The Sins of the Mother (Miller & Stevens Book 1)

by Scott Pratt

  She had serious bruises on all her limbs and several on her torso. She’d been sexually assaulted with a wooden instrument, maybe a broomstick or an old baseball bat. Dr. Franks removed splinters of wood from her vagina and anus. There was severe tearing in both areas. The one thing that gave Lukas some comfort was that Razzy also had a severe skull fracture. She may very well have been unconscious during the worst of the attack. The big finding, though, was the semen.

  Maybe the killer had finally lost control, Lukas thought. Maybe they finally had the break they’d been waiting for.

  Chapter Twelve

  The air had turned cooler when Brooke walked out of the medical examiner’s office with Lukas beside her. It felt good on her skin after being in the claustrophobic and stuffy confines of the autopsy room. She’d driven from the station, and they sat in her car for a short time, silent, with Brooke waiting for Lukas to speak. Finally, when it became apparent he wasn’t going to, she said, “Are you okay?”

  “It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I think maybe I’m starting to compartmentalize things, become numb. Maybe that happens when you see someone you know and care for brutalized the way Razzy was.”

  “It’s a defense mechanism,” Brooke said. “Part of the job.”

  “And now it’s about to get worse. I have to go tell Timmy.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “There’s a teacher at his school who’s a temporary foster care provider. He’s staying with her until the Department of Children’s Services can make more permanent arrangements. I reached out to DCS this morning since we haven’t been able to find any family. Razzy was all he had.”

  “Are you sure you’re up to telling him?”

  “No, but I have to.”

  Several more seconds of silence followed. Brooke hated to press, but he was so closed off. She knew she’d want a friend with her if she were in his place. She glanced at him.

  “Do you want to do it alone? Or could you use some backup?”

  “I think I definitely need some backup. Would you mind?”

  “Not at all. Are you ready?”

  “Let’s go.”

  ***

  Lukas directed Brooke to a house in a middle-class neighborhood located in the central part of town. The lawn was perfectly manicured, and the landscaping was beautiful, even in November. Lukas could feel Brooke’s eyes on him as he took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He looked at the piece of paper the address was written on and matched it to the house.

  “Let’s do this,” he said.

  “Do you want me to wait in the car?”

  “No, come with me.”

  Lukas picked up a bag from a sporting goods store that he’d brought with him from the station. He and Brooke walked up the long sidewalk toward the front porch, but before they could ring the doorbell, the door opened and a pleasant looking female who appeared to be in her forties came out to greet them.

  “Hello,” she said. “May I help you?”

  “I’m Detective Lukas Miller, and this is Detective Brooke Stevens. We’re here to talk to Timmy.”

  Before the lady could reply, Lukas heard footsteps. The voice of a young boy cried out, “Coach! Hey! What’s up?”

  Timmy looked exactly like his mother, except he had blond hair where his mother’s was auburn. He was a little undersized for ten years old, but Lukas had seen him compete with boys much bigger because of his athleticism.

  “Wait a minute, Coach. I’ll be right back,” he said. He disappeared back into the house.

  Mrs. Clay waited until Timmy was out of earshot and told them that he seemed to be doing well, but that he kept asking when his mother would be out of the hospital. Timmy returned less than a minute later holding a baseball and two gloves. “I want to show you how much harder I can throw, Coach.”

  “I brought you a new glove,” Lukas said, pulling one out of the bag he’d carried from the car.

  “Wow, cool. Thanks, Coach.”

  “Okay, my man. Let’s go out in the yard so you can show me what you’ve got.”

  “I’ll be pitching for you next year,” Timmy said, racing ahead of them onto the front lawn. Lukas jogged out after Timmy.

  The next few minutes were filled with baseball talk and with Lukas praising Timmy for the hard work he’d obviously put in. They obviously care for each other, Brooke thought to herself. The crisp air was filled with the steady sounds of the ball smacking leather. After several throws, Lukas asked Timmy to come over to the steps and sit with him. Brooke stood in front of them a few feet away and listened.

  “Timmy, remember when I started coaching you, how I told you sometimes we have to be strong and tough? Like the time you got hit by that fastball?”

  The boy grimaced. “Sure, that hurt.”

  “I know it did. And sometimes, baseball is like life. Sometimes in life we have to be strong and tough. I need to talk to you about something, and I’m going to need you be strong, okay?”

  “Sure, Coach, I will.”

  “It’s about your mom, Timmy.”

  “Yeah, she’s in the hospital right now. That’s why I’m staying with Mrs. Clay.”

  “Timmy, your mom was in the hospital. But now she’s gone to Heaven.”

  Timmy searched Lukas’s face. “You mean she’s dead?” Brooke felt tears well up in her eyes. The boy was barely able to hold it together. His face went pale, and he was shaking.

  “I’m so sorry, Timmy, she’s gone.” Timmy lunged at Lukas, throwing his arms around his neck. He began to sob uncontrollably. Brooke could see Lukas was struggling to maintain his composure, too. Lukas held the boy, comforting him.

