A Deeper Grave--A Thriller

by Debra Webb

  “Is that all?”

  The chief lifted one shoulder in a resigned shrug. “Go. But,” he qualified, “do not ignore what I’m saying to you, Bobbie.”

  She started to turn away but she hesitated. “What do you know about Mark Hanover?”

  The chief blinked. “Why would you ask about him?” He executed another of those negligible shrugs. “Is he somehow involved in the Parker case?”

  “He is,” Bobbie confirmed. “He lost a great deal of money. When Devine and I interviewed him today he mentioned that he knew my mother.” She played his words over in her head. “It was strange.”

  “He’s an unpleasant man, Bobbie. Your mother, your father, Hanover, we all knew one another growing up but we ran in different social circles. That hasn’t changed to this day. Take anything he says with a grain of salt.” A frown furrowed across his brow. “Did he say something that made you uncomfortable?”

  Bobbie shook her head. “It wasn’t really what he said. It was how he said it.”

  “He’s very good at making others uncomfortable. He’s not someone you want to know.”

  Bobbie had gathered as much. With another warning to watch her back echoing in her ears, she made her way out of the building. It wasn’t that she never ran into anyone who knew her mother. There was just something accusing or insinuating about Hanover’s remark.

  She would be talking to the arrogant SOB again.

  Eight

  Greystone Place

  8:20 p.m.

  Asher shifted in his seat. He’d spent way too much time in this car today. They still had a long way to go on the list Holt had given them, but they’d made some decent headway. Dozens of calls had come in on the hotline about the two missing women, Fern and Vanessa, but none of the tips had panned out so far.

  He looked over at the man behind the wheel. “We should call it a day. Showing up at doors at this hour doesn’t go over well. People complain.”

  Devine didn’t answer. Just stared out the window.

  “Hanover was telling the truth about the break-in,” Asher reminded him.

  Devine finally tore his attention away from the mansion across the street. Asher could tell he had a major hard-on for this rich dude.

  “He’s daring us,” Devine growled. “He feels untouchable. Above the law.”

  Something about this guy hit a personal chord with Devine. “You have a history with Hanover?” Devine had family in Montgomery. It was reasonable to think he might have run into this guy at some point in his life.

  “History.” Devine made a sound in his throat. “That’s a good way to put it, I guess.”

  Asher laughed. “Bobbie will kick your ass for keeping shit from her,” he warned the new guy. “You don’t even want to know what Holt will do.”

  “He was one of the adults who volunteered with the youth camp for the underprivileged,” Devine said as if Asher had said nothing and then he fell silent for a moment. “He probably still spends two weeks out of his summer helping to organize and execute the youth camp for the poor children of Montgomery. I was barely old enough to meet the criteria and my aunt insisted I attend. Sons and daughters of the more prominent families were expected to take a less fortunate kid under their wing and set a good example. Be a friend and a guide through the two-week outdoor adventure.” He made a sound in his throat, not quite a laugh. “It was an adventure all right. I was just a kid...”

  Oh, hell. “Man, you don’t need to tell me this shit.” Asher held up his hands stop-sign fashion. “You should tell Bobbie. She’s your partner.”

  Devine stared out into the darkness again, his attention on the multimillion-dollar estate lit up like the capitol building. “She won’t understand.” He turned back to Asher. “You understand. Imagine being raped when you’re nine years old by a grown man—a pillar of the community, someone the people who should have protected you looked up to.”

  “Fuck.” Asher shook his head. “I don’t want to hear this, man.”

  “I couldn’t tell my aunt. She believed Hanover and his family were above reproach. The bastard was a Boy Scout leader.”

  “Damn.” How fucked up was that? Asher didn’t know why he was surprised. He was a cop, plus he wasn’t oblivious to the national headlines. People hid behind respected positions and did crazy shit all the time.

  Devine leaned back in the seat. “How many other kids has he touched? He would have raped that girl—the one I was assigned to guide that summer—if I hadn’t stepped in.”

  Asher frowned. “And neither of you ever told?”

