Where Angels Rest (32 page)

Lud Ferguson—short for Ludwig—was a drunk. He’d spent a number of nights in temporary lockup, usually for his own safety. As far as Nick knew, he’d never hurt anyone, but neither had he ever worked except for the odd hour or two of chores here and there, and he was at least
occasionally influenced by voices in his head. Lud lived on the kindness of neighbors and his ailing social security checks, which he gambled away in the back room of Hank’s each month.

Which was why Deputy Cutter had thought to ask the question: What was Lud Ferguson doing with a brand new iPod?

When Nick and Quent arrived, Cutter and his partner, Browning, had Lud seated on the front stoop of a bar under a sign reading
HECK’S CASH D HERE
—with an unnecessary apostrophe. Music leaked from ill-fitting windows and the air smelled of onion rings and beer under a thin layer of urine. The drizzle had stopped earlier in the day, but the sharp edge of November cut through, men talking through puffs of breath and hunched into their jackets.

“Lud,” Nick asked. “I hear you got some new music.”

“What’s it to ya?” Lud asked, and Nick frowned. One thing about hometown drunks—they were unusually good-natured. Most of the occasions on which Lud had been taken into custody, he’d gone in smiling: gonna get a warm bed for the night and hot breakfast the next day, a friendly deputy to chat with.

“Where’d you get it?” Nick asked.

“Uh… Someone give it t’ me.”

Nick held out his hand, and Cutter handed over the iPod, in a clear plastic bag. “You listen to it?”

Cutter said, “Lud’s developed a fondness for Crystal Bowersox.”

“Huh,” Nick said. Quentin moved in on the other side. Lud wasn’t usually stupid enough to try to outrun the authorities; then again, Lud wasn’t usually found in possession of a missing woman’s iPod. Nick propped a
booted foot on the step beside him, and bent down. “Let me tell you what’s about to happen here, Lud, ’cause I’m just guessing you haven’t heard.”

Now a spark of worry flickered in the dull eyes. “Heard what?”

“That Rebecca Engel was kidnapped from a street near her house yesterday morning. We figure anyone who might have happened to, say, come across any of her belongings, might be able to help us find her.”

“Don’t know no Rebecca Engel.” His tongue flicked out like a lizard’s. “Is that
Engel,
like in the rest’rent downtown?”

“You know what
Engel
it is,” Nick countered. “Now let me tell you the rest of it. The rest of it is this, Lud: Anybody who did come across this girl’s belongings but
doesn’t
tell us about it, well he’d pretty much go straight to the top of our list for suspects in her kidnapping. We’d probably be inclined to think he’d done something to her. Murder, rape… Who knows?”

“I didn’t murder no one.” Getting nervous now, his eyes showing the whites.

“Then where did you get her iPod?”

“Found it. Just found it.”

Nick’s hand shot out. He curled Lud’s shirt in his fist. “Don’t lie to me, fucker, or if that girl’s dead, I’ll throw your ass in front of a jury for murder. With your priors, no one’ll doubt it, and you know what? Even if they do doubt it, the jury’ll say, ‘Well, he might not’ve done the woman, but he’s no good. Oughta be in jail for
something…’
That’s what they’ll say, Lud.”

“I found it, it’s
mine
,” he whined. The Wino’s Code of Ownership.

Nick dropped him to the cement step. “Take him in,”
he said, to Browning and Cutter. “Charge him with the kidnapping of Rebecca Engel, and don’t waste a holding cell on him. Take him across the street to the jail.”

“Whoa-whoa-whoa…” Lud sputtered, but Nick gave him his back. Three steps out, Lud said, “Whoa. Wait. I’ll tell ya, I’ll tell ya…”

Nick turned, watching the weird hues of a Budweiser sign flash on Lud’s face. “Tell me what?”

“In the dumpster.” He tipped his head toward the back lot of Woode’s. “The dumpster.”

Nick froze. He glanced at Quentin, whose expression had gone to horror. They all turned and looked toward the dumpster. “Ah, God, no,” Nick said, but even as he strode the thirty yards across the cement, he was thinking about it, preparing himself for the sight of Rebecca’s pale limbs bent on top of each other. He’d seen a woman in a dumpster once before and the picture never went away. Tossed in like a rag doll, the killer apparently had held her by an ankle and a wrist, and when she’d landed, her lower back had hit the edge of an old window frame sticking up, folding her backward. Nick had hoisted himself over the dumpster rim and seen her belly first, her spine broken over the edge of the window, her head and feet buried in the garbage people had thrown on her all day long….

