Killer Heat

by Brenda Novak

  “Hang on a second.” A yellow writing pad waited in front of every seat, ready for any meeting that took place. Hunsacker pushed his away. “We can’t jump to conclusions. Dean seems scared, but it could be unwarranted. He already admitted he’s crazy, told you flat out that he can’t think straight without his daily meds.” He turned to Finch. “You saw him the other day. He was on his feet but he was completely zoned out. A person like that could imagine just about anything and believe it was real. Until we have hard evidence, I’m not so sure we should focus exclusively on Butch. He could be telling the truth about dropping April at the side of the road.”

  “I, for one, don’t believe it,” Francesca said.

  “Because you made up your mind that he was a killer from day one. I’m just saying we can’t ignore the possibility that it could be someone else,” Hunsacker reiterated.

  Refusing to look at Francesca for fear his eyes would betray the conflict inside him, Jonah kept his gaze fastened on Finch. “Before we do anything, we need to talk to Dean’s shrink or whoever’s prescribing his medication, find out what he’s diagnosed with and what he’s taking.”

  “We also need to check with the staff at the Rio Grande and make sure Butch and April really came in that night,” Finch said. “If we poke around the area enough, maybe we’ll find someone who saw or heard something that’ll either corroborate or refute his story.”

  “Butch has more to hide than what happened to April,” Francesca warned.

  Hunsacker scowled at her. “What are you talking about now?”

  “You should’ve seen his face when I mentioned Bianca Andersen.”

  Telling himself she was no different to him than any other woman, Jonah allowed his eyes to rest where they’d been tempted to go all along. “He recognized the name?”

  Obviously agitated, she rewound the tape and played it for them again. “Listen.”

  Have you ever heard of Bianca Andersen?

  Who? Bianca Andersen.

  No.

  Aren’t you going to ask me who she is? Or why I’m mentioning her?

  I’d like you to leave. Now.

  “That isn’t particularly revealing,” Hunsacker said the moment she hit the stop button.

  Francesca’s eyebrows shot up. “Can’t you hear the tightness in his voice? And what about his refusal to even talk about her? If it was true that he’d never heard of her, he would’ve responded with more curiosity. He would’ve wanted to know why I was asking about her, what connection I thought she might have to him.”

  “Not necessarily,” Hunsacker argued. “Not everyone would react the way you would. Maybe he was afraid you were trying to drag him even deeper into a mess he knows he’s better off avoiding. He sure as hell understands that you’re not his friend. You’ve made that clear to all of us.”

  “I wonder how much you’d like him if he stood outside your car holding a baseball bat as if he was going to bash in your window?” she said.

  Hunsacker frowned. “He already explained why he did that.”

  “And I’m explaining that I saw fear in his eyes when I brought up Bianca,” she said. “He doesn’t want to be connected with another dead woman. He knows what that’ll mean.”

  Hunsacker persisted. “Even an innocent man wouldn’t want to be connected to a dead woman. No one wants to be falsely accused. Besides, a guilty look, fear in his eyes, none of that can take the place of forensic evidence. Why do you have such a hard time understanding that we can’t just act on your gut instinct?”

  Hoping to derail the conversation before it could turn into another argument, Jonah jumped in. “Don’t start on her. She’s telling us what we couldn’t see because we weren’t there. She’s not saying it’s proof. Sometimes gut instinct is what determines the direction we should take. You know that.”

  “How about if you quit defending her?” Hunsacker snapped. “I can think for myself. It’s not as if you’re my boss. You’re the hired help here.”

  Jonah drilled Hunsacker with a meaningful glare. “You want to go over that again?”

  Hunsacker adjusted his position, putting even more strain on the buttons holding his shirt together. “You’re a consultant, okay? That’s all I’m saying. You’re here to give advice. I’m reminding you of your role.”

  “My ‘role’ is to provide your department with the benefit of my experience and to help solve these murders in the most efficient manner possible. You got a problem with that, you need to talk to the sheriff, because if you remind me of my ‘role’ again, I’ll see to it that one of us gets kicked off this case, and it might not be me.”

