Next to Die Page 3

  The back door opened and Rachel cautiously stepped out. “You want to be alone?”

  “No, it’s okay.”

  Rachel came closer. “I’m sorry I lost it in there.”

  “We’re all losing it. This is unreal. Just unreal. Poor Rita.” Bobbi felt the sting of tears but beat them back.

  She looked around at the cars in the back lot, many of them double-parked, crowded together to keep the area clear out front. But it was quiet, just a few bugs zipping through, almost like nothing was happening.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Rachel said. “They’re letting people go.”

  “I don’t even know where I’m going to go,” Bobbi said. “Home? Sit staring at the wall?” She thought of Connor again. He was probably working but given the circumstances might be able to get away. She didn’t want to be alone.

  “You probably need to eat,” Rachel said. “Have you eaten anything?”

  Bobbi shook her head. “They asked me about Lennox.”

  Rachel nodded. “They asked me about you. I mean… hey, you’re shaking. Are you okay?”

  “You know what Jessica said to me?”

  “Oh my God. She is in high-time bitch mode. Can you believe her? Stalking around in there. She’s crazy.”

  “It’s just her defense,” Bobbi said. “I’m sure she’s hurting.”

  Rachel blew air out of her lips in dismissal. “Don’t be her apologist. What did she say?”

  “She just reminded me – Harriet was here because of me.”

  Rachel clucked her tongue and crossed her arms. “Nice. Real nice. She’s a piece of work. Don’t even let that—”

  “But no, I mean – she’s right. I was supposed to be here. What if that, oh my God, Rachel…” Bobbi could barely choke the words out. “What if that was supposed to be me?” It was a horrible thought now that she’d allowed it to fully form, the worst thought, and on top of it she felt guilty for focusing on herself instead of Harriet. “Our cars, Rachel, you know, my car and Rita’s are almost exactly the same…”

  Rachel was staring now, a real holy shit face. “Your cars,” she said slowly, “and you even kind of… well you’re a lot younger, but your hair…”

  The way she was looking her over, Bobbi had to face away.

  She just stood there beneath the sizzling sun, wondering what came next.

  * * *

  The smell. The fucking smell – what was that? Spoiled milk? They said odors did things, could even trigger repressed memories. But he wasn’t remembering anything, not now. Just killing her, just the blood, and searching his soul to find satisfaction. Was he satisfied? He was excited, that’s what he was, and a little bit angry.

  He drove through Lake Haven, not really seeing anything, thinking about how the stink of rotted milk had gotten under his skin, infected his brain, and made him want to shower with scalding water. How it had screwed him up.

  And the car had been so damned hot. If he hadn’t cleaned up afterwards, he’d have left a puddle of sweat behind on the seats. Lucky he didn’t vomit.

  He drove fast, eager to scrub himself in the shower, remembering how her blood had been like fireworks, spraying all over the car; some of it had squirted in his face and it had tasted like pennies, and that sensation, too, had brought the past to life…

  A car blared its horn and he swerved, narrowly missing the oncoming traffic. He’d gone away for a second, lost in a dark place, filled with the odor of spoiled food, cool jets of air, music playing in the background – The Doors.

  He braked for an intersection, waited for the light. While waiting he searched the cassettes on his passenger seat. That was the beauty of having an old car like this one – even if there was some rust and a tendency to overheat, it had a working cassette deck. Nothing quite like cassettes, nothing like the squeak of the gears that pulled the magnetic tape. He popped in The Soft Parade and tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, first humming then singing along, off key, under his breath.

  He’d never had a singing voice. Not even close. He’d had other talents, though, things people didn’t really understand.

  Which wasn’t surprising, because people didn’t understand much of anything.

  The light changed and he made a right turn, started out of town. Got the old car up to speed and dialed up the music, reminding himself that this thing wasn’t over.

  Three

  Mike Nelson swept the papers off the desk and stuck them in his valise. He stood and rolled his neck, hoping to get out some of the kinks after sitting in the social worker’s office for five straight hours.

  Yari Fennel. Fennel had been to a late meeting with his divorce lawyer at the time of death. That was one person who could be immediately eliminated from inquiry. But Fennel was the only one, so far, with about twenty staff left to go.

  DSS had released the staff and closed services for the day. The lobby was empty as he walked toward the main door, still aromatic of coffee and traces of shampoo. There was a trash can in the corner brimming with wads of used tissues. Most of the news crews were still outside. Overton had given them a statement but Mike knew they’d be hungry for more.

  “Investigator Nelson?” A woman came from the other hallway before he reached the exit.

  “Yes?”

  “How did everything go?”

  He mentally brought up her file: Jessica Rankin. Short-statured, fifty-six, a divorcee who lived in Lake Haven. She had a close haircut, colored blonde to hide the gray. There were lines around her brown eyes. She lived alone and said she’d been home during the commission of the crime, watching Netflix.

  “Everything’s good,” he told her, stretching a smile. “Your staff was very cooperative.” He sobered and added, “Everyone is obviously deeply affected. But they were all able to bear up. An impressive group.”

