Once Shadows Fall (6 page)

J
ack Kale was in his front yard watering a white azalea bush when a Crown Victoria pulled into his driveway. Beth Sturgis got out.

After their meeting, he had a feeling she’d be back. For a moment, he couldn’t decide whether he was annoyed or pleased at her appearance. Jack shut the hose and watched her walk across the lawn to him.

“Hi,” she said.

“Detective Sturgis.”

“I was in your neighborhood and thought I’d stop by.”

“Were you?” Jack asked doubtfully.

“No, I just drove in from Jordan,” she said. “You were right. We found a tunnel.”

Jack nodded. “What about the women?”

“Nothing so far. What we did find wasn’t good. There was a great deal of blood down there.”

Jack nodded. “Don’t be surprised if you turn up roofies or Seconal when you get it analyzed. The combination of blood loss and tranquilizers would make your original victim compliant and easy for the killer to manage.”

“I’ll tell the ME,” Beth said. “We found other things at the scene, but we’re not sure what to make of them.”

“What things?”

“Take a ride with me and see for yourself.”

“I can’t, Beth. I’ve been out of the game too long.”

She ignored his comment and continued, “You were right about the missing women being victims.”

“That’s not good.”

“No, it’s not,” Beth agreed. “I have a bad feeling about them.”

“Understood.”

“Are you interested in hearing more?”

Jack looked up at the second story of his house for a few seconds and then nodded.

“The killer severed a woman’s finger and left it for us to find on an old stove in the tunnel.”

The more bits and pieces she doled out, the more she began to dislike herself. For reasons she couldn’t understand, he was struggling with the news. She compounded that by leaving her statements open ended, hoping to keep his curiosity up. He refused to take the bait.

“Well,” Jack said, “I’m sure you and your partner will figure it out. The case sounds like an interesting one.”

“My partner’s flat on his back recuperating from a hernia operation. Another detective’s backing me. You know each other.”

“Really?”

“Dan Pappas,” Beth said. “He worked with you on the original case.”

Jack nodded slowly. “I remember Pappas. He’s a good man.”

“So how about it?” Beth said. “Take a ride with me and give the scene a look.”

“Your department has any number of qualified people. You don’t need me.”

“No one has your experience with Pell and his methods. It won’t take long. I promise.”

“Time isn’t the issue,” Jack said. “It’s just that I have a lot going on right now.”

“I know. You said that yesterday.”

“Nothing’s changed, Beth,” Jack said patiently.

“Right. Your bush would miss you,” she said, finally giving in to her frustration.

“I’m sorry,” Jack said.

“So am I. You really disappoint me.”

Jack had no response to that. He simply looked down at his shoes.

She turned and started back to her car, then stopped.

“You owe me a cup of coffee.”

“Excuse me?”

“A cup of coffee. You said you’d give me a rain check when I was at your office.”

“Well, yes, but—”

“I’m ready,” Beth said.

“I’m afraid I don’t have any in the house,” Jack said. “I planned on going shopping later.”

“Not a problem,” Beth said. “We can dine out.”

Jack hesitated and then said, “All right. Give me a few minutes to change clothes. Would you care to come in?”

“Sure,” Beth said.

*

As soon as she stepped through the front door, she was greeted by an enormous German shepherd.

“This is Marta,” Jack said.

“MARTA? Like the train?”

Jack smiled. “She’s a rescue dog. Someone left her on the elevated platform at the Dunwoody station a few years ago. Hold your hand out and let her sniff you. She’s quite friendly.”

Beth made a loose fist and extended it to the dog and watched her nostrils take in her scent. A moment later, Marta’s tail wagged and she moved closer. Beth scratched her head. The shepherd then lowered her nose to check out her shoes.

“She’s probably smelling my cat.”

“Marty likes cats.”

“To eat them or play with them?”

Jack stifled a laugh and headed for his bedroom to change, leaving Beth and Marta alone in the living room.

“Just us girls, huh?” Beth said.

Marta’s tail wagged in response.

Curiosity got the better of her and Beth began to explore. Unlike Jack’s office at the university, his living room was surprisingly neat. A worn oriental rug with muted reds and yellows dominated the middle of the room. At one end was a couch, two club chairs, and a low coffee table with a half-empty bottle of Scotch on it. Next to the bottle were the blue test booklets she’d seen the day before. Beth laughed to herself.

