“I wonder if she saw someone skulking around, waiting to take them,” said Bernadette.
“As much as she doted on them, she did let them run around outside at all hours,” said Wharten. “She had one of those pet doors on her back door.”
“So anyone could have snatched them,” said Garcia.
“Who found them?” asked Bernadette.
Wharten looked toward the woodpile. “Your guy. The young fella. Carson. He found a bloody shredded gunnysack tied to the back fence and the carcasses nearby. More of your crew is working on getting footprints. Didn’t have a chance, the poor kitties. Fucking dogs must have had a field day ripping open the bag and having at them. A couple of the mutts did have scratches and bites, but for all I know they did it to each other in the frenzy. Entire breed should be eradicated, if you ask me.”
Bernadette looked over the sheriff’s shoulder toward the closed barn door. “Ashe liked the dogs enough to rescue them.”
“They sure as shit didn’t do anything to rescue her, now did they?” asked Wharten, following Bernadette’s gaze to the barn. “Imagine that: a pack of these brutes between her and whoever killed her. Didn’t do her a damn bit of good. All the murderer had to do was distract the four-legged morons with a sack of cats. It’s a cliché, for Christ’s sake. Pit bulls and a sack of cats.”
A wary Bernadette ran her eyes around the yard. “Where are the four-legged morons right now?”
“They’ve been hauled away to a veterinarian. He’ll tend to their wounds and keep them caged until we figure all this out.” Wharten pointed a finger at Garcia. “Correction: until you figure this out, Antonia.”
“And the boyfriend isn’t talking?” asked Bernadette.
“Not yet,” said Wharten. “He’s in the house with a couple of my men. They had to pry his hands off the barn door, he was so afraid to move. I suppose he’s thinking whoever did this to her is coming back for him.”
“Why’d he come home in the first place?” asked Bernadette. “With all the plowing he had to do tonight—”
“He kept calling her and getting no answer,” said Wharten.
“Did you know her at all?” Bernadette asked.
Wharten shrugged. “Him more than her. She was odd, even without the witch business.”
“This star stuff—first on the dead girl and now on Ashe—what do you make of it?” asked Garcia.
“I think I could do without it,” said Wharten. “I could do without some Satanist running around, trying to start trouble with our law-abiding witches.”
Garcia and Bernadette looked at each other. Garcia said, “You used the plural, Seth.”
“Yes, I did, Antonia. They sure teach you good at that fancy FBI training academy.”
Bernadette’s brows arched. “How many witches are we talking?”
“Loads,” Wharten said.
This was a revelation. Not one or two. Loads. “Does the general population know?” she asked.
“Not if I can help it,” said Wharten.
“Why?” asked Garcia.
“Persecution,” said Wharten.
The pagan landscape was suddenly changing. “Do you think this is about Satanists versus Wiccans?” asked Bernadette.
“I don’t know if it’s Devil worshippers versus witches, witches versus witches, or a pack of foaming-at-the-mouth Lutherans trying to pin something on an outsider,” said the sheriff, adjusting his brimmed hat so that it sat lower on his head. “What I do know is the murder rate in my county has shot up by about a billion percent since New Year’s Eve and you need to do something about it. You need to solve this, and quickly.”
“We’re working on it,” said Garcia.
“Did you know Dunton’s people called me today? You think I need that?”
“I didn’t know,” said Garcia.
Each man’s voice suddenly carried an edge that cut through the buddy-buddy fishing banter, and Bernadette instinctively took one step back. As the two men continued, the steam pouring out of their mouths made them appear even angrier.
Wharten thumbed over his shoulder toward the barn. “You’ve got an army of men and piles of equipment that most of us in law enforcement only dream about. Your budget for paper clips is fatter than my annual payroll.”
Garcia’s jaw tensed. “We’re making progress. You’ve gotta give us a chance.”
“You’re sucking air.” The sheriff pointed a fat gloved finger at Bernadette. “And what about her? I’ve been told she’s one of your big deals. How about getting one of those hunches before my people are killed?”
