“ ‘An appointment’?” I echoed, not liking the expression on Mike’s face. “Since when does anybody phone us to make an appointment? They generally just drop by.”
“No, it’s more like we got an appointment with somebody else. Somewhere else.”
These were ominous words, when placed in relation to Mike’s brief exchange with Pete on the phone. “Ah—we’ve been summoned, you mean,” I judged at length.
“Pete was trying very hard not to put it like that,” Mike answered. “But yeah, we have.”
“Whaaat?” Lucas said once again, plainly skeptical of the idea that his new partners could be thus commanded. “Whatta you mean, ‘summoned’? Where? What for?”
“Over to the north side of Fraser,” Michael told him, glancing around the plane and obviously concerned about our various displays. “And if I’m any judge of how devious the fuckers we’ll be seeing are, we’d better lock this place up tight, and you’d better scurry your ass home, kid.”
“I ain’t ‘scurrying’ nowhere,” Lucas replied, “until you tell me why you have to go and who can just order you around the county like that—and why?”
“The last part of your question is fairly obvious, Lucas,” I answered. “And I would have hoped you’d be able to figure it out, by now.”
“Me? How?”
“Context, Lucas—put all the statements Mike and I have just made concerning the case, including what he discussed with Pete—or the half of that conversation that you and I heard, anyway—in relation to one another, and you’ve got what?”
I watched his young brain start stoking the fires of cogitation, and was pleased when, after only a few moments, his eyes grew wide and he looked up at Mike. “Ho-lee shit…” he exclaimed quietly. “They found another kid’s body!”
“Well done,” I said with a nod; and it really had been a good little piece of extrapolation.
“Yeah, just found one,” Mike said, busily shoveling away what papers he could from desktops into drawers and then shutting down his computers.
“And they want you guys there?” Lucas asked, very puzzled. “I thought you being in on it all was supposed to be on the down-low?”
“It was.” I tried not to sound as uneasy as I felt. “But apparently, no longer.”
“Hunh!” was all the sense Lucas could make of that; his mind was quickly moving on to what, for him, was the juicier part of the tale: “So—who’s dead this time?”
{vi.}
“A boy from some town just outside Fraser—North Briarwood,” Mike told Lucas, as he continued to try to conceal, insofar as it was even possible, our work on what would likely have to be considered, now, the first three deaths. “Went to the local school,” my partner went on. “You know which one that would be, Lucas?”
“Hey, North Briarwood covers a lot of territory—a lot of pretty fucked-up territory,” Lucas answered; and again I noted how easily he took news that ought to have been at least as unsettling to him as it was to Mike and me. Yet the revelation that another teen in his own county had died under what were more than likely going to be revealed as suspicious circumstances seemed more to heighten the thrill of the endeavor that he had so recently embarked upon than to frighten him; and this reaction, in turn, intensified my own sense of Lucas’ mind being, in its way, as unnerving as it was impressive. “But he probably got bussed down to South Briarwood Combined—they go from elementary all the way through twelfth grade at that school, it’s big as fuck-all.”
“Well, I could only get a few more details, understandably,” Mike replied, nodding to acknowledge Lucas’ report. “Pete was calling on the sly. But he said it was a young black kid, maybe fourteen or so. OD’d on smack in an abandoned apartment block on Fraser’s north side.” Finally slamming down a stack of papers, Mike erupted: “Damn it, Trajan, we can’t hide all this! And we certainly can’t eat it. Have you still got that monster padlock for the hatch door? We’ll just have to close it up and hope one of them hasn’t managed to get a search warrant…”
“Michael,” I said, fishing through my top desk drawer and producing the enormous, shining padlock, which fit into a latch I’d had welded onto the outside of the JU-52’s forward hatch. “Calm yourself, on that score—and tell us, if you can manage it, exactly who the ‘them’ you’re referring to is.”
“Seriously, dude,” Lucas said, snatching the lock out of my hand when I held it up. “Get a grip, Mike. Look at this fucker: even if they have a search warrant, they’ll need a blowtorch to get in here. So, like L.T. says—who are ‘they’?”
“Oh, you can probably guess,” Mike moaned, holding up a batch of papers in one hand and a bag of trace evidence in the other, then dropping them as a gesture of resignation. “Pete and Steve’ll be with them—but the others, shit: Cathy Donovan and Nancy Grimes, for starters.”
“Jesus,” I whispered, absorbing it; for this was unexpected and unsettling news.
“What, what, what?” Lucas anxiously questioned. “Who are they?”
“They are the assistant district attorney and the head of the State Police’s Forensic Investigation Center,” I replied, myself looking around, now, at all the various sheets of information to which we were not supposed to be privy: if this was a diversion, and somebody from the county or state busted into the plane while we were gone, we could say goodbye to a lot more than our involvement in the case. Our jobs, for example, would be on the line. “Who else, Mike?”
“Frank Mangold,” Mike answered, with even more concern.
“Who’s he?” Lucas asked, still breathlessly.
