“What do you see?” Henderson asked and looked towards the tree line.
“I don’t know. I think someone is watching us.”
Henderson squinted. “I don’t see anything.”
“I saw the reflection of a lens.”
“Could be one of those freelance reporters.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Aaron said and stepped into the car. “I still don’t like it.”
“Want to go check it out?”
Aaron considered it, but then shook his head. “No, he’ll be long gone before we get there.”
He slapped on a pair of latex gloves and opened the glove compartment. He retrieved an envelope and gazed at the front door of the burnt house. The door frame was still intact.
“What’s in the envelope?” Henderson asked.
“A key. Somebody left it on my windshield last night.” He stepped out of the car and showed him the key. “It looks like a house key.”
“And you think it fits this house?”
Aaron glanced at Henderson and moved towards the front door of the destroyed home. “Only one way to find out.”
When the key didn’t fit the lock, Sergeant Henderson leaned within a few inches of Aaron’s ear. “You honestly didn’t expect that to work, did you?”
Aaron tossed the key back into the envelope. “It was just a hunch.”
“Uh-huh. So, I’m assuming you haven’t had that key dusted for prints yet.”
“Very observant of you, Sergeant.” Aaron removed his latex gloves and dropped them in a nearby trashcan.
Henderson reached for the envelope. “Want me to take care of that for you?”
“No, that’s okay.” Aaron stepped into his cruiser and tossed the envelope onto the passenger seat. “I think I’ll handle this one myself.”
CHAPTER NINE
Locker 217
Aaron dusted the key for fingerprints when he got back into town. To his surprise, he pulled a partial print off the head. It wasn’t much, but more than he’d expected. The owner of the key had more than likely wiped it clean. Aaron preserved the print and scanned it into the department’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System. He was grateful to have that, too, considering the age of most of the department’s systems.
While they did have IAFIS, the system had performance limitations due to the crawling speed of the network in the old building. It should have taken no more than an hour to process a partial print, but even after two hours of scanning, it still hadn’t produced any results.
“I’m going out for a smoke,” Aaron said, while Sergeant Henderson typed a report on the Garner Ranch case. “Let me know if that thing spits out anything.”
Henderson grinned. “You said you wanted to handle it on your own.”
“Forget it,” Aaron said while snatching a pack of cigarettes from his desk. “Just keep tapping on that keyboard, smart ass.”
“Hey, at least I’ve been working instead of staring at a machine for the past two hours.”
Aaron gave the Sergeant’s chair a playful shove on his way out. “First real work you’ve done in years.”
“Whatever, jerk.” Scott laughed. “Enjoy your cancer stick.”
“I will.”
Aaron lit his cigarette and leaned against the building. His mind traveled in several directions. His lightheartedness with Sergeant Henderson had only been a front for his continuous struggle with anxiety. His faux smiles and improved professional demeanor couldn’t hide the fact that he still had trust issues. He preferred working alone, but his new leadership role at the Lost Maples County Sheriff’s Department meant he had to step back and allow his team to take the reins.
In the past, Aaron had preferred investigating cases on his own, particularly after his partner—both professional and personal—had died from cancer. He was a small-town cop now, but the recent turn of events were of big-city caliber. More people had died violent deaths in Lost Maples in the past week than in the past several years combined, if not decades. The town had never experienced anything like this before, and Aaron feared it was only the beginning.
†
“Give it back, Pete!” Cody yelled. A tall and heavyset teenager with dark brown hair and brown eyes held Cody’s sketchbook high above his head. Two other boys laughed as Cody tried to retrieve his book.
“Whatcha gonna give me if I do?” Pete swatted Cody’s head with the sketchbook.
“I’m not giving you crap.” Cody reached up, missing the book by a centimeter. “Now give it to me!”
Pete hit Cody with the book again, triggering laughs from his friends and a few other students passing by in the hallway.
“Cut it out, you jerk!”
Pete opened the book and took a peek at the contents. He turned and pushed Cody away. “Oh, wow,” said the plump teen. “These are actually pretty good. You prolly spent a lot of time working on them, too, huh?”
“Yeah, I did. Now will you please give it back?”
“Sure, okay.” Pete formed a mischievous smile and ripped several pages from the sketchbook.
“No!”
He held the book under his arm while he continued to tear the pages of artwork into little pieces. He and his friends laughed as Cody grabbed Pete’s arm in a failed attempt to retrieve his property.
“Get off me, freak!” Pete pushed Cody to the ground and showered him with the shredded remains of his sketches.
The trio of bullies walked away laughing, while other students stared at Cody. None of them tried to help him while he gathered the torn pieces of paper.
He glared at one of the rubbernecking teens with disdain, and yelled, “What the hell are you looking at?” He shoved the shreds into his backpack and reached for his sketchbook, but Samantha picked it up and held it out to him.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Nothing. I’m fine.” He grabbed the sketchbook and stuffed it into his backpack. “Thanks.”
“It didn’t look like nothing. Who was that fat boy that pushed you?”
“Peter Slavic,” Cody said as he got up. “He’s in my P.E. class. A real douchebag.”
