Shattered (18 page)

“Maybe.” His tone was doubtful. “Seems to me it would be easier to just find Saddler in the first place.” And he grinned, getting up to clear the table. “Of course, I'm just an amateur.”

“But gifted,” she allowed generously, then her expression sobered. “I don't know, honey. There's an awful lot about this case that still doesn't add up. I just can't help but wonder if you're not giving Saddler too much credit. Are you sure it was him who was in Carol Dennison's house yesterday?”

“We'll know as soon as the report on the fingerprints come back from the lab—which should be first thing this morning.” The phone rang just as he passed it, and he scooped it up. “Maybe that's the office now. I told them to call as soon as the report came in.”

It was the office, but not with the fingerprint report. Two minutes later, Derrick Long was out the door and on his way to what he knew already was going to be a very bad day.

~

Chapter Twenty-five

B
y the time the day nurse came on duty, Guy had showered, shaved—albeit a little shakily—and dressed in the wrinkled, bloodstained clothes he'd found stashed in a plastic bag in his closet. Carol had said something about bringing a change of clothes by for him that morning when she came to take him home, but he couldn't wait. He spent a few minutes arguing absently with the nurse who had some fixation about patients being dismissed by their doctors before they went home and Walt was waiting for him when he went outside.

“Man, you gotta start hanging out at better bars,” was all the big man said as Guy got into the Jeep.

“Yeah, tell me about it.” Guy gingerly touched the bandage on the back of his head. It still throbbed dully, but if he remembered not to make any sudden movements, the pain was manageable.

Walt pulled out onto the highway and the light traffic that constituted rush hour in St. Theresa County, chomping down on a tattered cigar. Walt Marshall had long hair, a bushy beard, and weighed three hundred pounds on a light day. He favored Jimmy Buffett T-shirts that were always too tight on him, and was rarely seen without the cigar, which Guy had never known him to light. He was arguably the wealthiest full- time resident of St. Theresa County, but most nights ate dinner from a TV tray in front of a fuzzy-pictured, nineteen-inch television set. That was why Guy liked him. Except for the part about being wealthy, they had a lot in common.

Walt said, “A sheriff's deputy was by last week with mug shots of some dude they said was gunning for you. Guess he found you, huh?”

“More like I found him.”

“Good going, Slick.”

“He got away.”

“Yeah, I heard about your troubles last night on the police scanner. I was going to send you flowers.”

“Thanks for not.”

“Shaping up to be one of them weeks,” Walt went on, chewing the cigar. “Moon's in Scorpio.”

Guy leaned his head back gingerly and closed his eyes. “Oh, yeah?”

“Damn straight. Had a floater wash up before sunrise this morning.”

Guy opened his eyes. “What?”

“Some kid, probably drunk, swum out too far.Girl, I think. Fisherman found her near the channel cut, what was left of her anyway.”

“Jesus.” Guy stared at him. Everything inside him went cold. A girl, dead. He would never hear those words, never in all his life, without thinking first of his daughter. “Who was it? One of ours?” By “ours” he meant a local, and he knew how self-serving it sounded the moment the word was out. But he was, first and foremost, a reporter.

“Don't know. That was when you called, and I had to leave.”

Guy said, “Listen, Walt, forget the marina. Take me straight to the office.”

But one of Walt's eccentricities was his peculiar notion of propriety. He refused to take Guy to the office looking, in his words, “like a bad highway wreck,” and he insisted on waiting while Guy changed clothes and then driving him to Carol's house to pick up his car.

Guy was glad to see Carol wasn't home; she had said she was spending the night with Laura. He scrawled a note—”Sweetie—I'm okay, call me at work. G.” and pinned it between the storm door and the frame to protect it from the wind. In the end, it was nine o'clock before he got to the office.

“I've heard of devotion to duty,” said Rachel when he came in, “but this is ridiculous. You look like death warmed over. Aren't you supposed to be in the hospital or something?”

“My, how news does travel.” Everyone was staring at him and Guy was embarrassed. He beckoned Rachel to follow him into his office.

“Maybe that's why they call us a newspaper?” she said, coming inside and closing the door. Concern was on her face, and Guy was touched—and even more embarrassed. “Are you okay?” she asked.

“A little headache, that's all. Listen, I need a favor. Tanya Little—that name sounds familiar to me. Get somebody to look it up, will you? Lindy, if she's free.”

Rachel had her notebook out. “Local?”

“I don't know. I doubt it. Seems like—oh, I don't know.” He pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers, trying to concentrate. “Three or four years ago.”

“Got it,” Rachel said briskly. “Anything else?”

“Yeah. Get Deputy Long on the phone and if my”—he stopped himself before saying “wife”— “Carol calls, transfer her to my cell phone. I'm going to be out of the office most of the morning.”

Rachel closed the notebook, a stubborn look on her face. “We have reporters—” began a familiar argument.

“And I'll call one if I need one. Now try the sheriff's office, will you? If Long's not there, try to find out where he is.”

Ed Jenkins came in the door just as Rachel was leaving. They shared a look—hers fraught with meaning, his bland. Ed said, “How're you feeling?”

“Like shit.”

“Better than you look.”

“Thanks.”

“Carol okay?”

“Yeah. She stayed over with Laura.”

“Any word on the perp, as we say in the biz?”

“They're waiting for a fingerprint match, but if you took a wild guess, you wouldn't be wrong.”

Ed's face was grim. “So I figured. Listen, it's your call. The radio station has news about the break-in, but all they know is that you, and I quote, surprised a burglar in your ex-wife's home. They've been calling, but we haven't told them anything. If you want to keep it quiet, it never happened. You want headlines, you got them.”