  When Hunsacker didn’t respond, Jonah leaned forward. “In other words, forget whatever it is you’re holding against Ms. Moretti. Got it?” He knew he was probably being too much of a hard-ass. It wasn’t his style. But he was hoping to provoke Hunsacker. If Hunsacker told him to go to hell, he’d have a good excuse to approach the sheriff and have himself replaced with someone else from Department 6. One second, all he wanted to do was return to California and forget he’d ever seen Francesca again. The next, he was eager to prove that he wasn’t as bad as she thought. Regardless of his feelings, however, he had enough to do without tolerating a belligerent investigator, especially one as mediocre as Hunsacker.

  Finch nudged his partner. “Come on, Hugh. I know you’re stressed. We all are. But fighting among ourselves won’t help.”

  “We’re just as important to this investigation as he is,” he grumbled, jerking a thumb at Jonah. “Maybe we’re not getting paid the big bucks, but we’re local. We’re the ones who know the area and the mind-set of the people living in it.”

  “What are you after?” Jonah asked. “An ego boost? Are you not feeling valued?”

  Hunsacker’s watery eyes lifted. “I know Butch, okay?”

  Silence engulfed the room, a silence that stretched until Finch murmured, “What’d you say?”

  Releasing a heavy sigh, Hunsacker rubbed his forehead. “He goes to my church.”

  “And you didn’t think to mention it before now?” Jonah asked.

  “I didn’t want you to assume I was biased, that a previous…affiliation would get in the way of the investigation.” He glowered at all of them. “Because it won’t. I’ve just been trying to point out that Butch is innocent until proven guilty, and we currently have no proof that he’s done anything wrong.”

  “We’ve got to start somewhere, Hugh,” Finch said.

  “I have a slightly different perspective on Butch.” He hesitated. “I’ve seen his good points.”

  Francesca slid the wire she’d put on the table to one side. “Which are…”

  “When Peggy lost her job at the supermarket last year, we went through a hard time financially, okay? It happens to the best of us.” His tone challenged any one of them to disagree. “We assumed she’d have no problem getting on somewhere else so we didn’t start saving soon enough. And then she didn’t get a job for several months, and we began to fall behind on our mortgage. We were about to lose the house when some of the people at my church took up a collection.”

  “You never said a word to me about any of this,” Finch said.

  Hunsacker shot his partner a self-conscious glance. “You knew Peggy lost her job.”

  “But I didn’t realize you needed help, that you weren’t making ends meet.”

  “You have your own problems.” He spoke into his chest now. “And I didn’t want you to know. I guess…I guess I was embarrassed. It’s not easy to talk about.”

  “Don’t tell me Butch contributed,” Jonah said.

  Hunsacker’s double chin wagged as he lifted his face. “He did. He lent us a thousand dollars, much more than anyone else. And you can tell he doesn’t have a lot. That says something about a guy, doesn’t it? That he’d help an acquaintance who was down on his luck—without asking for anything in return?”

  When no one answered, he added, “Sociopaths aren’t supposed to feel empathy.”

/>   “That doesn’t mean they can’t ever be kind,” Francesca said. “Maybe he liked the ego boost of being able to help you, a cop.”

  “If so, he never rubbed my nose in it.” Hunsacker shrugged. “He never spoke of it at all. Treated me just the same as he ever did.”

  “Still, we know Butch is no saint—” Francesca began, but Hunsacker cut her off.

  “He might not be faithful to his wife. He might not be all that nice to his mentally impaired brother-in-law. But maybe he has reasons for what he does that we know nothing about. Maybe his wife is frigid and won’t let him near her. Maybe his brother-in-law is such a pain in the ass he can’t stand living with him but does it because Dean has nowhere else to go. Who can say? I can’t believe he’s a killer. I need proof. But so will a jury,” he said, as if that justified his stance.

  “We aren’t going to charge him without proof,” Jonah said.

