Hail Mary, page 7
Beau’s hard jaw pulsed, but he didn’t rise to the bait. Instead, he pulled out his little notebook and removed a pen from the front pocket of his shirt, which was a wild mix of greens, from bright, neon lime to the darkest forest, a pattern of leaves and lush jungle undergrowth.
Wynn didn’t get it. He was abrupt and gruff; unsmiling and unbending. What was he doing wrapped in such vivid, mind-bending color? A veritable celebration of life?
Who in hades shopped for him?
And then she thought oh.
No doubt the same woman who’d bought him his gold watch.
His dead wife.
A woman he grieved deeply. Those words had slapped her, the pain in them so sharp and piercing, she could have reached out and touched it.
You’re a jerk. Even though she hadn’t meant to wound him.
But how was she to know? It wasn’t like he wore a ring.
“Have you heard about the bank robbery down in Dorchester, Earl?” he asked.
Bank robbery?
Wynn straightened and set her cup down on the counter.
“Sure.” Earl shrugged. “It’s been all over the news.”
“Can you tell me where you were on Monday morning at eleven am?”
Earl folded his arms on the table.
“You bet,” he said conversationally. “I was down at the flea market, lookin’ for fly rods. The old ones are worth somethin’, you know. Every once in a while I stumble across one.”
Which was true. She was constantly tripping over the long, slender rods when she made Earl’s bed.
But why was Beau asking Earl about a bank robbery? A frigging bank robbery?
Her heart fluttered painfully. Because Earl didn’t seem at all surprised.
And he should have been.
“The flea market down in Dorchester?” Beau clarified, scribbling into his notebook.
“The one over in Violetta is too small. Full of junk. The one in Dorchester is on a circuit. Better stuff.”
“Were you by yourself?”
“Nope. Everybody except the Sisters went down to the market that day.”
“The Sisters?”
“Eloise and Ethel,” Wynn said.
“Did you buy anything?” Beau asked.
“Nah.” Earl blinked. “I didn’t find no rods.”
Beau sat back in his chair and stared at him. Earl stared back.
And Wynn began to feel a little sick. It wasn’t like Earl to take an interrogation lying down. When he’d run over the sign at the Post Office, Hatfield had been forced to chase him through the streets of Blossom Hills on foot. People still talked about it.
“What makes you think I’d have anything to do with a bank robbery?” he asked finally. “I’m just an old man.”
Wynn snorted.
“What happened to your hand?” Beau looked pointedly at the collection of Hello Kitty band-aids that covered the back of Earl’s left hand. “Looks like it hurt.”
“I’m an old man,” Earl repeated and shrugged. “I fall down.”
Another short stare-down ensued.
“You can’t be serious,” Wynn said to Beau because come on. “He’s a suspect?”
“I found something that belongs to you, Earl,” Beau said, ignoring her. “And I’m having a hard time understanding how it could have ended up at the scene of a federal crime.”
She watched Earl’s Adam’s apple bob. And thought: aw, crap.
“You don’t say?” Earl’s brows rose. “Huh. What was it?”
“Your senior discount card for Eckhart’s Grocery. Strangely enough, it was on the floor of the Dorchester National Bank, right in front of the teller’s booth where the bank robber stood.”
Wynn stared at Beau’s flinty expression and felt her coffee sour in her stomach. She was afraid to look at Earl.
“When was this?” Earl wanted to know.
Beau’s brilliant green gaze was cold. “Monday afternoon.”
“Hell, I lost my wallet more than two weeks ago,” Earl told him, shaking his head. “Down at the mall in Edgerton.”
Wynn tried not to stare at him. The liar.
“Did you report it?” Beau asked.
“Nah. Didn’t have nothin’ worthwhile in it—just my grocery card and a few scraps of paper.”
“Hard to shop with an empty wallet.”
“I wasn’t shoppin’!” Earl snapped. “I was escortin’ the ladies. Some of those young punks who hang out down there give ‘em a hard time.”
