Fractured Truth

by Susan Furlong

  I frowned. “How much clearer can you get than a pentagram?”

  “Pentagrams are the most obvious symbol associated with satanic worshiping, although they’re used by other groups, too. Not always as a symbol of evil.”

  “But it can be evil.”

  “Yes. But the other symbols, especially the ones painted in Maura’s blood. They’re unusual. Random. Untraceable.”

  “What are you saying? That someone just made them up? What does that matter? Murder is murder. It’s evil.”

  “All I know is that I’ve never seen these symbols. I’ve run them through databases, and by colleagues. Nothing. As far as I can tell, this type of symbolism hasn’t been used in any similar crimes, nor do they match anything that’s been out there in pop culture for the last twenty years. That strikes me as odd.”

  I agreed. I’d already told the team what Colm said as well, that the Latin verses on the note left with the body were poorly written, inaccurate Scripture at best. “And Addy’s murder wasn’t staged. Maybe there’s no connection.”

  “Addy’s killer was trying to hide the body. He wanted to cover the crime. The autopsy report isn’t back. I assume it’ll take longer than normal. The body was in bad shape after being submerged so long. But the initial examination showed several puncture wounds. Not methodical, like the way Maura was stabbed. More random, angry.”

  “So a different killer.”

  Grabowski shook his head. “Not necessarily. Here’s the kicker. The ME says that Addy’s wounds are similar to the wound in Maura’s chest. Probably incurred by a double-bladed knife. If it turns out to be the same knife, but a different method, it could indicate two or more killers.”

  “Or one single killer with two very different motives.” I told him what John had relayed to me about the knife and the threats. “A blond, pretty-boy type, driving a black SUV. I’m thinking Hatch Anderson.”

  Grabowski looked at the bar. “Which guy told you all this?”

  “The tall one with dark hair. Wearing a flannel shirt.”

  He stood and pulled out his cell. “I’ll find a picture online. If he verifies it was Hatch that night, I’ll work on the warrant. By the way, I’m going down to Jefferson County first thing in the morning to have a look around the Bartons’ place.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  He looked down at the two empty beer glasses on the table, lined up like spent soldiers, and shook his head. “Only if you’re sober by then.”

  “Two beers?” I scoffed. “Give me a break.” The fact that it was my second set of double-ups wasn’t any of his damned business.

  CHAPTER 32

  I stood to the side, huddled in the blue and red siren strobes, not daring to get too close to the scene, but fixated nonetheless. I’d wanted to be there. I’d begged to be there. I’d fantasized about this for a couple weeks and now I was like the voyeur getting a fix.

  This was the most fun I’d had in a long time, thanks to Grabowski. Within five hours, he’d set up and executed a plan to get inside Hatch’s vehicle. It was a little after midnight and we had Hatch and some buddies pulled over on south Briggs, two blocks down from the Cash & Carry. Hatch had a taillight out, imagine that. Grounds for a traffic stop. The K9 officer just happened to be in the neighborhood at the time. And I’d been invited to the party. Wilco wanted to play, too, but I kept him in the back of my car while the K9 officer worked his dog around Hatch’s vehicle.

  Another uniformed cop was positioned at the driver’s window, taking Hatch’s license and registration. “You been drinking tonight, boy?” the officer asked. We already knew he was. Surveillance had picked him up after the high-school basketball game and tracked his every move. A couple stops off at friends’ houses and a trip into the convenience store, emerging with what looked like a case of beer. We weren’t after booze, though, or pot, but little white pills. Pills that would tie him to Addy Barton’s murder and eventually Maura’s death.

  Hatch didn’t say a word, but kept his eye on his side mirror, watching the dog as he sniffed the perimeters of the car. Halfway down the driver’s side, the dog hit on something. The K9 officer looked our way. Grabowski nodded.

  Hatch was pulled from the car, cuffed, and his joyriding friends, two guys and one girl, relegated to the curb. Not looking too joyful. A search of the vehicle turned up several illegal items, one of them being a small Baggie of white pills. The whole thing was so damn exciting . . .

  Until Gina Anderson showed up.

