Beneath the Bones (10 page)

“Sheriff Talon.”

“I’m finished with the diner, Sheriff.”

Ronnie, and his voice was oddly toneless, almost as if he were reading from a script and his heart wasn’t in his performance.

“Find anything of interest?”

“Not really. Got some prints, but it’s hard to say if they’ll come to anything. I printed Mrs. Coulter for comparison, too.”

Joanne knew there was no way to print all of Debbie’s customers, especially since some of them just stopped in as they were passing through. Any prints Ronnie got might well prove useless when it came to either identifying
or
eliminating suspects. Still, they had to try.

“Anything else you’d like me to do?” Ronnie asked, tone still flat and mechanical.

She was starting to worry about him. What if his neurosis was getting worse and he had the beginnings of a full-blown psychotic breakdown? She hated to think so selfishly, but she couldn’t afford to lose him, not right now with a murder case on their hands.

“Why don’t you head back to the office and get the prints ready to travel to the state crime lab? I want them to go out ASAP.”

One of them — Ronnie or Joanne herself — would drive the prints to Columbus and deliver them personally to maintain the chain of evidence. Not for the first time she wished Cross County had its own crime lab. The state lab usually had a backlog of evidence to process, and it could well be some time before they got any results back to her. She’d make a few calls, see if she could get them to expedite her material, but she doubted it would help speed things up significantly. She supposed she could ask Marshall to see what he could do. Rumor had it that the Crosses had connections in the statehouse. She didn’t like the idea of asking Marshall for help, and she sure as hell didn’t like the idea of being beholden to him for a favor. Still, she’d consider it.

“Will do, Sheriff. Anything else?”

“I’ve got reason to believe that Tyrone Gantz may have witnessed the break-in at the café last night. We’ll need to get a statement from him. I’m poking around at the Deveraux Farm right now, and I may be here for a while, so I need someone to track him down and talk to him. When you get back to the station, see if you can find someone to take care of it.” She thought of who was on duty today. “Kelly, maybe. Or if she’s too busy, ask Harley.” She wasn’t about to ask Ronnie to do it. The way he was acting, the last thing she wanted to do was put anymore stress on him.

“Sure thing, Sheriff.”

Joanne told Ronnie to keep her posted, then she disconnected and slipped her phone into its carrier. She and Dale had continued walking while she’d spoken with Ronnie, and they now reached the Deveraux house. Most of the white paint had flaked away over the years, exposing dull gray wood. The windows — those that hadn’t been shattered by stone-throwing teenagers eager to prove their bravery — were streaked and grimy. Half the shingles had peeled off the roof, and Joanne thought it was only a matter of time before the elements weakened the roof to the point of collapse. The barn didn’t look any better. Joanne assumed it had been painted once, but not a single flake remained to indicate the color it had been. It was a gray, lopsided structure covered by a rusty corrugated tin roof. It had no windows to break, so the local daredevils had been forced to carve graffiti into the soft wood. Most of it has simple and banal — people’s names, profanity, and names of bands followed by
rocks!
or
rules!
And in more than few cases, those words had been scratched out and
sucks!
etched beneath. But a few of the messages were more original and some were downright enigmatic.
Jizbo seeks solace and They came in through the out door
. The strangest was a smiley face with two X’s in place of eyes, and above it the words
Only the dead
. Considering what had happened behind these walls, she couldn’t help shuddering when she saw it.

They stopped at a point halfway between the house and the barn. Dale took a picture of the former and continued to look at it when he was finished.

“It wasn’t all that different twenty years ago,” Dale said. “The yard was better kept, though it needed mowing, and both the house and the barn could’ve used fresh paint. Maggie Deveraux had lost her husband Bill only six months earlier, and she was still grieving him. She was Carl’s first victim, you know.”

Joanne
did
know. Carl the Cutter was local legend, and even if she hadn’t been sheriff, she’d have been familiar with the details of the case. Still, she didn’t want to interrupt Dale. He’d accompanied her predecessor, Sheriff Manchester, when the bodies had been discovered, and she wanted to hear about Dale remembered about the crime scene.