“This is a federal investigation. We’ll conduct it the way we see fit. How we utilize Agent Saint Clare or any of our other personnel is our call.”
“Sheriff?” somebody called from the darkness.
“Pardon me,” Wharten said stiffly, and left to talk to someone down the driveway.
Bernadette whistled. “Man.”
“I don’t blame him,” said Garcia.
“I guess,” she said.
“Loads of witches,” said Garcia, opening the barn door. “How does that change things?”
“I’m not sure,” said Bernadette.
The barn was thick with crime-scene guys dressed in identical dark blue hooded jackets and latex gloves. Emblazoned on the back of each jacket in huge yellow letters: FBI EVIDENCE RESPONSE TEAM. For the heck of it, she’d love to go up to one of them and ask, “Is there anyone here from the FBI Evidence Response Team?”
Garcia and Bernadette both stayed where they were, just inside the door. They didn’t want to mess up the crime scene. One of the blue men was bent over the body. When he looked up and saw Garcia, he waved the boss over. “No, it’s okay. You’re good.”
“Let’s see what you got there, Tuckert,” said Garcia, stuffing his leather drivers into one pocket and pulling his work gloves out of the other.
Also exchanging the leather for latex, Bernadette followed at Garcia’s heels. A couple of the blue men stopped what they were doing to gawk at the newcomers. A tired-looking young guy with a camera lifted his right hand, and she returned the greeting. He’d been at the New Year’s Eve party. In fact, he might have been the one distributing the Jell-O shooters. For every two he’d given out, he’d downed one. No wonder he still looked beat-up.
She and Garcia stood over the body while Tuckert, squatting next to it, pointed with a gloved finger. “See these here?” he asked, pointing to disk-shaped marks around the witch’s neck. “These are not from a rope or some other device. This is manual strangulation.”
“Takes a strong person,” said Garcia.
“How long would it take to do something like that, to keep up the pressure and strangle a woman with your hands?” asked Bernadette.
Bobby Tuckert—a brown-haired, barrel-chested fellow from the South who was new to Minneapolis Division—looked up at her. His attention darted between her blue and brown. “Uh … I’m sorry … what was the question?” he asked in a slight drawl.
“Forget it,” Garcia said impatiently.
Shifting her focus to the artwork on the dead woman’s forehead, Bernadette said, “That doesn’t look like blood.”
Tuckert pointed across the room to a workbench, which was taped off. “She had a bunch of paints and brushes. We figure the star was painted with one of those.”
The noose was on the floor next to the body, no doubt where Vizner had dropped it after freeing her neck. “So someone killed her first, then put the noose over her head and hoisted her up,” said Garcia, walking over to where the other end of the rope was hanging from a beam.
Bernadette joined Garcia. The line was dangling at her eye level and swaying slightly from the wind seeping through the gaping cracks in the barn’s walls. “What’s this stuff at the end of it?”
“Clay, we think,” said Tuckert. “We found a lump of it in the middle of the floor. We’re figuring it was used to get the rope over the beam.”
“Sounds feasible,” said Garc
ia, walking back to the body.
“We’re betting the lady’s assailant wore gloves, sir. We found what look like glove prints in the clay.”
“Good work,” said Garcia, hunkering down next to the body, across from Tuckert.
Bernadette went over to the potter’s wheel and saw the remains of something in the middle. Ashe was working on a project when she was interrupted. Hands clasped behind her back, Bernadette stepped over to the shelves filled with finished pieces. “Hope the victim got some licks in before she was killed.”
“No blood or skin under her nails, but broken pottery in a trash can,” said Tuckert. “That could be something, or maybe not.”
Nodding, Bernadette continued touring the pottery display. “Barn door wasn’t busted or anything?”
“No sign of a break-in,” said Tuckert. “Dogs clawed up the outside of it, though.”
“So maybe they did try to protect her,” said Garcia.
“Cell phone?” Bernadette asked.
“Left on the workbench,” said Tuckert. “B.K…. Agent Cahill should be able to get some good stuff off it.”