  She nodded, wringing her hands, and looked out the window. He followed her gaze to the blackout tent in the parking lot. The evidence techs were almost done working the car and Harriet Fogarty’s body had finally gone to the morgue for autopsy where Terry, her husband, refused to leave her side. Mike had to go talk to him next and wasn’t looking forward to it. Talking to the bereaved was often the worst part of the job, not just because of their grief, but his own.

  “Have you found anything?” Her expression was earnest but there was a trace of irritability in her tone.

  “Right now we don’t know much, Ms. Rankin. This was a brutal crime. Haven’t seen anything like this in a long time. I’d say though that whoever did this has a lot of anger.”

  “Was anything stolen? Was it a robbery? I keep thinking it’s unusual this would happen at eight o’clock at night if it wasn’t a robbery; if it was random. Some of the staff leave at four, some stay until five. But after five, everybody is gone.”

  “I can’t really discuss that. But what I can say is I think this person felt they had a reason to be upset.” He pulled a business card from his wallet and passed it to her. “I’ve left quite a few of these, but here’s another.” He’d already asked her, but it couldn’t hurt: “Can you think of anyone, at all, who would want to do Harriet harm?”

  “Well, like I mentioned to you and Detective Overton – unfortunately we upset some people in this business. Regardless if they’re putting their child in danger, parents typically don’t like it when those children then get taken away.” She bit at her bottom lip for a moment. “What about…?”

  He waited.

  “What about Roberta Noelle?” Rankin asked. “She was supposed to be here; it was her case…”

  “We’re looking into everything,” Mike said. He moved toward the door.

  She went on, following him. “Was the car broken into?”

  “I really can’t say anything else, I’m sorry.”

  He opened the door to leave and Rankin said, “You know, caseworkers are responsible for a lot. Assessing the safety of children, investigating allegations of abuse or maltreatment—”

  “Yes, for s
ure. Thank y—”

  “If it’s occurring, then we access the necessary interventions to teach families how to do it differently.”

  “Right…”

  “We can access parent aids, or for drug issues we help them with… There are cases where the judge can court order services. Or the extreme, which is foster care.”

  He let go of the door and resigned himself to listen until the end.

  “In the assessment process, we interview all parties but families can refuse. We conduct home assessments, talk with and work with collaterals to monitor the situation. So there are a lot of people involved in what we do. That’s my point. A lot of people.”

  He nodded, feeling slightly sparked. “And then there’s also the family involved – the Fullers – and whoever they may be associated with. Which is why we’ll need to see everything from the Child Welfare Unit.” She started to object but he held up a hand, adding, “We’ll obtain a writ so we can have a look at what she’s been working on. What I’ve gotten is that Harriet didn’t do a lot of direct casework as a supervisor, but she was overseeing quite a lot.”

  “As a supervisor she had a smaller caseload. That’s why I think it’s possible that—”

  “I understand. We’re looking into it. Thank you, Ms. Rankin.”

  “Okay…” She seemed suddenly wistful and held up the business card, studying it as he finally pushed out through the door.

  * * *

  The afternoon was a scorcher, but he was grateful for the fresh air.

  Brit Silas, a crime scene technician who oversaw the processing of evidence, was next to the tent. A few reporters remained beyond the crime scene tape and saw Mike. They called questions and aimed their cameras but he headed for Silas first.

  “We’ve gone all through the vehicle for trace evidence,” she said as Mike neared. “It’s a deluxe model, leather interior. So far, no fingerprints. But we’ve got swabs for DNA processing.”

  Mike held up a hand toward the reporters – in a minute. “And you’ll get elimination prints from the victim and her husband along with their DNA samples...”

  Brit nodded, the afternoon sun glimmering in her eyes. “Step in?”

  “Sure.” He followed her through the flap into the tent. Lights had been rigged to illuminate the small area, turning the dried streaks of blood on the windscreen to black. One crime scene tech was still inside the vehicle, hunched over in the back. There was just enough room to walk around the car, but Silas was standing still, pointing at a yellow marker on the ground. “Partial boot print there,” she said. “That little bit of blood has tread on it. It’s amazing with all the blood in the car there aren’t more tracks. But the spatters are mostly on the windshield and dashboard. I’d say about four pints of blood in that car. At least fifty percent blood loss, class four hemorrhaging; she probably died of hypovolemic shock. But you’ll get all that from Dr. Crispin.”

  He looked down at the shiny splotch of dark red fluid on the asphalt. It held a slightly rectangular shape – like Silas had said, from the tread of a shoe. “Did they break in?”

  “Doesn’t look like it. No scratches, no obvious sign of forced entry. But we’ll have to take apart the door to be sure.”

  She pushed back out of the tent and Mike followed. There was another crime scene marker on the ground, and another red splotch, but smaller.

  “This is her blood,” Mike guessed.

  “I think so, yes. We’ll know soon enough. There’s only the two marks forming the trail. I’d say the doer got it on his shoe while he was in the car, just a little bit, and then tracked it, got rid of it on his walk away.”

  Mike followed the trail of two blood drops, looking into the parking lot and at the woods beyond. He could see a K-9 officer moving amid the trees, pulled along by his German Shepherd. He thought about Jessica Rankin saying that employees regularly cleared out at five. If the killer had targeted a specific caseworker, it wasn’t chance; he’d known she was working late.

