“It’s the middle of the afternoon. You got enough sleep.” Lila inched around Meyer and parked herself in line with the partition. “We’ve had another death.”
Pausing in his coffee prepping, Fitzgerald leaned against his counter. “And that justifies waking me up?”
“It was Neva McKinnley.”
This revelation earned her a confused frown.
“Her death looks suspicious. The sheriff is running with the theory it’s a murder, but she wants it kept quiet until we have an actual confirmation from the ME.”
“This couldn’t have waited until I got to the department?”
“No.”
He cocked his head, eyeing Lila.
Meyer shifted into the open space next to her. “Ben, stop being an ass.”
“Up yours, rich boy.”
Meyer twitched, his body posed to make a move. Lila’s hand shot out and slammed against his chest. He was a powder keg about to blow. Guiding him behind her, she kept her gaze locked on Fitzgerald.
“Meyer, take a breather outside.”
She sensed the deputy’s hesitation. Two heartbeats passed and he obeyed her command. Lila eased into the dining area.
“All you women keep mother-henning him and he’s never going to grow up.”
“Jealous?”
Fitzgerald snorted. “Of him? Never.”
“That monkey must weigh a ton.”
He blinked, confusion marring his usual sourpuss face.
Lila clicked her tongue and gave him a thumbs-up. “Not a word out of your mouth about Mrs. McKinnley’s death.” She turned to leave.
“Or what?”
Leaning her head around the edge of the partition, she said, “Or I’ll make your life even more miserable than it already is. For some reason, the sheriff sees something in you. I don’t. I don’t like you, and I don’t like how you act. Later.”
The house trembled under the force of her closing the door. “Shoot. This thing would blow away in windstorm.”
Meyer scowled but followed as she headed back to the squad car. “Why did you make me leave?”
“To save you the embarrassment of having to explain to the sheriff why you lost your cool with a fellow deputy. And why I kicked your butt for doing it.”
He snagged her coat sleeve and dragged her around. “I can’t make you out.”
She scrunched her nose. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Back at the McKinnley house, before we went inside, you acted like you had no idea what you were doing. Just now, you took charge and did something any seasoned deputy would do. I don’t get it.”
Sighing, she studied the road and the driveway where the car sat. How did you explain to a rookie the hell she was still trying to navigate through without scaring him off? Oh, right, she didn’t.
“Let’s go. Deputy Fontaine is supposed to meet us with the ATVs at the Barrett place. It’s going to be dark soon, and I’d rather not be out there in the woods in the dark.”
“It’s not safe back there at night if you don’t know where you’re going.”
“All the more reason to get this show on the road.”
*
An Eckardt County Sheriff’s Department Dodge Charger and a dark gray Ford F250 with a long flatbed trailer were parked in the yard. Meyer drove his unit into the overgrown driveway and parked beside Fontaine’s Charger. Lila and Meyer exited his vehicle as Fontaine and another man with similar features emerged from behind the decaying house.
“Joel,” Meyer called out. “What are you doing here?”
The other man shook Meyer’s hand. “Rafe asked me to help out.”
Lila met Fontaine’s steely gaze. “Did he now? And why would Deputy Fontaine include a civilian in this matter?”
“Because that civilian is my brother, the owner of the ATVs we’re using, and he knows these woods as well as I do.”
Brother? Oh, this must be the ex-husband the sheriff wasn’t keen on. Lila gave Joel Fontaine the once-over. Come to think of it, Fontaine didn’t like his brother all that much.
“We’re losing daylight. If we hope to find anything to tie into these murders, we need to move now,” Fontaine said. “Joel and I will take the four-wheelers, covering north and east. Meyer, you and Dayne take the side-by-side and run southwest to west.” He held out Motorola radios. “We’ll keep in contact this way.”
Lila squawked hers. In good working order. “And why are we taking orders from you?”
“Like I said. We know this area best. And the sheriff isn’t here to give orders.”
“But she didn’t give you permission to be out here.” Lila poked Fontaine’s chest with the Motorola. “Now did she?”