“Tire tracks? Footprints?” Garcia asked.
“The boyfriend plowed the road to his house and the driveways before he found her, so that didn’t help,” said Tuckert. “Then there’s the blizzard. That blowing and drifting didn’t help much, either.”
“Sheriff said some of our guys are checking out footprints by the back fence, near the dead cats,” said Garcia.
“Again, the weather isn’t helping.” Tuckert released a barely audible sigh, a commentary on the climate of his new home and its lack of cooperation as he tried to do his work. “We’re doing what we can, sir. It’s been every bit as challenging as that crime scene in Blue Ox Park.”
Garcia didn’t bother correcting him on the name of the state forest.
While listening to the dismal report, Bernadette continued to survey Ashe’s shelves. She spotted a wizard like the ones she’d seen in the house. What had Ashe said about them?
“I’ve got those three and two out in the barn. My unholy quints.”
There was only one wizard on the dusty shelf, and a circle of clean wood next to it. That’s where the second one had stood. Someone had pilfered it. The killer? In case it had been moved rather than taken, Bernadette quickly scanned the shelves again, from top to bottom. No. No second wizard.
Bernadette, turning to face Garcia and Tuckert: “Something was taken. One thing.”
“What?” asked Garcia.
“Ashe made these small wizard statues, and the killer took one as a souvenir. Took it from the shelf here.”
“Good,” Garcia said. “If we find one of those little dudes on someone’s buffet, we’ll have our killer.”
“Exactly.” The blue men were staring at her. Their freak colleague had showed them up. Tough.
“Anything else?” Garcia asked hopefully.
Bernadette peeled off the latex and stuffed the gloves into her pocket. “Going to go outside and talk to Carson about his find along the back fence. See if the phone came up with anything juicy.”
Garcia stood up. “I’m heading to the house to try the boyfriend. Join me when you finish with Cahill.”
Bernadette started for the door, pulling her leather gloves tighter over her fingers. As she exited the barn, she felt the eyes of the blue men burning a hole in her back. It made her smile.
CHAPTER TWENTY
B.K. had left his station next to the woodpile. Bernadette couldn’t see any of the other agents, so she asked a deputy if he knew where Cahill had gone.
“Which one was he?” asked the youngster, who was the size and shape of an oak tree. They grew them big up north.
“He’s the one who found the dead animals,” she said.
“Cat Man Do. Sure.”
She cringed at the nickname they’d given him. “Yeah. Carson Cahill. Where is he?”
“He went to your RV,” the deputy said with a smirk. “How many folks does that thing sleep, by the way? Does it come standard with HDTV?”
“Hilarious,” she said, and started down the driveway.
“My grandpa’s shopping around for one to take down to Arizona,” he yelled after her. “What kind of mileage does it get?”
Turning around, she hollered over her shoulder, “One on the highway and zero in the city.” She heard him laugh, and she had to do the same.
The wind had died down and the snow had stopped, but the temp was dropping. Her boots squeaked as she walked on the snow.
She caught up with B.K. as he was getting out of the van. “Hey, Carson.”
“Hey, Bern,” he said, zipping his jacket to his neck.
As she stepped up to him, she could see that his face was knotted with tension. Was it the mangled cats or the crime scene in general? She decided to ask about something safe. “How’d you make out with the victim’s phone? Come up with anything decent?”
“A lot,” he said, leaning his butt against the side of the van. “She made a bunch of calls today. A bunch yesterday. Boom, boom, boom, one after another.”
“Hmm. That’s fascinating as hell. All local numbers?”
“Yup. All local. She was up to something. Trying to organize something or track someone down.”
“Or warn people,” she said.
“About what?”
“About us—or someone else—coming after them.”
“Then the outgoing calls stopped and she missed a bunch of incoming, all from a Karl Vizner.”
“Let’s go for a hike,” she said, nodding away from the commotion.
For several minutes, they walked without talking. The new snow made the road glow bright white. He broke the silence with a voice that sounded forced in its casualness. “Heard you ran into some trouble in Brule.”