  “I realize that. I’m just…asking you to keep an open mind, to understand that this guy is a decent person, at least some of the time, and that maybe there’s someone else out there, someone we’re overlooking.”

  “Like Dean?” Francesca said.

  “Like Dean,” Hunsacker replied. “If he’s somehow following Butch around, he could certainly have come across April after Butch left her.”

  “He can’t even drive,” Finch pointed out.

  “Legally,” Hunsacker clarified. “That doesn’t mean he never gets behind the wheel. I’ve seen him at church and other places by himself, plenty of times. I’ve never wondered how he got there, but I’m telling you he seems to get around okay.”

  “Question is…does he have the presence of mind to hide his crimes?” Jonah asked. “Because whoever’s doing the killing is pretty damn good at covering his tracks. Look how long he’s been active. Some of the remains we’ve unearthed at Dead Mule Canyon have been in the ground for five years. Going undiscovered for such a lengthy period isn’t typical of someone who kills due to hearing voices or some other mental problem. Those killers act out and move on and generally don’t do a good job of cleaning up, if they even try.”

  “Maybe he’s not good at hiding what he’s been doing,” Hunsacker said. “Maybe it’s just that everyone already assumes he’s incapable, so they look past him.”

  Jonah’s eyes locked with Francesca’s. “That’s possible.”

  Covering her face for a second, she tried to imagine Butch as a benefactor. “Whether it’s Butch or Dean doesn’t make much difference to me. They both have my address.” She dropped her hands. “They have the addresses of all my friends and family, too.”

  Standing back, well out of reach, Adriana peered through her partially opened front door. A man with a slight build and a heart-shaped face, made pointier by a patch of beard growing on the end of his chin, stood on her stoop. With large blue eyes and fine blond hair, he appeared to be no older than twenty-five, and he looked innocent, completely unthreatening. But she knew his baby face could hide more than his age. “Who are you again?” she asked.

  “Dean. Dean Wheeler.”

  That was the name she’d thought he said, the one Francesca had mentioned with Butch Vaughn’s on the phone last night. Knowing this man was connected to someone Francesca believed had murdered quite a few people, Adriana tightened her hand on the door handle in case she needed to slam it fast, and was glad she’d been cautious enough to leave the chain in place. Fortunately, she’d put the boys down late for their nap, so they were still sleeping, although it was close to dinnertime. Otherwise, if they were up, they’d be running around, maybe even playing in the front yard, making it very difficult for her to feel she could protect them. “Butch Vaughn’s brother-in-law?” she said.

  “That’s right.” He smiled broadly. “You know Butch?”

  “Francesca told me about him.”

  His smile dimmed a bit. “What’d she say?”

  “Not much.”

  “They don’t get along,” he explained.

  She let her breath ease out. “Right. She told me that.”

  “Did she tell you she thinks he’s a murderer?”

  How should she answer this? “Is he?” she asked.

  “Oh, no. My brother-in-law can seem formidable, but he’s really not what Francesca thinks.”

  The heat was beginning to overpower her air conditioner. Adriana wanted Dean to go away so she could close and lock her door—then call her husband and ask him to come home early. “I hope you’re right.”

  “Did she mention me, by any chance?”

  This question surprised Adriana. Why would he suppose Francesca would mention him? “Um, she said you had her purse, if that’s what you mean.”

  “I don’t have it anymore. I gave it back.” The satisfaction in his voice indicated he was very pleased with himself.

  “That was nice of you.”

  “I’m always nice.” Craning his neck, he tried to look into the house. “Where are your kids?”

  Her heart began to beat faster. “They’re not here.”

  “Are they with your husband?” Dean didn’t seem in any hurry to go.

  “Yes, yes, they are. But they should all be home soon. Any minute, actually.”

  He turned around, studied the yard. “What does Stan do for a living?”

  Hoping to get him to leave, Adriana allowed her confusion to show. “I’m sorry, but…I’m not sure I understand why you’re here, Dean. What can I do for you? And…how do you know my husband’s name?”