Joel chuckled. “I like this one.”
His brother grunted. “It’ll go faster with more of us.” He turned and strode to the red four-wheeler.
Joel stuck out his hand. “Nice meeting you, Dayne.”
She gripped his gloved hand, stunned by the strength pouring from him. That’s right. Hadn’t Benoit said he was Delta Force? And Lila could see why Elizabeth Benoit had fallen in love. In his youth he must have been a real looker.
With a nod, he mounted the navy-blue mate to Fontaine’s ATV. The side-by-side she and Meyer would use was parked to the right of the four-wheelers.
“Do you know how to drive one of these things?” Lila asked the rookie.
His face scrunched. “Excuse me? Are you implying that I, as a rich kid, wasn’t allowed to slum it with the boys?”
Crap! Dog with her nose in the trash.
Meyer laughed. The knots loosened in Lila’s neck.
“My non-approved buddies and I used to race these things. Get in. You’ll be fine.”
The Fontaine men started their machines as Meyer and Lila climbed inside their designated vehicle. Lila noted with glee the GPS monitor in the cab.
She tapped the power button on the device. The brothers tore out of the yard and sped off to the tree line. Meyer followed on their trail, running alongside the mashed grass of the path that she and Sheriff Benoit had spotted the first time she’d been here. Once the grass met the tree line, the path disappeared under a blanket of pine needles and brown leaves carpeting the forest floor.
“Not that I don’t trust you to know where you’re going,” Lila said as they bumped along, “but I need a better idea of where we are in relation to the house.”
“No offense taken.” Meyer peeled off the Fontaine brothers’ tail and headed west.
Lila watched Joel’s backside as he bucked over a slight dip in the pathway. He stayed straight on the path while Rafe went east.
“You get the impression that Deputy Fontaine isn’t happy about this arrangement?”
“He probably had to swallow a lot of crow to ask his brother for these ATVs. And knowing Joel, he probably demanded to come along since he was providing the vehicles.”
Meyer slowed the ATV, allowing them to get a better look at the area around them. Lila’s gaze bounced from the GPS to the timber floor. Winter’s bite had withered a lot of the underbrush that managed to grow despite the thick stand of trees. Meyer had to pick a careful path over downed limbs and rock outcroppings.
“Why would he ask his brother? Aren’t there other people that have equipment to borrow?”
“Not everyone can keep their silence like Joel. We’d have a lot of busybodies once word spread. And the last thing we need is Ma Kauffmann to discover we’re out here.”
“I was under the impression the sheriff asked permission for us to be back here.”
“She probably did, but it’s safer to have the brothers out here with us in case Ma changes her mind. She won’t ever cross those two.”
Lila pulled her attention away from their surroundings to look at Meyer. “And why is that?”
Slowing the ATV to a halt, he looked at her. “Family.”
“Family has many different meanings to you people.”
“Us people?”
She gave Meyer a smile. The kid was growing on her. But she shouldn’t consider him a permanent partner. She couldn’t afford to get close to anyone.
Swinging her gaze back to the woods, her eye caught a weird break in the scenery. She pointed to their right. “What’s that?”
Meyer turned the vehicle in that direction and bumped over the rough terrain to the spot. Lila hopped out before he had it stopped. She knelt beside the tracks.
“I think we found the location where they entered and existed.” She followed the tracks as far as she could see. “I’m going to walk them. Follow me, but stay off the tracks.”
As she walked, she scanned the ground, hoping that whoever came this way had dropped something. The shadows lengthened. Pausing, she checked her watch.
“Lights?” she asked.
Meyer flipped the headlights and dug into a floor compartment, producing a flashlight. Taking the handheld device, she flicked it on and kept moving.
The Motorola squawked. “Dayne, progress?” Fontaine’s voice echoed through the trees.
She grasped the radio and cued it. “I’ve found some tracks cutting through our area. I’m following them to see where they go.”
“How far are you from where we started?”
Meyer held up two fingers.
“Two miles.” She squinted at the tree line. “Heading northwest.”