  The crying eventually stopped, but Timmy remained in Lukas’s arms, trembling, staring into nothing. He finally raised his head, looked at Lukas, and said, “I need to be strong, right Coach?”

  “It’s okay to be sad, but yes, you’ll have to be strong. You’ll get to see her again. We’ll all join her one day. Your mom just left us earlier than we would have liked. But I know she would want you to be strong, just like she was. I’ll help get you through this. We’ll get through it together.”

  “Will you still come visit me and take me to practice and the games like you did before?”

  “Of course I will. That’s what friends do, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Here’s a card with all my phone numbers on it. If you need anything, all you need to do is call. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Tell you what. I’m really busy right now, but hopefully this weekend I’ll have some free time. How about we go down to the field and work on that fastball of yours some more? How does that sound?”

  “Yeah,” he said, wiping tears from his face.

  “Good. Now let’s get you inside so Mrs. Clay won’t worry about you.”

  Timmy nodded. He was halfway back up the stairs before turning. “Oh, and thanks again for the new glove.”

  “You’re welcome, bud.”

  Mrs. Clay had returned and opened the door. Brooke saw that her eyes were red, but she was holding it together for the sake of the boy. She ushered Timmy into the house and clutched the gloves and ball Lukas handed her.

  “It’s going to be hard on the little guy,” she said to Lukas and Brooke. “I’m not sure where we go from here.”

  “I know,” Lukas said. “If there’s anything at all you need, call me.” Lukas handed her his card. “Timmy already has all these numbers, but I want you to feel free to get in touch, too. Any time. Anything. I mean it.”

  “I will. And thank you both.”

  When they reached the car, Lukas spoke first.

  “That was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life.” “You did fine, Lukas. You did great.”

  Lukas nodded slightly and retreated into silence for m
ost of the drive back to the station.

  Before they got back downtown, Brooke looked at her watch. “I need to get back over to Kingsport and talk to some of the hookers. I’d like to make contact with that other pimp, Draxton Little, but I’m not sure he’ll talk to me.”

  “I’m going to go back to the scene at the mayor’s house to do another canvass. They didn’t turn up much last night. I feel like I have to keep at it.”

  “Okay, I’ll catch up with you later. I’ll let you know what the chief’s got lined up on the task force.”

  “Thanks for going with me,” Lukas said. “Thanks for being there when I needed somebody I could trust.”

  “So, you trust me now?” she said.

  “Isn’t that what partners are supposed to do?” he said.

  Brooke nodded and smiled. She was pleased to see Lukas offer a warm smile of his own. “It is,” she said. “Trust is the most important thing.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Lukas arrived at the mayor’s house, got out of his car, and looked around. The scene had long since been cleared. The only remnant was the yellow police line tape, fluttering in the faint breeze. He’d decided he would start with a sweep of the area. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust his fellow detectives or crime scene techs. They were all competent. But another pass through the neighborhood couldn’t hurt. It was, after all, customary to re-examine the scene in most murder cases.

  After three failed attempts at contacting the neighbors close to the mayor’s home, he knocked on a door a couple of houses down from where the body was found and was surprised when an elderly lady opened the door.

  “Good afternoon, ma’am. I’m Detective Lukas Miller from the police department, and I was wondering if I could have a few minutes of your time concerning the events that took place last night here in the neighborhood.”

  “Glad to meet you,” she said. “I’m Edith Owens. You must be talking about that young lady who was found in the mayor’s driveway.” She chuckled. “I bet that put a little hitch in the giddyap of the ol’ high and mighty.” Lukas looked at her curiously. What a strange thing to say.

  She must have realized how she sounded, because her face flushed. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean any disrespect to the young lady who was killed. Please forgive me.”

  Lukas let it go. So, she didn’t like the mayor. Big deal.

  “No problem,” Lukas said. “Did you see or hear anything out of the ordinary?”

  “I was going to call your detective division after I watched the news this morning. I just haven’t gotten around to it yet. Look at me being rude. Please come in, young man. It’s a little warmer in here.” She turned and walked into the den. “I was outside last night looking for a lens that fell out of my glasses yesterday evening when I got home from the grocery store. I looked for it when it fell out, but I couldn’t find it in the sunlight, so I thought if I went out in the dark with a flashlight, I might get a reflection and find it. So, there I was, squatted down out there with the light to the ground behind the hedge, looking for the lens when I heard a car pull up. I looked over the hedge and saw a man get out of the driver’s side of the car and walk back toward the trunk. He opened the trunk, picked up something and threw it over his shoulder. Then he walked up the street, but I didn’t see where he went because I went back to looking for the lens.

  “But he walked toward the mayor’s house?”

  “He did.”

  “Did you get a look at the car?”

  “I saw it, but I didn’t pay much attention to it.”

  “Do you know what color it was?”