Guess he’s making progress
.

To the right of the couch was a fireplace with a very old-looking limestone mantel. Above that hung a large, rectangular impressionist painting of a man and a woman in dated evening clothes like people in an F. Scott Fitzgerald story. The man was facing away from his companion, holding a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other. She was looking at him, arms folded in front of her, grasping her elbows.
Beth couldn’t decide what her expression meant, which was probably the point the artist was trying to make.

“What do you think?” she asked Marta, who was sitting there watching her.

Across from the fireplace, one entire wall was taken up with built-in shelves filled with books. Between the books were a few photographs in silver frames. One was of a young girl and a woman. From the resemblance, she was sure the woman was the girl’s mother. Both had the same facial shape and skin tone. She recognized the girl from the photograph in Jack’s office. The woman, like herself, was a brunette.

“Former lady of the house?” she asked Marta.

Marta’s tail thumped against the couch a couple of times.

Beth turned back to the books and read a few of the titles, something detectives did out of habit.
Group Psychology
,
Abnormal Psychology
,
Cognitive-Behavioral Techniques
,
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
, and Robert Parker’s
Thin Air
.

Wandering around the room, she came to a pair of French double doors that looked out onto a patio, a backyard with two cherry trees, and a doghouse.

“Your place?”

Thump. Thump.

Jack finally reappeared. He’d changed into dark-blue jeans, and a white golf shirt with a small polo player logo on the left side. Yuck, she thought.

“Ready when you are,” he said.

“We can take my car,” Beth said. “I’m blocking you in.”

Marta looked from one to the other and decided the invitation didn’t include her. She walked back to the Oriental rug, turned around three times, and settled in front of the couch again with a sigh.

As they pulled out of the driveway, Jack asked, “Are you familiar with this neighborhood?”

“Enough,” Beth said.

“Where are we going?”

“Jordan. They have a great coffee shop on the square.”

The rest of the ride passed in silence.

W
hen she reached the town, Beth pulled up to the bakery she’d spotted on her first trip, praying they sold coffee. Jack didn’t look happy.

“How do you take it?” she asked.

He turned and stared at her.

“Look, I’m sorry,” Beth said. “It was a mean trick. If you give me thirty minutes at the scene, I’ll make it up to you. I promise.”

Silence.

“I’ll get you home right away so you can do . . . whatever. Thirty minutes, that’s all.”

There was still no response. Jack’s finger began to tap a rhythm on his knee.

“Okay,” Beth said. “This was a bad idea. But I’m out of my depth here and I can use the help.”

When more seconds ticked by and he still didn’t respond, she was ready to conclude her strategy might not have been effective. Beth reluctantly reached for the ignition key and started the engine.

“Black,” Jack said, “with one of those blue sweetener things.”

Beth nearly smiled with relief but managed to stop herself in time, or rather the expression on Jack’s face did. She hurriedly left the car. When she returned she informed him, “I bought you a cappuccino.”

Jack opened his mouth to reply, then decided against it. He simply nodded his thanks.

She explained further. “I saw the machine in your kitchen and figured you liked them better.”

Jack made a noise deep in his throat, which she interpreted as gratitude.

“Are we good?” Beth asked.

“Thirty minutes.”

*

The other cars were parked along the road’s shoulder. Ben Furman’s van from the crime lab was there along with a second deputy’s vehicle. As they crossed the field, Beth began a running commentary on the house, the barn, and what they’d found in the tunnel. Jack appeared to be half listening. His eyes were focused on the cross.

Max Blaylock and Dan Pappas were waiting for them at the barn. The sky was leaden and the air heavy with humidity. Swarms of gnats hovered over the tall grass. An absence of bird and insect noise had settled over the place as if even they were avoiding it. The sheriff introduced himself and shook Jack’s hand. Pappas nodded to him.

“Good to see you, Jack. It’s been a few years.”

“Dan.”

Max Blaylock said, “Detective Pappas tells me you handled the original investigation.”

“I did.”

“It’s pretty obvious we’ve got a copycat,” Blaylock said.

Jack didn’t respond to that directly. “I understand you recovered blood samples from the ladder and tunnel.”

Pappas informed him, “There was a good amount down there, Jack. Beth and I walked through the middle of it while we were stumbling about in the dark.”