  She screeched to a halt in her powder blue Mercedes two-door behind my rust-riddled, busted-window four-door. I swear its shiny propeller logo lifted its nose at having to slum it like that. Gina, too, had her nose lofty and flared as she stomped her way toward us. One of the officers tried to block her way, only to end up in a silly side shuffle like a crossing guard trying to stop a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day float.

  Grabowski looked disgusted. “Looks like Mommy’s here.”

  Hatch bucked against the cuffs. “Go home. I don’t need you here.”

  Gina splayed a manicured hand across her cashmere jacket as she took a step back at his display of rejection, nearing toppling the hapless cop who had instinctively reached out to prevent her from falling. “Don’t say that, baby. I’m here to help you.”

  “I don’t need your help. Just tell Dad to send our attorney.”

  “He’s already on it. Don’t you say a word, baby. Not a word. We’ll get you out of this.”

  Laid out on the hood of the car were nine spent beer cans and a tiny bag of pills. Only enough for a possession charge, he’d finagled out of that before, but the pills were the clincher. We’d gotten what we were looking for. Grabowski leaned in closer to the kid. “If those pills are what I think they are, then there ain’t going to be no one who can help you, boy.”

  Hatch looked Grabowski directly in the eye and grinned. Cocky little wuss still thought he was above it all. He was overconfident. Depending on whether or not we could connect all the dots, the bag of pills might be enough to put him away for a lifetime. Grabowski was right. Mommy and Daddy weren’t going to be able to fix this one. I smiled to myself.

  My smile faded when Gina appeared in front of my face. “You’ve been out to get my boy from the start. You set this up.”

  Her moist lips glistened a glossy pink in the reflected streetlight. “That’s not true. An officer was patrolling the area and noticed your son’s vehicle had a faulty tail—”

  “You liar. It’s a setup. The entire thing. This is your way of getting back at my husband for making you go through drug testing, isn’t it?”

  The other officers looked my way, a too-eager audience. The curtain had risen, and they were waiting for the show. The dopey sideshow freak called out by the master of ceremonies to perform. I fought not to react, yet shame and anger bubbled up inside me. I moved closer, in her face now. I didn’t give a flying flip who she was; she didn’t intimidate me. “Look, lady, your son is a loser. Nothing more than a drug dealer—”

  Grabowski stepped in. “Shut up, Callahan.”

  Gina went rigid, but a glare of triumph edged her eyes. “You’re the one with a problem. You’re drugged up half the time, screwing up evidence and losing control of that dog of yours. I can’t believe they even let one of you gypsies wear a uniform.”

  Her audience—my uneasy colleagues—fastened their full attention on me and it took everything I had not to call the bitch out. Fact was, there was truth behind some of her words. I swallowed that back, focused on other truths: the reality behind her pointless life and worthless son, with the proof of it that lay spread out for everyone to see. “You can’t put this off on me, Gina.” I pointed to the hood of Hatch’s car. “All that came from your son’s car. He’s going down for this, one way or another. I’m going to—”

  “That’s enough.” Grabowski jerked me by the arm. “We’re taking the boy in. You go home. Get a couple hours of sleep. We have an early morning.”

  CHAPTER 33


  By noon, we were in the Bartons’ backyard, sidestepping chicken crap as we made our way through a field of gamecocks, each tethered around the ankle and tied to small buckets that served as shelters. Wilco was next to me, on a tight lead.

  “This is insane,” Grabowski said. “What type of kid does this as a hobby?”

  “She’d probably made enough money to offset her first year of college.”

  “She was barely eighteen.” He looked my way. “What’s a Pavee girl do at eighteen for extra money? Fast food, babysitting?”

  Other girls maybe. At eighteen, I was beaten, broken, and homeless. Living on the streets waiting for a recruiter to call to let me know if I’d passed my MEPs and enlistment physical. Hoping I wasn’t pregnant with a rape baby. I wanted to believe that I would have loved the child. But maybe I would have left it behind, like my mother had left me. Thankfully, I never had to figure that out. One small blessing. “I never worked fast food,” I said. “Or babysat. Kids were never my thing.” Still weren’t.

  He pulled the barn door handle. “Were you close to your own mother?”

