“Sure!” the receptionist said. “Anything for our boys in…well, gals in blue, too! This way.”
A minute later Emily was alone, having politely shooed her escort. She punched in Branch’s number. Mid third ring she heard a series of clicks, then a silky male voice.
“Bambi!”
Emily stared daggers at the phone. “Am I ever going to live that down?”
“Not if I can help it,” Branch said. “I take it from the delay that you’re back running?”
“Yes, Mother,” she said. “You can stop nagging now.”
“Hey, it worked, didn’t it? Where are you?”
“Edward Hospital,” Emily said. “Closest phone to the cemetery. What’s up?”
“You familiar with Vermont Cemetery?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Come join me.”
“Now?” Emily frowned. Driving there and back guaranteed being late for work. She wanted that as much as a root canal. Chief of Police Kendall Cross hated her enough as it was. He was always nitpicking and criticizing, constantly demanding she “shape up or ship out.” Even a second’s tardiness would rekindle his animosity. “Branch, I don’t have enough time before—”
“I already spoke to Ken,” Branch interrupted. “He knows you’re gonna be late, and he’s not gonna give you any grief.”
None? This must be important! She hastily calculated her time. “I’ll run home, shower, and drive right over,” she said. “Figure an hour.”
“Twenty minutes,” Branch said. “And forget the shower. It’s better you stay smelly for this.”
CHAPTER 2
Monday, 7 A.M.
Seventy-one hours till Emily’s birthday
Emily drove fast as dawn hardened into morning. The Vermont Cemetery was located in a farm area southwest of Naperville, and she knew the trip would take longer than Branch’s allotted twenty minutes. She tried, anyway, pushing her car through every gap in traffic. She finally saw the flashing lights that heralded a major crime scene and slowed for the turn onto Normantown Road, the north-south arrow of blacktop that ran past the cemetery.
“Captain Branch ordered me here,” she explained, flashing her badge at the roadblock.
The sheriff’s deputy pointed to a patch of cornfield. “Park there,” he said. “Your boss is a hundred feet up the road.” Emily locked her car and went to find him, noting the knot of deputies around the silver Porsche convertible inside the cemetery’s chain-link fence. The car was wrecked and rested on a tombstone. One of the deputies bent so far into the passenger side, only his waist and legs showed. Another snapped photos. A third took notes. Her excitement grew.
“You needed my help for a traffic accident?” she asked when close enough.
Branch smiled, made a show of looking at his watch, a Guy Special with the huge bezel and multiple knobs. “What kept you?” he asked. “Bambi’s mother get in your way?”
Emily made a face, shaking her head. The day she graduated the police academy, she bought one of those red flashing lights TV cops used in their cars. She listened to her radio scanner when off-duty, figuring she could check out interesting calls. An opportunity came a few weeks later, a bank robbery near Fox Valley Mall. She slapped the “Kojak” flasher on her roof, mashed the accelerator—and slammed into a deer leaping from the shadowed tree line. The impact totaled both deer and forest green Saturn, but Emily was merely shaken, thanks to air bags.
The first responder to her 911 call was a Joliet patrol officer she liked. He checked her for damage, found none, then wagged his finger at the deer. “Next time, buddy, move right for sirens and light.”
“Very funny,” Emily shouted over the howl of approaching fire engines. “Don’t tell anyone at my shop about this, OK? I’ll never hear the end of it.”
“Course I won’t,” the officer assured her. “Your secret’s safe with me.”
The next night she walked into roll call for the pre-shift briefing and found, propped in her chair, a set of deer antlers bolted to a junkyard fender. “Bambi” and “Thumper” from a child’s coloring book were skewered on the tips. “Oh, no!” Emily shrieked, touching the Rust-Oleum “blood” as her face turned equally scarlet. “I’ll get him for this, no matter how long it takes!” The grinning cops sprang to their feet and, led by the shift commander, chanted, “Bambi! Bambi! Bambi!” Her friend Annie Bates, a patrol sergeant and lead sharpshooter on the department’s SWAT team, put out the word the next day to knock it off. “’Cause it’s pathetic,” she explained when Emily asked why. “Roadkill? Deerslayer? Cool nicknames. But Bambi?” Annie shook her head in disgust. “I told the boys to cease and desist or I’d Thumper ’em.” Branch still loved to tease her about it.