“Why don’t you tell the coach about it?”
“Like it’ll do any good.” Cody walked away and glanced back at her. “I’ll see you at home. And don’t say anything, okay?”
Samantha promised she wouldn’t, and followed Cody. Sadness filled her eyes. She and Cody had no biological relation, but she loved him like a real brother. She sighed and headed down the hallway towards the band hall. “I’ll see you tonight after band practice.”
“Remember, don’t tell.”
“I know. I promise.”
†
Agent Hirsch sat in the driver’s seat of a beige GMC Terrain in the temporary parking lane in front of Lee Hauser Middle School. He watched Cody step inside a Sheriff’s Department cruiser from a few car lengths back. He could tell the kid was angry about something by the way he tossed his backpack into the car and slammed the door. Volunteers helped move traffic along in the no-idle lanes of the pick-up and drop-off area. Within ten minutes, only a few vehicles remained, and only one vehicle sat between Agent Hirsch and the police cruiser.
Agent Hirsch’s cell phone rang. As soon as he connected the call, a female voice with a British accent asked him if he was at the school.
“Yes, I’m here. They’re sitting in the car and haven’t moved for several minutes.”
“Then drive away,” the voice on the other line said. “If you stay there, he’ll notice you.”
“I don’t see the point of this,” Agent Hirsch said. “We should just tell him.”
“No, not yet. You just get out of there and make sure he doesn’t see you.”
†
“And there it goes,” Aaron said, while a beige GMC Terrain rolled past the cruiser. It had a green Enterprise Rent-A-Car sticker on the back window. “Stupid ass. Did he think I wouldn’t notice him?”
“Who was that?” Cody asked.
“Really? Why’s the FBI watching us?”
“No idea, but it’s amusing that they thought rolling around in a rental car would fool me.”
Peter Slavic exited the school building and headed across the grass towards a red ‘90s model Thunderbird. Peter looked towards the cruiser and raised the edges of his mouth a little. Cody turned his head away and clenched his jaw. As Peter gripped the passenger side door handle of the Thunderbird, he glanced at Aaron, and then back to Cody before getting inside the car.
“Friend of yours?” Aaron asked while putting the car in gear.
“He’s nobody.”
“Didn’t look like nobody.” Aaron followed the car out of the school pick-up area and onto the main road. “But you know him?”
“I told you, he’s nobody,” Cody said, as he stared out the passenger side window.
“Did he do something to you?” Cody didn’t answer. “Want me to pull them over?” Aaron joked.
Cody responded with a cock-eyed furrowed brow and crooked mouth. He exhaled a loud grunt and shook his head.
“All right.” Aaron drew out the words in dissatisfaction. He drove past the red Thunderbird. “Just trying to help.”
“Well, you’re not.”
†
Cody moved shreds of paper around on his bedroom desk like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle as he tried to reconstruct the sketches. He spent a couple of hours working on his paper puzzles, binding them all together with Scotch tape. Peter had ruined three of his drawings, two of which were not even half of what they had originally been before the portly bully had laid his greasy hands on them. One drawing, however, only had a few pieces missing.
Someone knocked on the door, which subsequently opened behind him. He continued to focus his attention on the drawing of his mother holding a baby in her arms. He had drawn this from memory of a home video his mother had once showed him three weeks before she died. In the drawing, his mother had a perfect smile with wrinkles around her joyous eyes. She held baby Cody in her arms.
Aaron set a plate of food on the desk. It wasn’t until then that he realized the importance of those shreds of paper Cody had scattered on his desk. “You have a real gift there, kiddo. That’s a great drawing.”
Cody sighed. “That’s me when I was a baby… and my mom.”
“She was a beautiful woman.”
Cody sniffled and rubbed his eyes. “I miss her so much.”
“I know you do.” Aaron placed both of his hands on Cody’s shoulders and gave them a squeeze. He reached for the sketchbook. “Can I see—?”
“No!” Cody blurted and slapped his hand on top of the book. “They’re only for me.”
“I’m sorry. I just thought… well…” He could tell that Cody wasn’t going to budge, so he didn’t press the issue. He was genuinely impressed with Cody’s artistic talent, and had simply wanted to admire more of his work. That clearly wasn’t going to happen. He glanced at the plate and headed back toward the hallway. “Your food is getting cold.”
†
High-heeled footsteps echoed down the vacant hallways of Lee Hauser Middle School. Security lights cast shadows of a tall woman in a black dress holding a manila envelope loose in her hand as she scanned both sides of the hallway. The click-clack of her footsteps stopped in front of locker 217. The woman tapped red fingernails against the metal surface of an adjacent locker and pulled the handle on locker 217. She checked a notepad entry in her phone for the combination and twisted the dial, stopping on each number in alternating directions.
With the locker door open, she unfastened the metal tabs holding the envelope flap down and reached inside. She slipped a folded newspaper article and a five-by-seven photo between two textbooks. As she closed the metal vented door, she noticed a white t-shirt at the bottom. She picked it up and held it with both hands. She stared at it for several seconds before raising the garment to her nose and inhaling. As she smelled the body odor from the shirt, she closed her eyes.