  “Never. She died from leukemia a few years later.”

  “That story is seriously sick.”

  “Everyone always thought Hanover and his father were above reproach. Still do.”

  “Maybe his father did shit to him. Maybe that’s why Hanover messed with you.” The bastard Gaylon Perry who’d killed Bobbie’s family had been victimized by his father—a man of the cloth no less.

  “I want to get this guy,” Devine admitted. “He needs to go down.”

  Asher smiled in spite of the disgusting subject. “All this time I thought you were some kind of straitlaced by-the-book fucker.”

  Devine turned his head to look at him, a faint smile on his face. “I am. Most of the time. I’d put the past behind me, you know. I didn’t spend the summer with my aunt anymore as a boy, but I still visited. In all those years I never ran into him. When I saw his name on the POI list something snapped inside me. The memories wouldn’t stop haunting me. My face pressed against that rough wooden floor...the pain. Him grunting like a pig. Sweating. Me crying like a baby.”

  Anger burned through Asher. Kids should be protected. What the hell was wrong with people? “Whether he has anything to do with these murders or not, we can shake him up a little. Make him sorry for what he did to you.”

  Devine turned to Asher. “I should have told my aunt.” He exhaled a weary breath. “I guess I thought if I didn’t I was protecting her from the ugliness. If I’d told my parents they would never have allowed me to visit her again. I couldn’t let that happen, especially after the Colonel died. She needed me. Still does. I’m the only one who cares enough to see that she is taken care of the way she deserves.”

  “Protecting the people we love can hurt sometimes.” Asher suddenly wished for a drink. He’d been sober for twenty-one days. He didn’t want to screw that up.

  “Who were you protecting?”

  The question startled him. “What do you mean?”

  Devine shrugged. “I’ve heard the rumors about your fiancée but I don’t believe what they say.”

  Asher didn’t give a damn what anyone said. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Wow.” Devine laughed drily. “I tell you my darkest secret and you can’t share what everyone in the department but me seems to know.”

  Asher hardened his jaw. His first inclination was to tell the guy to fuck off. He didn’t do kumbaya moments. Let Devine be just another fellow cop who thought Asher was a piece of shit for cheating on his fiancée and causing her to want to die.

  But he couldn’t do it.

  “I didn’t cheat on her.”

  Devine didn’t say anything, just listened.

  “We were planning our wedding.” His heart started to pound as he recalled those days. She was so happy. “We wanted to start a family right away, so she stopped taking her birth control pills. She was so excited. We both were.”

  “Did she discover she couldn’t have children?”

  Asher shook his head. “Worse. She found out she had stage-four ovarian cancer. The docs said they could remove everything, give her chemo and buy her some time. The cancer was too advanced to offer any decent chance of survival.”

  “Damn.” Devine scrubbed a hand over hi
s jaw. “I feel like a dick for feeling sorry for myself.”

  Asher waved him off. The guy had no way of knowing. Asher hadn’t told anyone. “She decided to die on her terms. She wanted to save me and her family from watching her suffer a slow painful death. So she climbed into the tub with a bottle of wine and sleeping pills and went to sleep. She left a note for me and one for her family.”

  “She must have been very brave.”

  Asher nodded. “She was.”

  “Sounds like you still miss her.”

  “Every day.” Asher blinked at the burn in his eyes. He damned sure wasn’t going to cry in front of the guy no matter what he’d shared. “Every day.”

  “We should find a bar and get hammered.” Devine smacked the heel of his hand against his forehead. “Shit man, I’m sorry.”

  “How about we do something better?” Asher suggested.

  “Name it.” Devine started the engine. “I’m ready.”

  “Let’s question some of Hanover’s friends again. Make him feel the pressure. Cast a little shadow on his image.”

  “That’s the best idea I’ve heard all day.” Devine shifted into Drive.

  Asher decided maybe he liked Devine, after all. You had to hand it to a guy who could go through that kind of trauma and not turn out totally fucked up.

  Still, Devine would never be able to fill Newt’s shoes.

