Murder Comes by Mail (10 page)

Betty Jean dabbed at her eyes and blew her nose. “Poor thing. She looks like she should still be playing with dolls. Do you think anybody knows she’s dead?”

“Somebody does.”

“I didn’t mean whoever did it.” Betty Jean sounded a little shaky. “You really think it might be the jumper?”

“Looks that way,” Michael said grimly. He yanked open a drawer in the file cabinet in the corner with so much force the whole cabinet fell over toward him. Michael pushed it back and stood there with his hands on the cool metal and ordered himself to stay calm. He couldn’t think about a girl who would never grow up because of him. He needed to concentrate on finding the person responsible. “Where are those plastic evidence bags? I know I saw them here somewhere a couple of months ago.”

Betty Jean looked over at him. “Top shelf, right corner, under the extra coffee filters.”

Michael found the size he needed and came back to her desk. She was still standing in the same place.

“I meant her family,” she said. “Do you think they know?”

“I doubt it. They probably didn’t even know where she was. You’d better check the missing persons files.”

Betty Jean leaned closer to the picture of the girl’s face and dabbed at her eyes. “Brown hair with blonde streaks from a bottle. Too much makeup. What do you think? Maybe fifteen.”

“Hard to tell, but young. Very young.” Michael tried to push the picture into the plastic evidence bag, but suddenly his hands were shaking so much, it was all he could do to hold the letter opener, much less use it to guide anything.

“Here.” Betty Jean took the letter opener out of his hand. She found some tweezers in her desk drawer and efficiently slipped the pictures, letter, and envelope into separate plastic bags. She held them out toward Michael. “It’s not your fault.”

Michael didn’t meet her eyes. Instead he stared at the bags. “Can you make copies of the pictures through the plastic, front and back? The envelope too.”

She had just turned to the copier when Hank Leland stuck his head in the door. “Good morning,” he started, but then picked up on the tension in the room. “Something’s going on?” It was half question, half statement.

Betty Jean kept her back to Hank as she made the copies. Michael stepped around her desk toward the door to block Hank’s entry. “Not much. Betty Jean saw a spider. I was sending him to his reward.”

“I wouldn’t think Betty Jean would have any problem dispatching her own spiders.” Hank frowned a little and fingered his notebook in his pocket.

“This was the monster variety,” Michael said.

“Well, you shouldn’t have squashed it. I could have taken a picture of the creature and run it on the front page. It’d be the nearest thing to news I’ve found all morning.”

“Slow morning in Hidden Springs?” Michael tried to keep his voice light, and then wondered why he was bothering to hide the pictures from Hank. He would know all about it before the paper went out Wednesday, at any rate. Pictures, Michael suddenly thought, that might be waiting in the editor’s own mail pile. One computer-generated enlargement could easily become two. “Have you opened your mail yet this morning?”

The editor narrowed his eyes on Michael. “Why?”

“I don’t know. Just wondering if people maybe sent you stories sometimes.”

“News doesn’t come in the mail. Not unless you count pictures of somebody’s daughter running for Miss Hog Valley, USA, or something.”

Behind them, Betty Jean made a strangled sound at the copier and her shoulders began shaking as she started crying.

“What’s with her?” Hank asked.

“Bad weekend.” Michael grabbed the tissue box off her desk and pushed it over in front of Betty Jean, who still had her back to them. “You okay?”

She nodded as she yanked a tissue out of the box and buried her face in it.

Hank started to step into the office, but Michael stopped him by taking his arm and turning him back toward the hall. “Sometimes a good cry helps.”

“But don’t you think she needs a hug or something?” Hank looked over his shoulder at Betty Jean, who let out a wail and started crying harder.

“We’re just making it worse hanging around here.” Michael felt an answering wail crowding his heart, but he clamped down on the feeling. “Come on. I’ll walk you back to your office and watch you open your mail.”

“Something’s going on.” There was no longer any question in his words.

“Could be.” Michael shut the office door behind them and propelled Hank up the hall toward the double doors to the street.

“I’m not under arrest, am I?” Hank looked worried. “You didn’t read me my rights.”

“Do you have reason to be arrested?”