†
“Son of a bitch,” Aaron complained after turning the key several times, only to hear the sound of his engine struggling to turn over.
“Car won’t start again?” Maria asked the obvious. She held a steaming cup of coffee in her hand. “It’s time you finally sell that money pit and get something reliable.”
Aaron glared up at his wife and turned the key again. The Corvette engine roared to life. “You were saying?” At that moment, it sputtered and died.
Maria stifled a laugh. “I know you have a love affair with that car and all, but maybe this is a sign.”
“A sign for what?” Aaron popped the hood and got out of his vintage car.
“That you’re obsessed with this…this scrapyard on wheels.”
“I’m not obsessed.” Aaron glanced at his wife while lifting back the hood. He locked the hinge in place and double-checked to make sure it was secure. “This so-called scrapyard on wheels is a classic. And I just happen to like American muscle. What’s wrong with that?”
“How about spending hundreds of dollars on repairs every year? How’s that for starters?”
Aaron checked the connections inside the engine. “I’m not selling my car.”
“Do you like walking? Because that’s what you’re going to start doing if you don’t stop wasting money on that thing.”
Aaron pointed at the police cruiser parked in front of the house and looked back at his wife without saying anything.
“You know what I mean.”
Aaron stared at the engine as if that would somehow magically fix it. After wiggling more cables, he located the problem. One of the spark plug wires had come loose on the distributor cap. He secured the wire, stepped back inside the car, and turned the key. The engine started without a hiccup. “You see? It was just something minor. I’m taking it for a spin before I have to go to work.”
He stuck his head out the window and puckered his lips, which Maria ignored. She watched her husband back out of the garage and drive away in his cherished sports car, while she thought of the eight miles per gallon the Corvette guzzled every time he drove it. She noticed a small patch of black oil on the garage floor and rolled her eyes, before heading back inside the house to get ready for work.
†
Aaron dunked a glazed donut in his coffee and was about to take a bite out of it when Sergeant Henderson stepped into his office. He closed the door, placed a report on the desk, and sat in the chair across from him.
“What’s this?” Aaron took a bite out of his donut. He wiped his lips and flipped through the document.
“Results from Andrew Garner’s autopsy.”
He took a sip from his coffee mug. “That was fast. I didn’t expect to get this until at least next week.”
“You see there?” Henderson pointed to a paragraph on the third page of the report. “The wounds are exactly the same as Doug Travers.”
“Have you showed this to Richard?” Aaron closed the file and handed it back.
“No, not yet. I wanted to get your opinion first.” Henderson waited for Aaron’s response but did not get one. “So, what do you think killed these guys?”
“A big, three-headed, fire-breathing monster killed them. Torched the Garner’s house and ate the horse as an appetizer.” Aaron observed Henderson’s widening eyes. “Probably the same thing that killed all those people in Austin, too. And it apparently has a taste for alligator meat.”
Sergeant Henderson stared at Aaron for a moment, his eyes wide and jaw dropped a little. Then he smiled and laughed. He pointed his finger and bobbed it at Aaron. “You had me there for a second. And here I thought you didn’t have a sense of humor.”
Aaron smiled, knowing that telling Henderson what he believed would somehow be the best way to handle the questioning. It was easy to keep a straight face when he said it because he wasn’t being flippant at all.
Sergeant Henderson gave him an update about the fire at the Garner ranch. “
Anyway, I talked to the fire chief this morning. So far they’re not ruling out arson, but they haven’t found any evidence of accelerants to suggest foul play.”
They wouldn’t find any, either, because the Fire Investigator Field Guide didn’t list dragon fire as a possible accelerant to look for when determining the source of a house fire. The Garner case would likely end up in a cold case file. The Lost Maples Sheriff’s Department would make no arrests and they would find no vicious man-eating wild animal to euthanize. And that wasn’t so bad, was it? Maybe the Lost Maples Sheriff’s Department personnel could finally go back to doing what they did best… solving petty crimes and crossword puzzles.
†
Cody twisted the dial on his locker while guarding his backpack, which he held tight between his legs. He’d considered leaving his sketchbook at home, but drawing helped him pass the time. It helped occupy his mind during lunch breaks and after finishing his work in class. He was still pissed about Peter tearing up the sketches. That fifteen-year-old fat-ass was too old to be in middle school. Why couldn’t the Lost Maples ISD just advance the jerk to high school, already? And how in hell do you fail Kindergarten anyway? Not once, but twice! Peter seemed to be proud of that statistic, too, from what Cody had heard.
While he got ready for his first class of the day, he found something slipped between his Health Education and Pre-Algebra textbooks. He spread the books apart and pulled out a newspaper article and a photo. He didn’t recognize the woman holding an infant baby wrapped in a blanket. It looked like she was in a hospital bed. She was beautiful, too. She had long blonde hair, blue eyes, and a proud, motherly smile.
He wondered how the photo and newspaper clipping had gotten in his locker. He read the headline above the article.
Austin Police Officer Charged with
Devil's Nightmare: Premonitions (Devil's Nightmare, Book 2) Page 12
