The NightShade Forensic Files: Echo and Ember (Book 4)

by A. J. Scudiere

  Donovan was curious himself.

  He decided that being male might work in his favor, not that Dickens probably thought too highly of him. The man had been looking at him like he was a pansy for not handling the stench very well. But right now, he was the only one left. The others had all run upstairs following Dana, their decorum just shy of thirteen-year-olds at a slumber party. He could hear them chattering but didn’t bother to make out individual words.

  “So, you think it started in this ring with an accelerant, then moved to flashover to get the whole room?” Donovan waved his hand around at the various bits of evidence as he spoke.

  Dickens scratched at the back of his head. “Seems that way. Honestly, it’s the best conclusion I can draw. Without the accelerant test, I can’t close the case.”

  As if it was only the accelerant that made this one odd. Donovan didn’t say that. Instead, he volleyed with, “I’ve seen the photos of the upstairs rooms. Some aren’t burned. But the room down here where the victim was found was completely charred.”

  Dickens nodded. He looked uncomfortable. He seemed like a man who didn’t like what he couldn’t explain. “Yes.”

  “So, I’m not way off base suggesting it looks like the fire chased him.” Donovan threw it out there as casually as he could.

  “Now, that just doesn’t happen.”

  Donovan waited for a “sonny” that he didn’t get. While he understood the man’s reasoning—it was an idea well beyond his realm of perspective—Donovan didn’t fully agree. What he’d seen here, and at the other house, it did look like the fire was chasing the victims. It looked like whoever did it had full control of the burn.

  He asked another pointed question. “Does it look like the accelerant went upstairs?”

  Now Dickens was back in his world. “Sure, see?” pointed again, running his aim all along a path to the stairs. “You can see the darker trail where the accelerant was used.”

  “But it’s not as dark.” Donovan frowned looking back and forth from the front room to the stairs. The shading in the pictures he’d seen wasn’t as clear. He could hear Eleri in his head. “I hate pictures.”

  “Yeah,” He scratched his head again in a serious tell and Donovan figured if the man played poker he lost often. “I just think it wasn’t as close to the ground and not for as long.”

  “How is that possible?” Donovan frowned again, harder this time. “If you pour an accelerant, you could pour a narrower line, or not soak the carpet, but how do you get it ‘not as close’?”

  This time, Dickens lit up. “You want my real theory?” When Donovan nodded yes, he continued. “Flame thrower.”

  ELERI’S BACK HURT. Her head hurt. Her feet hurt, and she was wearing sensible shoes. Cute, but cushy. She shouldn’t feel like she’d been walking barefoot on gravel all day.

  Picking her way through Burt Riser’s house hadn’t been a walk in the park. The floor had been warped and buckled, rubble had fallen everywhere, and her cute but sensible shoes had not been made for that.

  They’d finally left the property and Eleri had never been so grateful to get back into the SUV and not be driving. Of course she was in the back with Wade and Christina. And of course she was in the middle. And of course Dana chose lunch again and she chose another all-American, order-anything place. Dana apparently loved burgers as much as Donovan and Wade. Christina had remained silent all morning. Eleri reminded herself to ask Donovan later if he thought maybe the woman was a little simple, at least in comparison to the rest of the crowd.

  Then they’d decided to see another house. This time Leona Hiller’s house. Hers was the oldest case of the original four pulled. She’d been killed over two years ago. Eleri expected the house to be cleaned up.

  It was more than cleaned up. As they pulled up, she saw that it had been completely re-built. Enough different from the house in the file pictures, it made Eleri blink for a moment as she saw the old house overlay on the new one. Whether that was the stress of a long day or an actual piece of intel she should use, she didn’t know. She was too tired to decide.

  What did bother her was the gate at the start of a long gravel drive. The house sat at the end, but so far away. Her feet protested, but Dana pushed the button on the comm system and spoke politely to the man on the other end. Unfortunately for Eleri’s feet, he let them through.

  Eleri walked the long gravel drive, trying not to let it show how ready she was to fall into a bed. But the bed was two-hour drive away, and she would have the joy of occupying the middle back seat—after they looked at this house.

  James Hiller let them in. Leona had been his wife until her murder. He merely nodded at them as he opened the door. Eleri vaguely cataloged his curt motion as the house blinked in and out of perspective for her. She tried not to look as though she was high on some weird drug.

  He motioned the children away from the hallway behind him. “Go play in your rooms. Now.”

  They balked only for a moment, then shuffled obediently up the staircase. The second floor was part of the new design. The old home had been only one story, but more spread out. Transparent images of children ran through the space in front of her—a far greater number than the three children who’d gone up the stairs a moment before. She’d thought the Hillers had only two children . . .

  It was the brunette child that stuck in her thoughts when James Hiller turned back to them, but stayed in the doorway. “FBI huh?”

  It was only then that Eleri realized Dana and the others had flashed their badges. She was slow on the draw, pulling it out even as Donovan elbowed her. Well shit, she was getting etiquette from Donovan. Things were not looking good. She smiled but was afraid it looked forced at best and freakish at worst. Hiller paid no attention to her.

