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Authors: Kylie Brant

BOOK: Waking Evil 02
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Comprehension warring with disbelief, Ramsey swung back to face Rollins, her voice incredulous. “A
ghost hunter
? Are you kidding me? You let some paranormal quack compromise the crime scene?”
Chapter 2
There was a glint in Stryker’s brilliant blue eyes that might have been temper, but his voice was affable enough when he corrected Ramsey. “This quack tends to prefer the term parapsychologist. And I’m not huntin’ ghosts. I’m searchin’ for scientific data that will prove or disprove the presence of paranormal activity.”
“My mistake,” Ramsey replied, her voice heavy with irony.
“Need a lift back to town, Dev?” Rollins asked.
Stryker bent to snag the sleeping bag with his free hand. “Nope. I’ll hike out. Got my car parked on the road by Rose Thornton’s place.”
“Careful she don’t run you off with the business end of a shotgun,” the sheriff warned. “Rose has gotten sorta cantankerous in her old age.”
A masculine dimple winked in Stryker’s smile. “Shoot, Rose was born cantankerous. Wasn’t room to get much worse. I’ll see you back at town.” He shot Ramsey a smile. “Ms. Clark.”
She watched him move away in a gait more an amble than a stride. Waited until he was out of earshot before turning to aim one long meaningful look at Rollins, who had the grace to look a bit discomfited.
“It’s not what you think.”
“Forget that he was mucking around in the crime scene,” she said. It had been eight days since the murder. The sheriff’s office would have worked the scene well before TBI was called in. Their investigators would have gone over it again. There was only an infinitesimal chance that any evidence would remain undiscovered. But as a law enforcement officer, Rollins should have been careful enough to protect that fraction of a chance. “But after all you said about the negative publicity and superstitious nonsense flying around about this crime, I would have thought allowing someone like Stryker in here would be the last thing you needed.”
“This scene has been worked four times already,” Rollins said stiffly. His posture was ramrod straight. She recognized the signs of bruised ego. “And I don’t have the manpower to post a guard over it indefinitely to keep the curious away. If you thought you were going to waltz in here and find somethin’ at the scene we missed, you’re gonna be disappointed. I know my job, Ramsey. As well as you do.”
Time to back off, Ramsey realized. And as frequently happened, that realization arrived just a bit too late. “I know you do. That’s why I’m surprised you’d take the chance that this ghost . . .
parapsychologist
would get the townspeople in even more of an uproar than this murder has them already.”
“Dev pretty much grew up in Buffalo Springs.” And by his tone, Ramsey could tell she hadn’t yet pacified the man. “Him and his family are known ’round here. I’m countin’ on him to convince the town that this local legend is a bunch of bull, once and for all. His books do more debunkin’ of this sort of stuff than not. Some people in these parts look up to him because of his degree and the books he’s published. If allowin’ him access to the crime scene after we finished processin’ it will help toward that end, I thought it worth a shot. It’s my decision to make, in any case.”
Suppressing a wince, Ramsey nodded. Just because she knew Rollins, had once been his colleague, didn’t mean she wouldn’t have to step carefully to avoid antagonizing the man. Local law enforcement was notoriously territorial. She’d first learned that as a TBI agent. And though diplomacy didn’t come naturally, it was a trait she was skilled enough at, when she took the time to employ it.
“Understood.” Silent for a moment, she crouched down and scanned the area, absorbing the atmosphere as some people soaked up the sun’s rays. With so few opportunities to be primary on a crime scene, she always insisted on visiting the scene herself, regardless of the timeline. Her boss, the legendary Adam Raiker, would say to understand a case, you had to see what the victim saw. Hear, smell, and touch what he or she did. Know the victim, know the crime.
The first step of knowing this victim was visiting the site where her body had been discovered.
“The case file said the kids found the vic at eleven P.M. Time of death estimated one to two hours earlier.” She looked up at Rollins soberly. “You sure those witnesses didn’t hear anything? See anything?”
“The girl, Becky Ritter, thought she’d heard screams earlier, but Robbie Joe claimed he didn’t.” Rollins pushed his hat back to swipe at his forehead. “Chances are he’s right and she was just imaginin’ things. When we first got the call, we figured it for a simple drownin’, but once we saw the bruises on her throat, we started thinkin’ differently. Medical examiner didn’t find any water in her lungs, so we can be sure this was a dump site. Spent four days going over every inch of the surroundin’ woods. Damned if we’ve found a thing to suggest she was killed ’round here. Most likely someone stopped on one of the borderin’ roads and carried the body in. If those kids hadn’t happened along when they did, the body was likely to never have been found. This pond is actually an old limestone pit. First settlers in town hauled stone from here to build their houses. Water is eighteen, twenty feet in places.”
He pointed across the pond. “The second pair of kids came through that way. And between the four of them, I tell you, we would have needed God’s own luck to get a decent footprint, even if the perp left one.”
The radio on Mark’s belt let out a burst of static. The disembodied voice of a dispatcher sounded. “Car one, what’s your location?”
He unsnapped the radio and answered. “Car one. I’m down at Ashton’s Pond. Go ahead.”
Rising, Ramsey circled the edge of the water, eyeing the ground carefully before stepping. The police tape framed the area where the victim would have been found. She saw the half-cut weeds that the teenagers had been sawing at. Was the body dumped where it had been found, or had it drifted and gotten tangled in the rushes sprouting out of the water’s edge like tiny hollow spears?
She eyed the water’s surface. Calm, even stagnant. There was a faint odor to the water, something metallic with a slight sheen of decay. Barely a ripple marred its surface.
