something up? Tell the truth? Should she just ignore him?
“What’s that?” the boy chirped louder, insistently pawing at her wrists. Clearly, he was not going to leave her alone until he got some sort of answer.
Maureen looked to her right at Officer Yancy and raised an eyebrow, silently asking what she was supposed to do. He just shrugged. Maureen sighed and crouched down to look the little boy in the eyes. Staring at him as menacingly as she could, she gave her answer. “They’re called handcuffs,” she whispered gruffly. “They put them on bad people to keep them from running away. I’m a bad person. So run along back to your mommy.”
Rather than run, the little boy giggled and raised his tiny hand to her face, running his hand down her cheek.
“Benny, get away from her,” a voice shouted. Maureen stood up to the sight of a young, dark-haired woman rushing down from the side of the road toward them. The moment she got to them, the woman scooped up the boy in her arms. “You know you’re not supposed to talk to strangers,” she chided the boy, holding her face nose to nose with his.
“Tasha, what are you guys doing here?” The voice of the detective came from up the hill.
Maureen turned to see him and the fireman jogging back toward them. The fireman came to their side and kissed the little boy on the top of the head.
“Hey, Manny,” the woman replied after she put her free arm through the fireman’s, who Maureen assumed was her husband. “We were coming back from staying at my parents’ house. We had dinner there last night and, since Ben had the late shift and I don’t have class until nine today, we decided to drive back down early instead of leaving late last night. When he saw the firetrucks, Benny insisted that Daddy had to be there, and he wanted to see him. I couldn’t say no. What happened here?”
“We probably shouldn’t talk about it in front of Benny,” the fireman replied.
The woman nodded.
Maureen looked down at the little boy again. He was holding on to both of his father’s hands but was facing her, smiling and rocking back and forth. His parents noticed.
“Weird, he’s usually so shy around people he doesn’t know,” the young fireman said.
“I’m taking him home,” the woman announced and gave the fireman a kiss on the cheek. “You’ll be home Monday morning, right?” She received his nod before turning back to Maureen and shooting her a look.
Same to you, bitch, Maureen thought sourly.
The young woman turned and hoisted the boy up so that he was facing he
r. The little boy broke into a broad grin and raised his hand to wave at her. Maureen, not knowing what else to do, stuck out her tongue at him and made a face. He giggled and buried his head in his mother’s shoulder. Maureen shook her head and then heard a brief sniffle of laughter come from her side. She snapped her head around to Officer Yancy, hoping to catch the crack in his serious facade, but he had mastered himself.
The detective shifted his head from side to side, eyeing Maureen and then the young woman and boy walking up the slope to their car. “What was that about?” he asked.
Maureen shrugged. “Kid just came up to me and started bothering me,” she said. “Nothing more.”
“Okay.” He drew out the word, clearly skeptical of her explanation. He eyed her for a moment longer before turning his attention to the other officer. “Carl, I’m going to head down and speak with the Feds and Dr. Winherst. Can you please take Ms. Allen back up to my truck and keep a tight eye on her? I’ll be taking her back to the station myself when I’m finished.”
“Whatever you say,” the officer returned in an even tone.
Maureen watched Detective Benitez stalk down the hill toward where Agent Layton and his partner were standing, silently watching over the crime scene. The agent’s head turned at his approach, but his eyes looked past him and met her own. Maureen held his gaze, determined not to be the first to break contact. Layton cocked his head after a moment and turned back around to stare back across the field. Small victories.
“Well, Officer,” she chimed as she turned toward the man the detective referred to as Carl, “shall we?”
The officer nodded, placed a hand on her elbow, and guided her back up the hill to await the detective. Maureen tried her best to keep her face even and ignore the queasy feeling creeping up in her stomach.
ELEVEN
“Why did you bring her here?” Agent Layton grumbled as Manny walked up next to him.