  Nine

  Parliament Circle

  8:50 p.m.

  Bobbie had dark brown hair and pale skin that refused to tan, but Dr. Lisa Carroll had her beat by a mile with deep black hair and skin so light it was almost translucent. Back in school, the boys the future doctor had ignored and the mean girls who picked on her had nicknamed her Morticia Addams. Carroll had been quiet with few friends. She graduated as valedictorian and won every damned scholarship imaginable. She and Bobbie had never actually been friends, more like acquaintances surviving the brutal teenage years.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t meet with you sooner,” Carroll apologized again as she led Bobbie through the lobby of her small clinic. “It took me hours to catch up here.” She shrugged. “People have appointments, they expect to be seen.”

  “No problem.”

  Bobbie had done some checking when she heard about Carroll taking the coroner position. Never married, no kids. Like Bobbie, work appeared to be her life. She had refused to go into practice with anyone else. She wanted to see all patients whether they could pay or not and she didn’t want anyone’s permission to do so. Rumor was she had turned a large storeroom at the back of her clinic into a mini apartment to avoid rent or a mortgage.

  “You’ll have to overlook the mess. I need to catch up on my filing.” Carroll stepped into an office no bigger than the cubicle Bobbie had at CID. “Just set those on the floor and have a seat.” She gestured to the chair flanking her desk, the seat stacked high with patient charts.

  “Thanks.” Bobbie moved the stack to the floor and took the seat.

  Photos of children, patients Bobbie decided, lined most of the wall space. The rows of smiling faces were interrupted only by a narrow space for a small bulletin board. Announcements and business cards were thumbtacked to the board. A filing cabinet with drawers too full to close all the way stood in one corner. Aside from the mounds of files on the doctor’s desk, there was a huge mug filled with pens and pencils and one framed photograph. The photo was Carroll and her parents. The coroner’s freshman year, as best Bobbie recalled. Her parents had been killed in a car accident the next year. Losing their parents at an early age was another thing they had in common.

  Carroll cleared a space on her desk for the file she dug from one of the smaller stacks. When she’d opened it, she looked up at Bobbie. “I can’t tell you much. I do a cursory examination, draw a few blood, urine and tissue samples to send to the lab, and send the bodies to one of two places—a funeral home or the state lab—depending on the circumstances of death.”

  “There was a serial killer, several years ago, the Seppuku Killer,” Bobbie explained. “He injected his victims with fentanyl and then murdered them the same way the Parkers were murdered.” Something had kept the Parkers and Manning from fighting their attacker. Had to be a drug.

  Carroll nodded. “You’re thinking this killer used it as well.”

  “I am. You can test for that, right?”

  “You can. First thing in the morning I’ll call the lab since I’ve already sent the samples I collected. It’ll take some time. They’re always backed up but I can try and sweet-talk my contact there. I’ll have a look at the bodies once more before they’re picked up to see if I can find any injection sites.”

  Bobbie was regrettably very much aware of how long it could take to get test results from the state lab. “I appreciate it.” She fought a wave of weariness. She needed to eat and shower. She was beat. “You checked on the Parker boy today?” Dr. Upchurch had called Bobbie to let her know that Carroll had offered to drop by the hospital and follow up with Sage.

  “He’s doing really well, considering. Dr. Upchurch mentioned you’d rather he not be released today. I assume it’s okay to sign off on his release tomorrow? You know those pesky insurance companies don’t like patients staying any longer than necessary.”

  “That works.” Pesky insurance companies were something else Bobbie was well aware of. Her months of rehab had come with loads of insurance issues. “As soon as he’s released we’re planning to move him and his aunt to a safe house until we determine whether or not he’s in danger.”

  The feds were picking up the tab for the safe house, which was actually a suite at the Renaissance downtown. Lieutenant Owens had ensured an MPD officer would be posted at the room along with two FBI agents assigned to the boy’s protection detail.

  “Your partner, Detective Devine,” Carroll said, “is convinced the unusual pattern made by the blade used on the Parkers is significant. One of the evidence techs—Andy—took extensive photos of the wounds.”

