Deathtrap (Broslin Creek)

by Dana Marton

  DEATHTRAP

  By Dana Marton

  This book is dedicated with my deepest gratitude to booksellers, and to Diane Flindt, one of the best in the business.

  My sincere thanks to Barbara, Diane, Linda and Toni for a fabulous edit, Kim Killion for the amazing cover, and my wonderful Facebook friends for reading the early version and giving me feedback. Also big thanks to Mallory Kane, one of my favorite authors, for her invaluable feedback!

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2013 by Dana Marton. All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the author. http://www.danamarton.com

  First Edition: 2013

  Chapter One

  Love was blind, people said. But lust was blind, deaf, and reckless. When lust took the reins, people set aside their best judgment and took risky chances, Broslin PD Captain Ethan Bing thought as he strode around the blood-soaked patch of dirt, notebook in hand, scribbling.

  The spring woods around him, budding life everywhere, stood in stark contrast to the gruesome vignette of death inside the vehicle his two officers were processing. Another one of his men stood at the edge of the clearing, talking to the teenagers who’d found the vic.

  In Philadelphia or Wilmington, the nearest big cities, they would have had three times this many cops at a murder scene, but Broslin was a small town of mushroom growers and Amish farmers in Southeastern Pennsylvania, the police department anything but overstaffed and fancy.

  The body was several days old, but she’d been pretty in life, they could still see that. Big blue eyes, long auburn hair, tall and slim. She wore makeup. Her top matched the purse on the passenger seat next to her. A woman took that much care over her appearance, chances were she’d done it for a man.

  She’d come for love, or lust, and had found death instead.

  Officer Joe Kessler, ex-football player slash small-town hero, looked up from dusting for fingerprints. Not a smudge of powder on his crisp uniform, or mud on his shoes, either. He liked to keep himself in pristine condition for the ladies. “You think you’ll make it to that Flyer’s game, Captain?”

  Bing blinked at him. He’d forgotten the game. Murder had a way of throwing off schedules. And the weather wasn’t too accommodating either, threatening to wash away their crime scene in a quick noon shower. He glanced up at the sky. “Let’s get this done before the rain hits.”

  Broslin Creek rushed along twenty or so yards behind the light blue SUV, the trees resplendent with their shiny new leaves, birdsong in the air. Sunshine sparkled on everything even as clouds were beginning to move in. A spring shower was gathering. Inside the car, the body lay draped over the blood-soaked steering wheel, the young woman’s head turned as if she’d simply lain down to take a nap.

  Doors closed but not locked. Bing stepped closer, recording in his notepad the mood and feel of the scene, and his own impressions and intuitions, the kinds of things the crime scene photos wouldn’t. He was the captain, and a killer who needed to be brought to justice walked somewhere in his town.

  His plans for his Saturday afternoon aside, they’d caught a murder case. He liked hockey and the Flyers in particular, the game would have been fun, but this was where he wanted to be. Nothing mattered more than the job.

  “There’s only one reason people come to these pretty little clearings this side of the creek,” Joe remarked, and he would know. He went on more dates than all the rest of the Broslin PD combined.

  Next to them, Officer Mike McMorris, a round, redheaded Irish kid two years out of police academy, snapped his phone closed. “Vehicle registration checks out.” He shoved the phone into his pocket and yanked on rubber gloves. “Like we thought, Kristine Haynes.”

  Bing nodded. Although the face was somewhat distorted, they’d recognized her without trouble. Her photo had been on TV and plastered on flyers.

  Married for ten years. Husband, Brian Haynes. Two kids, twin girls. Working mom. She’d been a part-time accountant at Anselm-Gnamm Pharmaceuticals, one of the largest companies in the area.

  The missing person report had been filed five days ago, and half the town had been out looking for her since. But the search teams hadn’t gone this far into the woods, this far up the creek. She’d disappeared on the other side of Broslin, so most of the search area had been marked out there, the teams going through the endless stretch of the pine barrens.

  The question was, how did she end up all the way out here in the woods, with her throat cut?

  Mike cleared his throat. “If you want to go notify the husband”—he hunched up his shoulders—“we can finish up here, Captain.”

  Joe busied himself with the last door handle, suddenly too engrossed to even look up.

  Bing shoved his notebook into his pocket. They’d been casting concerned glances at him since they’d gotten here. They thought the body, coming on the two-year anniversary of his discovery of his wife’s body, murdered in their home, might bring back too many memories. If it did…

  He was a cop, dammit. He could handle it. “I want to have a closer look before I leave.”

  Joe set aside the fingerprint kit. “Done with the outside.”

  He’d already photographed the crime scene but picked up the camera again, ready for the interior shots, first with, then without the body.

  Bing stepped closer to help as Mike opened the door. Since the body hadn’t been supported by it, the vic didn’t fall out. Definitely a good thing. The sweet, cloying smell of decomposition hit them, and they all took shorter breaths until they acclimated. Could have been worse. It could have been full summer heat instead of the soft warmth of spring.

  He scanned her now that he could see more of her, noting the discoloration of skin. “Looks like she was killed at about the same time she was reported missing.”