“Damn…” I was now amazed, as well as shocked; and, looking to Lucas, I added, “He’s a detective from the state Bureau of Criminal Investigation—and a nasty piece of work. Anybody else?”
“Mitch McCarron,” Mike went on.
“Major McCarron?” Lucas said, drawing surprised looks from both Mike and myself. “I know him—I mean I’ve met him. He’s the head of Troop G, State Police—my cousin’s one of his troopers, works outta the Fraser station. I’ve run into him a couple of times.”
“So have we,” I said. “And he, at least, is one we don’t have to worry about. Ever since I helped him shut down that damned petting zoo, he’s been a friend. But the rest…”
“And there may be more,” Mike continued. “Pete said he’s not sure, but it’s possible that Grimes may also be bringing one of her own forensic psychologists.”
“Jesus Christ,” I breathed. “A touch of overkill, isn’t it? How much do they know?”
“Nothing definite.” Mike had finally given up the idea of hiding the materials we’d compiled on the three cases, although he wasn’t at all pleased about it, and had thrown himself into the chair behind his trace examination table, where he thrust his face into his hands and spoke through his splayed fingers. “Apparently they heard a rumor that we were taking an interest in all this, and may be giving some informal advice to the sheriff. They want to warn us off of anything more serious—and warn us hard.”
“Does Steve or Pete have any idea how they heard?”
Mike shrugged. “Pete says it could have been someone in their office, although he doubts it—he’s been pretty careful about the information he’s sent us, about when he sent it and who might’ve seen him do it. Steve’s sure it came from outside their bunch, but from where—that’s a very fucking interesting question.”
“Not right now, it isn’t,” I said. “The far more interesting question is, why invite us to a murder scene if all they intend to do is warn us off any further participation in precisely such proceedings? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Since when does senior law enforcement have to make any sense?” Mike murmured. “Around here or anywhere else…”
“True,” I told him. “But this is a little extreme. You know…” I took a few more steps up and down the aisle of the JU-52. “If I didn’t know better—” I began to wag a pensive finger at the floor beneath my feet. “If I didn’
t know better…I’d say that when they found out that Steve and Pete had been consulting us, they got together to go talk to the sheriff and his people, after which they planned to come over here and give us their warning about getting in any deeper. But suddenly this latest case happened. Did you get any idea of the timeline?”
“All Pete said was that they just found the kid,” Mike answered, lifting his head with the first ray of hope. “It was a security guard working the block of buildings—he found the body, called it in to Steve’s office. Some junkie hanging out in the building ID’d the body.”
“And so I ask you again,” I said, knowing that Mike’s thoughts were running along the same lines as my own, “why invite us to a scene like that, just to tell us not to get further involved in this case? Unless they’re panicking.”
“Yep,” Mike said, standing up and pulling on his jacket. “Synchronicity at work.”
“Uh—guys?” said Lucas, who had taken to wandering around the plane, himself; but he’d stopped before the section of wall on which hung the information about, and picture of, Shelby Capamagio. “Guys, I think I gotta ask you something…”
“Hang on, Lucas,” I said, and then I turned back to Mike. “Apply the basic logic. Question the assumption that they want us there at all—they just happen to be there, and—”
“And,” Mike went on, wrapping an actual tie around his collar and beginning to knot it, “they’ve reached such a panic point that they feel like they need to talk to us, there or anywhere else, ASAP. They may even want outside advice, at this point—but they want to hammer it into our heads that our involvement has to remain informal, and under their control.”
“That’s great, guys,” Lucas said, “I’m really impressed, but just for one second, can you tell me one thing?” Lucas pointed at the posted papers concerning Shelby and then indicated his copy of the autopsy report. “It’s just that—who found her?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I said, turning to him. “Who found who?”
“Shelby!” the boy answered. “Who found her body? Who reported it?”
That dull queasy feeling that comes over one when an obvious consideration has been overlooked grabbed my gut, and I glanced at Mike, only to see that he’d had the same reaction:
“Who the fuck did find her?” Mike whispered to me.
“And who reported it?” I mumbled quietly. “It must be in the report, right? Mike?”
But Mike only began to shake his head slowly; and as our gazes mutually widened, he murmured, “Holy fuck!” and began to retrieve a goodly portion of the files that he had only just finished stuffing away so hurriedly.
“Oh, good Lord,” I said, hobbling over to stand behind Lucas and before the display of papers concerning Shelby’s case. “It has to be here, somewhere!”
“What?” came Lucas’ insistent voice. “Hey, what’s going on—you mean you really don’t know?”
“Hang on, Lucas,” I said, getting to my own station, opening my laptop and then the drawers of my desk. “We’ll find it, we’ll find it…” But Mike was already murmuring:
“It’s not here—Jesus Christ, L.T., it’s not fucking here!”
“It has to be,” I said, giving up on my documents, joining him, and scanning his papers, especially his notes on the initial sheriff’s report; and, when they revealed nothing, I began moving to the other displays around the fuselage once again, out of desperation. “The first two are here: the Kozersky girl was found by her family, the Howard boy by some kids. This is basic stuff, damn it, somebody has to have made a note of it in Shelby’s case—”
“Yeah?” Mike said, quickly moving to the desk that held his computer, then booting it back up and reading his file on Shelby’s death. “It’s so fucking basic that neither one of us thought of it. Took Lucas to catch it. How the fuck could we possibly have missed it…?”
