The NightShade Forensic Files: Under Dark Skies (Book 1)

by A. J. Scudiere

  There was a clear shift as he realized what she was referring to. “Only what was in the docket. Anything else?”

  “No, sir. Thank you.” She always said thank you. Even when she didn’t mean it. It was bred into her bones like so many other things she’d inherited. She was beginning to wonder what her genetics would say if someone could really read them.

  Westerfield was already down the hall, leaving her in the dust the moment she paused. Agent Heath was far ahead; she caught sight of just his pants leg as he turned the corner. He was wearing Doc Martens—not unheard of, but not the usual dress shoes associated with a suit and tie. He was clearly uncomfortable in the clothing as well as the building.

  Without her trying, her brain turned to what she did so well: she analyzed. He was mid-thirties, she knew that from the paperwork she’d been given. She knew he’d been a medical examiner until about six months ago when he left that position and began agent training. He was pretty ripe to hit the Academy, but he wasn’t the only one. Each class had a small handful of older, more experienced trainees. But even then, ninety-eight percent of them were ambitious go-getters. Heath was not.

  She automatically began pulling on threads. His emails had little to no tone in them; he likely wasn’t one to place much stock in opinion or gut instinct. He had an MD in pathology. Another score in the science column. Eleri would bet her trust fund that the FBI had approached him, not the other way around. She would bet that he was growing bored doing autopsies—even though he was reportedly very good at finding even the most odd and obscure causes of death—and that he’d considered the FBI’s offer as a new opportunity. He appeared undecided about his choices, even though he already invested more than six months in testing and training.

  And she was standing in the hallway when she should be chasing after him. She should be extending a drink invitation as the senior agent. She should be making certain that their partnership worked well, but he was already a good distance ahead of her. So Eleri did what she always did when her legs weren’t fast enough, she pulled out her phone and called.

  He was frowning when he answered. “Doctor Heath.”

  She laughed. “I believe it’s ‘Agent Heath’ now.” No, he had not reached out to the FBI. “Look, I was curious if you were available later tonight or for lunch tomorrow, to go over the facts of the case. It sounds like we’re going to ship out in the next few days to start the legwork.”

  There was a pause. He was quiet, this one. No good-ole-boy aw-shucks here. She was going to have to be the talker in this partnership. “Lunch tomorrow. I admit I’m not familiar with the area. Do you know a place nearby?”

  When he declined, she looked up a burger joint she knew and picked a time when it would be emptier. They would want space to spread out files without people seeing and without dripping ketchup on them. Clearly he would want a place where he didn’t have to wear his suit.

  She wondered how many he even had.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow.” The words sounded almost forced out of his mouth, as though pleasantries had not been part of his upbringing, and then the line went dead.

  Eleri mentally added that she would also have to be the social one, but she was anxious to see what he brought to the unit. She’d worked with agents with law degrees and psychology degrees but never a medical degree.

  So she hitched her bag over her shoulder and headed home after the short meeting. She had paper, photos, and e-file backups of all of it. She’d come of age just prior to the e-revolution and still believed in laying things on a table top and looking at all of it. Her psychology classes had taught her that hand writing something stored it in the memory much better than typing it did. And her colleagues always laughed at her the first time she took notes by hand. But only the first time.

  She and Heath had two days to get up to speed enough to start work. They had notes and phone numbers from agents and police departments who’d worked parts of the case or related crimes. It made for heavy reading.

  Being behind the wheel of her own car was still an unusual feeling. She’d driven herself everywhere since she turned sixteen. But for the last three months she hadn’t driven at all.

  So the ability to pull over and get her favorite pizza had her stopping in and waiting while a small pie baked. She hadn’t had good, greasy pizza in forever, and her mouth watered as she tried to sit patiently on the hard take-out bench and do nothing.

  There was no one to call while she waited; she didn’t really have friends. Like many agents, her work consumed her, much to her parents’ dismay. They kept her busy with events, so she went out plenty, but she didn’t meet anyone like-minded at these things. So she didn’t rack up lovers or friends with ease. Plus, she was unusual looking, a byproduct of a heritage she wasn’t supposed to mention.

  She sniffed at the pizza as the oven was opened time and again and mentally reviewed the case.

  Probable cult.

  Possible guns. Likely militia of some kind. But it was currently unclear if they were protecting their legal or religious rights. Well, “rights”—Eleri mentally added the quotes—freedom of speech and all that, but you couldn’t just declare yourself a sovereign nation in the middle of Texas, though many had tried.

  There was no real case, just a watch, until one week ago when a woman named Ruth came forward from Joseph Hayden Baxter’s City of God and said that she recognized one of the children there from an old missing child photo. An undercover agent, a telephoto lens, and a big risk had produced a picture that Eleri agreed was likely the missing Ashlyn Fisk, although Ruth said she knew the girl as Charity.

  That was when the FBI had been called in.

  Though they had a slim amount of medical information, the woman who had gotten out of City of God would give no last name. She refused to reveal any other identifying information. Then, of course, Ruth disappeared, leaving no last name, no social security number, no fingerprints.