Guy thought only a moment. “Quiet, for now,” he said. Then he added, “Thanks, Ed.”

“You bet. Now go home.”

Guy said, “What's the word on that kid who washed up on the beach?”

“I've got someone covering it.”

“Yeah. Me.”

“I don't think so.” Ed looked uncomfortable. “They, uh—well not much is coming in yet but apparently the body's in pretty bad shape. Sharks and, well, you know.”

“Come on, I'm not in that bad a shape. I can hold my cookies if that's what you're worried about.” But in truth he wasn't as anxious to get on the story as he once had been.

“Maybe, but that's not it.” Ed looked increasingly reluctant. “I just don't think you need this right now, okay?”

“Need what?”

Ed released a tense breath. “Look,” he said. “The kid—she was about Kelly's age. And they think she was murdered.”

~

Chapter Twenty-six

F
or Sheriff John Case, it was every spring break nightmare come true. News vans from as far away as Mexico Beach and Tallahassee were parked outside his office. A convicted rapist and child molester was on the loose, a young student was dead, his waiting room was brimming over with reporters and microphones and there on the front row, looking gray and grim and as alert as ever, was the man who was at the center of it all, Guy Dennison. And Sheriff John Case, dry-mouthed and sweating like a pig, had to stand up before them all and say, “We are withholding the name of the victim pending notification of next of kin. Though we won't have any details until we receive the autopsy report, we can tell you that the victim was a female, eighteen years old, and a student from the University of Virginia. It does appear at this time that she has been dead for at least twelve hours. She had, uh, been sexually assaulted before death.”

Someone called out. “Are you calling this an ordinary drowning, Sheriff?”

A trickle of sweat rolled down the back of his neck. He did not lift his hand to wipe it. “No,” he said, “we're not.”

A babble of voices then. What, where, when, who...

Sheriff Case said loudly, “We are interviewing friends of the victim and others connected with this case. I have no other information for you at this time.”

He went quickly through the crowd and into his office, shutting the door firmly behind him. He thought,
I reckon I could have handled that better. About a million times better
.

The door opened on a cacophony of murmurs and clatters and he looked up sharply. Guy Dennison came in and closed the door. Case scowled.

“I thought we were rid of you for at least a week.”

“Nice attitude toward a crime victim. No wonder those vultures out there are after your blood.”

Sheriff Case noted Guy's pallor, the set of his jaw, the flat dark color of his eyes, and he correctly attributed all to symptoms of something more than the aftermath of injury. Guy Dennison had the look of a man forcing himself to walk through hell for the simple reason that no one else was willing to do it, and Case was instantly sympathetic. This story had to be Dennison's worst nightmare; the one reason he had left big-city reporting for the small-time news of St. T. Yet even here it followed him: the assault and murder of a teenage girl who could have been his daughter, and no one could cover the story as well as the man who had lived through it already.

Case gestured him to be seated. “The girl's name was Mickie Anderson, from Wilmington, West Virginia. Her folks are on their way, but I'd rather not have them trampled by reporters until we get a chance to talk to them.”

Guy nodded, making note of the name and knowing without being told to keep it to himself. The paper would release a special edition at four-thirty. That was all the lead time he got.

Case went on wearily, “One of her girlfriends reported her missing night before last. They had driven up for the day from Panama City. Apparently she was bragging all day about some guy she'd met who was going to make her a star or some shit.”

Something tickled in the back of Guy's mind, but he couldn't quite catch it.

The sheriff went on tiredly, “Then she had a fight with her boyfriend and as far as I can tell, she went off to meet this guy and that was the last anyone saw of her. When she wasn't at the meeting place when they all got ready to go home this kid had the sense—God only knows how—to call our office. We didn't think much of it, just jotted down her name and school and where the caller could be reached. Like this was the only kid that didn't show up to catch her ride home? But anyway, we got a positive i.d. a few minutes ago. Mickie Anderson, eighteen years old.”

The last words were uttered heavily, with an effort. His gaze was fixed on his desk blotter, where there was nothing to hold his attention but his own thoughts. He added quietly, “Do you know how long it's been since I had to deal with anything like this? Hell, that's why I live here.”

Guy said carefully, “We have drowning and boat accidents every year.”

Case looked up at him sharply. “This was no fucking boat accident. That kid was murdered. She was tied up, raped, tortured, then strangled to death. Her nipples had been sliced off. Finger tips. There were cuts all over her body. Of course, the fish...” He had to stop and clear his throat. “Well, it was hard to tell a lot by looking at her. We're bringing in a state forensic pathologist for more grisly details, but that's enough to make sure I don't sleep at night for a while. We've got a convicted rapist walking around loose looking for trouble and we've got a dead teenager who was tortured and raped before somebody tossed her in the water. And we've got a definite match between Saddler's on-file prints and the ones on the poker that brained you last night. What we don't have is Saddler.”

Guy said softly, “Shit.”

“You're telling me.”

The two men looked at each other silently for a time. Then Case said, “There is another possibility. Seems like this Mickie was a real wild card. Picked up this guy in Panama City, rode down here with him, ended up balling him on the beach, having a big fight, stalking off. That was the last anybody saw of her. Long brought him in with the girlfriend to identify the body. He's questioning him now.”

The tone of his voice suggested he did not anticipate helpful results.

Guy said tersely, “A man like Saddler can't hide out forever. The county's not that damn big.”

Case returned, “You want my goddamn job? You're welcome to it.” Then, rubbing his forehead, he added, “We're getting help from the state police. Something's got to break soon.”

Guy said, “ 'Spring Break Turns Tragic.' We'll play down the rape angle until you have more details.” He hesitated. “What was she wearing when she was found?”