Consumed Page 20
I clicked the car into park and waited for one of the four deputies leaning against the sides of their cars to come over. After a few seconds, one did, about fortysomething, in uniform, and wearing a campaign hat snugged down low on his head. His eyes were hidden behind a pair of mirrored aviator sunglasses. From the bit of his face visible, he didn’t look familiar. I pulled out my credentials and lowered my window.
“Agents Rawlings and Harper,” I said.
The deputy looked at my ID briefly and motioned for the other deputies to move the cars. He dipped his head a bit to look at me through the window opening. He didn’t remove his sunglasses, so I stared at my reflection as the man said, “You guys have some production going on over there. Earth movers came around seven o’clock. Been going strong since. Helicopters in and out all morning.”
I didn’t really have a response for him or know if his comments required one, so I said nothing. The cruisers moved so we had enough space to pass.
“We have to be as thorough as we can on an investigation like this. Keep in mind, each victim is somebody’s loved one,” Beth said from the passenger seat.
I looked back at the deputy, who nodded his head, turned, and headed back toward the other deputies. Beth and I drove through the opening the cruisers created and toward the Kirkwood property, half a mile up. By the time we were within a quarter mile, the house came into view, as well as two helicopters in the field behind it, a number of construction vehicles, and countless people. Both sides of the road were lined in more cars—they were all dark and looked government issue.
“Looks like Memphis sent everyone,” Beth said.
“Appears so.”
I parked behind the line of vehicles on our right, a few hundred yards from the driveway of the home and we got out. Tom was standing near the road’s edge, waiting for us.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
“Babe?” Karen asked. “Do you want me to pack your swim trunks?”
“Swim trunks?” I asked.
“Well, they’re on the lake. What if you want to take a swim? I’m taking my bikini.”
I whistled a cat call. “Sure, what the hell. Toss them in the suitcase.” I snugged my tie in the bathroom mirror, ran a comb through my hair, and brushed a few creases from the front of my suit jacket. I put my back to the mirror and looked out into the bedroom at Karen.
She stood in front of two open suitcases she was packing on the bed, wearing a small pink T-shirt and a pair of jeans that hugged her legs. She pulled her dark hair back and tied it in a ponytail with a band on her wrist. Karen looked over her shoulder and saw me staring at her.
“See something you like?” she asked.
“Maybe,” I said.
Her mouth turned to a smile, and she walked to me and wrapped her arms around my neck. “Do you really have to go in today? I thought Ball gave you the day off.”
“He did, but I just want to get some of this paperwork from the investigation taken care of. I don’t like the thought of leaving it until Monday.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Karen said.
“Is Ken still going to take Porkchop?”
Karen nodded. “I’m supposed to drop him off at noon. Speaking of which, I need to get all of his things together.”
Karen let her arms drop and left the bathroom. I followed her out and down the stairs to the first floor. She went to the kitchen and started getting some of Porkchop’s treats and toys from the bin beside the refrigerator together.
I pulled my sleeve back and glanced at my watch. “I need to get going. I’ll be home before two, and we can head over to the airport. Did you talk to Callie?”
“Yeah, she said Carl would pick us up from the airport when we landed.”
“All right. I’ll see you in a few hours.” I walked to her and gave her a kiss.
“Say goodbye to your furry son.”
I smiled and called the dog.
A second later, I heard a thump on the floor upstairs.
He must have been on the bed behind the suitcases.
After a controlled fall down the steps, he slid to a stop at my feet. I knelt and gave him a minute or two of petting, leaving him with the instructions to be a good boy as I walked out the door of our townhouse.
Thankfully, the drive to the office was traffic free for the most part. I pulled into the lot just before eight and was at my desk a few minutes after—I, as usual, was the first one there. I set down everything that had been gathered when we were in Tennessee and headed for the lunch room—I noticed Lewis, one of the tech twins, was taking a seat at his desk. I must have passed him in the office without noticing on my way in. I rapped my knuckles on the door and stuck my head inside.
Lewis spun in his chair toward me. He wore a standard blue polo shirt and khakis. His short blond hair was styled in a bit of a mohawk deal, which was new.
Maybe he’s trying not to look like his twin, Marcus.
“Morning, Hank,” he said. “Just get back?”
“Late last night,” I said.
“Hey, sorry I couldn’t get you anything on that Datsun. Marcus and I looked everywhere, trying to get something on it, but we just couldn’t find anything.”
“Nope. Don’t worry about it,” I said. “The plate on it was stolen. We had the VIN run. The truck hadn’t been registered since the eighties. It belonged to Mark Matheson, who as it turns out, was our chief deputy from the local sheriff’s department, going by a different name.”
“That may be why we couldn’t find jack,” he said.
“I’m going to get a coffee,” I said. “Need one?”
“Nope.” Lewis lifted his iced coffee in a see-through plastic container, probably purchased at a coffee shop on the way into work. He shook it. “I’m still full.”
I nodded, closed his office door, and continued to the lunch room.
A few minutes later, a coffee in hand, I took a seat and began going through all the paperwork. Each piece of information that Beth and I had put together needed to be compiled into a file that was somewhat organized—it needed to include notes, evidence gathered, photos taken, and a full briefing of what had transpired, start to finish. I was fifteen minutes into the organization process when Beth walked into the office.