“Carl never did explain why he chose Maggie. ‘I had reason,’ was all he’d say whenever asked why he’d picked any of his victims. He drove out here one night, parked his pick-up, calmly walked up to the door and knocked. It was close to midnight, but even so, Maggie answered the door. This is the country, and if someone’s at your door late at night, it usually means someone’s in trouble. Unfortunately in this case, that someone turned out Maggie. Carl forced his way in, slashed her throat, and then carried her body out to the barn. It was there that he carved his signature design into her abdomen.”

To anyone else, Dale’s recitation of these events would’ve seemed detached and unemotional, but Joanne could hear the underlying tension in his voice as he fought to keep a firm hold on his revulsion.

Dale turned to take a picture of the barn and then, as if by unspoken agreement, the two of them started walking toward it. Joanne kept her gaze on the ground, looking for any evidence that someone had been here recently, but she saw nothing. Her rational mind was beginning to think this was going to turn out to be a wasted trip, but the mild nausea roiling in her stomach and the vague tingling at the back of her skull said different.

Dale continued his story. “There was a padlock on the outside of those doors.” He pointed to the barn’s main entrance, a pair of large doors that were designed to swing outward. The wood had become warped over the years, and the doors didn’t quite align anymore, leaving a three to four-inch gap between them. “Carl never used them, though. There’s a regular-sized door in the back, but Carl never kept it locked. It was like he didn’t care if anyone discovered the bodies — or maybe
wanted
them to be discovered.”

“That might not mean anything,” Joanne said. “Carl wasn’t exactly a poster boy for mental health. His mind might’ve been so far gone it never occurred to him to try to conceal his crimes.”

“But he took over Maggie’s farm after killing her and used it as his base of operations. Seems like the act of someone who wants to carry out his work undisturbed.”

“That’s not the same as wanting to avoid capture,” Joanne pointed out. “And what was left of his sanity probably degenerated pretty quickly as the bodies began to pile up.”

“Maybe,” Dale said. “But it struck me as strange back then, and it still seems that way to me now.”

They reached the barn and stopped before the warped double doors.

“The smell was really strong this close,” Dale said. “I hadn’t lived in Cross County very long at the time, but even a city boy like me could tell that we weren’t smelling moldy hay and cow shit. It was late spring, which was the only saving grace. I don’t even want to think how bad the stench would’ve been in summer.”

Joanne’s queasy stomach gurgled at the thought, and she pressed a hand against her abdomen to quiet it.

Dale inhaled through his nose. “No smell now, though. That’s a good sign, right?”

Joanne didn’t answer. The fall weather was cool enough to keep a dead body from getting too rank — especially if it was fresh. But she didn’t see a need to tell Dale that.

“I assume you and Sheriff Manchester entered through the back,” she said.

Dale nodded. “Stan didn’t want to mess with breaking the lock on the main doors. Thought it would make too much noise. ‘Better to get in as fast and quiet and you can,’ he told me later.”

“Wise man. I think we’ll do that same.”

They walked around to the rear of the barn, seeing nothing along the side of the structure but more weeds and graffiti. There was nothing particularly remarkable about the back door, save for its smooth, clean surface. Perhaps the graffiti artists hadn’t gotten around to leaving their mark on this door yet. Or maybe the thought that Carl the Cutter had once used the door made them leave it alone out of a strange sort of respect — or perhaps fear.

Dale reached for the rusty doorknob, but Joanne grabbed hold of his wrist before he could touch it.

He gave her a sheepish smile. “Sorry. You’d think I’d know better by now.”

Joanne released her grip and Dale lowered his hand to his side.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “Your mind’s twenty years in the past right now.”

She removed a rubber glove from her pocket and slipped it over her left hand. She wanted to keep her right uncovered in case she needed to use her 9 mm. She bent close to examine the doorknob and saw nothing special. No sign of forced entry, no sign the reddish-brown rust had been recently disturbed. She gently took hold of the knob and turned. It moved more easily than she expected, and she pushed the door open. The hinges creaked, the sound loud as a gunshot in the silence.

But not loud enough to cover the sound of something moving inside the barn.