“Watch yourself. The area gets rocky, and about another mile or two there is a ravine.”
Scowling, she marched forward. “A ravine? Like the one we found Regan in?”
The side-by-side growled after her. She paused and jumped inside as Meyer pulled beside her.
“I think it is,” Fontaine said.
“Why did no one tell me this?”
Silence met her inquiry. She pinned Meyer.
“I don’t know this place that well,” he said.
She cued the radio again. “Rafe.”
“I wasn’t putting two and two together.”
“Damn it.” She slapped the dashboard. “Meyer, step on it.”
“The tracks?”
“Kick me later, but screw the tracks. Let’s go.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Deputy Lundquist was waiting for Elizabeth in the hallway leading to the morgue.
“What do you have for me?” she asked as he fell in step with her.
“The prints that I did find matched with Mrs. McKinnley’s. I found dirt clods on the cellar steps. Since she has no exposed dirt on her property, I had the DCI take it, and they’re testing it tomorrow.”
“Any footprints?”
“No, just the clumps.”
They rounded a corner and made a beeline for the swinging doors at the end of the hall.
“Kyle, are her clothes with DCI?”
“Yes. I went over them and took pictures as soon as the body arrived.”
“Did you find any anomalies?”
He shook his head. “The doc found bruising on the upper part of her arms.”
Elizabeth came to a halt. “Bruising like what?”
“Like she’d been restrained by a strong person.”
She closed her eyes and lowered her chin. Neva McKinnley likely had been restrained and probably dragged to the basement door where she was thrown down the steps.
“Murder,” she whispered.
The whoosh of rubber suction detaching brought her head up. Olivia came through the doors, removing her blood-splattered yellow gown.
“I’m finished,” she said, crumpling the gown into a ball.
“And?”
“I’ve determined the manner of death as homicide.” Olivia gripped Elizabeth’s shoulder. “Her neck was broken, but it was the cranial fracture and the brain hemorrhage that killed her.”
“Kyle said you found bruising on her arms.”
“Yes. They distinctly look like handprints. I’d say male by the size and width.”
“A male would be capable of lifting even her small frame and throwing her down the steps.”
“But why?” Lundquist asked.
“I think Deputy Dayne might have hit on it earlier. Neva knew too much. She was known to have filed complaints about activity at the Barrett place. And whatever she heard the other night might point fingers at Maya Wagner’s killer.” Elizabeth pointed at Lundquist. “The blood from the house, has a DNA match come back yet?”
“DCI said it matched Regan.”
“Okay, so, Regan was in the house. But she was dead the night Neva heard the sounds. And why throw Regan into the ravine?”
“It’s still possible Neva had her nights mixed up,” Olivia said.
“Possible, or we still have another victim out there. But it still doesn’t explain why Regan and Maya were killed at separate times,” Elizabeth added.
“Drugs and sex,” Lundquist said.
“Wait, did we ever get a hit on the DNA from the semen?” Elizabeth asked.
“No,” Lundquist answered. “Either he’s never been arrested or he’s not had a full workup due to incompetence.”
“Toxicology?”
“Still waiting,” Olivia said. “I’m hoping to see something from DCI tomorrow.”
Elizabeth drew in a breath and held it two heartbeats before releasing it. “I can’t believe we have all this evidence and it amounts up to nothing.”
“Any luck with the search on the Barrett property?” Lundquist asked.
“Dayne and Meyer haven’t checked in yet.” Elizabeth turned to Olivia. “Do you need me for anything more?”
“I’m getting my recordings transcribed. I want to review my report and then I’ll send it over. Otherwise, I have nothing more for you.”
“Call me if anything new arises.” With that, Elizabeth and Lundquist backtracked and headed for the exit. “Kyle, was the meth we found under Maya ever tested?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I want it tested. We can determine if the batch was fresh and what components are in it.”
“Yes, but we don’t have anything to compare it against. We don’t have any records of drug busts around here. Sheehan never bothered with it.”