They’d all gone to the mall; they went to the mall once a month. But there’d been no missing wallet. Earl would have had kittens if he’d lost his wallet. He would have launched his own personal investigation and taken out a full-page ad in the Blossom Hills Gazette.
Liar.
“I figured I must’ve left it someplace, but if my grocery card turned up at the bank, it must’ve been stolen.” Earl nodded as if it all made perfect sense. “Huh. Small world.”
Wynn resisted the urge to slap her forehead. For the love of Pete.
Earl had not robbed a bank.
Had he?
“That’s your story?” Beau asked, his voice like frost.
“It ain’t a story, it’s the truth!”
Beau looked at Wynn, who could only shrug helplessly.
“What about your trip to Canada?” Beau wanted to know. “Where did you go?”
Earl leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “Up to Sault Ste. Marie. Me and Griff, we like to go up and fish for northern.”
Beau lifted a brow. “Pretty far to go for northern.”
Earl shrugged. “Sometimes we like to give Wynn a break.”
Wynn watched him chew on the end of his pipe; she was tempted to resolve the entire issue by strangling him.
Bank robbery. Had he lost his mind?
Did this have anything to do with what Jenna had found in the pasture?
“So you went to the flea market Monday morning,” Beau clarified, “and then headed up to Ste. Marie right after?”
“Yep, we did.”
“Where in Sault Ste. Marie did you stay?”
“Same place we always stay. The Ste. Marie Inn, right on the water.”
Beau wrote everything down. Meticulously. And he wasn’t happy.
Not by a long shot.
“Hello, Sheriff Beau.”
They looked up to see Ethel in the doorway, an orange and green afghan she was crocheting in one hand, the TV remote in the other. She smiled at Beau, a beautiful, radiant, worshipful smile that immediately set off alarm bells in Wynn’s head.
“Hello,” Beau said politely.
“We’re busy, Ethel,” Earl told her.
Ethel ignored him. She moved into the kitchen, the afghan she held trailing against the floor. Her eyes were locked on Beau’s wide form. “You saved her,” she said. “You saved Clementine.”
“Damn fey woman,” Earl muttered.
“She’s my friend, and you helped her.” Ethel stopped next to Beau and showed him the afghan. “I’m making this for you. Do you like it?”
Beau blinked at the afghan. For the first time since Wynn had met him, he looked uncertain.
“You sweet-talked her right out of that dumb old tree.” Ethel smiled at him. “Everyone at the library saw. It was the best Storytime hour ever.”
Earl snorted.
“It isn’t finished yet,” she continued, returning her focus to the afghan. “But I’m working hard on it.”
“It’s beautiful,” Beau said stiffly. “But I don’t need an afghan.”
Wynn couldn’t help it. She laughed.
“Oh, it’s not an afghan,” Ethel told him. “It’s a cape.”
He blinked. “A cape?”
“When I saw you save Clementine,” she said, “I knew you were the one.”
“The one?” he repeated.
Ethel looked at Wynn. “He’s going to save us.”
Suspicion lined Beau’s face. “What the hell is she talking about?”
Wynn just gave him another shrug. With Ethel, who knew? Clementine, the old tabby cat that lived next door to the Blossom Hills Public Library, was infamous for finding trouble. People were always saving her.
Wynn didn’t know why Ethel would single Beau out. But…well.
It was hard to hate a man who could sweet-talk a cat out of a tree.
“He’s the one,” Ethel said softly, staring at him.
Annoyance flashed across his face. But whatever he was going to say was interrupted by the ring of a cell phone. He fished it from his pocket and answered it shortly, “Greystone.”
And Wynn watched him go from irritated to dangerous in a heartbeat. His expression closed; his eyes turned to ice. He looked up at her, and a sudden, chilling wave of goosebumps washed across her skin.
“I’m on my way,” he said flatly. He slid his phone back into his pocket and pushed to his feet. “I have to go.”
