Consumed Read online

  “What about the hotel phone?”

  “Haven’t tried that,” I said. “Pretty sad if that’s what is going on.”

  “What’s his number?” Beth went to the room’s phone, picked up the receiver, and dialed when I told her. A moment later, she clicked the phone back down. “Voice mail. Come on.”

  “Come on where?”

  “Hotel bar. Let’s go. After a day like today, it’s a necessity.”

  I rocked my head back and forth. “All right. I’ll meet you in ten minutes. I need to give Karen a call and check in.”

  Beth smiled. “Meet me downstairs at the bar when you’re done. Tell her I said hi.”

  I nodded and dialed as Beth left my room.

  “Hey, baby,” Karen said.

  “Hey, you. How’s it going?”

  “Pretty good. I picked up our tickets to Tampa.” Muffled sounds came from her end of the call, as though she was in the middle of doing something.

  “That’s what Kane just said.”

  “So you’re calling him before me now?”

  I smirked. “No. I wanted to bounce some things about this investigation off of him.”

  “Did he help?”

  “Maybe.”

  Karen’s car keys jingled unmistakably. “Well, I haven’t heard from you all day. Did you guys find out anything?”

  I didn’t feel like rehashing what I’d seen, and I was positive she didn’t want the details. “We did. Got his name—pretty much confirmed that he was the guy behind the killings. Now we just need to find the guy.”

  “That’s great news. So why don’t you sound happy about it?”

  I heard the creak of our front door opening. “Just a long day, babe. Where are you headed?”

  “How do you know I’m going somewhere?”

  “Detective skills.”

  She chuckled. “I’m going to Ken and his wife Jenny’s—poker night. Just about ready to leave the house. I didn’t get to tell you. We have another girl that plays. She’ll be there tonight.”

  “Oh yeah?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Newer agent. I think she has something going on with Doug. Me and some of the guys have caught their little looks and things like that, but they play it off pretty well.”

  “Gossip and poker. Sounds like a good night. How is Chop?”

  “Good. I’m taking him with.”

  I heard her tell him to come on followed by the closing of a door. “Really?” I asked.

  “Yeah, you don’t care that he’s in your new truck, do you?”

  “No. Not at all. It’s a Jeep—supposed to be dirty. Take the top and windows out so his little face can flap in the wind.”

  Karen laughed. “Already did.”

  I heard her tell him good boy, and stay.

  Karen continued. “Ken has a female Boston terrier that I’m going to let Porkchop terrorize.”

  “Just keep an eye on him,” I said. “He seemed a little frisky at the park last week.”

  “What do you mean? He’ll be fine. He’s been around other dogs a million times. I’ve never seen him try to mount one.”

  “No, I don’t mean the dog. When he was at the park, he found a dog’s owner that he seemed fond of if you know what I mean. He may have a little Mississippi leg-hound in him.”

  “You mean…? Eew,” Karen said. “You didn’t tell me that.”

  I laughed. “I was trying to keep it between him and me. Guy stuff. I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

  “Oh, now I don’t know if I want to take him,” Karen said. “Ken and his wife offered to watch him while we went to Tampa. What am I supposed to do?”

  “He’ll be fine, babe. Just take him. I’m sure the other dog will keep him preoccupied.”

  “God, I hope so.”

  I heard the sound of my Jeep starting. “Why don’t you give me a call when you get back? I’m supposed to head downstairs and grab a drink with Beth.”

  “Are you sure? It might be late.”

  “I don’t care. Just call.”

  “Okay, I love you. Tell Beth I said hi,” Karen said.

  “Yeah, I will. She actually wanted me to tell you the same, so hi, for Beth.”

  “Thanks. I’ll talk to you later. Love you again.”