“Long story.” She sensed that he didn’t want to hear it, and that he in fact wanted to get back to the well-lit homestead.
Something rustled in the woods. “What was that?” he asked, his head snapping to look behind them.
“Maybe we should start walking back,” she offered, thinking it was nothing more than a deer.
“No, I’m good,” he said quickly, then added, “If you’re good.”
“I’m sorry you had to be the one to find the cats,” she said.
“It’ll be a long time before I forget that,” he said, burying his hands in his jacket pockets. “There was blood and fur and guts all over the snow, like a horror movie. I won’t be sleeping tonight.”
“I’ve been there,” she said, thinking back to her worse murder scenes.
“I suppose you think getting so worked up over dead animals is ridiculous,” he said.
“Not at all,” she said sympathetically.
“I imagine you’ve seen a lot worse, with all the years you’ve been in law enforcement.”
“Now you’re making me sound old.”
A branch snapped and Cahill’s arm shot out. “Bern,” he whispered, clutching her forearm.
They both froze and she put her fingers to her lips to silence him. Something large was moving through the woods, not far from the road. Slowly, she unzipped her jacket and reached inside. Un-snapped her holster and drew her gun. Cahill did the same.
Bernadette crouched low, pulling him down with her. She peered into the trees on her side of the road, and he surveyed his side. They heard nothing for a minute or two, and slowly started to straighten up. Another crack caused them both to stop in a semi-crouched position. The noise was coming from the left, from her side of the road. Cahill looked over his shoulder, back toward the house. Bernadette shook her head. She didn’t want to risk losing the culprit. She pointed to a gap between the trees and Cahill hesitated. Nodded. She stood up and slipped into the forest, and he followed.
Slowly, she wove between the trees and bushes on a path of sorts. A couple of feet wide, it cut a meandering swath through the woods. Deer or humans could have made it. Maybe one had created it first and
then the other took advantage. Regardless, it allowed her and B.K. to make their way in the darkness without walking straight into a tree or tripping over a fallen branch.
Whatever they were tracking, it sounded as if it were making its own path through the woods. They could hear it barreling ahead of them, snapping twigs and rattling bushes. A frightened animal, or a panic-stricken human?
Every minute or so, she glanced behind to make sure B.K. was keeping up. Cahill was staying back about ten feet. His gun was no longer in his hand. He’d put it back in either his holster or his jacket pocket. She was glad; she didn’t want to be the victim of friendly fire. She kept her Glock in her fist.
The noise was fading; they were going to lose it. She picked up the pace, going from a jog to a run. Behind her, she could hear Cahill increasing his speed. She ran into the branches of a bush or a tree and pushed the limb aside without snapping it. She stopped for a second to hold it for B.K.
Winded, he came up beside her in a cloud of steam. “We should call,” he said in a hoarse whisper.
“Not yet,” she whispered back, and continued running. She wanted to make sure it wasn’t just a deer.
He went after her. “Bern. Wait.”
The path emptied out into a clearing. She stumbled into it a few yards and stopped dead. Was she seeing this, or was the darkness playing tricks? A chill deeper than the night’s dropping temperatures invaded her belly, and she instinctively tightened her grip on the gun.
Panting, Cahill came up beside her. He rested his hand against a tree while he caught his breath and took in the scene. “This looks like some sort of—”
“Get out your light,” she whispered.
He fished his Mag out of his jacket, clicked it on, and ran the light around the clearing. “Holy crap,” he muttered.
“Yeah,” she said.
Arranged around the perimeter were backless benches, the legs made of tree stumps and the seats made of rough-cut lumber. The benches were set in a perfect circle and resembled the sort of thing found at a group campground. The arrangement of rustic furniture had nothing to do with campfires and roasting marshmallows, however. In the center of the space was a table, the legs a little taller than those of a dining-room table and made of skinned logs. The top consisted of a thin slab of flat, irregularly shaped stone. It was decorated with a set of candles.
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