Wolfwraith (27 page)

Lorene crept slowly forward, drawing her pistol. Shadow followed along, wishing for his own gun, which he seldom carried when off-duty.

Helen Parsons sprawled on the porch, her throat ripped out like all the others. The side of her head was darkly bruised and a deep cut had been inflicted behind her left eye. Rips in her clothing made it appear she had been in a terrible fight. The old rocking chair on the porch, left by a previous tenant, had been smashed. Helen hadn’t been some young, tender girl, reluctant to defend herself until it was too late.

Jesus, Shadow thought irrationally, what’s she doing here? It isn’t even noon. I told her I’d call.

When they reached the edge of the porch, Lorene flattened her back against the siding and reached out with her free hand without exposing herself in case there was anyone inside the front door. She touched Helen’s leg. “Still warm.” She pulled back behind the corner, gun up and at the ready.

Shadow started to ask if they should check for a pulse, but looked at the severity of the throat wound and remained silent.

“Shadow, is your door locked?” Lorene asked brusquely.

“My door?”

“The killer could be inside.” Her head was rotating in all directions. “This happened only a few minutes ago. Is the door locked?”

“Uh, no.”

“We have to go in. Damn! I wish you’d carry your gun. Where is it?”

“In my night stand.”

“Locked up?”

“No.”

“Shit! You need to realize there are more dangerous things than rabid raccoons in the world. If anyone’s in there, he could have your gun. Follow me and stick tight. We’ll clear the kitchen first, then your room. It’s behind the kitchen, right?” She’d been in the house that morning, before they set out on the bay.

“Yeah,” he answered. It was hard to concentrate.

“When we get to the bedroom, grab your gun. I’ll check the rest of the house. Let’s go.”

She whirled around the corner and went up the steps, hopping over the dead woman. She went through the door at a run, Shadow following numbly, unconsciously letting Lorene take charge. As he stepped over Helen’s body, he felt a surge of the now familiar ominous presence.

Once inside, he saw Lorene, a wall behind her as she whirled around to look over the entire room. She held her pistol out in a two-hand grip.

Shadow waited inside the doorway, unsure, until she motioned him in with a jerk of her head. Moving fast, she led him to his bedroom door, where she again went in first. She checked the room quickly, then yanked open his closet and bathroom doors to make sure both spaces were empty.

“Get your gun,” she ordered crisply. “Stay here and call your boss. Tell him to seal the park and the refuge too. Have them call the cops to set up a roadblock on the road out of Sandbridge. We’ll get the bastard this time; there’s no other way out.”

The inaccuracy of the statement somehow shocked him from his lethargy. “Yeah, there is. Boats. I’ll have them cover all of the docks, and let’s not forget the North Carolina border. There’s no road, but he could get out along the beach and maybe have a car stashed down there.”

“Good idea.” She nodded.

He pulled his gun from the drawer and set it on the nightstand. Grabbing the phone, he dialed Alex’s residence, knowing, since it was a weekend, there would be only a volunteer on duty in the contact station.

“I’m on it,” Alex said when he had been told the situation. “Can you block off the Wash Woods dock yourself? It’ll take a quarter of an hour before I can get someone down there.”

“Don’t worry. I’m in my bedroom, so I can see the dock from here.” He could hear Lorene moving through the house. “We just pulled in there ourselves, anyway, and there was no boat anywhere around.” He looked carefully to be sure their two kayaks were still there.

Lorene appeared at his bedroom door. “Couldn’t he have a boat stashed in the weeds somewhere?”

“Sure but it’s not likely,” he replied. “Hard to get to—have to wade through the swamp.”

Alex, still on the line, asked, “Who’s there with you?”

“Agent Walker,” he answered. Then, thinking of Lorene’s question, said, “Could you get a boat out on the water? Have them hang out off False Cape and if anyone moves on the bay, they’ll be seen.”

“You got it,” Alex replied. “I’ll be down there myself right away; I can set all this up on the radio while I’m driving,” he said and hung up.

