Authors: Kylie Brant
Waking Evil 02 (20 page)
“I’ll be done in another hour or so.”
“Right. This. Instant!” The man’s voice quivered with the same fervency he usually reserved for the pulpit. But his zeal was lost on Dev.
“The thing is, Reverend,” Dev started reasonably, “You don’t really have the right to be orderin’ me off the premises. This isn’t church property, it’s county. I have permission to be here, which, I have to point out, you don’t. So technically . . .” He paused a moment to watch the vein in the man’s prominent forehead begin to throb. “You’re the one without a right to be here now, not me.”
“Right? Right?” The man’s face, usually sallow, went florid. “My position grants me the right. God himself grants me the right.”
“A powerful friend, but in this case, he’s trumped by the sheriff. I’ll leave when I’m done here and not before.”
The man’s large worn hands clenched at his sides. “I have to say I’m not surprised at your flagrant disregard for simple decency. Given your bloodline.”
The urge to punch the man didn’t stem from his words. No, that temptation arose from Dev’s sudden vivid memory of summer bible camp when he’d been about ten. The churches in town joined forces when it came to saving the local youngsters’ souls from the devil that would likely lodge there given too much free time. That particular summer it had been Biggers’s turn to supervise the events. One day he’d delivered a particularly impassioned sermon on sin, and with his gaze fixed on Dev, had assured the unruly group that murderers burned in hell for all eternity.
It had been the last day his granddaddy had forced him to spend in bible school.
“I’m sure you’ve saved many a soul with that Christian attitude of yours,” Dev said tightly. Because it seemed wiser, he began moving away. “Maybe if your tolerance was as well-developed as your self-righteousness, your wife wouldn’t have run off with the Schwan’s man a few years back.” A low blow, but Dev didn’t mind fighting dirty with bullies, especially so-called moral ones.
“You’ll be condemned to perdition, Devlin Stryker,” the man’s voice thundered behind him. “You’ll burn in hell for this godless activity you embrace.”
“See you there. In the meantime, you’re violatin’ a county ordinance by bein’ here at night. I’d advise you to leave before I tip off the sheriff.”
“We’ve got a couple prints that can’t be matched to any of the kids’ shoes. Here.” Powell tapped one picture from the array on the table in front of them. “And here.”
Ramsey narrowed her eyes as she studied the photos. Most of the kids had been wearing sneakers, which seemed to be part of the teen uniform these days. But Robbie Joe had had boots on that night. And from the look of these photos, someone else had, too.
She snatched up the magnifying glass a second before Matthews reached for it and took a closer look.
Trampled
was the best description of the area around the shore of the pond. Print over print. But with the magnification, she could see that the sneaker prints, and the boot print attributed to Robbie Joe, were on top of the faint boot marks that had been made sometime earlier.
Trampled
was the best description of the area around the shore of the pond. Print over print. But with the magnification, she could see that the sneaker prints, and the boot print attributed to Robbie Joe, were on top of the faint boot marks that had been made sometime earlier.
“Still no way to know if those footprints were made by the perp,” Matthews pointed out, leaning uncomfortably close to peer over her shoulder. Ramsey shrugged him away.
“Look at the heel marks on that boot print going toward the pond and the matching one leading away. The first one’s deeper, isn’t it?” If the UNSUB was carrying something heavy, like a body, the print going toward the water should be deeper than the one leading away from it.
Powell held up a sheaf of papers. “The techs made measurements from the casts we took and determined that it is. Glenn’s right, there’s no way to be certain. But it’s sure possible they could belong to the perp.”
Matthews straightened. “So all we have to do is check the boots of everyone in a tri-county area or so and we’ll solve this thing.”
Ramsey ignored his barely checked sarcasm. This gave them something to hold in reserve, for when they did get a suspect. Something that could tie the guy to the crime or eliminate him as suspect. As such, it was valuable, even if it didn’t lead them to a specific individual right now.
“We should receive the LUDs for Frost’s cell phone by the end of the day.” Powell dropped the papers on the table and leaned both hands on it, looking from one of them to the other. “I’ll update Jeffries while I’m waitin’ for the phone records. I’ve already contacted the resort owner at Pine Lake. He affirms Quinn Sanders and Sarah Frost had reservations for the date in question. But someone needs to go down there and show him pictures of them and all the people they claim were with them. Get a positive ID, and then see if anyone there can alibi them for the time of death. Then we’ll need statements from everyone who was in the Sanders group that weekend.”
“I think Ramsey’d be best for—” Matthews started.
Powell interrupted him. “You’re goin’. Do you good to give the women in Buffalo Springs a rest for a few days.”
That surprised a half smile from Ramsey. She’d wondered just how much of Matthews’s pastime that Powell was aware of. Apparently little got by the man.
“I’d like to run down that substance in the victim’s stomach,” she said. “Talk to the people around here who are known to dabble with healing or holistic health. See if I can get an idea of what the plant is, who uses it, and for what purpose.”
Powell nodded. “I’d also like you to check in with that nail gal who gave you Frost’s name again. Find out if the victim mentioned someone botherin’ her. I have a meeting with Rollins this mornin’, then I’ll head back to Kordoba, too, and start talkin’ to customers who frequented the bar, ask them the same thing.” After a moment, he added, “How far have you gotten on the ViCAP printout?”