  “Not especially.” Hard to be close to someone you’d never met. I didn’t explain any of that to Grabowski, though.

  “Was she abusive?”

  My muscles tensed. Regina. But we all called her Queenie. One of my few friends from childhood. She was stick-legged, all knees and elbows, with a crooked smile and freckles that stretched across her nose when she smiled. Which was rare. She lived three trailers down from us. Her dad was a big, burly fellow, drunk and loud; her mother mousy and somewhat withdrawn. She’d stayed over one night. During a midnight game of Truth or Dare, she’d told me a truth—when she was bad, her mommy burned her legs with a cigarette. She lifted her dress then. A dozen red circles burned bright against her pale thighs. I stared at the freshly charred skin and felt no pity. Nothing but jealousy. Queenie was lucky. I would have done anything for a mother, even let her hurt me.

  “No, my mother wasn’t abusive.” She wasn’t anything. “You’re getting a little personal, aren’t you, Grabowski?” I didn’t need any more psychoanalysis crap this week. I’d had enough of that from Dr. Ryan.

  “Fair enough. I’ll stick to the case for now.”

  For now. Thanks. Like I get to look forward to you probing my head later. I wanted to tell him to lay off, but knew that, too, would feed his appetite for getting into my head. And under my skin.

  We stepped inside the barn. Moldy hay and the sharp ammonia smell of bird piss stung my nostrils. Along the back wall, metal crates caged hens, stacked one on top of another with white and green excrement dripping between them. The birds on the bottom were coated in a crusty layer.

  Wilco pulled at his leash. I gave him free rein, watching as he ran anxiously from one end of the barn to the other, snorting the smells like a deprived addict set loose in a pharmacy.

  Grabowski looked around. “Quite the little enterprise Addy had here.”

  “Why’d the parents let this go on?”

  “My guess is they didn’t know.”

  “How could they not?”

  He laughed. “Do Gayle and Rick seem like the country type to you? My guess is they’ve never ventured out here.” He looked around. “No. This is all their little darling’s doing.”

  We’d talked to Rick and Gayle back at the house. Their mantel was covered with their daughter’s awards: 4-H ribbons, Young Farmer of the Year award, photos of Addy with her chickens, on and on. Eventually she’d turned her 4-H projects into a small business, Rick explained. Specialty show birds. “Addy was clever that way.”

  Yes. She was clever. I wondered how something so wholesome had turned so sick. And how the parents hadn’t noticed.

  Grabowski called me over to where several straw bales were arranged in a small ring. “A pit.” He pointed to a pool of blood in the middle. “She trained them here. Maybe demonstrated her bloodline to prospective clients.” There was a pile of cock combs on the ground, dry and shriveled, like a stack of severed tongues. “She dubbed their combs. It makes them less vulnerable in the ring,” he explained. “If they’re not removed, the opponent can grab ahold of the comb and use it for leverage.”

  Grabowski must’ve been reading up on the subject. Interesting, but not what I was looking for. I knew the girl was raising and selling birds for cockfights. I wanted to know who she was selling them to in McCreary.

  As I looked around, Grabowski opened his cell to call in the situation. How long had Addy been dead? What was this place like usually? Addy had apparently been shrewd and enterprising—she would have taken good care of her chickens, not for humane reasons, but just to safeguard her investment.

  My Marine lieutenant once said, “Don’t count the bodies, just retrieve ’em. We’ll sort ’em out later.” His perversion of “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.” I avoided looking toward the caged chickens, instead noting the barrels of feed nearby, each clearly labeled, a shelf of shiny clean tools, a neatly stacked pile of gloves. And a bloodied white apron on a peg. These creatures might have been well cared for when Addy lived, but all in preparation for the bloodthirsty deaths they would endure. How had this young girl justified her little enterprise? Don’t abuse your chickens before you profit on their abuse. One new saying to fulfill mankind’s blind need to manufacture some rhetorical logic to cover our shameful activities.

  I pulled out latex gloves, slipped them on, as much to protect my skin from this filthy scene as to avoid contaminating it.

