The Hysteria: Book 4, The Eddie McCloskey Paranormal Mystery Series (The Unearthed) (11 page)

“Yeah.”

“Mia says that isn’t true.”

“Turner’s lying to you.”

“Or Mia is.” I looked at Pater, who was watching me with his mouth open. “I don’t know who to trust but I do know that Mia and Megan don’t trust their own sister.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I know it doesn’t but I wanted to give you the latest.”

“I should come off Melanie then.”

I hit the speaker button. “I’ll leave that up to Pater. I think you should stay on her and see where she takes you. But it looks like Melanie isn’t on good terms with her sisters.”

Pater said, “Stick with her. Eddie has a point.”

“But Pater, it doesn’t make sense. If she’s not under the MPI, then following her is a waste of time.”

“There’s something else going on here,” I said.

Riehl shook his head. “What?”

“You people are the experts, figure it out.”

“Keep me in the loop. We’re getting close to the office.” Manetti hung up.

Nobody said anything. Pater had a faraway look in his eyes, whereas Riehl busied himself by cracking his knuckles.

You have to keep moving forward. That’s one of the few things I’ve learned in this life. “I want to pay Eamon a visit.”

“Why?”             

“Smooth things over. I’ve had some time to think about things. We’re all working together here to help Megan.”

Pater considered it. Riehl shook his head.

***

Eamon was exercising.

He was doing hand-stand push-ups along the wall. He didn’t stop when he saw me. Instead he pumped out three more without apparent effort then limberly lowered his feet to the ground and hopped up. His face was red from the blood rush.

He met me at the glass partition and picked up a couple dumbbells and proceeded to do jump squats. He could have given Strongbow a run for his money in the CrossFit games.

“I came here to talk, not watch you try to impress me.”

He grunted, “I’m on a circuit. Can’t stop.”

The computer monitor in his side of the room was counting down from five minutes.

“This is important.”

“I’m prone to depression…exercise is good for that.” He was breathing heavy and had to stop talking between a couple jumps. “But you know that.”

“Finding Megan today is more important than your fucking routine.”

He finished his set of jump squats and laid down on the floor to do leg raises. “You didn’t come here to…talk about Megan.”

“I did, asshole. So shut up, stand up, and fucking listen to me.”

He actually did.

“First things first. You guys need to find dance halls, places where they’d have wedding receptions.”

He was still breathing heavily. He rolled his head and cracked his neck.

I said, “Big places that are out of the way.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s not just Megan hiding, and you know that from Pater’s predictive modeling.”

“You can’t hide a large group of people in one place that’s still in operation.”

“They could be separately together. Maybe they’re all using false names and checking into the same motel.”

He shook his head. “Pater’s way ahead of you, Eddie. We’re running queries against that.”

“Check abandoned buildings with big, open spaces then.”

“What do you think we’ve been doing?”

“I think you dipshits have been playing with fire. The original plan was for Megan to go undercover as herself to test her MPI theory. Which was pretty fucking risky considering you had no idea what the trigger is, leaving her susceptible to it.”

“Leaving us all susceptible to it.” Pater had come into the room. “You don’t win the game from the sidelines, Eddie. You have to get out on the field, you have to get your hands dirty. If we don’t solve the problem, more innocent people will die. We take big risks because we’re fighting for a bigger cause.”

“What brought you out here originally? It had to be more than just this vague theory that something might happen.”

I had given my back to Eamon and I sensed him pacing on his side of the partition.

“Esther Lee. She ran a drycleaners with her husband. She was closing up shop one night by herself. Someone gutted her. They left the cash register alone, didn’t look for the safe, didn’t take anything. They just disemboweled her in the front of her store and left her there.”

“She have a gun on her?” I asked.

“Her husband’s. They kept it near the register.”

“What else?”

“Stan Woloski. He runs a cherry farm. His wife found him on his tractor, his intestines in his own lap.”

“Any chance it was the same person?”

“Slim. The killings were around the same time but the
loca morti
were forty-five minutes apart. Different instruments were used on Ms. Lee and Mr. Woloski. There are no ties between the two victims.”