  “Y’all come around here every fistful of months, trying to make some sense of it.” He looked at each of them. “All you do is upset my kids. I haven’t heard dime one on what really happened to my wife.”

  It wasn’t an invitation. Despite his surprising Southern drawl, he wasn’t welcoming.

  Dana talked her way in the door. It was a damned impressive feat given that there were five of them. Donovan, Wade, and Christina all looked slightly antisocial and Eleri figured she probably just looked high. She kept seeing random kids. Eleri knew they weren’t real children—no one else reacted to them, for starters. Her eyes blinked as her brain told her what it was putting together.

  The flashes of the old house were real. Her brain was trying to tell her something. There had been a lot of children here when Leona Hiller was alive. But why?

  “. . . your wife’s murder has recently been linked to three other murders.” Dana was telling him.

  James Hiller looked shocked—his first genuine reaction to anything about their visit. Then he took a moment to visibly absorb the information. “That’s the first thing that makes any sense. No one hated my wife. A serial killer—that’s what you’re talking about, right?—that’s the only way someone would do this to her.”

  Eleri watched as Dana put on her best friend-of-yours face and wound up for the pitch. “I know you’ve answered so many questions before and I know it’s hard to do, to dredge it all back up. But with this new angle, we feel we really have a lead—”

  That was a lie, or at least a very bold stretching of the truth, but Eleri didn’t interrupt. She didn’t have the energy.

  “—and now, we really think we might get somewhere. You can see—” she waved a hand at the group, “—the FBI has taken over the investigation and we have a full team on it. Anything you can contribute may be the difference in solving the case and bringing your wife’s killer to justice.”

  That speech was so great, and so sincerely delivered that even Eleri felt like putting her hand over her heart and singing The Star-Spangled Banner.

  Now he ushered them into the house, beyond the front foyer, and into a living room he didn’t quite belong in. Then he left for a moment to settle the kids. Eleri took stock o
f the place; the room looked a little too formal, a little too unused. When James Hiller returned, he offered sodas or water and a few of them took him up on it.

  Eleri spoke first. “When your wife was alive, there were quite a few children here. Is that correct?”

  He looked startled. Then flustered. He blinked. “Yes, she often watched other kids for extra income.”

  “It was a daycare?” Eleri asked. None of that had been fleshed out in any of the earlier reports. As soon as the words were out of her mouth she realized that’s exactly what Leona Hiller had been doing. Only her daycare wasn’t licensed. Eleri just needed to convince James Hiller that she wasn’t trying to trip him up or shake him down. She only wanted information. Everything helped.

  “Oh no, nothing as . . . involved as a daycare. Just some glorified babysitting for the neighbor kids.” His halting cadence gave away the lie and his smile was forced. “No one asked about that before. Is it important?”

  Dana launched into a “we need to just ask the questions” that was very kindly laid out. She even sweet-talked Hiller into being perfectly willing to answer any odd query any of them threw out, all under the umbrella of helping to find his wife’s killer.

  It was obvious that he loved Leona very much. Still, he was startled, embarrassed when a woman came through the front door.

  “Lisa!” he popped up.

  Eleri put the pieces together. The brunette child was hers. James Hiller was living with another woman.

  It had been two years. Nothing fishy there, not in Eleri’s mind. Only his reaction.

  She looked up at “Lisa” and tried not to blink as the image of another woman, one with paler hair than Lisa’s, overlaid the Lisa in front of her. But the woman wasn’t Leona Hiller and it clearly wasn’t Lisa.

  Eleri couldn’t identify the woman, but she did conclude that her brain had been right. The third child didn’t belong. Other children were here often when Leona had been alive. And another woman, not Lisa and not the blond Leona, played into it.

  Her head hurt too much to figure out how.

  7

  Eleri walked through the forest alone. She’d been walking all day, only this time her feet didn’t bother her. She didn’t know why they didn’t hurt, but she was grateful.

  The forest was lit by a silvery full moon that gave her enough light to see clearly by, and she kept one foot moving in front of the other. The temperature was perfect and it was so nice to get out and away from the others even if she should have been fully asleep. She didn’t even remember escaping the hotel, only that she’d needed to.

  Somehow, she’d made it outside with the heavy stock card in her hand. Her Grandmere’s scrawl had written a single line in the middle of the card. Other than addressing the envelope to her, Grandmere had written nothing else.

  Emmaline will be found soon.

  Eleri’s fingers involuntarily clenched at the card as though she could somehow hold onto her little sister. Emmaline had disappeared at age eight. The two girls had been out riding with their instructor and, skill by skill, he’d put them through their paces, with each horse and rider pair waiting while the other ran the course. When it had been Emmaline’s turn, she’d simply been gone. Her horse had disappeared with her, too.

  The FBI had gotten involved quickly. They treated the disappearance as though this could be no runaway, no simple case of wandering off. The rash reaction was as expected; Eleri’s family was wealthy, it would be a high-profile case. They were certain—despite the lack of leads or information—that the girl would be found and brought home soon. The horse should have returned on his own if he’d been abandoned. He should have found his own way back. In fact, he hadn’t been found for several years. And then, only on a chance encounter.