  There would have been nothing to do for it—you couldn’t follow evidence that didn’t exist to a city that no one knew where it was. There was the additional problem that “city” was a generous term by any standards. But Ruth was not the only one.

  Before her, a woman was found on the side of the road, beaten within an inch of her life. She’d died having uttered only one phrase repeatedly: “City of God.”

  There had been rumors after that. The FBI had found an old online presence for City of God. Though it was long since taken down, and only a reference to an idea, several names were linked—most notably, Isaac Hamry and Joseph Hayden Baxter. Baxter was the worst; he got all three names, like any good suspect did. His writings were radical. He believed in the sparest interpretation of all laws. He believed that he was exempt from a handful of said laws, each for a different—but obviously logical—reason. He quoted the Constitution and the Founding Fathers, usually improperly.

  Eleri usually disliked her subjects just because. If they hadn’t done something wrong, they wouldn’t be in her crosshairs in the first place. Maybe they only made the mistake of joining up or befriending the wrong person; she’d seen that plenty before. But still, good people who stayed out of trouble never got called by that middle name, except maybe by their mothers. But she disliked Joe Baxter for his misuse of her precious Constitution. His clear disregard for the actual facts he was citing got her hackles up. Using twisted logic ranked in Eleri’s book up there with kicking puppies.

  Everyone was accountable under the law.

  You didn’t like it, then be thankful you had a government that allowed you to say so, to petition, to write bills, and run for congress, and change your laws.

  She knew people got away with all kinds of crap. And she hated it.

  Just in case there wasn’t enough pressure on her, the case itself was a minefield. The FBI responded, fast and with force, to all missing children claims, but this was more tangled. The missing Ashlyn Fisk was tied to several other missing children, all linked by an unknown set of fingerprints
associated with their abductions. All the cases were over ten years old. One of the cases was that of Jennifer Leigh Cohn—daughter of FBI Special Agent John Cohn, missing eleven years, body never recovered, all leads gone cold. Also Cohn was an old partner of Westerfield’s, which was how he’d caught the case in the first place.

  No pressure there, Eleri thought to herself on a sigh. Find Ashlyn, find Jennifer? It was a longshot and Agent Cohn would not be happy if it didn’t pan out. She was grateful she didn’t know Agent Cohn personally, that the case wasn’t more disturbing than it already was.

  Now, Joseph Hayden Baxter was in her sights.

  And Donovan Heath was her new partner to help take him down, find missing children, account for the dead girl, and handle the various other crap they would run into along the way. Heath was so newly minted that he was still shiny, even if his demeanor didn’t match. Unfortunately, Eleri doubted her ability to be the partner to bring him into the fold. She didn’t think she had enough in her these days to prop herself up, let alone someone else.

  So she drove home, ate her pizza, and stared at the papers spread across her desk. Looking at the photos lined up on the small monitor and the documents in overlapping shots on her big monitor, she realized that she was not ready for this.

  When she’d first joined, there had been a note in her file: “No Children.” It wasn’t hard and fast, clearly it would come up. Eleri had been pissed off when she learned it was there. But then she understood. Some agents just had things they shouldn’t do. Hers was any case with children. But as she looked at the City of God file she realized she was really close. Some of the missing girls were young—not kids, really, but young.

  While she stared she realized something else, she should never have been released this early.

  2

  The run had done Donovan good. Bare feet, long strides, no one to answer to. The loamy smells of the forest told a story. His sensitive nose said there were deer by the dozens back among the trees. Coyote by the hundreds. And a lone bear. Out of territory recently, but now gone.

  The sunlight filtered down, warming him, and Donovan savored the smells of his home turf. It would be a while before he could run like this again. His property backed up onto the woods so he could head out, undisturbed, at any time. Three thousand acres of national park land. He would miss it.

  Today he started with the sunrise and stayed as late as he could, judging the time by the angle of the late morning sun. The distance he covered had been paltry, but he had a meeting. If he was lucky, he’d get in an overnight before he had to fly out, but that was a mere two days away. The timing would be tight.

  Showering was one of those activities that almost bothered him. The results were worth it, but he wasn’t keen on getting wet. Still, he used scent-free soaps to wash away what he picked up on his run. The smell of sweat didn’t bother him, but it bothered others so he scrubbed it away. He scrubbed a little harder, always wary that someone with as good a sense of smell as him would detect the forest on him.

  Columbia, South Carolina, should have been his stomping grounds. He worked in Providence Hospital before Westerfield had pulled him out and offered him this. But Donovan didn’t stomp. It seemed Agent Eames, with her rich traveler vibe, could easily find more about where to go and what to do around his hometown than he knew.

  Familiar as the drive was, he let his motor memory do it for him while he worried what he’d gotten himself into. He wondered if one could just back out of the FBI at the last minute. After all, they had invested nine months testing then training him just for this position. How angry would they be if he dropped out two days into the assignment?

  Sad when the only thing keeping him on the job was that he had no idea what he would do if he didn’t do this. So in the end it was his lack of other ideas that kept him from copping out. Besides, he liked a good burger, and investigative work at least sounded interesting.