  “Thank you, Brit.”

  Mike headed for the barricade, the reporters and microphones stretching toward him.

  * * *

  The dog was straining against its leash. Officer Crudup emerged from the trees just as Mike, finished talking to the TV people, reached the edge of the parking lot. They walked to the K-9 unit van together on the far side of the building.

  “So he was picking up on something, for sure,” Crudup said, referring to the dog. Crudup opened the rear of the van and let the German Shepherd off the leash. It hopped up into the vehicle where it circled around and stared back out at them, panting in the heat.

  Crudup was perspiring too, breathing heavy. He pointed back into the woods. “So right up there, you go about fifty yards, you come out on River Street. Runs all along the back of the woods. Frenchie took me all the way there, really straining. Walked me down the road shoulder a ways, stopped in between two houses.”

  “Like someone had parked there,” Mike guessed. “Parked up on River Street, came down through the woods, did the stabbing, and went right back out the same way.”

  “Could be.”

  Mike rotated around to face the front entrance. Lake Haven PD had viewed footage from the security camera, only to confirm that Harriet Fogarty had left at seven forty-nine the previous evening and walked out of frame. The camera had an angle on the access road, but no vehicles were recorded arriving or leaving.

  He left Crudup and circled the L-shaped, single-story building, taking his time, just looking at everything. He saw the yellow excavator and made a note in his little black notepad. By the time he wound up back at the K-9 van, he was sweating like everybody else.

  A second officer came out of the woods, returned a dog to the vehicle, and told him the same thing. “Hank took me up to River Street and along the road, stopped just before the big hill there.”

  Mike thanked him and headed away, dialing as he walked to his car. When Overton answered, he asked, “What did we get from the door-to-doors up on River Street?”

  “Just a few houses up there,” she said. “No one home; everyone at work.”

  “K-9 seemed to nose out one spot in particular. Can we send the guys back? Have them do another check. Maybe we get the phone numbers, talk to these people at work. I’m headed up there now.”

  He sank into his department-issued Impala, kept the door open while he turned up the air. Overton asked if there was anything specific they should be looking for. “I’ll find out,” he said.

  * * *

  Mike stopped on the street where the two K-9 officers said the police dogs had alerted. The pooches had followed their powerful senses of smell to a spot between two houses. One was white with a large, wraparound porch. The ground dropped away toward the woods, a steep embankment. The yard between the white house and the next, smaller house – pea-green with peeling paint – was overgrown with weeds. Mike thought some of those weeds looked trampled – like a path carved through the plantain grass and yellow clover.

  He stepped out of the Impala onto a narrow, broken sidewalk, crabgrass growing through the fissures. There was a rusted railing alongside the walk, bent and listing toward the downslope.

  Standing between houses, he peered into the woods, bending his knees, almost able to see through to the DSS building, but not quite. Still, it was easy access from here, if someone didn’t mind risking a little poison ivy.

  He walked to the white house, floorboards creaking as he moved to the door and knocked. Waited, knocked again; no one answered. It was still working hours, not quite two in the afternoon. Across the overgrown lot, the pea-green house looked just as deserted. In fact, he thought, moving back along the busted sidewalk, the green house didn’t look lived-in at all. He reached it and found the realty sign advertising it for sale.

  There were a few other houses around: One Victorian, proud but sagging with age, sat higher up the hillside. Beside it was McIntyre Street, narrow and covered in asphalt boils and potholes. Still further
up McIntyre was a nicer place, brown with red trim and a big porch. Between these two and the white house, Mike thought, maybe someone saw a car parked on the street sometime between seven and eight the night before. Someone cutting down from the street through the overgrown lot and into the woods.

  He started humping his way up to the Victorian to see if anyone was home when a Lake Haven cruiser pulled up behind his Impala. Two uniformed officers ambled over, sent by Overton, sliding nightsticks into their belts. Mike explained the idea that the killer had gone down to the DSS from River Street, asked them to have another look at everything in proximity, to call Brit Silas for any possible evidence, Overton for anything else.

  For Mike, it was time to talk to the husband.

  Four

  Terry Fogarty looked grim. He was about ten years older than Mike, grayer, wearing half-rimmed glasses and dressed in battered jeans and a plaid, short-sleeved shirt. He seemed in decent physical health, but emotionally, he was wrecked. Sitting in the medical examiner’s lobby next to Detective Lena Overton, the loss filled his eyes. He clasped his hands together between his legs, as if to keep them from shaking.

  Overton intercepted Mike and walked him into a vacant viewing room out of earshot. She closed the door. “It took me an hour to coax him away from the autopsy suite. Dr. Crispin is in there now. And their son, Victor, is on his way up from New York City.”

  “He’s not coming here, is he?”

  She sighed, and her shoulders sagged. “He says he wants to see his mother. I overheard Fogarty talking to him on the phone. You know how it can be with sudden bereavement.” Overton looked at the door. “He should be here any minute.”

  “Let’s talk to Fogarty alone first. Informally.”

  “Okay.” She started out of the room.