And why was that, pray tell? “I know. But I have a sneaky feeling it’s going to come up. We need to track it. Contact DCI and get on that.” She threw her arm into the door’s push bar.
“Where are you going?” Lundquist asked.
“It’s time me and the old sheriff have a little tête-à-tête.”
*
Lila held her flashlight aloft and scanned up. “I’ll be damned.”
Meyer splashed around on the edge of the stream. “Regan was dumped up there. But how do you get up and down from there without climbing gear?”
Swinging her light about, Lila let the beam fall on the tracks they had followed to this point. They disappeared into the streambed. “There has to be an outlet or a trail leading up that we’re not aware of.”
Her Motorola crackled. “Dayne, report?”
She jerked it free of her duty belt and cued it. “Fontaine, I’m at the base of the ravine where we found Regan. Meyer and I are going to check this area out to see if there’s a way to get up and down from the road to here.”
“It’s getting too dark for that. We’ll have to come back in the morning and look. We’ll start up top.”
She checked her watch. It was nearly five, and the dark was getting stronger. “Fine. Do you have anything?”
A radio squawk made her flinch. “You could say we did.”
Her stomach skipped.
“Put these coordinates in your GPS and head this way.” Fontaine rattled off numbers that Meyer logged into the ATV’s GPS. “Be careful. There are some deep holes and breaks in the ground that the side-by-side will get stuck in.”
“Roger that.”
She and Meyer loaded up and crawled through the timber at a reasonable pace, avoiding the holes and crevices. After twenty minutes of driving, she spotted the four-wheelers’ headlights. Meyer parked the ATV to t
he left of one four-wheeler and directed the lights on the structure before them.
Exiting the side-by-side, Lila let out a whistle.
Rafe and Joel appeared out the dark, both men armed.
“What is this?” she asked Rafe as approached her.
“Some sort of meth lab.” He directed the beam of his flashlight at the top of the building. The beam glanced off the mesh material stretched over it. “They used a camo netting to disguise the whole thing from the sky. A way to keep it undetected even in the winter when the foliage is gone.”
Lila blew air through her mouth. “Sheriff is not going to be happy about this.”
“But we found the source for our drug problem.”
“Do we know who’s been using it?”
Joel walked past her with a pair of bolt cutters. “We’re about to find out.”
“Can we just enter without a warrant or anything?” Meyer asked. “I mean, it just looks like a regular building. Nothing says meth lab.”
“Except for the pile of empty propane tanks in the back and the equipment inside,” Fontaine said.
“It actually has a window?” Lila asked.
“Not just one but three. They probably figured no one would find it and they needed some natural light. And, Meyer, if we don’t know who uses it, who are we going to serve a warrant to?”
“In the case of a drug situation, I don’t think a judge will care,” Lila added.
Meyer shrugged. “I’m just saying, we’re treading on shaky ground here.”
A snap of metal drew the three of them to Joel. Flashlights poised on the sliding doors, Joel dragged the heavy chain out of the loops and yanked one door open. It slid on well-oiled hinges, not making a sound. How convenient for subterfuge.
All four entered cautiously, Lila arming herself as they went. She watched Joel closely, impressed with his quick sweep of the area before walking over to a bank of switches.
“Prepare your eyes,” he warned and flipped the switches.
Light flooded the building. Blinking past the sudden change, Lila felt her jaw drop.
“Holy hell,” Meyer muttered.
“Someone has deep, deep pockets.” Rafe nudged a bank of glass beakers, connected to a sophisticated maze of tubes and burners.
This was no run-of-the-mill, backwoods doublewide meth lab. Above them was a state-of-the-art ventilation system, keeping the fumes from the cooking process away from the chefs. In a corner to their left were four stacks of boxes. Lila inched closer to read the stamped sides. Lighter fluid, pseudoephedrine, iodine crystals, rubbing alcohol, and hydrogen peroxide, all the base components for meth. And boxed, no less. Someone certainly had deep pockets to gain access to boxed ingredients before they hit the stores. “It’s like we stepped into an episode of Breaking Bad,” Meyer said.
The Killer in Me Page 19