  “Oh.” He laughed as if he should’ve explained earlier. “Now I understand why you’re nervous. There’s no need to be. You see, it’s right here.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a stack of pictures tucked in protective plastic sheaths that Adriana recognized as belonging to Francesca. “Stan Covington.” He flipped to the wallet-size of her family’s Christmas picture. “Says so right there. That’s you, isn’t it?”

  She couldn’t deny it. “Yes.”

  “And those are your boys, Levi and Tyler?”

  Swallowing hard, she nodded.

  “They’re cute. I wish I could meet them.”

  Forcing a smile, she narrowed the opening of the door by another inch. “Like I said, they’re not here.”

  “Too bad.”

  Silence fell, but he didn’t seem to care how strained and awkward it was. “I’m afraid I still don’t understand what you want,” she said at length.

  His eyes widened as though it should be obvious. “I’ve got these.” He pointed to the pictures. “They’re Francesca’s. I’m returning them. They must’ve fallen out of her purse.”

  Were there other things that’d “fallen” out, as well? Would he bring them all back, one by one? “I see. That’s…very sweet of you.” She suddenly noticed that he was wearing two different tennis shoes. Was he not aware of it? Or was it something he’d done on purpose? “I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you leave the pictures with me? I’ll give them back to her for you.”

  That wasn’t the answer he’d been hoping to hear. Visibly reluctant, he hesitated but ultimately handed the pictures through the door. “I wouldn’t want her to think I’m trying to keep them,” he said.

  “Right.”

  “I’d never do that.”

  “Of course you wouldn’t. Thanks for bringing them by.”

  “Tell her I stopped at her house, too, but no one was home. Fortunately, you two don’t live very far apart.”

  If he’d already been to Francesca’s, why hadn’t he left the pictures on her doorstep or in her mailbox? “I will. I’ve got to get back to what I was doing. Dinner’s in the oven,” Adriana said.

  “Oh, sure. No problem. But, before I go, would you mind giving me a drink of water? It’s really hot this afternoon, and I’ve got a long bus ride back to Prescott.”

  Adriana’s pulse kicked up even more. She’d have to take the chain off the door in order to fit a glass of water through the opening. And she wasn’t willing to do that. She had her boys at
home. No way would she provide this odd man with the opportunity to break in on them. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I—I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

  He seemed stunned. “Why not?”

  Before she could answer, Tyler’s voice rose behind her. “Mommy, who’s here?”

  Dean’s vanishing smile told her he knew she’d lied to him. She even thought she detected a hint of shrewd calculation behind that innocent face. But she couldn’t focus on trying to figure out what he might be thinking or feeling. Tyler was pushing to get between her and the door so he could see, and she was doing her best to block him. “I’ve got to go,” she said, and closed the door.

  Grabbing her oldest son, Adriana whispered for him to be still and, probably because he could sense her anxiety, he listened. “Please leave…please leave,” she muttered above his head. Dean wouldn’t go around the house and try to get in some other way, would he? There was no reason for him to bother. They’d had such a short exchange, one that shouldn’t have meant anything.

  Then why was she so rattled?

  Because he didn’t seem to understand that her polite responses were merely civility and not friendship. When he’d realized she’d lied to him, he’d seemed so…betrayed, as if she somehow owed him access to her children. It gave her the creeps.

  “What’s wrong, Mommy?” Tyler whispered, his body now stiff with fear.

  “Nothing, baby. It’ll be okay. Just…just be quiet for a few minutes and come with me.” She planned to lead him to the kitchen window, where she could look out and, hopefully, confirm that Dean was leaving. But she didn’t stop there. A scream drew her to Levi’s bedroom instead.

  15

  Her parents were trying to reach her. Francesca stared at her family name on caller ID and almost let the call transfer to voice mail. With everything else that was going on, she didn’t have time to chat. Besides, she hadn’t yet decided how much she wanted them to know about what was happening in her life these days. She saw no point in worrying them, not when they’d come straight back to Phoenix if they thought she was in any danger. But they offered emotional support and a good sounding board—and they’d worry about her safety just as much if they couldn’t get hold of her.