  Andy Keller was the best. He was also determined to spend time with Bobbie. She agreed to dinner occasionally. He’d done her far too many favors to ignore his requests. She only wished she could make him understand that being friends was the most she could offer him or anyone else. The image of Nick Shade pushed into her thoughts. Not meant to be.

  “You never know what piece of evidence will make the difference,” Bobbie said. Devine could be onto something. She thought of Hanover with all his swords and daggers. Whatever Hanover’s game she had to separate her personal feelings from the job. Not always easy. Particularly since the man seemed to know how to hit just the right spot for a reaction.

  “You know—” Carroll closed the folder and braced her arms on her desk, drawing Bobbie from the troubling thought “—I remember what you did in junior high.”

  “I hope I won’t be too embarrassed.” Bobbie was relatively certain Carroll wouldn’t be interested in hearing what she remembered.

  “You kicked Shane Culver’s butt for calling me names.” Carroll smiled. “It’s the only time I ever felt like I had a real friend and I barely knew your name.”

  Bobbie smiled, something she did a little more of lately. “I never could abide a bully.”

  “I wasn’t surprised that you became a police detective.” She gave a nod. “The job suits you.”

  Bobbie appreciated that the other woman didn’t mention the more recent appearances in the newspaper. “Thanks.”

  Carroll’s face clouded with regret and Bobbie realized she had not dodged that bullet. “What happened,” Carroll said carefully, “was...unimaginable. Your courage and strength amaze me.”

  If only she was as strong and courageous as everyone seemed to think. Bobbie gave Carroll a nod and stood. “Let me know what you find. I won’t hold my breath on the test results.”

  “I�
��ll push them as hard as I can,” Carroll assured her.

  They didn’t speak as they made their way back to the front entrance. When Carroll had unlocked and opened the door, Bobbie said, “Thanks again.”

  “Anytime.”

  As Bobbie walked away she heard the locks click into place behind her. Considering the stack of files on her desk, she imagined Carroll would be burning the midnight oil. Bobbie would be doing the same thing no matter how exhausted she was.

  She climbed into her Challenger and started the engine. She had the case files Devine had sent her on the killers their perp appeared set on copying. Whoever had executed three people and abducted two others in the past forty-eight hours had familiarized himself with the MOs and signatures of the killers he wanted to imitate. The abductions were a big deviation. Neither the Seppuku Killer nor the Pretty Boy Killer had taken victims without killing them right away.

  Whatever reason this killer or killers had for taking Fern and Vanessa, Bobbie hoped like hell they could find them before the bastard carried out the next step in his plan. Maybe there was more to those two killers than could be found in the reports. When she spoke to Nick she could get the whole story from him. She remembered the wall of information he’d gathered on the Storyteller. He would know far more than any of the databases or case files she could explore. This morning he’d confirmed that she had the right phone number. When she got home if he wasn’t there waiting for her, she would call.

  As she drove, her mind drifted back two months to all the times he had showed up at her house in the middle of the night. She’d been so focused on having her revenge against the Storyteller she hadn’t wanted Nick’s interference. She’d told him more than once to stay away. How else was the Storyteller supposed to get close to her? Nick had refused to go away. As much as he had wanted to get the Storyteller for his own reasons, he’d been determined to keep Bobbie safe. She sure as hell hadn’t cared whether she lived or died...as long as the Storyteller died first.

  Turning onto Gardendale, she slowed. As always the house at the end of the street was lit up like a beacon in the darkness. Javier Quintero’s place was the farthest thing from a safe harbor as could be found in any neighborhood in this city. Quintero and his gang ran the organized illegal activities on this side of town, but no one could prove it. It was as if the man had an inside source within the department that kept him one step ahead of the law. Bobbie wanted to hate Javier but she couldn’t. He’d done her a tremendous favor two months ago and, sadly, she owed the man. One of these days he would call in that marker. She supposed as long as it wasn’t illegal she would reciprocate.