Linger: Dying is a Wild Night (A Linger Thriller Book 1) Read online

  Kate said, “Mr. Weston is gone now and there’s nothing to be afraid of. I just want to know a little about you.”

  For a fleeting moment she worried she might again hear that odd, radio transmission in reply, but assured herself that whatever psychological glitch had overtaken her earlier was no longer a concern.

  At least she hoped it wasn’t.

  “Did he hurt you?” she asked. “Is that why you’re afraid to talk?”

  The boy still didn’t respond.

  “What about that little trick you played on me back in the house, with the seizure and the lights? Was that your idea, or have you and Mr. Weston done that before?”

  Nothing.

  Kate thought about pushing a little, but decided against it. Maybe Child Protective Services could get through to him.

  She patted his hand and stood, returning her attention to their belongings on the bed, this time unzipping the backpack for a look inside.

  She found more T-shirts and underwear—adult sized—a pair of worn jeans, a dog-eared paperback called The History of Luminous Motion, and some Triple-A road maps. A lot of road maps, well worn and rubber banded together in stacks of three.

  She flipped through them and saw a combination of cities and states—California, San Francisco, Oregon, Washington, Portland, Vancouver, Nevada and several from other parts of the country. The Midwest. East. Some south. And, finally, one of the entire USA and Canada.

  Either Weston was a dreamer or he and the boy had been on one hell of a road trip. And they’d been doing it old school, without the aid of a GPS.

  The question was why?

  Were they running from something?

  And why had they wound up in Oak Grove, standing in the middle of her crime scene?

  These were questions to be answered in the morning, assuming Weston would cooperate. But by then she’d know what he was hiding and have considerably more leverage.

  Stuffing the maps back into the backpack, she turned and looked at Christopher. Rocking. Rocking. Back and forth. Back and forth. And she wondered what was going on inside his head. He seemed to exist in his own private bubble.

  Whether it was by choice or by intimidation was another question she hoped to answer.

  But that would have to wait.

  9

  _____

  TEN MINUTES LATER, A CPS case worker arrived and took Christopher with her. The boy would be given a place to sleep for the night, then brought to the station house first thing in the morning, for a physical exam and a more extensive interview—assuming that was possible.

  Kate bid him a good night, got no response, and watched them drive away. Then she put Weston’s backpack and the boy’s suitcase in the back of her SUV.

  After one last look around the motel room, she dismissed the patrol officers, crossed to the Rambler, which was parked a few yards away, and did a quick search. She found a couple fast food sacks that hadn’t yet been tossed, a ratty wool blanket folded in the rear of the wagon, and a few gas receipts in the glove box.

  She also found Weston’s notepad, lodged between the bucket seats. She pulled it free and flipped it open, using her mini-mag to illuminate the pages.

  What she saw both surprised and puzzled her. It wasn’t a reporter’s notepad at all, but a small sketchbook full of meticulous drawings.

  And Weston was an amazing artist. The sketches—rendered only in pencil—were as lifelike as anything she had ever seen. But his choice of subject matter seemed random to her:

  —A motel key with the number 493 on it.

  —A train ticket stub marked PROVIDENCE, RI.

  —A man’s wrist sporting a crude tattoo of a circle with a black dot in the center.

  —A road sign that read WELCOME TO GEORGIA, STATE OF ADVENTURE.

  —A hand clutching a Gideon Bible.

  —A spouted canister marked FLAMMABLE.

  And eyes. Lots of eyes. Some isolated, some showing part of a man’s face that was ill-defined yet somehow unnerving.

  There were dozens of these drawings, along with handwritten notes—numbers, names of cities, people, biblical citations, symbols…

  The most recent page featured sketches of two Santa Flora landmarks—the clock tower from the Sandy Point Mall, which had been around since the sixties, and Amelia’s Oak, a massive tree near the 33 that was planted in the early 1900s in honor of the slain daughter of a local politician.

  Taken as a whole, Kate might have looked at this sketchbook as the work of a mad man, but it didn’t strike her that way. The sketches were random, yes, but they didn’t have the feel of a scattershot mind. They were precise and detailed, a chronicle of Weston’s travels, the things he’d seen over a period of many months.

  Weston was simply an artist who was fascinated by the mundane. Everyday objects and places and people were rendered with an uncanny perfection.

  Who the hell was this guy?

  ∙ ∙ ∙

  After bagging the receipts and sketch pad, Kate stored them in her SUV, then drove home to her one-bedroom walk-up in East Santa Flora.

  She wasn’t prone to taking tub baths at two in the morning, but she drew a hot one and soaked in it for half an hour before going to bed. She considered getting on the computer to check into Weston’s background, but decided it could wait until she’d gotten some rest.

  She spent the next several minutes on her back in bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking about the boy, and the man, and the Branfords lying in pools of their own blood, their skulls shattered by a claw hammer…

  Then she finally drifted off to sleep.

  10

  _____

  SHE WAS AWAKENED BY HER father just after six a.m.

  He always called her on her landline, which was located right next to her bed.