“So I did figure it out!” Lucas declared. “Well, you guys’ll be treating me with a little more respect, I have a feeling.”
“I told you to keep quiet for just a damned second, you truant!” I rejoined Mike at his desktop computer. “Is it there? Was it that bunch of morons in her family, up the hollow from the trailer?”
“Nah,” Mike said quickly. “No phone, remember? And even if they had found her, did it seem like they would have reported it?”
“Yo!” Lucas said. “Listen, guys, why would you be so shocked? I mean, the sheriff didn’t even know she was doing that asshole Mr. Holloway—I’m sure they could have missed a detail like this.”
“Which doesn’t explain how we missed it,” I answered without thinking.
Lucas paused before replying: “Oh. Yeah, you’re right—there you’re on your own.”
“Just shut up, will you, for five minutes,” I said, moving over to him and retrieving the big silver padlock. “Unless you have something constructive to offer.”
“O-kay,” the kid answered, somehow seeming to grasp the gravity of the moment without taking it entirely seriously.
“It’s not here, it’s not here,” Mike was repeating, scanning every inch of the reports. “And I’ll tell you what I think happened—somebody in Steve’s office took an anonymous call, a tip, then got on the horn to his squad car and the whole thing snowballed, especially given the panicky mood of the ADA and her crew, before anybody bothered to make an official note of where the call originated—it just got lost in the whole craze over having another teen suicide on their hands.”
“Yeah, I’ll buy that, if we’re speculating,” I said.
“Exactly what I was going to say,” Lucas announced with a grin.
“But the main thing,” I continued, “is that we do not know. And what’s worse, it didn’t occur to us any more than it occurred to them to ask so fundamental a question.”
“Okay, okay,” I finally conceded to him. “It was a very good catch, and you’re a damned genius—that help?”
“Maybe,” Lucas said, skeptical of my tone; but I couldn’t stop for any more banter.
“Come on, Mike,” I said. “We need to get going; and looking at these things over and over isn’t going to make it appear. Besides, it suddenly occurs to me that this may be information we can use, however much it reveals how rusty at this sort of thing we are. But for now, what we need is a reason to pull Pete and Steve aside when we get there…”
“I’ve got one,” Mike said, grabbing some papers from beside his stereomicroscope. “After I formed my little theory about Shelby, I asked Pete if he could get ahold of the trace tests that should have been run on the Kozersky girl. He did, and, like I say, sent over the report. But I also asked him to bring some of the physical evidence that will confirm my theory—and we’ll need to view that in private with Pete, which provides an excuse for pulling him aside. And I think I know what you’re driving at…”
“All right, then—for the time being we go with that, and get ready. And by ‘ready,’ I’m being rather pointed.” I began to move toward my own desk again. “Let me put it in terms that our young friend might even recognize: ‘There may be some little danger, so kindly put your army revolver in your pocket.’ ”
“Hey, I know that line!” Lucas declared; and when I looked over, I saw that he was hanging and swinging from the plane’s hatch. “That’s Sherlock Holmes—the one about the guys with red hair.”
“Jesus,” Mike said to me, leaning down to open a lower drawer of one of his own desks. “You really think it could get that serious?”
“What I think,” I answered, as my partner drew a 1.875-inch-barreled Smith & Wesson .38 Special revolver out of his desk, “is that we still have permits to carry, we’re headed for a crime scene, and we now know that senior county law enforcement is beginning to take an interest in our activities. We have no reason to trust senior law enforcement anywhere, anymore, Mike—you know they all cover each other’s asses.”
“Hunh?” Lucas continued, still shouting from his monkey-like perch on the hatch. “You
’re going to get in a gunfight with the cops?”
Sighing, I said, “Not unless we have to. But if you’ve been paying attention to the news lately, Lucas, you know how trigger-happy they’ve all become—toward just about anybody.” And then I finally managed to locate my own handgun, an original Model 1911 Colt .45, a little bit of history that, like most things in the hangar, had been a prized possession of my great-grandfather’s.
“Yeah,” the boy agreed. “That’s true.” Then he switched gears once more: “ ‘The Red-Headed League’! That’s the name of that story. You guys think you’re so smart…”
“ ‘Omne ignotum pro magnifico,’ ” I shot back at the self-satisfied youth, as I quickly got my jacket off and slipped on a shoulder holster for the .45, while Mike slapped a Velcro-banded neoprene receptacle for his .38 just above his ankle.
“And I know what that means, too!” Lucas shouted defiantly; then his voice drooped a little as he added, “Or at least, I used to. It’s Latin, from the same story—my sister told me what it meant when I read it, she takes Latin from her tutor.”
“I’m overjoyed for her,” I said, following Mike through the hatch of the JU-52. “At least there’s one scholar in your family. But didn’t I tell you to go home already?”