Emily gave as good as she got, though, and fired back, “I might be a stone-cold killer, Captain, but at least I’m properly groomed.”
Branch scratched his salt-and-pepper stubble. “I was running, too, when Marty called,” he said, fishing through his fanny pack. He pulled out a long green cigar that was frayed on both ends. “Happy birthday,” he said, tossing it her way.
Emily grabbed it midair and looked at him, puzzled. Branch knew her birthday—the big Four-O—was still three days away. He also knew she detested cigars.
“The stogie’s only half your present,” he said. “The other half is the homicide we’re gonna help Marty investigate. The body’s inside the car.”
Emily got excited even as her legs turned to ice. “Homicide? Wow!” she said, surprised at her mixed feelings. She’d been telling Branch for months she wanted to work a “big crime.” Now that he’d made that possible, she didn’t know if she was up to it. She decided to cover with bravado. “I’m ready. That fatal crash on Valentine’s Day? The drug overdose by the river? I handled those with no problem.”
Branch shook his head. “This is a homicide, not a death. Complete with rotting corpse. That’s what the cigar is for. The stink keeps you from losing breakfast.” He glanced at the big black flies dive-bombing the car. “With this one, we’ll need all the help we can get.”
The strain in his voice intrigued her. Branch worked hundreds of murder investigations in New Jersey before Bell Laboratories transferred his wife, Lydia, an engineer, to Naperville. Branch came along for the ride, tired of Garden State politicians big-footing his cases for their elections. Chief Kendall Cross took one look at his resume and appointed him chief of detectives, the first outsider to win that coveted post. The troops griped but eventually fought to get on his squads because he was good and backed his people completely. If Branch needs a cigar, she told herself, who am I to argue?
She accepted the match proffered by a young deputy. This was the county sheriff’s jurisdiction, as the cemetery was a whisker outside Naperville’s city limits. She nodded her appreciation, puffed till the end flamed yellow…then coughed till her eyes flooded.
“Well, it is a fifty-cent cigar,” Branch said. “It’s gonna taste a little rough.”
Emily hacked till the burning eased. “Haven’t you heard life’s too short to smoke cheap cigars?”
“Whoever said that never drew no chalk line round no dead body,” Branch observed. “These things taste like dead perch, but man they generate a stink. A trait you’ll appreciate when you meet the deceased.” Branch handed her a pair of white latex gloves.
Emily eyed the convertible, then took a more tentative puff. “What do you want me to do?”
“Look over the crime scene. Start here at the road, and examine everything you see. Don’t forget to listen and smell.”
“Why?”
“Clues aren’t always visual.”
Emily tugged on the gloves and smoothed the air lumps between her fingers. Even counting the “headline” murders—Marilyn Lemak poisoning and smothering her three young children to repay her husband for suggesting divorce, a psycho abducting little Jeanine Nicarico from her home in broad daylight, then dumping her broken body on a nearby walking trail—homicides were exceedingly ra
re in upper-middle-class Naperville. Making a cop’s chances of working one accordingly slim. She was glad Branch called. Even if it made her uneasy. “Then what?”
Branch hopped the drainage ditch separating the road from the cemetery. “Find me when you’re ready, and we’ll compare notes.” He walked away, shoving his hands in his pockets.
She looked down on Normantown Road. The asphalt was new, its coal black surface still sheeny with oil. Maybe some rubbed onto the killer’s shoes. Be sure to mention that to Branch. Beyond the east ditch sat the tiny, fenced-off cemetery. Beyond the west ditch ran the Elgin, Joliet & Eastern Railway, a freight line that cinched Chicago’s outermost suburbs in a 110-mile iron belt.
Next to the tracks was a concrete pylon with a W mortised into the top. It looked like a grave marker. “How appropriate,” Emily murmured, though she knew it told the engineer to whistle for Wolf’s Crossing Road a half-mile north. West of the tracks was an industrial park filled with jeans-and-flanneled truck drivers gawking at the flash-flash. She smiled. Not that long ago she’d been doing the same. Surrounding everything was cornfield, though that was changing fast—Naperville was expanding like Jiffy Pop. It was the rare farmer who turned down eight figures to grow houses instead of corn. In two years this field would sprout million-dollar condos.