“Regardless of who it belongs, to that shouldn’t affect the DNA,” Jack said.

“They also found an old stove,” Blaylock said. “Hell of an odd thing to run across in a slave tunnel you ask me.”

“Most likely it’s a prohibition tunnel,” Jack said. “The stove’s presence makes brewing moonshine a safe bet. It would have been a simple matter to load barrels onto a northbound freightliner.”

The sheriff hooked his thumbs in his belt and extended his lower lip. “Detectives Sturgis and Pappas found some other items not far from the end of the tunnel. You wanna take a look at them?”

Jack didn’t respond. His eyes had strayed again to the cross in the field.

“Professor?” Blaylock said.

“Did that yield anything?” Jack said, motioning with his chin.

“It yielded Jerome Haffner,” Blaylock said. “Some blood of course—not a lot, as I’m sure Beth told you. Most of it was in the tunnel. There were also a couple of threads, like the ones they found down there.”

“Was the victim wearing blue?” Jack asked over his shoulder.

“Yeah, Betsy Ann Tinsley, one of the missing women,” Blaylock said. “According to her mother, that’s what she had on when she left home.”

“Was the cross like that when you took him down?”

“I think so,” Beth said, pulling a photo out of the file. She examined it for a moment and was about to pass the picture to Jack, but he was already making his way through the grass toward it.

Beth and the others exchanged glances and hurried to catch up.

As they walked, the sheriff speculated, “Maybe Haffner’s weight caused it to lean. He was a big guy. That’s why I figured the killer had help.”

Jack nodded absently and kept going.

“Be tough for one man to put him up there, Jack,” Pappas said.

“Not if the killer staked him out on the ground first,” Jack said. “Has anyone looked under it?”

“Under what? The cross?” Blaylock said.

“Exactly.”

“We checked the area,” Beth said. “But no one’s moved it.”

Jack turned to her. “Do you remember showing me the electrostats of the shoeprints?”

“You thought the killer made both because the depth was the same.”

“I also said the crime scene was staged. That cross is perpendicular to the field, not facing it as you’d expect. Let’s take a closer look.”

Pappas looked at the sheriff and shrugged. When they were about ten feet away, Jack came to a halt and folded his arms across his chest. He stared silently at the cross as if he were trying to solve some complicated mathematical problem.

Nearly a minute ticked by before he spoke again. “Dan, help me take this down.”

“Why?” Beth asked.

“You said the body had been drained of blood, right?”

“Most of it,” Beth said.

“Was there enough in the tunnel to account for the difference?”

Beth considered his question for a moment, then answered, “I’d say no.”

“The ground at the base of the stake has been turned—recently, from the look of it.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Blaylock said. “But why so big an area if the guy was just putting the cross up? This has gotta be six feet wide.”

The same thought occurred to everyone at once.

“Shit,” Pappas said.

*

Avilles and the second deputy returned from town with two shovels and began to dig. At Jack’s direction, the earth was removed and placed onto a tarp they’d brought along. Beth and Ben Furman sifted through the growing mound looking for clues. At one point, Pappas’s cell phone rang. He took it out, checked the screen, and then returned it to his pocket.

“Everything okay?” Beth asked, noting his expression.

“Text message from the lieutenant to call in.”

“Maybe you should.”

Pappas lifted his shoulders. “Reception’s lousy out here. I’ll wait till I get—”

The detective broke off what he was saying to look at Jack, who had dropped into a crouch and was collecting a soil sample. He’d donned a pair of blue latex gloves he borrowed from Beth earlier and was using a small pocket knife to scoop dirt and place it into a plastic evidence bag.

“Whatcha got, Jack?” Pappas asked.

“A possible outlier.”

“A what?”

“An outlier—something that shouldn’t be here. The coloration and texture of this soil is different from the rest. It also contains some shiny particles. I can’t tell what they are by looking.”

He turned to Ben Furman. “Your lab has a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer, don’t you?”

“We sure do,” Furman said.

“And an electron microscope?”

“Yep.”

“You should analyze this as soon as possible,” Jack said. “They almost look like bits of shell.”

A curse from the second deputy interrupted the rest of Jack’s comments. Everyone turned toward the hole. Sticking out of the loose soil was a woman’s hand. One of the fingers was missing.