  “I couldn’t tell for sure. Maybe red? I’ve been on the city about replacing that street light out there – some kids broke it out – but so far, they haven’t seen fit to fix it. If old high-and-mighty had called, it would have been working before he got off the phone with them. Anyway, I think the car was red, but I’m not sure.”

  “Make or model?”

  She shook her head. “It wasn’t a compact car, but it wasn’t like a Cadillac, either. Mid-sized I guess.”

  “What about the man? What did he look like?”

  “He was a black man, middle-aged, but I didn’t pay that much attention.”

  “Are sure about that? That he was black?”

  “Absolutely. One hundred percent.”

  “How?”

  “Because as he came around to the trunk where the package was, a car came up the street, and he looked directly into the headlights. There’s no doubt in my mind about him being a black man. I thought he was just dropping something off to one of the neighbors. It didn’t seem suspicious at the time. That’s why I didn’t pay much attention.”

  “Did anyone, police or otherwise, talk to you last night?”

  “Someone knocked on the door and rang the bell, but I didn’t answer. I stayed in with the lights off. I’m a widow, and I don’t open the door after dark. That’s why I was going to call today.”

  “What did the package he was carrying look like?”

  The woman closed her eyes as she thought, “It looked like a rolled-up rug.”

  “Have you talked to any of the other neighbors about this?”

  “No, I got up this morning, turned on the news, and saw what they were reporting. That’s when I realized what had happened. By then everyone was gone to work.”

  Lukas handed her his card. “Thank you, Ms. Owens. If you think of anything else, please give me a call.”

  “I will.”

  Lukas left Ms. Owens and stood on the sidewalk looking at the area where she said the car was parked. She seemed like a credible witness. He walked up the sidewalk to the mayor’s house and knocked on the door. A woman Lukas recognized as the mayor’s wife, a pretty woman in her mid-thirties, answered the door wearing a dark blue dress. She had her keys and purse in her hands.

  “I’m Detective Miller, Mrs. Pennington, and I’m working the homicides that have occurred recently. Would you mind if I looked around the outside of the house?”

  “No, absolutely not. Be my guest. I was about to leave. Will that be a problem?”

  “No, I won’t be long.”

  “Take all the time you need.”

  Lukas looked around the front yard and driveway but, as he expected, found nothing. The killer had left nothing but Razzy’s body at the scene.

  He left feeling a bit more optimistic than before. A black man driving what might be a red car. He phoned Brooke to tell her about the new lead. The call went to voice mail, so he left a short message with the details and called Odessa McCabe to see if the results were in on the semen. They weren’t, of course. There was nothing left to do but take care of paperwork

  Thirty minutes later, he sat at his desk and entered his notes on the autopsy, the death notification to Timmy, and the new canvass. He again looked over the notes taken last night by the various detectives who were on the scene to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. Barking dogs, a car door shutting. Those were the highlights of the previous night’s canvass. No witnesses other than Ms. Owens.

  An African-American male as a serial killer? Lukas knew there’d been dozens of them in America. For some reason, they didn’t get the same publicity as John Gacy and Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer, but there had been several. Carl Eugene Watts, AKA the Sunday Morning Slasher, was suspected of killing more than a hundred white women before he was captured, so it wasn’t as though black serial killers were an anomaly. Lukas needed to follow the leads, and this lead was the best he had thus far. Still, he couldn’t shake a nagging feeling that two plus two was coming up five. He couldn’t say exactly why, but he just didn’t think this killer was black.

  Lukas picked up the phone and dialed the number of an old friend.

  “What gives, Lukas?”

  “Hey Danny, are you still working domestic terrorism?”
/>   “Of course. Seventeen years since nine-eleven, and most of our people are still focusing on domestic terrorism. Can you give me something to do to get me out of here?”

  Lukas was speaking to Assistant Special Agent In Charge Danny Smart, who worked out of the Johnson City FBI field office. Smart had done some work with the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit at Quantico but was now an ASAIC in Johnson City. Lukas knew there must have been a bump in the road somewhere in Smart’s career for him to wind up in the heart of Appalachia, but he’d never asked, and Smart had never offered. They were old friends, having met originally in Afghanistan, where Smart was an FBI liaison and Lukas was a pararescueman. Lukas had been amazed to learn that Smart had landed in the Johnson City office several years later. Small world, indeed.

  “I might be able to give you an interesting distraction,” Lukas said.

  “Something to do with the murders I’ve been reading about? How many now? Five?”

  “Yes and yes, if you count the two in Kingsport.”

  “How do you like the woman?”

  “She’s okay, man. She’s sharp.”

  “Unusual for them to put the two of you together.”

  “Desperate times call for desperate measures. Listen, speaking of desperate times, I was wondering if you’d work me up a quick profile.”

  “Come on, Lukas. I’d need a lot of information. Everything you have. And we’d have to make it official, which would mean the bureau would wind up in the middle of your case. Do you want that?”

  “No. I want a favor from an old friend.”

  “So, you want this on the down low.”

  “I want it underground.”

  “What’s in it for me?”