“I don’t know why I know. I just know.”
Her interactions over the last ten days with the little boy and his mother had left a definite imprint in her mind. She didn’t doubt what she had seen this time. Manny’s explanation would have been easier for her to accept, but she couldn’t.
Main Street came into view. Maureen slowed down to the new speed limit and they continued east. Nothing seemed out of place. There were the usual number of cars parked at the meters, along with a few people walking the sidewalks. It was all normal. All too normal. She felt her stomach begin to churn. It wasn’t the drink from the previous night or hunger. It was the foreboding feeling that told her they were going to find what they were looking for, and very soon.
“Nothing going on here,” Manny said. “Maybe we should try Tasha’s job. She teaches aerobics and spin classes at the gym over on the east side. In that little strip mall off the grocery store on Glenbrook Avenue. You know where that is?”
“Yeah kinda,” she replied. She walked there once for groceries during her first week in Sycamore Hills, before resigning herself to do her shopping at the drug store on Main Street, since it was much closer to her apartment.
“Three lights up and take a right,” he said.
“Got it.”
Turning right at the third stop light, Maureen would have thought he was the one with the psychic ability. Two blocks up, there was a mob scene in the parking lot of the strip mall. She counted six police vehicles, including the black sedan that belonged to the Feds. As she pulled into the lot and scanned the crowd, she could see the boy’s mother with Agent Lorenzo, hand over her mouth, nodding along with whatever the female agent was saying. Reading back a statement, she decided. The crime scene investigator she recognized from the previous Saturday was inspecting the back seat of a black sedan, in which she could just make out a child’s car seat. Even at the distance she was, Maureen could recognize it as the one from her dream. Of the surroundings, she had no idea, but something gnawed at the back of her head, telling her that something was still missing.
“Wait here,” Manny said as the truck stopped. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
He opened the door and quickly hopped out of the passenger’s seat, crossing the parking lot while adjusting his tie and smoothing his jacket. Maureen could tell that he was making a beeline for Agent Layton, who stood slightly apart from the rest of the crowd, silently monitoring the scene.
“Oh, like hell!” Maureen shouted out loud after a moment. She was not going to be left behind. She got out of the truck to jog after Manny. He had been intercepted by the officer that she knew as the captain of the Sycamore Hills Police Department, and it looked like the two men were arguing.
“Captain, don’t tell me where I can and can’t be,” Manny was saying as she walked up behind him. He sounded like he was trying to keep the volume of his voice in check, but the edge that he got when he was about to explode was certainly present.
“Why don’t you just tell me what you’re doing here,” the captain growled back, “and I’ll tell you if you can continue on.”
It was like watching two dogs arching their backs at one another. Maureen just hoped that neither of them would bite. Fortunately, the two men were rescued from themselves, though not necessarily in a way that made her any more comfortable.
“Gentlemen, what seems to be the trouble here?” came the voice of Agent Layton. He strode up to the two men and settled himself between them.
“Captain,” he continued keeping his eyes on Manny, “why don’t you let me speak to the detective here.”
“Sir, I don’t think that—”
“Alone.”
The captain backed up a few steps before sighing and turning his back on them. Agent Layton motioned with his head, and he and Manny moved onto the sidewalk in front of the storefronts of the strip mall. Maureen joined them, but stood just far enough away from Manny to prevent any sense of intimacy from being detected. The agent stared at her for an uncomfortable moment, before turning to talk to Manny.
“So, Detective,” he said, “the captain raises a good question. What does bring you here?”
“We came to grab a few things at the grocery store,” Maureen jumped in quickly.
“That’s right,” Manny said. “Just stopping by the store.”
“I’m sure,” the agent said.
He clearly didn’t believe them, but she knew enough about the man from Manny’s talks of him and her own interactions to understand that he would turn his head to certain things if it meant he could use them to get the job done.
“So what happened here?” Manny asked the agent.
“Tasha Naismith called the police about an hour and a half ago to report her son as abducted. According to her statement, she had stopped in at the grocery store here and left her son in the car with the window cracked while she ran in for a power bar. She estimates that she was only gone for two minutes, and when she came out, the back door of her car was open and her son was gone. She ran back into the grocery store in a frenzy, begging for someone to call the police. Apparently, she was so distraught that she forgot she had a cell phone. The clerk and manager at the store have backed up her story.”
“Is there any security footage?” Manny asked.
“We’ve reviewed it already. It doesn’t show the parking lot, unfortunately, just the front door of the store. It shows her walking in and out, and then running back in a few moments later.”
“I see,” Manny said.
Maureen felt for him. She could see that he felt useless at the scene and was searching for something that the rest of the authorities hadn’t thought of that would reclaim some of his worth.
“Maybe we could go talk to Tasha?” Maureen suggested. She was looking at Manny, but speaking to Layton.
The agent clearly sensed that and gave a resigned nod.