She walked toward the cemetery, skirting a puppy sprawled lifelessly on the shoulder. Judging from the smear of blood around her mouth, the Scottish terrier had lost a game of tag with a car. Emily’s heart went out to the unmoving pile of fur. She loved dogs—all animals, in fact, even the crazy deer that totaled her car. She couldn’t afford tears, though. She’d look weak to the other cops. So she bade the pup silent good-bye and leaped the ditch in one graceful bound, drawing admiring whistles from a knot of deputies, along with a hammy drawl from a fat, crew-cutted sergeant. “Hey, honey, I’ll jump in yer ditch anytime!”
Emily turned. If it had just been the whistles, she would have curtsied, been a good sport. “Jump in yer ditch” was obscene, and she couldn’t let it pass. She raised her middle finger and growled just loud enough for them to hear, “Jump this, Doughboy.”
The sergeant’s eyebrows knitted as his pals hooted with laughter. “No call to talk like that,” he said, forcing a smile. “I was kiddin’ around.”
That was a crock, she knew, but there was little to gain from dragging this out. “Fine, Sergeant,” she said. “Apology accepted.”
That he didn’t like. He worked his jaw like he wanted to take it to the next level, but nothing happened. She shrugged, started to walk away.
“Cunt,” he spat at her back.
“What did you call me?” Emily demanded, whirling. The last person to throw that vile slur at her had ended up on the pea gravel behind St. Mary’s Elementary with a split lip and two black eyes. The nuns were sympathetic—“nice uppercut, dear,” Sister Bethany had whispered as she hauled insult slinger Brady Kepp away for iodine and bandages—but the principal suspended her the rest of the week for fighting. Mama canceled the Saturday night family game festival as punishment. “Violence never settles anything, Emily Marie, and you need to learn that,” she lectured as Daddy peeked over the Chicago Daily News, with a small, proud grin. Emily had no regrets. No one called her names again.
Still no reply from the sergeant. “What did you call me?” Emily repeated.
“Nothing, missy,” he said, all innocence. “Didn’t say a thing, did I, boys?”
The deputies shook their heads. But they didn’t grin back, either. It told her they weren’t happy with what he was doing but wouldn’t interfere. Tribal law. She was on her own.
“Gol-ly, Sarge, you’re not afraid of a girl, are you?” Emily jeered, striding to the edge of the ditch opposite him, flapping her arms like a chicken. “A big strong hunk like you? No way!”
“Lady,” he sputtered, face turning cranberry. “You oughta think real hard about shuttin’ up—”
“Honey, cunt, missy, lady,” Emily interrupted. “And you still can’t get it right. Maybe you’re a moron.” She tapped her badge. “For future reference, my name is ‘Officer.’”
“Fuck you!” he growled.
“No, thanks. If you and a goat were the last two men on Earth, I’d pick the goat.”
His nostrils flared, and his belly shook like a paint mixer. “Gonna have to teach you some respect, little girl,” he hissed, stomping down into the ditch. She shifted her weight to knee him. But the most grizzled of the deputies caught her eye, shook his head microscopically, and grabbed the sergeant’s shoulder. “Why don’t we let this go, Sarge?” he said quietly. “Your uncle don’t need this crap in an election year.”
The sergeant huffed and puffed but let himself be talked into giving up. “Yeah, all right,” he muttered. “Better things to do, anyway, than argue with some play-cop.” He wheeled toward the road, clapped his puffy hands. “Look alive, people!” he barked. “Double-check the tracks and ditches to make sure we haven’t missed any evidence! Move it!”
Emily glued her hands to her sides so no one would see them tremble. She’d been willing to fight the man but certainly didn’t want to—he outweighed her by 150 pounds. Even if she won, she’d hurt for a month. She turned and jogged toward Branch, who was walking along the fence. He gave no sign he’d noticed the exchange. “I’m back,” she said. “I saw—”
“Not yet,” Branch said, eyes everywhere, planting his shoes in others’ footprints. “The victim isn’t going anywhere. So go slow. Weigh everything. Weather, for instance. It hasn’t rained in weeks. What does that tell you about, say, tire tracks? Then tell me what you see.”
Emily nodded, resumed scanning.