Beowulf growled softly.
And Wynn understood why—the look on his face was scary as hell.
“I’ll be back.” He slid on his coat and looked at Earl. “I’d suggest you think long and hard before we meet again.”
Then he turned to Wynn.
“Walk me out,” he ordered.
She was tempted to wave at him like Miss America, but the look on his face stopped her. Something had happened.
Something bad.
“What?” she demanded as they made their way toward the front porch.
“Nothing that concerns you,” he said. They stepped out onto the front porch, and he halted. “Did he tell you he’d lost his wallet?”
Wynn said nothing. She wasn’t admitting to anything until she talked to Earl.
“Goddamn it.” Beau ran a hand through his hair, which was dry now, the color of rich dark chocolate. “The feds won’t care that he’s old.”
Fear shot through her.
Earl couldn’t have robbed a bank.
But she knew just from his laissez-faire response to Beau’s interrogation, that he wasn’t innocent. At least, not entirely. And Beau was right—if Earl was guilty, they would put him away. It wouldn’t matter how old he was or why he’d done it—
Why had he done it?
“You think he’s guilty,” she said, her stomach filled with lead.
“He did it.” Beau shook his head. “There’s more than just the grocery card.”
More. Like what?
“They’re coming,” he warned softly. “I can’t stop them.”
Wynn only stared at him, silent.
“Talk to him,” Beau said.
Then he turned and disappeared into the night.
Chapter 8
She’d been left in a cornfield.
Her arms and legs were outstretched, tied with course, rough rope to thick steel railroad spikes driven into the ground. Vacant brown eyes stared up into the darkness; her mouth was open as if she’d died mid-scream, and blood was dark, viscous pool beneath her. Her hair was pale white-blond, stained with red, and she was just a kid, no more than fourteen. Her wrists and ankles were black with bruises, and every naked inch of her was covered in fine, short cuts and deep punctures. The wounds painted all of her: her face, her hands, and feet, everything in between. It was sickening and gruesome, and it made Beau want to puke.
He’d seen a lot of death. But he’d never seen anything like this.
“Emma Farley,” Harry said tightly. His eyes were wet; his hands were shaking. “She disappeared two months ago from up in Stockton.”
Beau stared down at her, ice in his blood.
A few drunks and loose stock. Right.
“It looks…” Harry faltered. “It looks like him.”
Beau knelt carefully beside Emma Farley’s horrifically abused body and forced himself to study her. “Him who?”
“The Stick Man.”
Beau went still. “This has happened before?”
“Yes,” Harry whispered.
Beau looked up at him. “Like this?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“The cuts. He did that before. They’re all little stick men.”
Beau focused on the fine lines and deep holes covering every inch of the girl’s skin. When the pattern suddenly materialized in front of his eyes, bile nipped at the back of his throat. “A serial killer?”
Harry cleared his throat. “Back in ‘09 a girl from Badger Creek disappeared on her way home from school; they found her six weeks later, cut up like this. Then about two months later, there was another one. She had the same wounds. The press took to calling him the Stick Man. ”
“How many victims total?”
“Just those two, I think. That they found, anyway.”
“No one was ever caught?”
“Not as far as I know. FBI came in, and there was a suspect, some guy from Dorchester, but they ended up cutting him loose. I don’t know why.” Harry looked down at Emma and blinked rapidly. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“Call Lancaster,” Beau told him. “I want him to take a look at her before we get forensics in here. Don’t touch anything.”
“You want me to call her folks?”
Harry’s voice wavered, and Beau’s respect for him grew a notch. The last thing anyone wanted to do was tell someone their child was dead. But having to tell them she’d been murdered by some sick fuck whose identity and whereabouts were completely unknown was a special kind of hell.
“No, I’ll do it,” Beau said.
Harry nodded and headed back toward his truck. “I’ll call Lancaster.”