Her flesh prickled, and for a moment, just a moment, past and present collided with an impact that made them indistinguishable.
Running. One hand clapped over her mouth to muffle her panting as she stumbled through the boggy woods toward the swamp. Terrified of what lay behind her. What awaited her if she were caught. But danger lurked in every shadow ahead. Sounded in each small noise. The certainty of her own death growing clearer by the minute.
“Ramsey?”
She started, almost lost her footing, and her shoe slipped into the soft mud. Water pooled over it before she pulled it free, and she caught a flash of silver near her foot, as if something lurked beneath the surface waiting for an unsuspecting meal. “Yeah.”
“I’ve got to get back to town. Got some news crew parked in my office, insistin’ on gettin’ a statement.”
He was already striding in the direction they’d come, but Ramsey stopped long enough to wipe her shoe on the soggy grass a few feet from the water. Something made her look over her shoulder, a quick furtive glance. But the scene looked no different. A dank, still pool, calm and somehow unwelcoming, fringed by rock, swamp plants, and scraggly brush. A place that was no stranger to death.
She shook off the fanciful thought and forced herself to hurry after Mark into the thickening stand of trees.
The only thing worse than having to walk through those woods again would be to walk through them alone.
Motel
was a polite term for the line of small cabins punctuating a rutted gravel drive on the outskirts of Buffalo Springs. Ramsey stood in the doorway of number nine and took stock of her temporary home. Green carpeting—God was that shag?—had been ruthlessly vacuumed. The cheap paneling on the walls gleamed with polish, and she’d be willing to bet not a mite of dust would be found on the old TV or the chest of four drawers.
Although the place obviously hadn’t been updated since the seventies, someone regularly took the time to keep it clean and comfortable. A quilt lay over the white iron bed, with plump pillows fluffed and resting against the headboard. There was an old hurricane lamp sitting on a crocheted doily on the bed stand, and through the open door of the bathroom, she could see a set of thick yellow towels hanging from a pitted metal bar.
“It’s nothin’ fancy,” the owner, Mary Sue Talbot, was saying behind her. “Not what you’re used to, I ’spect. But those other TBI fellas said you’d be okay stayin’ here.”
Mary Sue would have been pushing middle age when this carpet was laid, but she took as much care with her appearance as she did with the rooms she let. Her white hair was worn in a soft pageboy, and the crisp navy shirt she wore was spotless and tucked into a pair of trim starched jeans.
“It’s fine,” Ramsey assured her. “Homey. Beats lots of places I’ve stayed in, I can tell you.”
The woman studied her, as if searching for sarcasm, but evidently what she saw in Ramsey’s expression reassured her. “You need anythin’ at all, you just lift that phone over there and give a holler. We don’t serve any meals here, but there’s a soda machine in the office, and every mornin’ we have a tray of fresh doughnuts from The Henhouse. That’s a restaurant on Main Street. Best breakfast in the area. I can sell you a doughnut and a cup of coffee for two dollars every mornin’, but it’s first come, first serve.”
Since she wasn’t much of a breakfast eater, Ramsey smiled politely. “Thanks. I may take you up on that.” She waited for the older woman to take her leave, then dropped her bag and followed her out the door. She was anxious to talk to the TBI agents. She knocked on door eight, the cabin they were using as the investigation headquarters, and Agent Powell answered it in his shirtsleeves.
Without a word, he stood aside and allowed Ramsey entrance. Matthews, the younger agent, was there, too, sitting at a long folding table that served as a desk. Someone had prevailed on Mary Sue to have the bed removed from the room. A laptop, fax, and copier were wedged on another table against the window. Matthews had shed his suit coat, too, and his sleeves were rolled up on his forearms. The cabins weren’t equipped with air-conditioning.
Ramsey looked at the older man. There was a nagging sense of familiarity about his name, but she couldn’t recall having met him during her stint at TBI. “Had we met previously?” she asked, coming farther into the room. “While I was with TBI?”
“Don’t think so.” He was tall, with a runner’s build, craggy features, and a fading gray crew cut. “Heard your name a time or two. I’ve been in the Knoxville field office for fifteen years.”
Of course. A mental memory clicked. Warden Powell was lead agent in Knoxville’s Criminal Investigative Unit. She recalled seeing him at the ceremony where her team had received a commendation for successfully cracking a baby-snatching ring. He’d been up for an award then as well. She should have known Jeffries would put one of his most trusted men to head the case.
She crossed to the far wall where they’d turned the paneling into a bulletin board, with pictures of the victim, maps, and crime scene photos taped to it. Ramsey had the fleeting thought that it would take Mary Sue hours to scrub the sticky residue off the paneling.
“Any thoughts from the scene?”
“Someone went to a lot of trouble to carry a body that far into the woods.”
Powell nodded and joined her at the wall, stabbing one long index finger at an aerial map of the area. “The unknown subject knew his way around. No one would just happen into that forest near midnight and stumble onto that pond. He was headed there. It’s plenty deep in the center. He didn’t want the body to be found, that’s certain.”
Or he’d have dumped it in the forest, she thought, and let the animals finish the job he’d started. “He should have weighted it down if he didn’t want it discovered.”
She studied the wall for a few more moments. “So we have an UNSUB familiar with the area. Points to a local, or someone who once lived around here.” She had a sudden thought. “Are these woods hunted?” Hunters would come from quite a ways for a hunting spot rife with the game in season. And hunting permits would leave a nice paper trail if they started looking in that direction.

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