  “Love you, too.” I clicked off, put my phone in my pocket, and headed out.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Richard sat on the leather recliner in his brother’s living room with his eyes closed and the volume on the television turned up to the max—his mother had been nagging at him for the better part of the last few hours, and he was trying to tune her out. The noise from the television was some late-night talk show, yet Richard wasn’t much focused on its content. His mind kept replaying the vision of his old father on the bed upstairs, the conversation they’d had, and the throbbing from his arm, which surely required medical attention that it wouldn’t receive. Richard had run a needle and thread through the wound, wrapped it with a few paper towels, and fashioned himself a splint from a ruler and some duct tape—it wouldn’t address the cuts to the bones, but it would have to do.

  Richard rocked his head to the side of the chair’s padded leather headrest. He’d recognized that his breaks with reality had been increasing as of late, yet none had been as vivid as the one with his father—even hours later, Richard wasn’t convinced that it hadn’t happened. He’d went upstairs to double check multiple times—his father never appeared again. Richard had gone to the garage to inspect what he thought was his father’s car twice, but it was black, not green, and it wasn’t even a Ford both times he checked.

  “Richard!” he heard. “Where are we going to go?”

  Richard leaned forward from his reclined position on the chair and rubbed his eyes. “We’re not going anywhere,” he said.

  “They’ll come looking for your brother. They’ll find us here.”

  “Who cares?” he asked.

  “You care. Do you want to go to prison?”

  “I won’t be going to prison if they come. I don’t think I’d do too well there,” Richard said. “And we don’t have anywhere to go. Just be quiet.”

  “I’m not going to be quiet. Let’s just get in the truck and go. We’ll see where we end up.”

  Richard reached into his back pocket and removed his wallet. The small movement sent pain up his left arm, and he winced. With the fingertips of his right hand, he pulled the Velcro flap keeping the wallet closed and opened it. The wallet didn’t contain a single credit card or driver’s license since Mark had never let him have either. The photo holder held a single picture of a woman, which had come with the wallet when Mark gave it to him as a gift—Richard thought she was pretty, so he left it in. He spread open the center section to see how much cash he had and fingered through each bill one by one—six dollars. He hadn’t remembered to take the two hundreds back from the dead hooker.

  “We don’t have enough money to get anywhere,” Richard said.

  “Check your brother’s pockets, stupid.”

  “Don’t call me stupid,” Richard said. “I already checked.”

  “No, you didn’t. I’ve been sitting with you the whole time.”

  Richard didn’t want to admit that he’d overlooked something so simple. “Fine, I’ll check again.”

  He walked to his brother, sitting on the couch next to their mother. The knife had been removed from Mark’s chest and stuck back into its sheath on Richard’s hip. Richard rolled his brother to the side with one hand and then fished his fingers through Mark’s pockets—nothing. Richard pushed his brother to the other side and went through his pockets again. He pulled a wallet from Mark’s right pocket and flipped it open. Richard held the wallet against his thigh, pulled out the cash, and went through it.

  “He’s got like fifty bucks.”

  “Credit cards?” he heard his mother ask.

  “A couple.”

  “That’s enough to get us a ways. We’ll find some country and live off the land.”
r />   “That all sounds like a lot of work,” Richard said. He sat back down on the recliner, rested his injured arm across his chest, and kicked his feet up. He closed his eyes again and took in slow, deep breaths—each breath getting him closer to sleep. His stomach rumbled hard, jarring him from his relaxed state. “Damn,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I haven’t eaten anything all day.”

  “There’s food in the fridge. Go look.”

  Richard let out a breath, got up, and walked to the kitchen. He pulled open the refrigerator door and looked inside. The refrigerator was empty aside from some condiments, two cans of beer, and a head of lettuce. Richard cracked his neck back and forth—all the Tupperware containers of meat he’d seen must have also been figments of his imagination. Richard closed the door and pulled open the freezer—nothing but some old ice cubes, a single TV dinner that wouldn’t do much but tease the stomach of a person Richard’s size, and a bottle of vodka. Richard grabbed the bottle of vodka and closed the freezer door. He held the cap in his teeth, twisted it off, and spat it to the floor.