  Large sun umbrellas dotted the front of the burger joint, and he found a parking spot nearby. He was two minutes early when he walked through the door, but he wasn’t surprised to find Eames had already staked a table but hadn’t ordered. He could almost feel the grease in the air from the burgers and the fries and suddenly he was ravenous.

  Ignoring his stomach for a moment, he checked her out as she waved him over, clearly having been watching for him. She was in some odd kind of shiny pants that looked like a hybrid between work slacks and yoga pants. She had on a skinny T-shirt with something going on in the sleeves. Not in jeans like him but definitely dressed down. Today Donovan had conceded only to a shirt with buttons; he’d gone to work in sweatpants before. Then again, he worked in a morgue, in a basement with dead people who couldn’t give a shit what he looked like. His lab assistants might have, but he was standoffish enough to make sure they didn’t say so. He interacted as little as possible with police officers and physicians who worked on the living, always making sure he gave enough quality information that his lack of formal work attire would be ignored.

  Eleri smiled as she held up a credit card and a paper menu with her order marked on it. “If you don’t mind ordering for me, I’ll expense the whole thing.”

  And a good day to you, too, he thought.

  Maybe she would be okay. Or maybe she was just a good investigator and had already realized that platitudes and common niceties rolled off him unnoticed. “If it’s expensed, what does it matter?”

  Her head cocked a little to the side. “Fill out one expense form and you’ll see it’s a generous offer.”

  Color him convinced. Her order and notations were made in precise handwriting that fit neatly with the coddled upbringing and private school education obvious in her posture and speech. As he approached the counter, Donovan saw that the credit card was from a bank in Virginia that whispered of History. It was a color his own credit rating didn’t even have hopes of aspiring to and likely something the little burger joint hadn’t seen before.

  The girl behind the counter didn’t even look at him as he spoke. She was intent on punching in his order on the screen in front of her, a screen Donovan thought she should have already memorized as the way she slouched behind the counter reeked of long days doing exactly this. She didn’t check the card—perhaps because the total was nothing that required a signature—and handed it back.

  Thinking he could have easily robbed the place and no one would have an adequate description of him, he sighed and checked the card. He sure as hell hoped he couldn’t be mistaken for Eleri Grace Eames.

  Returning to the table, he balanced large slippery cups of soda, straws, napkins and umpteen packets of god-knew-what sauces. Eleri stood to take the drinks and clearly had a plan for where they were to go on the already subdivided table.

  Eleri Grace Eames was the living, breathing opposite of the girl behind the counter. Eleri buzzed with energy reined; the burger girl had exerted just less than enough to get the job done. Eleri was laser focused, alert, and clearly hyper-aware of everything around her—which Donovan found odd. Given the pampered existence she must have lived, how had she not ended up the lazy one? Why was she not married and getting facials and wondering what dress to wear to another charity event tonight?

  “What?” Her voice startled him.

  Crap. Now he was the one not paying attention.

  “Just thinking that the order will likely be a surprise.” He ad-libbed, even though it was the truth. At Eames’s raised eyebrows he elaborated. “Girl at the counter was paying zero attention. Couldn’t pick me out of a line-up of midgets.”

  The smile was a shock. The laugh heartier than he expected. “It’s a good thing I’ll eat just about anything, then. So you’ve now gotten away with credit-card fraud. Great way to start your career with the FBI.”

  “Career” was stretching it, but he didn’t correct her. Instead, they dove into the file, Donovan pulling out his matching copies of documents, but with his own added notes. “Baxter was raised in a small town in a small church th
at kept its followers close—Zion’s Gate. Sounds like he was raised cult-style.”

  He didn’t need to look at the notes.

  Eames frowned. “That’s not in the record.”

  “I found his parents and called them.” He didn’t like small talk, but he could do it. Found it meant something if he had a purpose for it.

  She nodded to him as if awarding a silent point. “I figured our job was to start on that tomorrow.”

  “I called yesterday afternoon, since there wasn’t much in the file about his upbringing. Anyway, both parents have colorful arrest records. Lots of protests, mounting the Ten Commandments in front of the courthouse in a major city that considered it vandalism. That kind of thing.”

  “So he started from a strict religious upbringing. That’s another point in favor of his leading some fanatical cult.” She shuffled the papers looking for something, maybe.

  Donovan kept going. “So I called the church, said I was moving my family there.” That had been fun actually. Playing the strict husband for no one but the lady on the phone. “I was rude to my ‘wife’ in the background. I was rude to the lady on the phone. I asked if the church kept their women in line.” As he spoke, Eames’s auburn brows climbed higher and higher. “I asked if I would be turned in for abusing my children, but not in those words. I suggested that all medicine is a sin and asked if the church had property that a working man and his family could reside on if they joined.”

  He watched as she waited in anticipation of his answer. He counted the moments until she caved and asked, “And?”

  “Never a twitch. In the end the only thing that surprised me is that she answered the phone and talked to a stranger. I’m new at this, but I’m pretty sure I got seriously shut down. They do not believe in child abuse, though they do believe the man is head-of-household by nature of his genitalia.”