“I had a notion she might be useful,” Manny shrugged, staring directly ahead at the smoldering remains of the fire. It all looked much like it had at the Lowes’ residence. He could see Stacey Winherst kneeling down, sifting carefully through the ashes. The body was obscured from his view, but he knew that, before the day was out, he would come face to face with the charred remains of another child. It was not a sight he was looking forward to.
“She’s a suspect, Detective,” Agent Layton returned sharply. “Suspects belong in custody.”
Manny turned and looked back at Maureen. She was leaning against his truck, a few feet away from Yancy, staring out at the field, as if transfixed by the sight of it all. A soft breeze tousled the few strands of her hair not contained by her ponytail as the morning sun lit her face. The image reminded him of how he’d found her attractive when he saw her at Anderson’s less than two days ago. She might even look better without makeup on, he thought.
“Well, she obviously couldn’t have done this from a jail cell,” Manny said, gesturing out at the crime scene. “I figured if she is involved somehow, it might help our case to bring her out here, under observation, and see if she does anything to tip us off.”
It was a flimsy reason and he knew it, but at present, he was unsure if telling Agent Layton about the woman’s supposed prophetic dream was wise. He himself didn’t put it outside of the realm of possibility, but he was certain there had to be some other logical explanation for Maureen’s episode in the cell last night.
Agent Layton paused for a moment, staring uncomfortably at Manny. Then, to his surprise, the agent leaned in and sniffed. “You haven’t been home since yesterday, have you?”
Manny saw no point in lying. “No, I haven’t.”
“Uh-huh,” the agent grunted out of the side of his mouth. “You wouldn’t have happened to have stayed at the station all night, would you?”
Manny nodded carefully.
“And I assume that you spent at least some of that time talking to our suspect?”
Manny nodded again, defeated. He should have known better than to try and pass off bringing Maureen to the crime scene as some grand fit of inspiration. Any analytical mind could see that he had gleaned a fair bit of information from her that necessitated her presence.
“So, are you going to share what she told you with me, or am I going to have to file obstruction charges?”
Manny knew he had to be careful. Any sound-minded FBI agent wouldn’t believe what he had witnessed, but he couldn’t lie. He decided to massage the truth, for his own sake and for Maureen’s. “She had some kind of fit in her cell last night, maybe two in the morning or so. It was probably epileptic or something. She vomited pretty good. I collected some and sent it over to the county lab for comparison to the other sample from the first scene.”
“What else?”
“She starts going on about having a dream about how another kid was going to get murdered,” he continued. “Raving like a lunatic, really. It was all really bizarre. The way I figure it, if she’s involved somehow, she had to know that her accomplice was going to do this tonight. Maybe she’s a distraction. Or maybe her guilty conscience is starting to get the better of her. I don’t know. Either way, I wasn’t going to leave her in that holding cell with only Officer Collins to watch her. He’s a good kid, and will be a good cop someday, but he doesn’t have the experience right now.”
Manny cast a look at Agent Layton from the side of his eye. Though an observer would think the agent wasn’t paying attention, Manny suspected he was listening intently and scrutinizing his every word, so he decided to try to turn the focus back to the present. He wasn’t going to earn the confidence of the Feds by spouting thin theories and unfounded suppositions.
Stacey Winherst was now making her way toward them, stripping off her plastic gloves as she climbed up the slope from the crime scene. Her dark hair was tied back and her boots were covered with footies. She wore her usual expression: the corners of her mouth ever so slightly turned down.
“The firefighters left this crime scene in even better condition than the last one,” she said, speaking directly to Layton and not giving Manny a second look.
Manny rolled his eyes.
“I was able to get a very good look at the body,” she continued in her measured tone. “The flesh is all but gone, but the skeleton is in as good a shape as I can hope for. I can say with full confidence that the victim was a pre-pubescent male, no more than nine or ten. There appears to be a nick on the C1, and I was able to observe a significant amount of blood on the wood under the victim’s neck, indicating severe blood loss prior to death. As with the last body, I was able to find a pile of internal organs on a separate part of the woodpile.”