“I didn’t think so, but then you’re acting mighty strange this morning.” Hank glanced back at the closed door to the sheriff’s office, then planted his feet and refused to budge. “Okay, Mike, you tell me what’s going on or I’m going to scream police brutality.”

“Who would believe you? Or care.” Michael studied the editor’s face, which was set and determined. The only way he was going to get Hank to move was to pull his gun on him or tell him enough of the truth to get him curious. Michael opted for the truth. “All right, you win. Something weird came in the mail. I want to see if you got the same thing in your mail.”

“Monster spiders?” Hank looked as if he couldn’t decide whether the whole thing was a joke or if he should pull his notebook out of his pocket and start taking notes.

“Monsters, at any rate.”

11

The editor’s desk was loaded down with every imaginable type of paper, from newspaper clippings to cereal box coupons. Here and there the slick edge of a photograph stuck out among the letters, as though trying to come up for air. A wire tray on the corner of the desk held a foot-high stack of letters with envelopes clipped to them. A scarred-up softball served as a paperweight.

Michael stared at the desk. “How in the world do you ever know what’s news and what’s not?”

“If it’s news, it tends to keep floating to the surface. Most of this is junk.” Hank waved a hand at the mess. “Letters from ‘concerned’ but ‘chicken to sign their names’ citizens, wild threats to shoot the editor for this or that, requests for free advertisement, or ‘how to make a million bucks working out of your home’ offers. Every year or two, I shove it all off into a big trash can and start over.”

“How about today’s mail? Is it lost in there?” Michael gave the desk a dubious look.

“Nah, nothing goes into the slush pile till I look at it and date it. I wouldn’t want something newsworthy to get past me.” Hank turned to a computer desk behind him and reached for a pile of mail.

The corners of at least two clasp envelopes poked out of the pile of letters, magazines, and newspapers. “Don’t touch it.” Michael quickly moved around the desk to step between Hank and his mail.

Hank froze, his hand suspended in midair. “What is it? A letter bomb?”

Instead of answering, Michael asked, “Do you have a pair of gloves around here?”

“Gloves? Don’t you think a bomb squad might be better?”

“This is serious, Hank.”

“And a letter bomb isn’t?” Hank asked, but he pulled open the bottom drawer of his desk and rummaged around to come up with two gloves, one black wool and one brown leather. “Not exactly a pair, but at least they aren’t both rights or lefts. They do?”

Michael felt like an idiot in the clumsy gloves sorting through the envelopes. Maybe there wouldn’t even be an envelope with pictures. He was trying to think of some kind of story to tell Hank to satisfy his curiosity when the camera flashed. Michael looked up as the editor clicked the shutter a second time.

“Proof.” Hank lowered the camera. “Of a federal offense. Messing with someone else’s mail. Don’t you have to have some kind of warrant for that?”

“Don’t need a warrant if you give me permission, and believe me, you do want to give me permission.” Michael eased an envelope out of the pile. It bore a printed white label addressed to the editor of the
Hidden Springs Gazette
, no return address, and an Eagleton postmark. He held it out toward Hank. “You want the gloves?”

“No, go ahead. This way I’ll have something on you and you’ll have to give me the story. And it has to be some story if it’s got Betty Jean crying and you breaking the law.”

“I’m not breaking the law. I’m just helping a friend open his mail.”

Michael glanced around for an empty spot without success. He pushed aside some papers on the desk and laid the envelope on the flat surface before pulling loose the flap. With care, he shook out the contents.

The photograph on top was different from the one the killer had sent to Michael. In it the girl was still alive, smiling, looking even younger than she had in death. Michael leaned down to study the picture, but he couldn’t see any hint of fear in her sparkling brown eyes or the lines around her mouth. Her hair looked in need of a comb, but so did half the models in the magazines these days. She wore a matching set of teddy bear earrings.

Hank moved over behind Michael to look at the girl. “You know her?”

“No.” Michael slid the second picture to the top. Behind him, Hank gasped. It was the close-up death shot of the girl’s face, an exact copy of the one in the envelope addressed to Michael.

Michael laid it on the desk and looked at the words printed in all capitals on the last page.

IF IT HADN’T BEEN FOR YOUR HERO, HOPE MIGHT STILL BE LAUGHING. NOW ALL HOPE IS LOST. TIME TO WRITE A NEW STORY WITH A NEW ENDING.