  She fumbled for it, put the receiver to her ear and was about to mumble a greeting when he cut her off.

  “I was up all night thinking about tongues,” he said, his wheezy, phlegm-choked voice sounding even more labored than usual. “I can’t stop thinking about those goddamn tongues.”

  Kate, still groggy, groaned into the mouthpiece. “What the hell are you talking about, Mitch? Do you know what time it is?”

  “Those victims up in Tacoma, remember? The ones in the house fire? They were all missing their—”

  “Yeah, I remember. But what’s it got to do with me?”

  “It’s a signature. A lot of these guys like to sign their work.”

  “I’m aware of that. Anyone who reads or watches movies or TV shows or has managed to make it past fifth grade is aware of it. What’s your point?”

  “I’m just wondering about your guy. What’s his signature? You didn’t find any missing tongues, did you?”

  Kate sighed. “Seriously? This is what you woke me up for?”

  “It’s six o’clock, your highness. You shoulda been up an hour ago.”

  “This conversation is over.”

  “Cut your old man a break, for chrissakes. Because if any of your victims had their tongues cut out—”

  “Goodbye, Mitch.”

  “—you could be dealing with a traveling psychopath—”

  “I’m hanging up now.”

  “—and maybe a closer look at Tacoma will—”

  She cradled the phone.

  She knew Mitch was only trying to keep his mind active rather than allow himself to fall into the stupor of the damned, but the truth of the matter was that there were no missing tongues in the Branford house massacre and certainly no fires. She highly doubted the two crimes were connected.

  In fact, she was sure they weren’t.

  And while she didn’t mind sharing general case details, she wasn’t about to get into the nitty gritty and have to listen to her father tell her how to run her investigation. Because the truth was, he had never been very good at police work, prone to looking for easy solutions based on wild speculation.

  One day, out of curiosity, Kate had spent some time in the
department’s computer archives, looking at Mitch’s old files and case notes, and had found that his approach to a crime was singularly narrow-minded and often misguided. Reading those files had been an education in how not to investigate a crime, and she wondered how he’d managed to survive in the job long enough to retire.

  Most of the substandard work had come after her mother’s death, and she had to wonder if the murder had blinded him to the possibility that there might actually be a few innocent people out there.

  Mitch rarely talked about her mother, but when he did, Kate sensed a burning frustration inside him that had never been relieved. And maybe that frustration had fueled his abysmal career.

  Whatever the case, Mitch’s apparent obsession with the idea that the Branford killings were the work of a serial perp only solidified Kate’s thinking that her current instincts were correct. That this was a one-off crime made to look like something far more sinister.

  She supposed she could tell her father this in an attempt to shut him up, but suspected it would have the opposite effect, and he would only ridicule her, as he had so often in the past.

  Besides, it felt much better just to hang up on him.

  Once the receiver was on the cradle, she lay back, closed her eyes, and let these thoughts run through her mind as she tried to go back to sleep. She managed to doze fitfully for another hour, but at a quarter after seven she finally climbed out of bed and made herself a nice big cup of caffeine, hoping she’d be able to function on just three hours sack time.

  She had once been involved in an investigation and pursuit—led by the inimitable Rusty Patterson—that had kept her up for nearly two days straight. So the thirty or so hours of sleep she’d managed to grab since the slaughter at the Branford house were something of a luxury.

  So why didn’t she feel rested?

  11

  _____

  BY EIGHT-THIRTY, KATE WAS IN the department parking lot when she heard a familiar voice call out to her.

  “Katie?”

  Her gut tightened and she stopped in her tracks and turned.

  Coming toward her from across the lot was the man she had shared a house and a bedroom with for nearly six years.

  Her ex-husband. Dan Brennan.

  Four of those years had been good ones. The last two not so much.

  “Glad I caught you,” he said. “I’ve been assigned to the case you called in last night.”

  Santa Flora County statutes required that all suspected victims of child abuse undergo a physical examination before any formal police interviews could take place. A pediatric psychiatrist, Dan had been consulting with Child Protective Services for as long as Kate had known him. She had expected their paths to cross at some point, but not so soon after the divorce.

  All she could think was, why now?

  “You couldn’t have declined?”

  “Come on, Katie, you know the department is stretched to the limit. Let’s just be professional about this and do what needs to be done.”

  He was the only one who called her Katie but it no longer warmed her. “Where’s your assistant?”

  Dan made a face. “So much for professional.”

  “I’m just thinking you may need her to whisper reassuringly in your ear or laugh at one of your stupid jokes or maybe soothe your tired and aching bones after a hard day’s work. Who knows, maybe you’ll even get a happy ending. That’s certainly more than I got.”

  She was surprised by the venom in her voice, but she was still raw and didn’t much feel like hiding it.

  “Oh, for godsakes, Katie. Is this what it’s come to?”

  “What do you want from me, Dan? Do you expect me to pretend we never happened?”

  “Maybe this was a mistake.”

  “One of many.”