Shadow turned to Lorene. “Alex is on his way here. He’s going to put someone out on the bay to watch for anyone crossing to the mainland. It takes a while to get across the bay and it couldn’t be done without being spotted.”

Lorene nodded, and then said, “Okay, real quick now, let’s figure out how to catch this son of a bitch. The woman on the porch—I’ve seen her around. She’s a reporter isn’t she?”

“Helen Parsons. She was checking something out for me, about the park closing. We had an idea it might somehow be linked to the killings because of the value of the land—that was before you caught Jennings. She was still following through on the park deal, but not about the killings.” He paused. “I was supposed to hook up with her later today, but she came early. She was checking old deeds and such; maybe she found something important.”

“Well, let’s forget Jennings anyway. You were obviously right about that, you and your damn hunches. Stay here while I check out the yard.”

“I’m going with you.” He picked up his pistol.

She looked at him flatly for a moment, the embodiment of professionalism. “Suit yourself,” she said. “But don’t touch anything and don’t mess up any footprints. We’ll take a quick look and leave the rest for forensics. I only want a clue as to which way the killer went; he can’t have gotten far.”

“I’ll be careful.” He found himself a bit annoyed by the implication he was a klutz, remembering how she had once taken him to task for messing up the Gordon crime scene.

“Okay, let’s go,” she said. “Be careful; he could still be hanging around here.”

They left the house, guns in hand, and Lorene began a more thorough examination of Helen’s body, but without coming too near. The sand all around was disturbed; there might be a useful footprint. Shadow walked to the other end of the porch and stepped off, so he wouldn’t have to step over Helen’s body again.

He walked along the narrow, stony path, careful not to leave any footprints in the soft, moist sand of his front ‘lawn.’

Without leaving the walkway, he looked for impressions in the sand. Anything from before the rainsquall would have been washed away, of course, so any prints would be fresh. He saw nothing; the killer must have also stayed on the pathway. Next, he looked at the gravel road, which ended at his house. His truck was parked alongside the house, so the road was clear.

The roadbed was free of marks, as he had expected, but he saw a narrow track running through a pothole filled with leaf debris and wet muck. It hadn’t been made by Helen’s bike, still leaning against the tree; the impression was too wide for its tires.

So who the hell would viciously kill a woman and use a bicycle as a get-away vehicle? Then again, a bike was a great way to get around the park, fast, quiet, and easily stashed away.

He thought back to the few minutes between the end of the squall and when they had found the body. He hadn’t heard the sound of tires on gravel. Would he have noticed, though, in the thrill of kissing Lorene?

Easily stashed away—why did that ring a bell? Then he thought of False Cape Frank hiding his bike in the bushes near the cemetery grove.

Chapter Twenty-One

Shadow, have you lost your mind?

“Holy fucking shit!” Shadow dropped to his knees to get a closer look at the track.

“What?” Lorene called. “Did you find something?”

He didn’t answer. It had all clicked together for him. If the park closed, who would have first claim on the land? According to Helen, it would be the families who had long ago been legally coerced into relocating by the state. Why would False Cape Frank have been at the Wash Woods graveyard, leaving shells at the tombstone of Mamie Bunch if she were not some sort of relation? Shadow tried to remember their conversation, the only time they had ever talked. Frank had said something like “traipsin’ these woods as a boy,” and “angering the spirits of the folks who used to live here,” although Shadow couldn’t recall the precise words.

What if Frank had some claim to property here on the cape? Could he be the ‘hold out’ Barnett had mentioned, who would get an ‘offer he can’t refuse?’

He recalled the transit on Frank’s bicycle. Shadow had seen Barnett with a team of surveyors near the False Cape dock, a couple of times. Had the old man seen them also, and put two and two together with four being a causeway?

Lorene had stepped nearer while he pondered.

“Hey,” she said again. “What is it?”

“I know who did it.” He spoke softly, afraid if he said it aloud, it would turn out not to be true.

Lorene ran the rest of the way to him. “Who? And how the hell do you know?”

“That.” He pointed at the marks in the mud.