  A friend recognized him at a farm he was buying thoroughbreds from. The Eames’ had the horse’s blood tested, and though they could never prove this was the horse that had disappeared with Emmaline, they did prove that he was bloodline of Banker’s Sovereign, just like Emmaline’s Silver Sovereign had been. The owner had no papers for him, though he was a well-bred show horse. The owners had been questioned by the feds, but they had no knowledge of Emmaline or her disappearance.

  Eleri kept the cardstock note clutched in her hand now. She’d not been in touch with Grandmere about the note. The two of them were the only ones who seemed to have any idea what happened to Emmaline, though they’d never spoken directly of it. If Grandmere had a phone line, Eleri would have called. If Eleri had her phone on her. . . Her hand swiped at her back pocket. No phone, but she wasn’t concerned. The night was just so beautiful.

  The path opened up in front of her, the trees giving way to a little clearing, the moon shining on the sloped, square roof of the house. The porch was small, barely big enough to stand on, the white wood railing would contain a person with just enough space to knock on the door. It was set at a forty-five-degree angle across what should have been the corner of the house.

  Eleri didn’t knock.

  Turning the knob, she entered.

  Only this time, the rooms weren’t empty. How had she not heard this noise from outside?

  Children shrieked and ran about the room, playing tag, or blocks, or some odd form of patty cake. Some bolted by, yelling and calling to each other, shrill glee trailing them in sound waves Eleri could almost see.

  She followed them around, knowing the house looped on itself. If she kept walking through arches and doorways she would wind up back at the front room. Were the old man and the old woman in the back again? Eleri couldn’t hear with all the kids yelling and playing, but she didn’t ask them to stop. She just walked.

  In the back room, she found the woman.

  Though she usually sat in a rocker, this time the woman stood. The rocker was gone. This room was quiet, no children entered, though Eleri braved it. The woman’s eyes shot open as Eleri crossed the threshold. For a moment, it appeared she was angry, then she reached out and grabbed at Eleri, dark, thin fingers encircling Eleri’s wrist in a strong grip before she could even protest. She pulled Eleri with her though her feet didn’t move. Into the circle Eleri could now see on the floor.

  Frantic, she looked around, unsure if the woman was friend or foe, though in the past she’d always seemed neutral. At the doorway, children stopped, looked in, but came no further, as though an invisible barrier kept them out. After a moment of watching the strange ritual, they would go on their way, back to playing.

  Now, Eleri stood with the woman, finding herself in the middle of a circle with a five-pointed chalk star. The woman raised her hands to the skies and Eleri found herself following along. As she looked up, she could see stars punching through a moonless sky. Then everything went black.

  Eleri’s eyes fluttered. Light came in through the hotel window, a shadow blocking the direct beam. She rolled to the side, the hard ground grating against her hip and shoulder.

  Ground?

  Carpet.

  She was lying on the floor. The shadow had been the high bed, the blinds letting the bright daylight seep in.

  A knock came at the door. “El?”

  “Donovan?” She asked it as though she were confused. And she was.

  “Who else would it be?” There was a small pause. “I take it you’re not ready?”

  “Nope.” She sat up, still on the floor, her elbows on her knees as she surveyed the mess around her. The card from her Grandmere lay stuck in the lush carpet mere inches from her, but didn’t look as though it had been damaged at all by her odd dreams of the house. Eleri plucked it up, rubbing the heavy stock of the paper in her fingertips. She sighed. “I woke up on the floor.”

  With her declaration, Donovan pushed the door open. Maybe it was a bit too bold, but it was obvious he was concerned and nothing else. “You’re okay?”

  “Yup.” She sighed again, not feeling rested enough for the night she’d spent.

  “I got worried. You’re usually up before me.” Donovan commented as he
scanned the mess of the room around her. He didn’t say anything about it.

  “Weird dreams. I’ll be there in a bit.” Then she paused, turning around to look at the clock she hadn’t set, so confident that she’d wake up at a reasonable time. “Did I miss anything?”

  “No, we have time for breakfast, but I want to go somewhere that Christina isn’t.” He’d said the same thing the day before.

  “Call Wade.” She told him, mentally preparing to get up off the floor.

  “Already did.”

  He closed the door and the sound of his feet walking away let her know he’d declared her good enough and was waiting for her to get ready.

  She frowned. The room looked almost like it had been tossed. Though she couldn’t see the top of the bed from where she sat, it was clearly no longer made up. She’d climbed into it earlier. At some point she must have climbed out, too. But she hadn’t brought the covers to the floor with her nor even pulled them back up—not fully made, but not a tangle—like she usually did.

  On the floor, assorted pieces of her clothing looked like they’d been pulled from her suitcase. It almost looked like she’d needed something at the bottom and rummaged through, simply throwing pieces over her shoulder as she rejected them. Also, not her style.

  She frowned at the items and stood. Her joints protested, probably from sleeping on the floor. Only as she became fully upright did she see it wasn’t random.

  Only white shirts. Probably pulled from the hangers. Other white items were around the room, but the shirts defining the space around her were button downs, a t-shirt. It took a moment of squinting in confusion before she realized that the ones near her were all cotton. All white, and all cotton . . .