Maureen and Manny walked over to where Agent Lorenzo was finishing with Tasha. She had since been joined by her husband, still wearing his firefighter’s shirt. He was clearly in a state of shock, saying nothing and rubbing the base of Tasha’s neck, trying to comfort her. Lorenzo looked over their shoulders as they approached, raised her eyebrows, and nodded. She must have gotten confirmation from Layton that they were allowed to approach. She closed her notebook and stood to one side.
“Tasha, Ben,” Manny began as they came to stand in front of the couple, “I’m so sorry for what’s happened. Can we talk to you for a minute?”
“I’m not saying a word with her here,” the woman said pointing at Maureen. “Whatever’s going on, I know she has something to do with it!”
“Tasha, I can assure you,” said Manny, “Maureen has been with me all morning.”
“Didn’t know you liked slumming it,” Tasha scoffed, rubbing the tears from her eyes with the palm of her hand.
Maureen knew that the woman was simply projecting her grief onto her. She tried not to take it personally, to pretend it didn’t bother her. It did, of course, but she knew she had to bury it down with the rest of her baggage.
“Look, I’m not going to lie to you,” Manny said, appearing to speak to the husband. “I’m not strictly a part of this investigation, but I still want to do whatever I can to help. And Maureen here is helping me, so you can trust her too.”
“You can’t help!” Tasha shouted. “Either of you! Just leave us alone, Manny! You haven’t helped the other families, so get lost!” She turned and buried her head in her husband’s chest and began to cry again.
Maureen watched as Manny reached into his pocket and pulled out a business card. He maintained a stoic look on his face, but Maureen could sense tension in his body that meant the woman’s words had hurt him very deeply. “Just in case,” Manny said softly, handing the card to the woman’s husband.
The man reached out with one hand, took it from him, and nod
ded.
“What now?” Maureen asked him when they had gotten back into his truck.
Manny sat in the passenger’s seat with his chin resting on one fist, staring out of the window. “I don’t know. Our theory of the victims being related is out the window, though.”
“How so?”
“Ben Jr. is only three,” he said wearily. “The kids wouldn’t know each other from school. Tasha has been an agnostic for as long as I can remember—and pretty outspoken about it, too—so the church is out. And she’s a fitness instructor. I don’t remember any gym memberships showing up in either Tom Lowes’ or Sandra Locke’s financials. We’re back to square one.”
“Well then, we’ll just have to find another thing that ties them together.”
“I don’t see how,” he said, pulling out his phone and looking at the display. “It’s almost noon. We’ve got twelve, fourteen hours tops before the kid is dead, and we’re not going to be any help to the Feds. Everything we’ve given them hasn’t helped at all. Let’s just go home.”
Maureen turned the key and looked over at him. He was probably correct, but it didn’t seem right for some reason. Her giving up was to be expected, but she couldn’t fathom Manny giving up like this. It wasn’t right.
Somehow, Maureen decided, it was up to her to make him fight.
THIRTY-FIVE
Manny paced in front of his couch while Maureen sat in silence with her legs curled under her. The morning had dawned, and no fire had been reported anywhere in the area. There was no sign whatsoever that the killer had struck again. The pervasive thought in the community became that the child was not taken by the same ghoul, and that they would need to expand the search parameters to include the more standard kidnapping fare. He, of course, knew from Maureen’s dream that they were looking for the same person, but they decided to keep that to themselves and help out as much as they were allowed, in the hopes that a mass search would flush out the guilty party. The prospect that he could still prevent the boy’s death had reinvigorated him, and he was now ashamed that he had even considered giving up the previous day.
Being a Saturday, it hadn’t been hard for the police to round up enough volunteers to search the surrounding area for any sign of little Ben Naismith. They had combed fields, searched along the river, and even sent the county K-9 unit through the woods into the next county. Hundreds of residents were interviewed, and the Amber Alert was sent out. No word came back from the surrounding counties, and nobody who was interviewed was of any help. Now that the sun was setting, the possibility of the boy only being found once he was set upon a pyre was becoming a firmer reality in his mind. And to Manny, that was unacceptable.
“We’re doing enough, right?” he asked Maureen, desperately hoping she could provide him with some kind of satisfaction. “I mean, there’s nothing we’re missing, right?”
“I don’t know,” came her stoic answer. It was not what he wanted to hear.
“C’mon, Maureen help me out a little,” he said, his voice beginning to rise. “Please. We’ve got to be missing something! We know this person is religious to the point of zealotry. We know he’s setting these crime scenes up as sacrificial altars. We know he’s been killing just after midnight or early in the morning. This sick bastard lights up a signal beacon every time he kills someone, so why not now? The kid’s alive, that’s why.” Manny felt his whole body shaking. He was losing control. He felt himself slump on the couch next to Maureen and bury his face in his hands.
“Why can’t you just see who it is?” he lamented, throwing himself back and staring at the ceiling. He could feel his cheeks begin to flush and tears blurred his vision. “What good is being psychic if you can’t save people? If this kid dies, it’ll be our fault! How do I live with something like that?”
The pain of what he was saying hit him all at once, and Manny closed his eyes and lowered his head into her lap, seeking some kind of comfort. He couldn’t hear anything except for the soft whimpers coming out of his throat.
