What Burns Within

by Sandra Ruttan

  “You can spread your butter on like this,” the girl said, demonstrating how to use the flat spoon with the butter.

  Taylor glanced at Lindsay and then reached for her bread.

  The first bite seemed to dissolve on her tongue. Within seconds, the warm bread was gone.

  She glanced at the door, then at the face of the girl who she’d almost begun to believe she’d dreamed about.

  “What’s your name?” Lindsay whispered.

  “Hannah.”

  “Not your new name. Your real name.” Lindsay reached for her bread.

  “Hannah is the only name I need now.”

  “Don’t you want to get out of here, go home?”

  The new girl, Hannah, stared at Lindsay, who stared back at her. Then Hannah smiled. “I am going home. He says I’m almost ready. Like the others who used to be here. When they were ready, he took them home too.”

  “Ready for what?” Taylor asked.

  “Ready to be pure before God.”

  “He’s not sending you home. He’s a sick person. He’s going to kill you.”

  Hannah yanked the bread from Lindsay’s hand. “Liar! You’re the liar. Lies are the devil’s work. She’s evil,” Hannah yelled, grabbing what was left on the tray and running from the room.

  Once Hannah had disappeared, the man came and stood in the doorway. He shook his head.

  “I thought you were ready. You still have much to learn.”

  Taylor felt a twisting inside her chest, but instead of coming in with the whip again, the man stepped back and locked the door behind him.

  Daly rubbed his forehead, which did nothing to ease the pinch of the skin as he watched Tain pace back and forth.

  “Maybe I was wrong,” Tain said.

  “Do you really think so?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I mean, the guy definitely gave off a guilty vibe when he was here before, but not like it was about the girls. It was something else. When I asked about those girls, he seemed genuinely surprised.”

  “Then what did he have to be edgy about?”

  Tain shook his head. “My gut, something about boys. The way he became still whenever I mentioned Nicky, the way he was too quick to defend himself and insist he hadn’t done anything wrong…the fact that he never explained what he was doing in the park to begin with.”

  “Didn’t you or Ashlyn tell me that one of the kids from Lindsay’s church group mentioned something about a guy watching them change?”

  “Yeah, but it wasn’t Alex Wilson.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Positive. The peeper was a lot younger. Wilson may be a bit of a seventies leftover, but he’s not in the late teens, early twenties age bracket.”

  “So we need to take a good, hard look at Wilson.”

  “Sims did a thorough check. He definitely ties to Julie Darrens and Taylor Brennen, but I don’t have a link for Lindsay or Isabella yet.”

  Daly thought about what Tain had told him, about Wilson’s background. “Odd that he’d pick up Taylor Brennen’s brother, drive him to a police station, the next day Taylor’s picture, a picture he took himself, is splashed all over the news and he never says a word about it.”

  “That’s what I mean. This guy, there’s something going on with him. He was really uncomfortable with me showing up at his house today.”

  Daly frowned. “What were you doing at his house?”

  “I went to talk him in to giving us his fingerprints for elimination purposes.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously. He didn’t exactly admit it, but he didn’t deny being at the recreation center Sunday night. I told him we had to print everyone and eliminate people we knew weren’t involved so that we could try to find the person who took Lindsay.”

  “And he bought that?”

  “My guess is, he was so relieved that I didn’t think he’d nabbed the girls, he was willing to help. Like he was hiding something else that he was afraid I’d come to see him about, and when he realized it was just those girls, he stopped worrying.”

  “What’s Ashlyn’s take on him?”

  “Unfortunately, she hasn’t had a chance to size him up yet.”

  Daly’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Why not?”

  “Carl Parks was ready to talk at the same time Alex came in for his interview. She knew Carl, so she dealt with him. Truth is, I’d like to see how Alex responds to Ashlyn.”

  “What’s your gut telling you?”

  “This guy’s got no use for women. Not in an aggressive kind of way, but I think he’s afraid of them.”

  “It’s not a crime to be gay.”

  “And I couldn’t care less. But I’d put my money on his preferences being age and gender specific.”

  “Little boys.”

  “I think Ashlyn should talk to Nicky again, too.”

  Daly glanced up and stopped fiddling with the sticky notes he’d been rearranging.

  “Just to be on the safe side.”

  “What are you going to do now?” Daly asked.

  “Find out why Alex Wilson stopped working for the photographer.”

  “And then?”

  “See if Burnaby has come up with a link for Taylor and Lindsay.”

  “You know, Tain, you could be right about Alex Wilson, and it could still be him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The girls weren’t raped. Whatever these abductions and murders are about, it isn’t sex. Could it have something to do with working out some issue he’s got with women by killing girls?”