Joanne froze, left hand still gripping the doorknob. She felt her pulse speed up, and she rested her right hand on the butt of her weapon, though she made no move to draw it yet.

“Stay back,” she whispered to Dale. She didn’t know if he’d heard the sound, but she didn’t have time to explain. Either way, she hoped he’d listen to her and do as she said. She then stepped across the barn’s threshold into shadow.

She immediately stepped to the side so she wouldn’t be backlight by the light filtering in through the open doorway. The barn’s tin roof kept the light out, but the planks, like the large double doors, had warped over the years, creating numerous spaces for sunlight to penetrate. The interior of the barn remained dim and shadowy, but there was enough light that Joanne’s eyes quickly began to adjust. She swept her gaze from right to left then back again. She saw the bulk of an old tractor, a jumble of gardening tools, a rototiller, and the like. Evidently Bill Deveraux hadn’t kept any animals in the barn and had only used it for equipment storage. Joanne didn’t like it. Too many places to hide in here.

Joanne unclipped the flashlight from her belt, thumbed the switch to activate it, and held her breath as she shined the beam where the mass of junk was the thickest. If there was anyone in here and they were armed, she’d just made herself the perfect target. There was another reason she held her breath, though: so she could listen better. She strained to hear the slightest sound that would indicate someone was hiding in the barn — a foot sliding across the dirt floor, the rustle of clothing as someone shifted position, the too-loud respiration of excited breathing. But she heard nothing.

“Cross County Sheriff’s Department!” she called out. “Anyone in here?” She waited for a count of ten as she panned the flashlight beam around the barn. Still nothing.

One side of the barn was relatively clear of clutter, and as the flashlight beam passed over it, Joanne had the impression that a shadowy form was standing there. A thrill of adrenaline surged through her, and she swung the beam back as she drew her 9 mm from its holster.

But no one was there.

“Sheriff’s Department!” she repeated. “Come out with your hands in the air!”

She moved the beam rapidly back and forth, searching for whoever it was because goddamnit, she’d seen someone! But once again the light revealed no one, and Joanne knew that there wasn’t enough cover on that side of the barn to allow someone to hide so swiftly and silently.

The noise she’d heard was probably an animal of some sort — a raccoon or a feral cat — that had been spooked when she’d opened the door. Whatever it was had most likely fled the barn and taken refuge in the high grass outside. She was angry at herself for allowing her imagination to run away with her like a damned rookie. It was one thing to react cautiously when one heard a noise, but quite another to imagine seeing someone that wasn’t there. Even worse, the figure had resembled Carl Coulter: stocky, thick-necked, shaved head, black muscle shirt, and ratty jeans. It was the way he’d looked when Sheriff Manchester and Dale had caught him right here in this very place. She knew, because she’d seen the photos Dale had taken. In the pictures, Carl’s hands had been coated with blood, for he’d just finished working on the corpse of his latest — and as it would turn out last — victim, Marianne Hendrickson.

Had her imaginary Carl had bloody hands? She’d tried to remember, but the vision, if that was the right word for it, had lasted only a fraction of a second. She decided it didn’t really matter. It hadn’t been real, so who cared about specifics? Still, she thought maybe she
had
seen smears of crimson on his hands. Red, wet, and fresh.

She replaced her weapon in its holster. “All right, Dale. You can come in.”

Dale entered and walked over to join her. “All clear, I presume.”

“I make no guarantees that there aren’t any bats hanging from the rafters, but I’m fairly confident there are no murderers hiding in the shadows.” She decided not to mention her “vision” of Carl to Dale. Not only because it was embarrassing, but because he had a tendency to place far more stock in such occurrences than she did. The last thing she needed was for him to start theorizing about why she’d seen Carl and what it might mean. She knew
exactly
what it meant. She was running on too little sleep today, simple as that.

She realized then that she was trying awfully hard to convince herself it was nothing. She also realized it wasn’t working.

“At least there are no other bodies here,” Dale said. “After seeing Carl’s mark on that boy’s belly last night, I was afraid we’d find corpses stacked halfway to the ceiling.” He looked around. “Nothing’s changed. By now, you’d think vandals would’ve left their mark inside as well as out.”