Stone Maidens (21 page)

The police officer flicked it a few times on his palm and then handed it back. “Mr. Claremont, I’m going to ask you to follow us back to the station to answer a few questions, if you don’t mind.” It wasn’t a question.

“Well, I do mind. Am I under arrest? I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“No, sir, I didn’t say you have,” Owens said. “Just some routine questions. We’d appreciate it if you’d come voluntarily.”

Claremont frowned, then nodded. “I guess I’ll follow you.” He looked over toward his truck.

Owens judged the man’s demeanor. He appeared calm. Not a flight risk. “All right then.”

Claremont pocketed the keepers and got into his truck, grimacing.

The cruiser led the way. Deputy Owens notified the dispatcher to contact the state police special crimes unit to say they were bringing in a possible suspect for questioning regarding the murder of Julie Heath.

“All I’m saying is,” Deputy Boles said, checking the rearview mirror, “we should have taken him in the cruiser on account of reckless driving, not to even mention the fact that he could be a goddamn killer.”

Owens leaned his arm over the seat back and looked over his shoulder at Claremont following them in his truck. “First off, he ain’t drunk. His breath didn’t smell of alcohol. And where’s he going to go?” The deputy flicked the arm of his partner with the back of his hand. “If we got the killer dead to rights, he ain’t going nowheres.” He patted his holstered sidearm. “Believe you me. Nowheres.”

The sheriff pulled off the road above the crime scene, eyeing his rearview mirror as the traveling lab crept around a bend and then rocked unsteadily over the ruts to a halt. Static interference on the two-way radio signaled an incoming call from his office. Mary had Rodney Cox, a retired trooper from the state police post, on the line. Cox lived in Parker, a twenty-minute drive from Crosshaven.

A federal agent in aviator-style dark glasses hopped out of the RV’s front passenger side and slowly approached the Bronco. A photo ID hung from a lanyard around his neck.

“Patch him through, Mary,” McFaron said into the mike, eyeing the agent in the side mirror. The man’s hands drifted to his hips in a deliberately nonchalant gesture, waiting for McFaron to get out. The sheriff grinned. No wonder Christine didn’t like Howard, assuming this was Howard. McFaron didn’t like him, either, and he hadn’t even met him yet.

“Rodney, what’s going on there?”

“Ezra North and his girl Sarah are sitting here in my living room, Sheriff. They got something to talk to you about.”

Outside, the muffled voices of technicians climbing out of the RV intruded. They gathered beside the forest, busy with equipment. One tested a luminous light instrument against the bark of a white pine.

“I’m kind of occupied at the moment, Rodney. Can I get back to you? Over.”

“It’s that man in your sketch she saw,” Cox said point blank.

McFaron straightened up. “Say what?”

Mr. Cool was now standing beside the sheriff’s door. McFaron rolled down his window.

“Give us a minute.” The sheriff tipped his hat and closed the window.

Without a word, the FBI agent sauntered back to his crew.

“Is the girl hurt?” McFaron said anxiously.

“Not a hair on her head has been mussed. Had the daylights scared out of her, though. According to Sarah, this guy just about ran her down after soccer practice on Friday. She didn’t tell her parents till this morning. Too scared.”

McFaron’s cheeks burned. “Damn! She’s sure about the ID?” He ripped open a new roll of Tums, chewed three at once.

“Says the picture’s the spitting image.”

Outside, apparently preparing for a siege, federal agents were setting up sensing devices and wielding scanning pods on the ends of long metal poles. A female agent, her blonde hair in a ponytail, positioned a headset over her ears and clipped a pod to a vest harness. She began waving the sensor over leaves at the edge of the forest.

“Called you as soon as I could, Sheriff. I knew you’d want to know about this.”

“Listen, Rodney, hold the girl there. We’ll need to get her statement. You’ll hear from me within the hour.”

McFaron hung up. Parker was practically on his doorstep. This was one bold bastard on the prowl. Christine Prusik would be damn pleased to hear about this development.