The sky was azure. The breeze smelled sweet as towels from the dryer. The cheerful chirps of robins and cardinals were undercut by the eerie moan from the galvanized steel fence. The chain-link aria rose and fell with the breeze, prickling the hairs on her neck. Purple shadows from the links formed a quilt of triangles on the crime scene investigators swarming the weedy ground inside. The fence line was clogged with a winter’s worth of debris—yellow newspapers, blown tires, cracked transmissions, trash bags, beer cans, lumps of desiccated somethings, paper plates, a harvest gold refrigerator door, two sump pumps, and a Michael Jordan Space Jam cup so faded from the sun Michael was white. Tire ruts in the surrounding cornfield indicated the convertible had left the road, circled through the crushed stalks of last fall’s harvest, and freight-trained through the back fence. The impact ripped a jagged hole in the links, and the car came to rest atop the black granite tombstone. The ruts, she noted, were shallow because the ground was hard from lack of rain.
Twenty minutes later she’d absorbed everything she could and rejoined Branch. They traded observations as they ducked into the cemetery, careful not to cut themselves on the broken links. “Helluva desecration,” he murmured.
Emily nodded. The cemetery contained the remains of the shovel-faced farmers who fled Vermont after the American Revolution to wrest life from the wilderness. The plants she was now trampling were the great-great-great-grandchildren of a vast heartland prairie tamed into row crops and, now, subdivisions. Pioneer cemeteries were scattered like diamonds around Naperville. This one was the most isolated. Where she’d been with Jack, the most prominent. She swung her attention to the car with the cops with the corpse with the flies.
“Watch out,” Branch warned.
Emily froze, looked down. She’d nearly stepped on the tiny boot peeking from the animal burrow in the milkweeds. “Sorry,” she said, guiding her foot to a less harmful spot.
“Murder scenes are overwhelming,” he said, waving it off. “Easy to get distracted.”
Emily stuck the cold cigar in her mouth. “You don’t,” she said, relighting as several deputies walked past. “Why? Experience?”
Branch smiled. “Fear. When I was at my first murder scene as a new detective, I roamed that ground like a full-back. Gonna find me a clue, yessir, gonna make me a big name. I di
d all right. I stepped on a shard of glass. It was hidden in the weeds, just like that boot.” He rolled his eyes. “Turned out to be the murder weapon—the guy’s throat was slashed—and I’d crunched it into a jillion pieces. Destroyed its value as evidence.”
“Ow. What happened?”
“The killer confessed, so I didn’t get busted back to patrol for my mistake. I treated the next crime scene like a mine-field, where one little misstep could make me a soprano. Still do.” He flagged a CSI. “My keen police instincts tell me this boot’s too new to be garbage. Is our corpus delicti missing one?”
“Nah, it’s wearing both shoes,” the CSI grunted as she walked over. “Geez, maybe you found a clue or something.”
“First time for everything.” Branch made introductions. The CSI nodded, then whistled across the graveyard. “Yo! Commander! Take a look!”
A giant in a tailored charcoal suit trotted over. From the road he’d looked fat, Emily thought, but up close, the bulk was solid muscle. He was a serious weight lifter. He bent from the waist and eyeballed the boot from wide, rounded toe to horizontal treads on the sole to pull-loop in back. He told the CSI to take pictures, then bag it for the lab. Finally, he tilted his face up at Branch and grinned. “If you found this, there must have been a sign saying X MARKS THE SPOT.”
Branch grinned back, jerked his head at Emily. “Actually, my colleague here found it.”
“Good thing someone did. I’d like to wrap this up already.” He straightened to six-foot-six, casting Emily into shadow. “Hi. I’m Commander Martin Benedetti. Sheriff’s chief of detectives.”
“Officer Emily Thompson,” she replied, accepting his hand, which was so big it enveloped hers in warmth. She was pleased to find he didn’t shake limp-fingered as so many men did with women. “Actually, Commander, I didn’t—”
“Call me Marty,” Benedetti urged. “All my friends do.” He squinted at Branch. “You, on the other hand, should keep calling me commander.”
“That might be interpreted as a sign of respect,” Branch said. “So I’ll call you nothing.” His square face tightened. “I still think you’re wrong. But you’re gonna do what you want, anyway, so let’s get it over with.”
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