Manny felt her hands slide under his chin and lift his head up to look into her eyes. Their deep pools, usually protected from betraying the emotion underneath, now held endless depths of pity and understanding. She ran her hand down his face, drying the tears that held on to his skin.
“I’ve been asking myself those same questions all my life,” she whispered. “And in all that time, I’ve never managed to find the answers. I’ve lived with this torment from my earliest memories, and I’ve never been able to save anyone or at least turn this curse into something that does good. I’ve told you that it’s always easier to walk away.” Her eyes narrowed. “But not this time,” she said through gritted teeth. “I don’t know if we can save the kid, but I swear, even if it kills us, we’re gonna find a way to bring this fucker down!”
Manny’s heart rose at her words. He sat up, took both her hands in his, and kissed them. Then he got to his feet and stalked over to the window. The sun was already setting behind the river banks. Time was getting short. They needed to get to work.
“All right,” he said, turning back toward Maureen, “maybe we should take another look through the evidence box. Look again for something we mi—”
The sound of his cell phone vibrating on the coffee table cut him short. Maureen reached over and picked it up, staring at the display.
“Who is it?” he asked.
“No name, just a number.” She tossed the phone to him. It was a local number.
He hit the button to answer. “This is Detective Benitez.”
“Manny,” a woman’s whispered, tentative voice on the other end said, “I need to talk to you.”
“Who is this?”
“It’s Tasha. Is there some place we can meet? It’s important. I don’t want to talk over the phone.”
“Okay,” he said, trying to sound calm. “Why don’t you head down to the police station, and I’ll meet you there in ten minutes.”
“Isn’t there some place else we could meet? Somewhere private?”
“The station will be private enough at this hour,” he replied. It was the truth; there would only be one officer there. Manny would have to come up with a reason he was talking to the kidnapped child’s mother when he wasn’t officially on the case, but he had the car ride to figure that out.
“All right,” Tasha said tentatively. “Ten minutes.”
“Okay, I’ll see you and Ben there.”
“Ben won’t be there.”
The line clicked dead before Manny could respond.
“That was Tasha Naismith,” he told Maureen. “She’s got something she wants to talk to us about. Let’s go.”
Maureen nodded and got to her feet, tying her flannel shirt around her waist.
“Don’t forget your phone,” he reminded her.
Maureen smirked slightly and bent to pick up the old flip phone he’d given her. “Still can’t get used to having this thing.”
They ran out of the house and jumped into the truck. Manny felt his stomach tighten as he pondered Tasha’s last words. She was coming to meet them alone. What could that mean? Where was Ben, and why wasn’t he coming? Did he even know she was doing this? The questions would drive him mad, so he gripped both hands on the steering wheel, stared ahead into the growing darkness, and focused on the road instead.
The truck’s lights splashed across the figure of Tasha Naismith and silhouetted her against the building as Manny pulled into the parking lot of the police station. He swung his truck into his usual parking spot and let out a long sigh.
“You don’t have to come in if you don’t want to,” he told Maureen as he shifted the truck into park.
“I’m coming in,” she replied stoically, still staring straight ahead.
Manny tilted his head toward her but said nothing. She had been silent throughout the whole drive, just staring off into the night.
He wanted badly to ask her what she was thinking about, but there wasn’t time. He pushed his door open and stepped out of the truck. Maureen followed suit.
“Why am I not surprised that she’s with you?” Tasha said sourly, pointing at Maureen as they approached.
“Knock it off, Tasha,” Manny said. “I already told you yesterday, Maureen is helping me with this investigation. So anything you say to me, you can say to her.”
Tasha eyed Maureen for another moment before nodding in agreement. Manny nodded back and motioned for them to head into the station. As they approached the door, he looked back to Maureen, who was shuffling along half a step behind him. Unsurprisingly, her face didn’t betray whether or not Tasha’s cold reception had troubled her.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Officer Collins shouted, springing to his feet as the group walked through the door. Clearly, he had not expected any company tonight.
“Trying to catch a killer,” Manny said, calmly walking past the befuddled officer. “Is there coffee?”
“Wh—ye—no,” Collins stammered. “Hang on! You can’t be here!”
“The hell I can’t,” Manny shot back, rounding on the young man and bringing his face in close. “Mrs. Naismith has something to add to her statement, and I’m going to hear it. Now, if you have something against solving this case and getting a child back to his mother, please let me know, and I’ll be glad to stop what I’m doing.”
Collins’ lip quivered. He said nothing.
“Thank you, Jack,” said Manny, patting Officer Collins on the shoulder. “Head back to the desk and keep an ear out for the phone. You never know if you’re gonna get an important call.”
He kept his eye on Collins as the officer headed back to the main desk, pleased that his gamble had payed off. It was probably a fortunate thing that it was Jack who had been assigned to the overnight shift and not one of the more senior of the officers. He could be relatively sure that his power play would not have worked on any of them.
“You should probably stay out here,” he whispered to Maureen as they walked down the hall.
Unholy Shepherd Page 25