“Anybody else?”

“Those were the first two. We were on a plane twelve hours later.”

“How many more?”             

“At least four, possibly nine.”

“Possibly?”

“If we include gunshot victims with no apparent motive, the victim pool increases to nine.”

That didn’t jive with what Stan had told me earlier. “How did you keep all these things out of the papers?”

Pater smiled. “We have our ways.”

Which explained why it was a madhouse in the police station yesterday. “It’s escalating.”

“That’s what we keep telling you,” Eamon said.

I ignored Eamon and asked Pater, “Any closer to finding the trigger?”

“I won’t know how close we are till we’re sitting on top of it.”

“I’m here to help Megan,” I said. “That’s it. When I get her to safety, I’m gonna bounce. You understand that?”

“I do.”             

I faced Eamon. “I came in here because I wanted to call a temporary truce.”

“Temporary.”

“That’s right. Temporary. When I find Megan the truce is over. You’ve got these people fooled but I’m not buying the self-reformed act.”

“Eddie. I know you’ll never understand or forgive me. But I am truly sorry about your brother.”

My blood was boiling. I got out of there before I did something violent.             

Pater followed Riehl and me into the lobby. “Eddie, we’ve got fifteen, sixteen hours till all hell breaks loose if the model is correct.”

“I told Eamon where to look.” I nodded at Riehl. “Let’s go.”

I followed Riehl in the corvette. On the radio, they were talking about the biggest storm of the year going to hit that night. They expected flash flooding.

“Rain shadow my ass.”

Riehl slowed ahead of me. I spotted the house we wanted.

Dorothy Young’s front door was open when we parked in front of her ranch house set back from the road. It was already 9:30. I could hear that clock ticking in my head.

The neighborhood was quiet. A couple in their sixties a few houses down watched us from across the street. Their mailbox had their last name on it: Taylor. I had them pegged in two seconds. They were the couple that snooped and watched and knew everything about everybody.

Dorothy’s lawn had just been mowed. Riehl and I went up the steps to the door. It was open.

“I take lead, you follow,” Riehl said.

“Sure thing.” Before he could take his lead, I knocked on the door. “Ms. Young?”

No response.

Riehl tensed beside me. “Don’t showboat around me. I’ll put you down in two seconds.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

My eyes adjusted to the dimness of the house. There was a suitcase packed and a large purse stuffed to the brim sitting in the foyer in front of the coat closet.

“Ms. Young?”

Nothing.

We stepped into the old, creaky house. Though it was a bright day, the house was gloomy because it sat nestled in a copse of trees.

“Ms. Young? Are you here?” Riehl said.

Nothing.

We moved through the foyer. The house had an open floor plan. I could see into the kitchen and down a hallway that led to bedrooms. The house was spotless and completely in order, not a pillow out of place.

“Ms. Young?” I said.

Hearing no answer, we went into the kitchen. There was a fresh bowl of fruit on the table. The kitchen looked to the backyard. There was a huge garden, a hammock bolted between two old sycamores that were shedding. The shed was big and its door was open. In front of the shed, a patio table.

There was something shiny on the patio table. It looked sharp.

A knife.

My mind jumped back to yesterday’s madness, with Jamie Witherspoon almost gutting me with a blade.

“Car’s here.” Riehl pointed over my shoulder through a different window. “She didn’t go anywhere. Let’s check the rooms.”

Riehl drew his piece. I wondered at the legality of the action but now wasn’t the time to dispute the finer points of constitutional law. I stayed a step-and-a-half behind him as we tracked down the hall.

The first room was a guest bathroom. The shades of the bathroom were drawn and like in every bad horror movie the shower curtain was wrapped around the tub. Riehl gestured for me to check it out.

“You’re the one with the gun,” I whispered.

“Time to earn your keep.” Son of a bitch winked at me.

I stepped into the bathroom and tore the shower curtain aside, not worrying about the noise. Nobody was in there.