“Didn’t feel like taking the day off either, huh?” she asked.
“Nah. This should be taken care of, and I kind of figured you would be in here today. Which means if I didn’t come in to get going on it, you would have done it all by yourself, which isn’t really fair.”
“Ha!” Beth said. “I only came in because I figured the same thing. We could both leave.”
I smirked. “Already here. May as well get it taken care of.”
Beth rolled out her chair and took a seat at her desk. “Where are you at with it?”
“Just starting to get everything organized,” I said.
“Okay, you do that, and I’ll start the briefing. Once I’m done with it, you can look it over and see if there is anything you’d like to add.”
“Works for me.” I caught movement to my right and looked over—Scott was heading toward Beth and me and his desk.
“Looks like we’re all back, huh?” Scott said in his Boston accent. “Heard you guys had a catch.”
“Yeah, in custody,” Beth said.
“Awesome,” he said. “One less on the streets.”
“When did you guys get back?” I asked.
“Wednesday,” Scott said. “We ID’d the guy, but that’s about it. By the time we got the information that we needed, he was in the wind. My guess is he gets picked up before too long, though.” Scott hung his dark-gray suit jacket over the back of his desk chair and took a seat. He wore a navy dress shirt with a lighter-blue patterned tie. He scratched the side of his gray-and-black hair. “It’s going to be hard for him to hide when his name and photo are at every law enforcement agency from here to Mexico.”
“How did you ID him?” I asked.
“Bill did, actually. Turned
out that the type of wire being used in his homemade garrotes was a commercial grade that is common with television and Internet companies. Well, Bill found us a witness that saw a cable van parked out front of one of the victim’s home a day or two prior to them being murdered. We contacted the company, found the work order and installer, and that was it. Unfortunately, we were a day or so too late. By the time we got to his house, he was cleared out.”
“Found some more of the wire in the garbage cans outside of the house he was renting, though,” Bill said. He leaned against the wall next to our morning meeting room, his arms crossed over his chest—a thick tactical-looking watch wrapped his left wrist. Bill was thirty-eight with a round, clean-shaven face that made him look ten years younger than that. His brown hair was trimmed short without a sprinkle of gray mixed in, and I don’t think I’d ever seen him without an energy drink in his hand. From our talks, I’d learned he was married with a pair of young ones. Bill pulled himself from leaning on the wall and walked toward his desk. “Jim in yet?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Haven’t seen him.”
“I need to be reimbursed for a few hundred bucks of miscellaneous. I finally gathered all of my receipts from Louisiana together last night.”
I went back to looking at my computer screen and the task of organizing everything regarding Kirkwood. Before I even touched a key, I heard my name called from over my shoulder.
“Rawlings, Harper, my office,” Ball said.
We both rose and walked over.
Ball took a seat at his desk and clasped his hands behind his head. “First, good job. Second, why am I looking at either of you two? I thought I said that I’d see you both on Monday.”
“Just wanted to get a bit of a jump on the paperwork for the investigation. Plus, I need to call the Memphis office to get the exact number of bodies removed from both properties. They were still working on the chief deputy’s when Beth and I left Thursday.”
“What did they get at Kirkwood’s?” Ball asked.
“Fourteen more female remains, plus one male,” Beth said.
“We’re thinking the single male may have been Owen Matheson,” I said.
“The father?” Ball asked.
“Correct.”
“And the chief deputy’s place?”
“Just yesterday, they pulled twelve bodies from the farm pond on the back of his property—all missing arms and legs. Each one had a cinder block chained around its neck. Apparently, the pond had been where the chief deputy was dumping his brother’s women.”
Ball shook his head. “So this guy could have very well killed over fifty people?”
“Forty-five years of killing people or so,” I said. “Fifty is probably underestimating it.”
Ball went quiet for a second. “Do we have IDs on everyone we can ID?”
“That’s going to be a long, ongoing process,” Beth said. “The Medical Science place in Nashville is also taking the new bodies that have been found from the excavation team. They are going to start doing dental records now and work with the missing persons units in the state to try to match some of them up.”
“Yeah, Agent Clifford, from the Clarksville resident agency, was going to keep up with them on that and do his best to stay in the loop with what Memphis was doing,” I said. “He has my number here and was planning on touching base with me next week.”
“Okay. You two put some kind of plan together for what you need to get done paperworkwise on this and go home.”
“Sure,” I said. “Need anything else?”
“Nah, that’s it.”
Beth and I turned toward the door.
“Actually wait, that’s not really it.”
We turned back around and faced Ball.
He let out a breath. “I think we’re going to stick with this arrangement if neither of you two mind.”
“Arrangement?” Beth asked.
“You two going out on investigations together. Why split up something that’s working?”
I shrugged. “I don’t have a problem with that.”
Ball looked at Beth. “Well?” he asked.
“If I have to,” she said.
I flashed her a sideways glance.
“Totally kidding. Working with Hank is just fine.”
“Good and done,” Ball said. “All right.” He motioned us out of his office.
“Come on, partner,” she said, with a fist to my shoulder and a smile.
I smirked and closed Ball’s office door at our backs.
The End
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Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTE
R TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX