Believe No One (11 page)

The murder victim was Kyra Pender. Her life had been short, her ending brutal. The ME recorded death by traumatic asphyxia. There were no signs of strangulation, but the ME noted petechiae on the inner surface of her lower eyelids. The small, pinprick reddish marks resulted from minute haemorrhages of the capillary blood vessels, and were typical of strangulation or asphyxiation. Kyra also had two broken ribs.

The CSIs believed the body had been dropped from a bridge; tyre marks indicated a compact sedan had burned rubber leaving the scene. This was twelve months ago.

Simms read part of Kyra's life history aloud. ‘Her mother was sixteen when Kyra was born. Mother and child moved from a low-rental apartment to a mobile home shortly after the birth. Kyra began stealing her mother's prescription meds at the age of twelve. By the time she was sixteen she was addicted to meth and crack cocaine, pregnant with her first and only child.'

‘And so it goes,' Dunlap murmured. ‘I want to say it's a cycle of nature, but nature cleans up its messes, and this drugs situation just keeps getting messier and dirtier.'

‘Kyra's little boy was never found?' Simms asked.

Dunlap shook his head. ‘He's gone.'

‘There are some useful details: her body was dumped inside cargo netting. Local rocks were used to weight her. The net was stitched together with grey cord.'

Ellis shook his head. ‘This case has already been under the microscope.'

‘What makes you so sure?' Simms asked.

‘Child case,' he said. ‘It's a no-brainer.'

‘You would think so, wouldn't you?' Dunlap rubbed a hand over his grey curls. ‘But the fact is, Kyra Pender is not in ViCAP.'

‘What?'

‘I got no returns from NCIC, either.' This was the National Crime Information Centre, covering records both of crimes and missing persons.

Ellis gaped. ‘
What
?'

‘Nothing,' Dunlap said. ‘Zip.' He turned his laptop for Ellis to see. The page header bore the bold red, white and blue FBI insignia, fronted by the lion mascot of LEO, the Law Enforcement Online portal. ‘See for yourself.'

While Ellis searched angrily through the databases Dunlap had already searched, Dunlap turned to Simms and explained: ‘That little boy's details should've been on at least one of a half-dozen databases – Federal and independent. The fact he's not on either of the two main Federal databases is—'

‘
Unbelievable
is what it is,' Ellis growled.

Dunlap glanced at him, but continued calmly, explaining the procedure to Simms. ‘Kyra Pender's body is found; the local law enforcement agency might think it's no big deal, given her history. But her child is also missing – and that is
huge.
A missing child goes on
any
of the FBI databases, NCMEC is automatically notified. That's the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children. When NCMEC is notified, they deploy a Team Adam consultant to the investigating agency. Those guys have all kinds of technical resources and funding and expertise, and their single mission is to find missing kids.'

‘But Kyra's case details were never entered into any of the FBI databases, so NCMEC never got to know,' Simms said, pronouncing it ‘Nec-Mec', as he did.

‘Right,' Dunlap said. ‘Which is
crazy.
Budgets being squeezed the way they are, you jump on whatever money is available.'

‘Come on, Dunlap, you know what this is about.' Ellis again.

‘Ellis …' Dunlap said.

‘See, Chief, the FBI is only interested in serial killers,' Ellis said. ‘Which is kind of a disincentive to anyone with a plain, old-fashioned murder to investigate.'

Simms knew that this was one of the many beefs that state investigation agencies across the US had with the FBI.

‘Problem is,' he went on, ‘unless you have
all
the cases, how're you supposed to
know
which murders involve a serial killer?'

Special Agent Detmeyer didn't seem inclined to defend or criticize the Bureau's policies; he gazed calmly at Ellis, interested but in no way abashed.

Ellis eyed the FBI agent a moment longer, then reached for the case file, snatching it from under Simms's elbow. ‘This happened in the Two State area,' he said, scanning the report. ‘Jesus, she was dumped in Forest Park, practically under our
noses.'
He stared, aghast, at Dunlap.

‘You know how it is,' Dunlap said, ever the diplomat. ‘A case like this, where you don't even have any family waiting for news, you can get distracted. You mean to put the data on the system, but the next homicide comes in, you're following leads on other cases, you forget.'