“Asshole.” Riehl continued down the hallway and I followed. The next room had belonged to a child and was filled with toys that looked fifteen years old. Pictures of Dorothy’s dead son lined the dresser. I poked my head in and saw a pair of ice skates poking out from under the bed.

“Check it,” Riehl said.

“You fucking check it. I’m going on.”

Riehl shut the door to the room and we went on. The next room was an office. One look in and you could tell nobody was hiding in there. I shut that door. There was a laundry closet next to the office with a washer and dryer and next to that, the door to the master bedroom was open.

“Ms. Young?” I didn’t like the thought of going into her bedroom. I didn’t want to find anything in there, living or dead.

Riehl read my mind. “We’d smell the blood by now if there was any.”              

The room was dark. All the shades were closed. I heard a fan whirring. “After you, Shorty.”

He grunted a reply and with gun extended went into the bedroom. I gave him a moment and went in after him.

The first thing that caught my attention was a huge trophy on the nightstand that displayed two plastic figures dancing. Taped to the front of the trophy was a flyer about the event, the Dance-Till-You-Drop Marathon from two years ago held at a local skating rink. Dorothy Young’s name was on the flyer, listed as the coordinator. Looked like she wasn’t just in charge, she’d actually taken home the gold. It reminded me of the dancing manias of the Middle Ages.

You could have bounced a quarter off the bed. Some clothes were neatly folded on one side of it.

“These outfits didn’t make the cut,” I said.

Riehl ignored me and walked to the master bathroom. He poked his head in, flicked the light on, didn’t see anything.

“She’s not in here.”

The bedroom was as spotless as the rest of the house. Next to the nightstand were two books, a novel that showcased some bodice-ripping lovers and the Bible. If I had to put money on it I’d say the Bible was probably a lot more sordid than the romance novel.

I opened her closet. All her clothes were neatly hung, her shoes were lined up in a couple stands. The only thing that looked out of place was the box of rollerblades. I opened it and peered inside.

“What are you doing?” Riehl asked.

“Looking for clues, big fella.”             

I closed the empty box and then slid the closet doors shut.

Riehl put his piece away. “Let’s get a look at the shed.”

We went back down the hallway in the quiet house and found the door to the backyard in the living room. I stepped onto the porch.

Before we took another step, Dorothy Young came out of the shed holding a pair of menacing garden shears. She put them on the patio table next to all the other blades that were glinting in the sun. She hadn’t noticed us and went back into the shed.

I let Riehl take the lead. “Ms. Young?”

She poked her head out of the shed. She had white hair and would have been pretty but she was scowling.

“Who are you?”

“I’m Agent Riehl. This is Special Consultant Eddie McCloskey.”

Special Consultant?

Riehl went on. “We’d like to ask you some questions. Could you come out of the shed?”

She didn’t move a muscle. All we could see was her head. “About what?”

Riehl eased into his shooter’s stance but kept his hands at his waist. “Could you come out of there?”

Dorothy’s eyes flicked back and forth from Riehl to me before her head disappeared back into the shed.

“Ms. Young?” Riehl’s hand went to his hip.

She popped out of the shed, humming a Fleetwood Mac tune and now wearing a floral gardening hat and handling a pair of shears like they’d been dipped in shit.

She walked to the table where the other blades were and examined them with a wrinkled nose. Her face was pinched tight, like the sight of all that metal was making her sick.

“Ms. Young, could you put those—”

The shears clattered when she dropped them on the table. Dorothy backed away from all the tools like she didn’t trust herself near them.

She weighed a hundred-twenty pounds max, had probably never thrown a punch in her life, and gardening had been her most vigorous exercise the last twenty years.

But she had me on my toes.

“Could you come over here?” Riehl asked.

She moved that distrustful look from her shears to Riehl. Finger-by-finger, she tugged off her gardening gloves and put them into her back pocket.

“You’ve been through my house already?” she said.

“Ma’am, please step away from that table.”

She did. It was like she wanted to get away from the blades but didn’t want any parts of us either. As she approached, she hardly gave me a second glance. Her eyes were glued on Riehl.

He said, “Thank you. We’re conducting an investigation and had some questions. Do you know Jamie Witherspoon?”