  Mike began talking into his recorder, continuing the report he’d started when they’d arrived on the scene. “Victim’s fully clothed, wearing black pumps, black dress slacks, patterned silk blouse, and a yellow sweater. Her clothes appear undisturbed. No sign of struggle inside the vehicle. No weapons visible…”

  Joe kept snapping pictures, without measurement guides first. He would set those out next and shoot another set of pics before moving on to video.

  Since Bing knew the process would take a while, he left his men to their work and strode over to the two teenagers at the edge of the woods who were giving their statements about finding the body. Detective Chase Merritt was nodding at them patiently. He was a mild guy, in his mid-thirties, laidback and easygoing. Half the time he could defuse a fight just by bringing his mellow energy into the conflict. He was the perfect person to be talking to the kids.

  Bing kept himself between the SUV and the kids as he walked, blocking as much as he could. They didn’t need to see more than they already had.

  The boy, around fourteen, was white around the gills, the girl, same age, clinging to his arm, to the one-size-too-big varsity jacket he wore. He worked part-time at the gas station. What was his name? Brett something. The girl didn’t look familiar, but Chase would have the personal details recorded already.

  “What were you doing out here?” Bing asked as he caught up to them.

  They both looked away.

  Then Brett shrugged. “Just looking for a place to talk,” he said to the ground at his feet.

  Color crept up the girl’s face.

  They’d probably been in search of a quiet p
lace to neck.

  “You come here a lot?”

  Brett shook his head, his gaze meeting Bing’s again. “No. Not this far up the creek. We got a little lost.”

  “Did you touch anything?”

  “We didn’t go that close. We could tell that she was…” The kid swallowed and turned another shade paler. Nothing in his expression indicated that he was lying.

  “I appreciate your help. You’ve done everything right by calling us and not approaching the vehicle.” Bing glanced at Chase. “We have everything we need here?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The boy’s Adam’s apple bobbed. He pulled the girl closer. “You think you’ll figure out who killed her?”

  “We’ll do our level best. If you can’t think of anything else right now, Detective Merritt here will take you home,” Bing told them, and left Chase to it.

  He didn’t want those kids to still be here when the news crew arrived, and he didn’t want them stumbling miles through the woods right now either. If the investigation came up with more questions for them later, they could always be called down to the station.

  He strode to his cruiser he’d left at some distance so it wouldn’t disturb any possible tire tracks closer to the crime scene, and brought up Kristine Haynes’s file on his laptop.

  Reported missing by her husband, Brian Haynes. Age 39. Height/Weight/Race. Clothes worn prior to disappearance. A match to current. No medical conditions. No known enemies. No history of erratic behavior. Soccer mom with twin girls: Kelley and Dakota. Occupation: part-time accountant, Anselm-Gnamm Pharmaceuticals.

  The pharma companies in Philly and Wilmington were the big employers in the area. Bing’s wife had actually worked at AGP too. He pushed that thought away and focused on the case, staring at the screen until the image in his mind—Stacy lying in her own blood at the top of the stairs—faded enough so he could see Kristine Haynes.

  The database photo was fairly recent and clearly matched the vic. So did the vehicle registration.

  Step one accomplished. They had positive ID.

  He knew the report by heart, but he read it over all the way to the end anyway.

  Kristine Haynes had dropped off the kids at school Monday morning; then she was supposed to take the family hamster to the vet. Except she’d never arrived at the vet’s office. The younger girl, Dakota, called the father when Kristine didn’t pick her up after school. The man had been looked at for the disappearance, but he’d been at work all day at a small accounting firm, with dozens of witnesses. Until now, there’d been no other leads. Finding the body changed everything.

  Bing closed the file and rolled all that information around in his head as he hurried back to the crime scene, glancing at the sky. They had minutes, but Joe and Mike were making good progress.

  Joe paused the video camera for a second. “What do you think, Captain?”

  Evidence markers waved in the breeze, the little orange flags ringing the spot in front of the car where Kristine Haynes’s blood had soaked into the ground. “She was killed outside the vehicle, obviously. We’ll have to dig up all this dirt and take it in, have it lab-tested to see if the blood is all hers.”

  He scanned the inside of the car once again, trying out different scenarios. Just because his instinct said love affair gone bad, it didn’t mean he was going to leave all the other stones unturned.

  “Doesn’t seem like a robbery. Her purse is on the seat next to her. The car wasn’t taken.” He rubbed his chin. “Doesn’t feel like a random crime.”

  “That’d be good.” Joe nodded. “Those are the hardest to solve. Then again, half the fun is in the challenge.” He flashed a grin. Like Mike, he was new enough to the job to find even setbacks exciting.

  Bing examined the victim’s face, frozen in death. “Whoever cut her throat put her back into the car and closed the door, made sure no animals got to her, kept her out of the weather. The killer cared about her.”

  He squatted by her side and scanned her hands. “Fingertips black and bloodied. Could be her own blood, could be the killer’s. We might catch a break there.”