She leaned forward and looked carefully. “A bicycle? How does that tell you who the killer is?”

“It doesn’t, exactly,” he said. “But it made me think of this guy since every time I see him, he’s on a bike. And I know that, at least once, he hid it away.”

“Oh, Jesus, another hunch. And this one’s so far out it must have been beamed down from the moon.”

Crap, why didn’t she ever believe him? “I’m telling you I know who killed her. Okay, I don’t have proof, but he’s on a bike, so he couldn’t have gotten far.”

“Who?”

He turned and ran toward his truck, parked alongside the house. “I’ll tell you on the way,” he shouted back. “Let’s get after the son-of-a-bitch first.”

She ran after him. “Hold it,” she cried. “Wait.”

“He’ll get away!” He slid into the truck’s cab.

He expected her to get in the other side, but instead she held his door open. “I can’t leave a crime scene untended. For all we know, the killer could be hiding in your crawl space or one of the other buildings.”

“Stay here then. I’ll go alone.”

“No, damn it! This is a murder investigation and you’re not trained to handle it, let alone chase after a dangerous killer. Your boss will be here in a couple of minutes. Fill me in on who you think it is and why.”

“Who made you boss?” He said and saw her eyes turn to ice.

“My badge makes me boss in a situation like this. I’m serious, Shadow.”

He felt like telling her where to stuff her badge, but knew he was being unreasonable. “Okay, you win this time. But there’s something else I can do.” He turned on the two-way radio. Alex’s voice came from the dash speaker, talking to one of the refuge wardens. Shadow held the microphone near his mouth, driving with the claw, and waited for a pause in the conversation.

“False Cape Six to False Cape Two.”

“Go ahead, Six,” Alex answered immediately.

“The killer is on a bike,” Shadow said. “Probably heading north along the road, but that’s a guess. And...” He hesitated, deciding whether he was confident enough to accuse someone. “I think it’s False Cape Frank.”

“False Cape Frank!” Alex paused. “Shadow, have you lost your mind? He’s an old geezer; there’s no way.”

“Well, we’ll soon know, I hope. Tell everyone to be looking for someone on a bike; we found bicycle tracks. But if our boy Frank is found in the park, we need to talk to him.”

“Ten-four. Did all units copy?”

Several voices quickly answered in the affirmative, one after another.

“Six,” Alex said. “I’ll be at your location in two minutes; I’m passing False Cape Meadow now.”

“Ten-four,” Shadow answered. “Out.” He hung up the mike.

“So who the hell is False Cape Frank?” asked Lorene.

“He’s an old guy who’s been hanging around the park for years. Always rides a bike, although he sometimes leaves it and hikes through the dunes.” He marshaled his thoughts. “Helen called me this morning and said the governor and some of his cronies are trying to close the park to get the land. The park will revert to the original owners, according to the charter, or whatever it was, so they’re buying up the land rights through a dummy corporation. I think Frank is heir—or at least has a claim to—some property here. If they approached the old guy, and he realized what they’re up to, it would piss him off. He wants the cape to remain the way it was before the park opened.”

He took a deep breath, then continued. “I think he’s trying to get everyone to leave False Cape. Maybe he figures the publicity of so many murders would keep people from coming here—everything points that way.”

“You’d better be right. Do you realize everyone heard your transmission, not just your boss?” Lorene’s left hand rubbed her temple, as though she had a headache. Her automatic remained in the other hand, held loosely at waist level. Shadow briefly wondered if she had the safety on, but wasn’t concerned. Lorene was obviously very competent with firearms from what he had seen. She was pretty damn bossy, too, when you came right down to it.

“It’s more than a hunch. That’s why Helen Parsons was coming out here,” he said. “I don’t know all of it yet, but she thinks—thought—the governor is closing the park so it can be sold off through or to his brother-in-law, something like that. The thing we couldn’t figure out is why, since the land isn’t worth much without access. Helen was looking into it and found out they were surveying the bay to put in a causeway. A frigging causeway!” He still couldn’t believe he’d never thought of such an obvious solution to the isolation of the park.