“What is this, Michael? Some kind of sick joke?”

“If only.” Michael shut his eyes, but the girl’s image was imprinted on his brain. “He told me I’d be sorry, and I am. I surely am.”

“Who? The man on the bridge?” Hank didn’t seem able to grasp the facts. He gave the picture a closer look. “My gosh, she doesn’t look much older than Rebecca.”

Michael pulled in a breath and looked at Hank. “I need a bigger envelope I can put these in to take to Eagleton.”

“Eagleton? Why Eagleton?”

“The postmark, and it’s where Jackson was last seen. It’s as good a place to start as any.”

Hank held out an envelope, then pulled it back. “I hate myself, but I got to ask. Let me make copies. You know, just in case I need to print the picture to help find out who she is or something.”

Michael let him make the copies and extras for his own file. He didn’t know why. Once he turned it over to the Eagleton police, he would be out of it. A curiosity to the case perhaps, but not somebody to pull into the investigation. He’d dealt with the Eagleton police department before. A deputy sheriff from Hidden Springs didn’t command much respect.

Michael tried to reach Buck Garrett before he headed out to Eagleton, but with no luck. Probably in the middle of handing out a ticket. Just as well. Buck couldn’t make any of it different.

Michael called ahead and talked to a desk sergeant, but the man must have thought Michael was some prankster wasting his time. He gave him the “we’ll be sure to check into it” line and hung up. But by the time Michael got to Eagleton, the department had received another call, a tip about where to locate “Hope.” They sent a car around to check it out just in case, and by the time Michael got there, they had found the girl’s body.

So when Michael showed up at the desk that guarded the door, a policewoman was waiting for him. With a face that looked like it might break if she smiled, she shoved a marked map at him and told him to ask for a Detective Whitt at the crime scene.

“What crime scene?” Michael asked.

“Don’t know, don’t care,” the woman said shortly. “All I know is you’re from Hidden Springs, so that means you’re the hero and Detective Whitt said send you on out. I’m sending.”

Things went downhill from there. While he was driving the interstate over to Eagleton with the pictures practically breathing on the seat beside him, he had nevertheless been able to still think it might not be true. The pictures could be some kind of cruel hoax. The movies these days proved what could be done with makeup or with those picture apps. With the right programs, a person who knew how to work with computers could probably print out faces pale as death.

But there’d been no makeup or doctored pictures. The body was discovered in a church basement in the neighborhood where the old part of town met the new part. Two streets over, office buildings reached toward the sky. Here in their shadow, the houses huddled together in fear of the next urban development plan.

Somehow the old building that housed the Abundant Hope Church had escaped the bulldozers through the years in spite of various congregations periodically abandoning the location for larger buildings out in the suburbs. The current congregation had started meeting there about a year ago.

Michael made his way through the police lines and found Detective Whitt questioning the pastor inside the church. Michael stood back, listening and waiting. The detective shot a look his way when he first walked up but quickly turned his attention back to the preacher, Reverend O’Banion, a round little man in blue jeans and a plaid shirt, who kept glancing at his pulpit as though he’d like to get behind it to have something to hold onto.

They had had services Sunday night, but nobody had gone down into the basement. The body hadn’t been there during the morning services. At least the preacher didn’t think so. He’d made his usual check of the building before he locked up after the morning service just in case somebody off the street slipped in unseen. Not that the congregation minded the street people coming in, he claimed. They welcomed them and tried to find them whatever help they might need when possible. But the fact was, not all the people out there had the proper respect for a church building and brought in alcohol, drugs, that sort of thing. The church could hardly sanction that.

When the preacher kept slipping off and away from whatever questions he asked, the detective obviously struggled to hold onto his patience. Detective Whitt was tall, probably taller than Michael, but he lost an inch or two with the way he slumped forward, as though he had too much to do to worry about fighting gravity too. He looked like the kind of man who either didn’t have time for eating, or when there was time, preferred a liquid diet. It was plain the man had used up the best years of his life serving the citizens of Eagleton, who had just as surely never shown the first bit of appreciation. The people he had the most contact with were apt to run if they saw him coming. He appeared to be a man who would like making them run.