Mr. Cool started wandering back over. McFaron exited the Bronco and found that his initial annoyance with the FBI team’s arrival had receded.

“Sheriff McFaron, Crosshaven County.” He extended his hand. “Nice to meet you.”

“Special Agent Bruce Howard.” They shook hands, and the agent gave McFaron a business card.

“Afraid I’m all out of cards,” McFaron said with a straight face. He gave Howard his cell and office phone numbers and watched the agent key the numbers into a BlackBerry.

“We’ll follow you down, Sheriff,” Howard said, his voice neutral. Despite an overcast sky, he kept his shades on.

His perfunctory response was fine with McFaron. Better to keep things businesslike.

Agents wearing khakis and lightweight navy Windbreakers with the large yellow FBI logo stenciled across their backs spread out across the forested slope. Stepping down the steep embankment, McFaron followed the trail through the disturbed leaves. Halfway down, he said, “That large log to one side was positioned over the body.” He pointed. “The one curving downhill slightly.”

“Got it. Thank you, Sheriff. We’ll take it from here.” Howard motioned left then right to his technicians, who descended on either side, carrying electronic equipment.

A technician in goggles flicked on a fluorescent light attached to the end of a long-handled pole. McFaron knew he was looking for trace evidence that would glow under the special ultraviolet lamp.

The sheriff backtracked to his truck, yelling over his shoulder, “Give a holler if you need anything.”

Howard gave a mock salute. The smug prick, thought McFaron. At the same time, he prayed they’d find something significant. Wrap this thing up before another girl wasn’t as lucky as Sarah North.

He slammed the truck door and sat behind the wheel. A tingling sensation started up in his chest. Too much stress on his heart? His dad had died suddenly at forty, barely middle-aged. His doctor had blamed years of smoking for leaving him slumped over a log at the mill yard, ending life with a burn mark between two fingers from a last cigarette. “So long, son” had been his last words to McFaron earlier that morning, the same words he’d always said as he passed his son’s bedroom door on his way off into the predawn air. And then he was gone, just like that.

How many more years did he have, McFaron wondered. And how would he spend them? In a certain way, his world hadn’t changed much since his father’s death, when a kind of emotional numbness had set in. By the time of his mother’s death, McFaron had felt nothing. And when he did recognize feeling something more than the irritations of the workday, it was emptiness, like the barely visible face of the moon against a pale-blue sky, a great silent presence. With the coming of night, when the moon loomed brightly, turning the backyard into stark shapes and shadows, McFaron’s struggle would begin anew, and the void within him would blacken. Swigs of Kentucky bourbon did little more than lighten its edges. Sooner or later he feared the pain would win.

McFaron retrieved Christine Prusik’s business card from his wallet. If he was lucky she might not have eaten lunch yet. He called her cell phone number and accelerated without looking back.

The phone beeped over the racket of idling diesels outside her window. The Interstate Motel shared a parking lot with a large truck stop plaza. Prusik found the receiver on the fourth ring.

“Special Agent Prusik.”

“Can I take you out for a sandwich, Christine?”

She yawned aloud. She’d gotten up early, unable to sleep, and had been on the phone with her team and working on an update for Thorne all morning. Her stomach gurgled loudly. “Now that you mention it, I never had breakfast. A sandwich sounds good. Anything sounds good as long as it comes with lots of coffee.”

“I can arrange that,” McFaron said. “Your man Howard and his team are going over the crime scene as we speak. They have all their hardware out.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well...I mean they’re going over the crime scene,” McFaron said slowly. “I led them out to the site a little while ago.”

“Right,” Christine said after a moment.

“Shoot, Christine,” the sheriff said. “I just assumed he’d called you.”

“You assumed wrong, Sheriff.” She winced. McFaron didn’t deserve her sharp tone.

“If you don’t mind my saying, he seems a bit full of himself.”