Dorothy Young’s mouth opened but no words came out. Her eyes went backwards and the strength went out of her legs.

I grabbed her before she broke a hip. Riehl stayed where he was, hand at his back. Dorothy’s eyes were lifeless but she was breathing.

“Help me prop her up,” I said.

Riehl shook his head. “This could be an act.”

Before I could argue, Dorothy’s face grew animated.

“Oh, dear me. What happened?”

“You fainted,” I said. Or in medical terms,
syncope
.

“I’m so sorry, I have low blood pressure.” I helped her back to her feet then gave her some space.

“Are you okay, ma’am?” I asked.

“Happens from time to time, I must have overexerted myself in the shed, you know.”

Or she was fainting just like Megan.

Dorothy seemed to remember Riehl was there too. She forgot all about me and stared at him like she’d seen him before but couldn’t place him.

“Can I get you something? Maybe water?” I asked.

She didn’t take her eyes off Riehl. “No, thank you. I’ll be fine.”

“Ms. Young,” I said, trying to snap her out of her fixation with Riehl. “Do you know Jamie Witherspoon?”

“The name is familiar. Who is he?”

“He’s Megan Turner’s ex-husband.”

“Oh…Megan…” Her eyes were nervous, her body fidgety.

I decided to play a flyer. “Yeah, the Taylors, live down the street? They said she was here recently. When was that?”

Dorothy forgot how to talk.

I said, “When was Megan here?”

“I don’t know what they’re talking about…”

She was lying and everybody knew it.

She said, “They’re the ones on the street that like to stick their nose in because…never mind them. I haven’t seen Megan but I did just see her father.”

“Where?” Riehl said.

“Fundraiser the other night. We had a record attendance.”

“Where?”

“In town…actually, outside of town. Did you know they redefined the town limits after the county’s zoning board…” She realized she was rambling. “We had the Dance-Till-You-Drop two years ago at the old skating rink. After the rezoning, the rink is outside town limits now so we have to go elsewhere. If we have it again.”

Something set off an alarm in my head, but before I could grab onto it, Riehl asked a question.

“What kind of fundraiser?”

Dorothy scratched absently at her thigh till she left angry red claw marks on her white skin.

“For stricter gun control,” she said.

“You don’t like guns, do you?” Riehl said.

Given her family’s tragic past, Riehl was being a touch insensitive. I’d never lost a child to an accidental discharge and even I was ready to deck him.

Riehl’s hand was creeping toward his hip again.

I moved forward so I was sort of between them. “Ms. Young, did you say Morgan Turner attended a fundraiser for gun control?”

She looked me dead in the eye. “I like you, you’re okay.”

“Ms. Young?”

“Yes, that’s what I said.”

What the hell was old man Turner doing there? With all the guns in his study, new and antique, you could have called the room an armory. He was tied into local politics but an anti-gun rally didn’t fit his demographic, or the demographic of the people that worked for him. His attendance didn’t compute.

I said, “Did you talk to Morgan Turner that night?”

“He talked to me.”             

“What did he say?”

“Just that he wanted to see me, and everybody else.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know why. He’s been at a lot of public events recently. He was mad about the rezoning, though.”

Her comment about Turner being out-and-about reminded me of my first meeting with him. Turner had been getting ready for something tuxedo-worthy. Strongbow had alluded to his boss’s non-stop schedule. All of that pretty strange considering his daughter was missing.

“Is he interested in office?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“What do you think he meant, see everybody?” Riehl asked.             

“Everybody at the fundraiser, I suppose.”

“Was it his first time at one of those?” Riehl asked the million-dollar question.

“This one, yes. But like I said, he’s been out and about a lot recently.”

“Was his daughter Megan there?”

“I told you, I haven’t seen her.”

“Did he talk to anybody else?” I asked.

“He talked to everybody else. What did you say your name was again?”

“I’m Eddie McCloskey.” I decided to switch gears on her. “Are you going somewhere?”

Behind me Riehl moved so he had an angle on her.

She smiled at me. “No, why do you ask?”