‘Would
you
forget?' Ellis demanded. ‘With a kid involved?' He turned to Simms. ‘Would
you
? I didn't think so. The lead investigator didn't do his job – this is a complete screw-up.'

Simms said, ‘You know, in the UK, we have a dedicated team of analysts to do the data input—'

‘Well, good for you,' Ellis interrupted, in a tone that meant,
Screw you.

‘I'm not trying to score points, Ellis,' Simms said. ‘I'm saying that our national code of practice
requires
police forces to submit crimes that fit the criteria: the bulk of the work is done for them, and a sizeable percentage
still
don't send the case files in. There are weaknesses in any system – you have to accept that, and do the best you can.'

‘Is that so?' Ellis said. ‘'Cos I get one hundred per cent of my cases on the system. I fucking
hate
filling those forms, worse than I hate filing my tax return, but I still do it.
That's
doing the best you can.'

Fennimore's hotel near Westfield, Williams County, Oklahoma

Deputy Abigail Hicks finally caught up with Fennimore around midnight. She had booked the professor into a family-run inn a couple of miles out of Westfield. The management described the place on their website as ‘authentic Midwest architecture'; covered wooden walkways with kitsch horse rails were rigged up outside the ground-floor rooms, but a beat-up Ford Mustang was the closest they ever had to a horse nosing up to those rails.

Fennimore was sitting on a straight-back chair outside his room, the chair tilted back, his feet propped up on the rail. He held up a hand against the glare from the headlamps of her ten-year-old SUV, and she killed the lights and grabbed a paper sack from the passenger well before stepping down.

‘You look nice.'

She had changed into jeans and a T-shirt, twisted her hair into a chignon to let the air at her neck – wanting him to see the woman beneath the badge.

‘I went to the trailer park to give you a ride home,' she said. ‘Found you gone.'

‘I bummed a lift from the CSI.'

‘And he obliged?'

‘It's not that far over the county line,' Fennimore said. ‘Why so surprised?'

‘I talked to him before I came over. He said you were rude.'

He raised his shoulders, hands spread – a picture of injured innocence. ‘What, because I said it would be a bad idea to splosh Luminol around indiscriminately? It happens to be biochemically destructive and often unhelpful at crime scenes.'

‘Now if you'd said
that,
it wouldn't be so bad,' Hicks said. ‘But you talked about magic tricks and pretty colours. He
said
you implied he was a street hustler—'

He thought a moment. ‘With hindsight, I was rather rude, but evidently I won him over with my encyclopedic knowledge of forensic methodology.'

She smiled. ‘I do like to hear you talk.'

‘I'm gratified,' he said. ‘There are some of lesser discernment who say I talk like a textbook.'

‘Oh, you do, Professor,' she said.

The corners of his eyes crinkled, and she felt pleased; most of the time he looked so sad.

There was a second straight-back chair on the walkway and he extended a hand, offering it to her. She took it with a sigh, feeling the long hours she had worked in every muscle. ‘So, did you find anything helpful over at Laney's place?' she asked.

‘It's clean,' Fennimore said. ‘Shiny clean – I mean
OCD
clean. The landlord even stripped out the carpets before the new tenant moved in.'

‘The manager didn't seem “The Customer is King” type,' Hicks said.

‘We aren't talking about the average customer here, Deputy.'

She had to agree. ‘If the rugs went to landfill, we could maybe—'

‘No such luck,' the professor interrupted. ‘They were destroyed on the park's burn pile. On the plus side, if Ms Oxy-Clean is ever a victim of crime in her home, you'd have a pristine environment to pick up forensic clues.'

She chuckled.

‘Seriously,' he said. ‘I've seen dirtier DNA labs.'

‘I wish I had better news,' she said. ‘Laney signed the registration forms, and the only prints we got on the rent book were hers. On the upside, you were right – the guy with her did pay for propane gas.'

‘I'm guessing cash,' Fennimore said.

‘Yeah. We did get a partial palm print on one of the receipt carbons, but not enough to get a hit on AFIS.'

Fennimore nodded. ‘Palm prints can be trickier than fingerprints.'