  “When I get my psychology degree I’ll get back to you.”

  “Very funny.”

  “Sergeant Daly, why don’t we have a profiler in on this?”

  Daly glanced at the door until he felt reasonably certain nobody was lingering in the hall outside his office or approaching. “Some people are concerned that if we bring a profiler in now, it will send a message to the public that we weren’t doing all we could from the beginning and we’re trying to correct our mistakes.”

  “That’s ridiculous. This wasn’t eve—”

  “Sit down, Tain, and lower the volume. It wasn’t our case. You know that. I know that. You only got put on when Julie’s body was found on our territory. That’s still less than a month you’ve been working it, and that was as a back-burner resource person until the past few days. But the public won’t care. We’re under a lot of pressure, with this case and with one of our own officers being a victim of a serial rapist who’s graduated to murder.”

  “So, what you’re telling me is, someone’s playing politics because we could use a profiler, and Craig could use a profiler as well, but if they bring one in now it will seem like the department didn’t give a damn until one of our own was raped.”

  There was silence for a moment, and then Tain stood.

  “I’ll go track down Alex Wilson’s former employer.” Tain looked out into the hallway in silence, not moving, and then leaned down over Daly’s desk.

  “I thought lending Craig to that investigation last year was supposed to have earned you a big chip to cash in. Are you telling me that you don’t have a favor left to call in, or that you won’t use it for this?”

  He straightened up and walked out of the room before Daly had a chance to respond. Daly leaned back and rubbed his temples, his eyes closed.

  When he opened his eyes, he groaned.

  Craig shut the door and smiled as he sat down. “That bad, huh?”

  “I just talked to Tain.”

  “Ah. That can be enough to suck the will to live out of any senior officer.”

  Daly smiled. “I find it surprising you don’t have any animosity toward Tain.”

  “I’m not a senior officer.”

  “And you share a common tendency toward insub ordination and in de pen dence.” Daly sighed. “And that’s not all.”

  Craig’s smile faded. “We worked together on a difficult case. Whenever you’re in a tough situation and
don’t know who to trust, once you’ve worked that out you get pretty tight. You know that.”

  Daly nodded. “But I think there was more to it.”

  Craig could feel his neck burn and stiffen simultaneously. “I never crossed the line. Not with—”

  Daly held up his hand. “It’s none of my business.”

  “Damn right it isn’t.”

  Daly drew in a sharp breath, but didn’t respond to that. “You here to fill me in?”

  Craig waited until he was sure he could siphon all the anger out of his voice. “We went over the scene thoroughly once we got consent.”

  “What do you mean, once you got consent?”

  “Our victim wasn’t too keen to have us search for evidence.”

  Daly stared at him. He knew that look on Craig’s face, the one that hinted at a thousand things being deliberately left unsaid. “Out with it.”

  “My gut tells me she wasn’t raped.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “Look, if she was, it was somebody she knows and it wasn’t our guy. She didn’t know any of the holdbacks about his MO. According to her, he didn’t bind her the same way or gag her. He tied her arms to the headboard with the cord from her robe and told her to close her eyes.”

  “Anything to corroborate that?”

  “Nobody found her. She allegedly worked herself free and then threw out her robe with the morning trash.”

  “And called you long after the garbage was picked up.”

  “I’ve seen a lot of women react afterwards, you know? I’ve seen anger, I’ve seen denial, and I’ve seen desperation. I’m not saying I’ve seen it all, but what I haven’t seen is calm, cool, collected and ‘do you want cream in your coffee?’ Add that she eventually called a lawyer before agreeing to let us search her house, and she absolutely refused a rape kit, despite the fact that I told her it was almost a certainty we wouldn’t get a conviction without it.”

  Daly raised his hand to stop him. “What are you going to do now?”

  “The only thing I can do. I’m going to work hard on the other cases. If we do find any prints of interest that pop up in the system, I can check them out, but she’d vacuumed the floor, changed the sheets and washed the original ones.”

  “I’m having a briefing in here tomorrow morning to review the arson and abduction cases. Maybe you should sit in.”

  “Why? I thought you felt there wasn’t anything solid to suggest a link.”

  “Still, I’d like you to hear everything. The dates are a bit of a coincidence.” He reached for his glass of water and opened the top drawer of his desk, removing a bottle of Tylenol. “You really need a partner on this case.”

  “Speaking of which—”

  “You saw her?” Daly swallowed the painkillers and took a sip of water.