“Not far,” she said blandly. In fact she’d looked at the huge stack of responses and immediately determined to narrow the search. “I want to resend a more specific request focusing on multiple attackers, foreign substance ingested, and the method of killing the victim.”
He grunted. “That should keep you busy for a while. But in the meantime, start goin’ through the responses we do have.”
Ramsey caught Matthews’s grin from the corner of her eye. Clearly he was feeling better about his assignment. Probably looking forward to a new locale for picking up unattached women.
But Ramsey was content enough with the tasks she’d been given, with the exception of the bottomless pile of ViCAP responses. She’d had a feeling from the beginning about the unidentified substance found in Cassie Frost’s stomach.
Instinct told her if she found out what it was, it might just lead them to the killer.
After checking on Jonesy’s progress sorting out the fibers they’d collected from Frost’s apartment—and getting an unkind, growled response—Ramsey headed to her car. She figured she could put in a call to Tammy Wallace, the owner of the nail salon the victim had frequented, as she was driving into town.
The woman sounded harried when she answered. Ramsey had a moment to wonder just how busy a person could be who painted fingernails all day for a living before she began.
“I sure don’t recall Cassie mentionin’ anyone who was botherin’ her,” Tammy said in response to Ramsey’s first question. “I think I told you she didn’t offer much personal information. I didn’t even know exactly where she lived.”
“So she never mentioned her ex-fiancé, either?”
There was a pause. “Is that what it was?” There was a measure of sympathy in her voice. “I got the feeling someone had hurt her badly. That she was sort of usin’ some time to recover, you know? But she never seemed scared or anythin’. Just sort of . . . sad, I guess.”
Ramsey paused her vehicle at the end of the drive, waited for a total of four cars to go by on the blacktop before pulling onto it. That constituted Buffalo Springs’s morning traffic jam. “Did she ever talk about her sister?”
Again there was a short silence. She knew she’d taken the woman by surprise. “No-o.” The word was drawn out. “If I’d had to guess, I’d have figured she didn’t have one. Come to think of it, I think she might’ve told me she didn’t have any family. That’s odd, isn’t it?”
Not really, Ramsey could have told her. God knew she didn’t spend time talking about her own. Cassie had probably been doing her best to forget she had a sister. She’d been betrayed in the most intimate way possible by the two people she’d probably trusted most in the world.
Life, she reflected, could be a real bitch.
“Any of the other gals in your salon ever talk to her? Do her nails maybe?”
“Oh, no.” It was clear from Tammy’s voice that she’d ventured into a forbidden area. “She was my client, and no one else would have worked on her nails. But she got her hair cut here once. If you give me a few minutes, I can check on who cut it, if you’d like to talk to her.”
Ramsey agreed to hold as she drove slowly into Buffalo Springs. It was, if one liked small towns, a sort of quaint place. The streets were wide and lined with storefronts, many of them still filled. Some had modern facades, but others, like the museum, had been restored to the original front, dating, she supposed, back well over a century.
Flags lined the streets, left over from Flag Day, and barrels of flowers dotted the curb and spilled bouquets of color in front of shop doors. And everywhere she looked, it seemed, there were small clusters of people passing the time of day.
Three older men sat on a bench in front of a barbershop that still had an old-fashioned striped pole. Kids rode bikes down the street with little heed for the intermittent oncoming traffic. A small group of people were gathered outside the car repair station; another set were talking on the steps of the post office. Most raised a hand in a friendly wave as she drove by, in the manner of people in a small town. Either they recognized you, figured they knew you, or soon would. Most would find the scene charming. Friendly.
Of course, most hadn’t lived in a place similar enough for comparison. Most hadn’t experienced walking by similar bunches of people. Hearing their conversations stop, only to start again a few moments later.
Most, she thought grimly, didn’t realize the weight of the stigma that came from being born poor white trash in just this sort of town. How desperate the need to escape could be.
How that desperation could fuel decisions that were regretted for years afterward.
Tammy came back on the line then and introduced the hairdresser who had trimmed Cassie Frost’s hair two months ago. Ramsey asked her much the same questions she’d asked Tammy, with the same lack of results. She disconnected the call just as she spotted a parking spot close to her destination.
Minutes later, she was pushing open the door to the Buffalo Springs Family Health Clinic to find herself in a surprisingly modern lobby area. She walked up to the front desk where a woman in her late fifties was multitasking by talking on the phone while typing at the computer. Her dark hair was liberally threaded with gray and worn in two soft wings on either side of her face. Her nameplate read Jenny Callison.
The woman smiled at Ramsey and lifted a finger long enough from the keyboard to indicate for her to wait a minute.
Ramsey used the interim to gaze around at the other occupants of the waiting area. There was a couple who were easily in their nineties, a bearded man holding a blood-soaked bandage to his hand, and a younger woman with a boy who looked as though his biggest health problem was boredom. He kicked at the legs of his seat with increasing volume as he stared in disgust at the ceiling while his mother flipped through a magazine.
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