  Richard walked past each cupboard one by one, flipping the doors open as he pulled a mouthful of vodka from the bottle. Mark had a number of boxes of cereal but no milk—a bunch of different boxes of pasta but no sauce. Richard flipped the cupboard closed and walked back out to the living room. He leaned against the wall and stared at his brother’s body on the couch.

  “Find something to eat?” he heard his mother ask.

  “Yeah, I think so,” Richard said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  I was up with a slight headache a few minutes before seven. Beth had kept me at the bar for two drinks more than I’d planned, talking about how she’d gotten a couple text messages from her ex-husband. That would have been fine, but then she wanted my advice on what to do—apparently the messages were hinting at trying to rekindle their lost romance. I had no advice for her but listened, nodded my head, and did my best to play friend as opposed to coworker. When I returned to my room, I fixed another drink and talked to Karen about the “becoming parents” topic for the better part of an hour, which had led to another drink.

  While I was getting ready, I shoveled down a couple aspirins, which seemed to be doing their best. I left my room and walked next door to Beth’s. I gave her door a rap with my knuckles and looked down at my watch—a quarter to eight. I figured we’d grab a quick breakfast and stop by the Medical Science building to see if they’d found anything from the remains brought in. After that, we could head back out to the Clarksville area and hunt down the chief deputy, who still hadn’t returned my calls.

  The door pulled open. Beth was dressed for the day and looked fairly spry for it being morning. “Ready to go?” she asked.

  “Hell, you look more ready than I do. I was going to see if you wanted to get breakfast.”

  “Yeah, sure,” she said. “I was actually about to come over in a minute and ask you the same. I’ve been up for a few hours already.”

  “A few hours?” I asked.

  “Scott leaves for work pretty early and wanted to talk to me before he did. So we chatted for an hour or so before he had to go.”

  I held up my hands and gave her my best what-the-hell-are-you-talking-about face. The only Scott I knew worked in our office.

  “Scott, my ex-husband, from Chicago,” she said. “Our talk last night made me realize a couple things, so I sent him a message or two after you left the bar. He responded, and then he called me this morning. We talked.”

  “Sure,” I said. “And?”

  “We’ll see how it goes.”

  I shrugged. “Um.” I scratched at the back of my head. “Good luck? Is that the right response? That doesn’t sound like the right response. Take it slow, maybe?”

  Beth chuckled. “Both great responses, Hank. Anyway, where do you want to eat?”

  “I don’t know. I guess the restaurant downstairs is fine. I figured we could pop into the Medical Science building after and see if they got anything there, then head back out to the Clarksville area and try to find Whissell. Probably going to need to make a few phone calls on the ride—Ball and the Memphis office, mostly.”

  “You didn’t hear back from the forensics team from Memphis?”

  “Nothing yet this morning, no.”

  “Okay. Need anything from your room?” Beth asked.

  “Yeah, just my stuff for the day.” I ducked back inside my room, grabbed my laptop bag containing everything we had on the investigation, and followed Beth down the hall to the elevators. We rode down and found the restaurant, called The Grill, off to one side of the lobby. We walked in, told the hostess we had two and were seated. We both ordered coffee and searched over the menus.

  “Headache this morning?” Beth asked.

  “You mean hungover?” I asked. “A little headache. Pretty much wiped it out, though, with a pair of aspirins. I can’t drink like I could in my younger years. Three or four drinks kind of knocks me out.”

  “Wuss,” Beth said. Her eyes never rose from her menu.

  I smirked. My eyes caught the breakfast titled Triple Play on the menu—the meal consisted of three slices of French toast, three pancakes, three eggs, hash browns, toast, three pieces of sausage, and three strips of bacon. My decision came easy. I folded the menu up and slid it back between the ketchup and salt and pepper shakers.

  “Know what you’re getting?” Beth asked.

  “Yeah. A big-ass plate of greasy breakfast. You?”

  “I think I’m going to get the cottage cheese and fruit bowl.”

  “What?” I asked. “That sounds awful.”

  “Yeah. Sounds healthy is what it sounds. I thought you said your wife was big into eating right or organic or something. Shouldn’t you be getting something more sensible?”