  “Well there isn’t much we can do about it at this point. I just spoke to the foster care volunteers. The child has been fed and prepped and should be here any minute now. So why don’t we concentrate on the matter at hand and you can take comfort in knowing that I know exactly what you think of me.”

  “Oh, we’ve only scraped the surface, sweetie.”

  He studied her a moment. “Get some help, okay?”

  “From some therapist who’s just as screwed up as I am? No thanks.”

  “Get some sleep, then. You’re starting to make your father seem like the happy-go-lucky charmer in the family.”

  “Fuck you,” she said.

  He grimaced, nodded, then pushed past her and headed for the entrance. “I’ll grab you as soon as I’m finished with the exam.”

  “Don’t hurry on my account.”

  12

  _____

  WHEN KATE REACHED THE SQUAD room, one of the uniforms told her that Noah Weston had been brought up from his holding cell and put in an interrogation room.

  She took a detour on her way to her office and stepped into the observation booth to look at him through the one-way glass.

  She had expected to find him still agitated and angry, but the man she saw sitting at the interview table seemed to have found his bliss and looked as calm as a theta level Zen master.

  Weston was facing her directly, and even the haunted eyes seemed clear and calm—almost disconcertingly so—and she wondered for a moment if she had misjudged the guy.

  Were those the eyes of a child molester?

  Hard to say. But if she had misjudged him, why had he been so reluctant to answer her questions last night? And why did his mistrust of law enforcement seem to run so deep?

  There were a lot of whys with this one. The biggest being his presence at her crime scene.

  What had he and Christopher been up to?

  Gathering, he’d told her.

  Whatever that meant.

  His refusal to talk had infuriated her, but maybe once she knew more about him and was able to confront him with his past, he’d be more forthcoming.

  Or maybe he’d lawyer up and call it a day.

  It wouldn’t be a first.

  As she exited the observation booth, she turned to find Matt Nava headed her way down the corridor. “Hey, lieutenant, I’ve been looking for you.”

  Matt worked computer forensics. He was a smart kid, and they got along well, and Kate often thought he’d make a great little brother, if she ever needed one. The kind who’s eager to please but rarely annoying.

  “What’s up?” she asked.

  “I cracked your passcode in about a minute and a half.”

  He produced an evidence bag containing the cell phone she’d found in the stuffed bear at the Branford house, in the oldest daughter’s bedroom. She had dropped it on his desk tagged URGENT, and with Weston crowding her mind, she’d forgotten all about it.

  “That easy, huh? What was it?”

  “Jesus.”

  It took her a moment to realize he was answering her question. “J-E-S-U-S?”

  He nodded. “Number twenty-one on the greatest hits list.”

  Matt kept a tally of the most common passwords he encountered, all about as effective as a BandAid on a bullet wound.

  “That’s weird,” she said. “I didn’t get the impression the Branfords were religious. They didn’t belong to any of the local churches. Maybe the daughter was a closet Christian.”

  “Or maybe not.” He handed her the evidence bag. “I’m pretty sure she didn’t use that password for the usual reasons. I think it’s meant to be pronounced Hey-soos.’”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Because that’s the only name and number in her contacts folder and unless she’s got a direct line to heaven, I’m figuring he’s Hispanic.”

  The hairs on the back of Kate’s neck started to prickle. “Is there a last name?”

  Matt shook his head. “The call log shows a few dozen calls between them over the last couple months and nothing else. She never even ordered a pizza with the thing. So whoever this guy is, he was important to her.”

  No doubt, Kate thought.

>   So had she been right about Bree? Was this the secret boyfriend she had speculated about? Could this guy be the key to her case?

  “What about text messages?”

  “None. And no voice mail. Just the calls. Other than that, the phone’s pristine.”

  Kate looked at it behind the plastic, a tremor of excitement rumbling through her. She needed to find out who this guy was.

  “Thanks, Matt. I appreciate the help. And thanks for putting it at the top of your to-do list.”

  He shrugged and started away. “All in a morning’s work, lieutenant. I usually go for the easy ones first.”

  If only Kate had that luxury.

  13

  _____

  AFTER MATT WAS GONE, KATE went straight to her office, dropped the evidence bag on her desktop, then pulled a pair of plastic gloves from her drawer and snapped them on.

  She took the phone from the bag, hit the power button, waited for the thing to boot up, then keyed in the passcode.

  J E S U S

  A moment later she was scrolling through the call log to find that this guy Jesus was indeed the only name and number, no surname, no photo. There were forty-seven calls over the last two and a half months, sometimes several a day.

  Kate knew that most kids today prefer text messages over phone calls, so the absence of any texts led her to believe that the two were being extra cautious about their communications. And forty-seven calls was some very serious airtime with a guy Bree had dedicated an entire phone to.

  So who the hell was he?

  A lover? A classmate?

  A drug dealer?

  Interviews with Bree’s small circle of friends had yielded nothing of interest in the romance department. They all claimed she was unencumbered and happy to be, and mostly kept to herself when she wasn’t hanging with them at school. Even her social networking on the Internet was limited to that same small circle, with no indication that she’d ever expanded it beyond those limited borders.