  Mike, who’d been standing behind the car and quietly talking into his recorder, now stepped closer to look. “We’ll know when the lab work comes back.” He cracked his neck. “What if it is a random crime? What if she was kidnapped and brought here?”

  “I’d say she came of her own free will.” Bing pointed inside the vehicle. “Her purse is on the passenger seat. Shoebox in the back. I don’t think there was anyone in the car with her.” His gaze settled on the empty box, its lid half-off.

  Joe caught him looking. “The missing person report didn’t mention valuables. You think she was killed for whatever was in there?”

  Not likely. One particular line of the report popped into Bing’s head and he lurched forward. “Watch the door. I think we have a loose pet. She was taking the kids’ hamster to the vet.”

  He leaned forward to peer around the vic’s feet but found nothing, so he closed the driver’s side door. He hurried around, pulled on gloves, and opened the door on the passenger side carefully to check the floor there. He did a thorough visual search of the back of the car next. Nothing moving around back there either.

  “Make sure it doesn’t get out, if it hasn’t gotten out already.” House pets didn’t do well on their own in the woods. He squatted and reached under the front seat from the back, and pulled out some garbage and a handful of broken crayons.

  Then he saw something that made him catch his breath. A simple pen. But a pen with a familiar logo on it: a crimson staircase with a golden door on top.

  For a moment, he could no longer hear the creek or the men around him, only the rushing blood in his ears. He’d seen that logo before, on a folder when he’d searched through his wife’s things after her murder.

  “Need an evidence bag.” He barked the words as a million questions slammed into him. “I want this dusted for prints. Make it a priority.”

  He snapped a photo with his cell phone before he dropped the pen into the bag Joe brought over. Then he reached back under the seat, his mind spinning.

  His searching fingers swept the small space, but this time he came up empty-handed. He plunged back again, dropping his head onto the floor between the front seat and the back, all the way down to the carpet, every muscle taut.

  Other than cookie crumbs, he could see nothing.

  Disappointment rose in a dark wave. He swallowed it. Keep focus. Keep a clear mind. He closed the door and hurried over to the other side, checked under the driver’s seat, looking at everything differently now.

  Where had the pen come from? What did the logo mean? What was it doing in Kristine Haynes’s SUV? What was the connection to Stacy?

  The two women had worked for the same company. Was that the connection? Was there a connection at all, or was he just grasping at straws here?

  The junk he pulled from under the driver’s seat next gave him no answers. “Save everything,” he said anyway as he carefully pushed aside the wadded-up burger wrappers. “I want everything tagged and preserved, down to the last speck of dirt.”

  On the second sweep, he finally felt something small and furry. “Here we go.”

  His fingertips reached the animal wedged into the far corner. Then sharp teeth sank into his skin the next second. “Hey!” He yanked his hand back, but then eased it forward again. “I’m trying to help here.”

  But the hamster bit and scratched him bloody by the time he tugged it free.

  Mike had a goofy grin on his face as he came over. “Can’t believe it’s still alive.” He had a bottle of water in his pocket—trying to lose some weight, swearing off soft drinks—and he poured some into the cap, then held it out so the hamster could drink. The poor critter lapped it up in greedy gulps.

  The three of them looked at each other for a second, some of the tension easing in their shoulders—a time-out. Finding life at a murder scene was nice for a change, to still be able to s
ave something. It made all of them feel a little better.

  Bing slipped the hamster into his jacket pocket, then pulled up the zipper, leaving room for air but not for escape. Then he turned his mind to the murder again, while the other two documented every last detail.

  Kristine Haynes. He was pretty sure he’d never heard of her before the missing person report had come in. Did she and Stacy know each other?

  “I don’t like the method of murder,” he said after a minute, backing away from the car for a wider perspective. “Crimes of passion, when a knife is involved, tend to end with the knife through the heart.”

  “A cut throat is more organized-crime MO,” Joe put in.

  He was right. Sliced throats usually had to do with “silencing” people. They saw those cases coming out of the nearest big cities, not in their small rural town of Broslin.

  Mike brought the body bag over. Bing helped him roll it out and opened it as his two officers gently lifted the body from the car and laid her on the plastic. She was somebody’s daughter. Somebody’s wife. Somebody’s mother.

  “So two idiots are driving down the road, drinking beer,” Mike said as they worked. “They see a cop car. One says, ‘Oh man, we’re busted.’ The other one says, ‘Just pull the labels off, we’ll stick them on our foreheads and toss the bottles under the seat.’ So the cop stops them, looks in and asks, ‘Have you been drinking?’ The driver says, ‘No, sir, we’re on the patch.’”

  They straightened, and Joe grabbed his camera again. “Jesus, that’s a bad joke.” But he laughed.

  And so did Bing, even as he shook his head. More jokes popped around a crime scene than anywhere else—a way to deal with all the darkness.

  Mike pulled a piece of paper from the dashboard. “Bank receipt for the twenty bucks she took out the morning she went missing. Not enough to be killed for, that’s for sure.” He bagged it.

  “Probably lunch money for the kids,” Bing said. “We’ll check the bank again, see if anyone remembered anything more about that trip to the bank.”