  Craig’s mouth twisted as he nodded. “She’s not doing well.”

  “She wants to come back to work.”

  Craig snorted. “She’s not touching this case.”

  “Personally, I agree. But she threatened to go over my head. I’m not saying she’ll have any better luck higher up the ladder.” He gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head. “I’m just warning you that she’s going to try.”

  “Constable Tain. Tain,” the voice called, the sound of quick footfalls getting louder as the person approached.

  Tain relaxed when he saw Sims.

  “There’s someone here to see you.”

  “Who?”

  “His name is Iggy Klipper.”

  Iggy Klipper? Tain stopped walking. “Did he say what he wants?”

  Sims nodded. “He said he saw that girl at the Cloverdale Fair the day she went missing.”

  Tain scratched his head. One good, promising lead he really wanted to chase down, maybe something constructive to tell Ashlyn in the morning. Five seconds later and he would have already been out the door.

  He stuffed the paper with the address back into his pocket. “Where is he?” he asked, following Sims back down the hall.

  Ashlyn sat down on her couch, gesturing to the chair across from her. “Thanks for coming over.”

  Luke Driscoll sat down, his usual easy smile in place. “No problem. What happened?”

  “I went through some floorboards.”

  The smile added a questioning twist to it. “Is that all in a day’s work for you?”

  She shook her head. “Not exactly.”

  “So, what can I do for you?”

  “What can you tell me about the number forty?”

  “Are you serious? You called me up and asked me to come over to talk about the number forty?” The smile hadn’t disappeared from Luke’s face, but his eyes had narrowed a touch, like he was lingering somewhere between intrigued and baffled.

  “It has some religious significance, doesn’t it?”

  “Sure. There are some who believe that it take forty days for a soul to be purified, that it’s a predetermined period of devotion and preparation.”

  Ashlyn grabbed her note pad and started asking questions.

  THURSDAY

  Ashlyn barely felt a twinge of pain as she walked to her desk, perhaps a little slower than usual, but under her own power. She set her files down, tucked her hair behind her ears and started skimming through her messages.

  Nothing, nothing, nothing…Nicholas Brennen. Hmm. She glanced at her watch, convinced it was far too early to call. She set that message aside.

  That’s when she noticed the folded paper, tucked partway onto a tray. She knew the handwriting immediately, pulled it out and sat down.

  Ashlyn,

  We’ve had a witness come forward with some potential leads about Taylor Brennen’s abduction, and Alex Wilson is turning out to be a viable suspect. I’ve put all the notes in a file, which is in the top drawer of my desk.

  There’s also a report from the lab in there with the data on the contents of the bundle you recovered from the fire and the photos you took of the object on the wall and the room below. There was also a message from Carl Parks for you. I put it in that file.

  I’ll be in early—Daly’s bringing breakfast. He said he’s putting a display board in his office, and he wants us in there at 8 AM, ready to go through everything.

  Knowing you, it’s 5:30 as you read this, so you should have enough time to get ready.

  Tain

  Ashlyn set the note back on her tray, glanced at her watch and smiled. She went to his desk and removed the files.

  “What did you do, wait until it was officially past midnight and come to the office then?”

  She spun around, the words, “Will you…” already out before their gazes met.

  Craig offered a half shrug as an apology. “Sorry. Looks like you’re ready for this, though.”

  He knew her well enough to guess at what was going through her mind, but she had no opportunity to ask. Tain and Daly walked in.

  Tain shook Craig’s hand, offered a curt nod but said nothing.

  “Okay, take me through everything we’ve got,” Daly said.

  “June fourteenth.” Ashlyn pointed to the date at the top. “Julie Darrens went missing. She went with her oldest sister to pick up a few things at the corner store. This wasn’t a daily ritual, but it wasn’t uncommon. Julie had a tendency to dawdle, and her sister was walking briskly, trying to coax her along. She turned back and found the bag Julie had been carrying was dropped on the sidewalk. Julie was gone.” Ashlyn tapped the evidence photos, one of Julie from school, one of the scattered groceries on the pavement. “They were walking past a vacant lot on one side. Across the street was park land, a treed section with walking paths about ten feet off the road. Since it was June and the trees were covered in dense, green leaves—”

  “No eyewitnesses,” Daly said.

  “Same day, a building here—” Tain moved beside Ashlyn and tapped the map—“was set on fire. Simple gasoline accelerant, but the thing that stood out was the fact that wood had been cut out of the floorboard
s, stacked meticulously, doused in gas and then set ablaze. A charred doll was found lying on top, like a funeral pyre, and an angel had been hung from the front door.”