‘We checked it against the manager, and Laney's police records. No match to either one of them.'

‘So it
could
be the man Laney was living with.'

‘Or the next person who came in to buy gas,' Hicks said. ‘And even if it
is
Laney's guy, we don't know if he had anything to do with her murder.'

‘He disappeared when she did,' Fennimore said. ‘He has to be a strong suspect.'

She nodded. ‘But we have no clue who he is—'

‘And so we come full circle,' Fennimore sighed. ‘Why don't you tell me about your visit with Laney's father?'

‘All right. But I'm hungry and dog-tired, and pretty fair depressed with human nature, right now, so I'm going to need food and liquor inside me to tell that story.'

She opened the paper sack next to her chair and he perked up a bit.

‘You brought food?'

‘Pulled pork sandwiches and pickles. Didn't you eat?'

‘Under the shadow of a magnificent bear rampant, modelled in plastic and polyester,' he said. ‘But that seems years ago. And I declined the offer of booze, which I now regret.'

‘I might have a few bottles of Sierra Nevada in the trunk of my car,' she said, but sounding vague, not wanting him to think she had come
too
well prepared.

He stood and held out his hand. ‘Give me the keys and I'll fetch them.'

‘Oklahoma liquor laws are real strict on drinking in public places,' she said.

He looked around him at the silent parking lot, empty except for a few cars. ‘How public is public?'

She hesitated. ‘We're going to have to take it indoors.'

‘I promise I'll be the perfect gentleman,' he said, waving her inside.

The ale tasted of malt and caramel and new-cut grass, and it was good and strong, and blessedly cool. It took the edge off the anger that had been gnawing at Hicks all afternoon, so that she could tell Laney Dawalt's sad story without wanting to break something.

‘The boy was her brother?' Fennimore said.

‘Yup,' she said, noticing that he said ‘was'. It seemed Professor Fennimore, like the ME, Dawalt and just about everybody else she had spoken to, believed that Billy was dead. ‘Mr Dawalt said he was too “sick” to look after his son. Said Laney was “old enough”.'

Fennimore said, ‘Old enough for what, exactly?'

Hicks grunted. ‘What I thought. He said he hadn't seen Laney or Billy since they went into foster care, so I paid a visit to the Department of Human Services in Adair to find out more. Laney got pregnant a few months after her mother died.'

‘Oh,' Fennimore said.

‘Mr Dawalt didn't have a single thing of Billy's that might give us his DNA. I respectfully requested a cheek swab so I could get a Family Reference Sample into CODIS. He declined. You would think a man would move mountains to bring his child home safe, but this asshole literally wouldn't spit to help find his son.'

‘It's beginning to look like Mr Dawalt has something to hide,' Fennimore said.

‘You bet. Dawalt admitted that the first time Laney ran away was after she'd had an abortion.'

‘That tallies with the ME's autopsy report.'

She nodded. ‘I confirmed it with county hospital. Laney got rushed into the ER when she was three months gone. She lost four pints of blood. The surgeon told me Laney was so messed up they had to perform a total hysterectomy. She was fifteen years old, Professor.
Fifteen years.
' She broke off, took a swallow from the bottle and ran her tongue around her teeth, tasting bitterness that did not come from the ale.

‘You think Dawalt was the father,' Fennimore said.

She shrugged. ‘Only reason
I
can think of why a man would take his underage daughter to a backyard abortionist. Hell, wouldn't surprise me if he took a wire coat hanger and scarred up her insides himself. Wasn't even Dawalt called the EMS – it was Laney's five-year-old brother did that for her. Her daddy just put her in the bathtub so she wouldn't mess up the couch.'

‘Was he prosecuted?' Fennimore looked sick.

‘Claimed he wasn't home. Laney wouldn't say what happened – I think she was scared of what Dawalt might do to her brother. The DHS put them in different foster homes, but on her sixteenth birthday, she went looking for Billy and they ran off together.'

He shook his head in disbelief. ‘She got them both killed.'

Hicks felt suddenly hot and angry. ‘How can you say that? Laney had lost her momma less than a year before. She was probably raped by her own father, who then forced her to abort her baby. Yet she still had the goodness and the strength of spirit to want to take care of her little brother.'