Thunder rolled in the distance, but the rain had stopped. The field was soft but not muddy, covered in the short, tough bristle of old corn stalks. It was nearly full dark, the moon lost to the clouds, and they were going to have to get some light if they wanted to process the scene before the rain washed their evidence away.
If there was any evidence.
Beau felt the cold in his veins sink into his bones. He rubbed his leg absently, his eyes locked on the patterns sliced into Emma Farley’s skin. Judging by the look of her, she hadn’t been here long. Rigor mortis hadn’t set in, and there were no signs that animals had gotten to her. An hour or two. Three, tops.
The owner of the field had found her. Fred Bigsby had gone out looking for a stray heifer and stumbled across her instead.
Christ.
Beau pushed himself to his feet. He pulled out his notebook and pen and circled Emma’s body. He sketched a copy of the pattern that decorated her skin, his stomach churning. He still wanted to puke. But more, he wanted to kill.
No judge, no jury. Just death.
An instinct at odds with his newly minted position as the man who enforced the law, not the one who broke it.
He wondered grimly which would win.
“Lancaster’s on his way,” Harry said from behind him. “Shouldn’t be long. He was down at the Legion playing cards.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Just that he was needed and where.”
“Good. We keep this need to know only.” Beau turned away and looked out at the field. “We’re going to need light and tarps.”
“We’ve got portable LED spotlights and a couple of framed canopies in the storage unit.”
“Go get them.”
“You sure? I mean…” Harry looked around. “He might still be out here.”
A cold smile curved Beau’s mouth. “One can only hope.”
His deputy looked down at Emma and swallowed hard.
“She’s just a fucking kid,” he said, his voice raw. “Who does something like this?”
Beau had no answer. “Grab coffee, too. Were going to need it.”
Harry tore his gaze away. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Not a word to anyone.”
“No, sir.”
Rain began to patter down, and Beau moved his truck, parking so the headlights lit the scene. He could see tracks—tire and foot—but some of those were his and Harry’s, and some belonged to Fred Bigsby, and the rain was working against them.
As was history. If Emma Farley’s death was a new chapter in an old crime, odds were long against finding anything so obvious as tire tracks and footprints. If this bastard had been murdering girls for the last decade—without getting caught—chances were, he’d gotten damned good at it.
Clearly, he was patient. The intricacy of the cuts had taken time and patience and—sickening as it was—skill. There was nothing hurried or impulsive about this crime. Whoever had done this had planned it, probably down to the last detail.
And he’d enjoyed it.
Headlights bounced across the field, and Beau looked up to see the county Coroner, Elliot Lancaster, pulling in, his dark blue station wagon swaying as it covered the uneven pasture. Old school, Beau thought. Christ.
Elliot parked and climbed out of his Griswold-era car, clad in a hooded, bright yellow slicker and red mud boots. He removed a large black medical bag from the passenger side and slowly made his way over to where Beau stood.
“Must be bad,” he said as he halted next to Beau. “Harry didn’t sound good. That boy is not cut out for—”
His words cut off abruptly as he focused on the motionless form of Emma Farley.
“Oh no,” he murmured. “Not again.”
And Beau thought: fuck.
“Again,” he repeated.
“The Stick Man,” Elliot said softly.
“We need to be sure,” Beau told him.
The older man nodded and moved toward Emma’s body. He looked down at her for an eternal moment before carefully kneeling beside her. Then he removed a small tape measure from his medical bag and used it to measure the length of the cuts that covered her. Beau watched, his heart a hollow thud in his throat, adrenaline spiking in his blood.
A fucking serial killer. Perfect.
Elliot moved on, testing the depth of the puncture wounds. He moved slowly, methodically, and it seemed to take forever before he sat back and said, “It’s him.”
“How do you know?” Beau asked.
“The cuts. They’re identical in length and depth to the ones that covered the victims back in ‘05. Then again in ‘09.”
“‘05 and ‘09?” Beau repeated sharply. “Harry only mentioned two in ’09.”