“So in other words, the same perp is responsible,” Agent Layton finished for her.
“I didn’t say that,” Dr. Winherst responded with a speed and earnestness that caught Manny completely off guard. “All I can say is that this crime scene follows the same MO as the last one.”
“Of course,” Layton replied with a subtle grin. “Is there anything else?”
“Actually, yes,” she said. “I believe I may have identified an accelerant of some kind. There was an oily substance that was found on some of the unburnt wood.”
“Do you have a sample?” Agent Layton asked. Stacey nodded. “Could you bring it over?”
Manny could hear in his voice that it wasn’t really a question. He stood quietly, half expecting Dr. Winherst to object to the handling of evidence before she had a chance to take it to her lab. To his surprise, she immediately turned over her shoulder and called to Derrick Emmsley, who was walking away toward the road with an evidence box. He changed his direction at the sound of his name and strode up to the group. Stacey pulled an extra glove out of her pocket and used it to pick up a test tube from the box.
“Go ahead and open it,” Agent Layton said coolly.
Dr. Winherst hesitated for a momen
t, but obeyed.
Agent Layton bent forward and sniffed the contents of the tube. He nodded to Agent Lorenzo who leaned over and sniffed as well. He then turned to Manny and indicated that he should do the same. Stacey seemed to take offense, but allowed Manny to come over nonetheless. He took a deep breath, paused, and took a second one. The odor that overwhelmed his nostrils was the smell of burnt wood and smoke, but underneath was a second smell. It was equal parts spicy and sweet. Manny was sure he’d smelled something like this before, but couldn’t place it.
“Well?” Agent Layton’s voice came through the haze of his concentration.
Manny looked up to see that the agent was looking at him, no doubt expecting his assessment. “There’s something familiar about the smell,” Manny said slowly. “I’m just not quite sure what it is.”
“I had the same thought,” Agent Layton replied before turning to Dr. Winherst. “I’d pay really close attention to this sample, Doctor. I have a notion that finding out exactly what this substance is would go a long way to helping us in this case.”
Dr. Winherst nodded, turned, placed the tube back in the box, and hurried up the hill with Derrick. Agent Layton leaned in and said something in Agent Lorenzo’s ear. She nodded and followed the doctor and her assistant at a casual distance. Layton then turned to Manny and cocked his head in the direction of the burn pile. Manny nodded and they descended the gentle slope.
“I’ve never seen Stacey Winherst submit like that,” Manny found himself saying, before he gave a thought as to whether it was appropriate.
“Well, we go back a while,” Agent Layton replied, still facing forward, eyes fixed on their destination.
“Really?” Manny was surprised. He’d never really thought of it before, but he realized how little he actually knew Dr. Winherst. “She’s not much older than I am. How can that be?”
“True, she’s not much older than you, but she’s had a longer career than you’d think. You don’t think you’re the only investigative mind to return to their hometown, do you?” he paused to let the new information sink in. “Stacey has always had a brilliant mind when it comes to crime scene investigation. She was one of the youngest CIs in St. Louis and was key in several murder cases that I myself was the lead investigator on. She helped me get several federal convictions. But she got emotional on one particular case about five years ago. It was a double murder of a young single mother and her daughter. They were beaten to death in their apartment on the east side of St. Louis. The prime suspect was the woman’s estranged boyfriend. He had priors for drugs and battery, as well as a shaky alibi, but the evidence against him wasn’t solid. The new DA was looking to establish his own credibility, so Stacey was able to convince him that she could prove the case against the boyfriend on the stand. The trial didn’t go well. The boyfriend had backing from friends and could afford one of the better defense attorneys in the city. Once he had Stacey in cross-examination, he played her like a fiddle, got her to burst out in court, and was able to get much of her testimony thrown out. He managed to turn what was allowed into the record into nothing more than wild and vindictive speculation in the minds of the jury. The boyfriend was acquitted, and Stacey was asked to leave her job soon after.”
Unholy Shepherd Page 9