  I found a workstation, a 1950s pink-and-gold-flecked Formica-topped kitchen table, as out of place as a prim grandmother at a sewer plant. It was crammed in the corner of one of the horse stalls. It was littered with papers, manuals, syringes, and vials of poultry antibiotics. Records and . . . bingo! A ledger.

  Obvious sales records, income and expenses. Addy had quite the small business going. Smart kid. Sales assets were listed, too. Along with clients’ initials. I scrolled through the dates, found the night Maura was murdered. Addy made a delivery that night. The initials next to the entry were N.M. Nevan Meath.

  * * *

  Nevan sat slumped in a chair across from me. Parks stood off to the side, arms crossed, lips pressed tight. Department rules: two officers present for an interrogation. So I’d asked Parks to join me and to keep her mouth shut. I’d get more out of Nevan, Pavee to Pavee.

  “You need to start talking, Nevan.”

  He stared at me with bloodshot eyes. “I don’t have nothing to say to you.”

  He seemed out of it, lethargic, half asleep still. “Your arraignment is tomorrow. They have enough evidence to try you for Maura’s murder.”

  I changed tactics. “How do you like being locked up? A Traveller confined. Not easy. Goes against our nature.”

  He stared at the table again.

  “But at least here, people leave you alone. Not so at the pen. And if you don’t put a stop to this, that’s where you’ll be heading.”

  “The state pen?”

  “Yup. You’ll be thrown in with a bunch of guys going cold turkey and eyeing you as their next plaything.”

  The air filled with sour-smelling fear. Nevan was duly freaked out. Good. I raised my brows and pressed him. “Believe me, the pen will make this place look like kindergarten. You’ll wish you could come back here. But by then, it’ll be too late.”

  Sweat broke out in tiny drops around his hairline. He stared blankly ahead, his Adam’s apple sliding up and down his throat.

  “Tell me about Addy Barton.”

  His jaw tightened. “She’s just a friend.”

  “She wasn’t from around here. How’d you meet?”

  He shrugged.

  “I was out at her place yesterday. She’s in the chicken business. Fighting cocks.”

  “So?”

  “She kept records. A ledger of sorts. Your initials were in it. You buy from her?”

  “That has nothing to do with Maura’s murder.”
>
  “She’s dead.”

  He sat up straighter, then slumped back. “Dead? Addy’s dead?” More sweating. He looked sick.

  “Yes. Stabbed. Multiple times. Why would someone want her dead?”

  He doubled over, clutching his stomach. I leaned in and spoke quietly into his ear. “Nijesh swibli, geturl.” Don’t be afraid, boy.

  His back stiffened.

  I stared at his clamped lips, frustration and anger swirling through my mind. Maura, Addy, Nevan . . . what is the connection? I needed to know the connection. “Nothing to say, Nevan?” My hand balled into a fist. Parks inched closer. “Two girls are dead. Maura was one of us. Your fiancée. And you have nothing to say?”

  His cheeks flushed. “I’d . . . I’d like to talk to my mother.”

  “Talk to your . . . you pathetic little sissy. Grow up, Nevan.” I shot out of my chair, grabbed him by the collar, pulled his body up until his face was inches from mine. “This isn’t a game. And you’re not going to talk to your—”

  “Easy, Callahan.” Parks clamped down on my shoulder.

  I exhaled and let go of his shirt, pushed him back hard in his chair. “What did you have going on with Addy? What type of scam?”

  Sweat broke out on his brow. “Nothing.”

  “She planned to meet with you that night to give you the birds. Did you see her? Whatever you’re into doesn’t compare to being prosecuted for murder. The sheriff is building a case against you this very minute. Do you want to go to prison for murder?”

  “I didn’t do it.” His voice came out like a whiny young boy’s, thin and high.

  I laughed and sat down across from him. “It doesn’t matter if you killed her or not. Don’t you get that? You’re a Pavee. They’re building a case against you, and you’re sure as hell not going to get the benefit of the doubt.”

  He considered this, his tongue licking his lips like tasting a bitter truth. I softened my tone. “Tell me about the cockfights. How do they fit into all this?”

  “It’s just a cash business we got going. You know, something to help us in the winter. We got bills to pay.”