  I looked left and right over my shoulders. “I don’t see Karen. When she’s not in view, I eat as bad as I can.”

  Beth smiled.

  My phone vibrated against my leg, so I reached in my pocket and yanked it out. I glanced at the screen but didn’t recognize the number. I took a sip from my coffee and hit Talk.

  “Agent Rawlings,” I said.

  “Hey, this is Tony Miller. I was leading up that forensics team out there yesterday.”

  “Yeah. Did you guys come up with anything?”

  I cupped my phone’s mouthpiece and whispered, “Forensics guys,” to Beth—she nodded. I went back to the call.

  “Well, we got the prints back from the interior of the house,” Miller said. “Looks like we got three sets in the newer and just two in the older of the homes. Um, the one set that we found in both homes, we actually don’t have a match for in the system. We do have the greatest amount of that set of prints, though.”

  “Could be Richard Kirkwood. I don’t believe he is in the system. We have zip on the guy actually, other than a name and a could-be on appearance. What are the other two?”

  “Woman named Crystal Bridson. She has priors for prostitution. As of now, she’s not reported missing.”

  “Could be one of the victims that we found in the home,” I said. “What about the last?”

  “The last looks like it’s a friendly. It was the other set that was in both houses: August Whissell, works for the sheriff’s department.”

  As soon as I heard him say the name, the rest of his sentence faded—Whissell had never gone into either of the houses while we were there. That meant he had prior and knew what was inside.

  Tony continued. “We’ll be processing the DNA and working with the guys at Nashville Medical Science to see what else we can get. It looks like we’re getting another trip out there set up as we speak—full excavation. Did you want me to give you a ring if we get any more updates?”

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  “Sure, no problem. Same number I just called here?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Thanks for the call.”

  “Take care,” he said. The phone clicked
in my ear.

  I hit End on my phone’s screen and set it on the table. I reached for my coffee and took a sip.

  Beth stared at me. “Well?”

  “Whissell was in the houses.”

  “What?”

  “They found his prints in both,” I said.

  “We didn’t let him go in, though. So… he was in there before we were.”

  I nodded. “Let’s order this to go. We’re headed to the sheriff’s department.”

  “Yeah,” Beth said.

  We ordered our food and grabbed another pair of coffees to go. Beth drove, per our usual arrangement. During the ride, I shoveled down my breakfast, which came in three separate Styrofoam containers. Beth opted for a banana and a muffin for her breakfast as opposed to her cottage cheese and fruit bowl. I imagined that she figured it was more eat-while-you-drive friendly. I, however, would have ordered the same thing whether I was driving or not—my giant breakfast was exactly what I needed.

  Beth made a left and drove a few car lengths up the hill in front of the red-brick sheriff’s department. She pulled to an open spot along the curb and shut the car off. I pulled open the passenger door, grabbed my stack of Styrofoam containers and chucked them in a nearby garbage can then took three or four steps up the block toward the sheriff’s department’s front door.

  “Hold up a second, Hank,” Beth said. She was standing outside the rental car, the door still open, her feet in the street and her elbows resting on the roof. “What are we doing once we get inside here?”

  “Finding Whissell and asking him what the hell he was doing inside that house prior to us getting there. He better have a damn good reason too, or he’s going to have some problems. This guy has been jerking us around from the beginning. It’s getting old real quick.”

  “Are we sure he’s here?” Beth asked.

  “He should be, shouldn’t he? Monday morning.” I looked at my watch—ten after nine. “If not, we’ll make a house call. He’s answering our questions one way or another.”

  “All right,” Beth said. She took her arms from the car’s roof and swung the door closed. As we walked along the solid red-brick wall toward the building’s entry, I took in the building on the corner just beyond the sheriff’s department with the steeple and ornate dormers poking from the roofline. The dormers were actually copper, a feature I hadn’t noticed the last time I’d looked—apparently I’d also missed the giant museum sign on the corner. We turned right toward the entrance of the sheriff’s department. I held the front door for Beth and then followed her inside. We walked up to the woman at the counter.