“I don’t mind your saying,” she said, leaving it at that. She reminded herself to put in a call to Howard right after getting off the phone. She would afford him that civility even if he hadn’t bothered to call her on arrival, as all professional courtesy would demand.

“One more thing,” McFaron said. “Actually, the most important thing.”

“Yes?”

He filled her in on Sarah North’s sighting.

She felt her adrenaline start to pump. “Jesus Christ, he’s getting bold.” She took a breath. “This is great. We can go right over and interview her.”

“After lunch. A few extra minutes won’t cost us anything, Christine. Didn’t your mother ever tell you about the importance of three meals a day?”

“She wasn’t that kind of mother.”

Joe smiled wryly. “Mine neither. I’ll pick you up in thirty minutes. I need to make a couple of phone calls.”

Prusik nearly hit
END
but hesitated. “Uh, Joe?”

“Yeah?”

“You didn’t mention any of this to Howard, did you?”

“Didn’t think there was a need to.”

“OK. See you in a few.”

So Prusik wouldn’t be flying back to Chicago right away. McFaron would pick her up and they’d grab some food to go before driving to Parker to interview the North girl.

Prusik toggled through the address list on her PDA’s screen and steeled herself. “Bruce,” she said in her most congenial voice,
“I understand that Sheriff McFaron led you and the field team to the crime scene? Any findings to report?”

“Nothing yet. I’ve got Goodyear and Morrison checking several hundred yards out from the perimeter doing concentric rings.”

“Good, good. I’m gathering my notes together from the postmortem and my interview yesterday afternoon with a witness.” She left out McFaron’s most recent revelation of a possible second witness. It was premature, she decided. And besides, she had no direct information yet. “I’m about to meet McFaron to discuss the other people he’s interviewed. Get a lay of the land. Shall we check in a couple of hours?”

“Sounds like a plan,” Howard said.

“Great.” She clicked off the phone and sighed. Howard had said all the right things and so had she, but it was clear that neither one of them trusted the other. It would be nice to work with a real
partner
, someone who believed in teamwork and wasn’t always jockeying for position, someone who wanted to solve the crime because he wanted to
help
, not because he wanted more power. Someone like...Joe.

Slouching her shoulders forward, she examined herself in the mirror that hung over a small writing desk. Her face appeared smooth in the murky light, which hid the furrowed brow line no wrinkle cream could conceal. Not so bad for thirty-five, she thought. Thirty-five. Was that considered middle age?

She whisked into the bathroom. McFaron would be arriving soon. She felt a bit of a wreck from the previous night’s terrors, but there was a tingle inside, too. There were two new developments to pursue, and if she were honest with herself, the prospect of pursuing them with Joe, at least for the morning, was exciting. Her response to him was bewildering but unmistakable. The sheriff had strong-looking hands and a handsome face. The day before when he’d driven her to the motel after she’d interviewed Joey Templeton, she’d found herself staring at the dark hair on his fingers.

She took a quick shower and toweled off briskly, groaning at the prospect of putting on her dirty, wrinkled clothes. But it was that or pick out some cute cowgirl outfit at the farmer’s co-op she’d seen. Luckily the pantsuit had held up. Thank goodness for polyester.

The rumble of a truck motor shot straight through the bottom of her black leather Rockport all-weather shoes, filling her with a tangle of emotions—dread, self-doubt, and resolve. She looked in the mirror again and gave herself an encouraging smile, then started to the door. The room was too depressing. She’d wait for McFaron outside.

When her hand was on the doorknob, she stopped and made her way back to the mirror. Reaching into her handbag, she rummaged around until she found an old tube of lipstick, then slowly, carefully, she applied it to her lips.

Joe held the bag with their sandwiches in one hand and opened the door of the truck stop café with the other. “After you, Special Agent.”

She smiled and led the way outside, a large cup of coffee in each hand, one for her, one for Joe. “Thanks, Sheriff.” After one cup of coffee quickly consumed while they were waiting for their takeout orders, she already felt much more human. After a second cup, along with a roast turkey sandwich, she thought she might feel downright civil.