The memory climbed on top of him and he stopped five yards from the dumpster, swallowing back bile. Some ingrained habit from years gone by made him breathe through his mouth in preparation for the stench. Without speaking, Quentin laced his hands together and Nick stepped onto them, pushing his body above the rim. He swiveled to balance his butt on the corner of the dumpster
and took a flashlight from Quentin, swung the beam back and forth until he found it.

“Ah, Jesus,” he said, and closed his eyes. Nick tilted his face skyward, muttering something that might have been a prayer. He took a minute to recover, then pushed off the ledge to the ground. “We better talk to Lud some more.”

They were doing that when a car rolled up, slowed, and pulled on past, the silhouette of the driver showing a cell phone. Ten minutes later, Leslie Roach appeared with her band of photographers and bright white lights.

“Don’t you ever sleep?” Nick asked, walking away from Lud, who had begun to chatter like a chipmunk once they emptied the dumpster. “Or do you feed at night?”

The characterization seemed to please her. She smiled. “What happened?”

Nick walked past her. “Go to hell.”

“I love it when you talk rough with me.”

Nick stuck out his elbow to block her, not quite catching her in the face, but close enough that she backed off a step. He kept walking, and finally she stopped, planting her feet.

“You know I’m gonna print something,” she called after him. “Would you rather I use fact from you or rumor from ‘an unnamed source’? Or maybe it’ll be about the local sheriff bedding down with a nutcase, that nutcase almost getting burned to death—”

Nick rounded on her. “Don’t go anywhere
near
that.”

“I’m shaking in my stilettos. Now tell me about this.”

He cursed, but needed for the media to keep putting Rebecca’s name and face out there. And to stay away from Erin. “Rebecca Engel,” he said.

“You found her? Found Ace Holmes?”

“We found Holmes, but not Rebecca. We just pulled her suitcase from the dumpster.”

“Is she dead?”

“We’re looking for her.”

“Did Holmes kill her?”

“We’re looking for her.”

“Is she really a suspect in the murders of Jack Calloway and Carl Whitmore?”

“We’re look—”

“What does that bum over there have to do with it? He rape her and kill her or something?”

“Well, Leslie, that would’ve made a great story,” Nick said sardonically, “but I’m afraid we’re still hoping she’s alive.”

“Can I quote you on that, Sheriff, that it would’ve been great to—”

Nick advanced on her, felt a tingle of satisfaction when she backed up a step, then became dimly aware that Leslie’s photographer was no longer the only one shooting. The press had arrived, cameras rolling all over the place. Television now, not just the local newspaper milking the Calloway story. Cleveland, Columbus, Toledo. Hopewell TV news and weather came from all three, and each of them had sent someone in to feed on whatever carcasses they could find in Hopewell. If Nick could keep it in hand, the coverage might help find Rebecca, and maybe Shelly Quinn and Robin Weelkes. The flip side, though, was rumor and mayhem that served no purpose but to destroy anyone caught in it.

Nick bent his head to Leslie, boom mikes coming at them like cobras. He kept his voice low. “You took a scared single mom and a possum and turned it into a circus about misuse of county funds. You crucified Calvin
Lee. You put Katie Engel on the front page looking like a murderer. If you think I’m gonna give you one single, fucking thing,
Miz
Roach, you are out of your fucking mind.”

He straightened, skimmed the collection of reporters surrounding them and pointed a finger at one. “You,” he said. “Come here.”

The tow-headed reporter slid from the pack, hesitant, and inched toward Nick. Nick felt a pang of concern; this guy might be twenty. Didn’t matter. “You wanna break this story?”

The guy danced on his feet. “Sure, Sheriff.”

“Follow me.”

While Leslie Roach steamed, Nick took the bubbling young reporter to where Quentin stood next to Lud. “What’s your name?” Nick asked the guy.

“Jimmy—uh, James Forrester, Channel Twelve, WBH-TV, Cleveland.”

Nick looked at Quent. “Deputy Vaega, this is James Forrester, with Channel Twelve, WBH-TV, Cleveland. Fill him in on Ferguson twenty minutes before we break it. Let Channel Twelve have it first.”

And he walked back past Leslie, ignoring the growl deep in her throat. To the pack of other reporters, he said, “A lesson for all of you: Don’t fuck with me.”

Talk to Katie. Tear apart Lud Ferguson. Question Margaret. Find Robin Weelkes and Shelly Quinn. Track down the printer of the suicide note. Keep Erin safe…

Nick stretched out on the vinyl sofa in his office, the list of things to do reeling through his mind. He draped his arm across his forehead and closed his eyes. He’d sent
the day crew home—they’d been up almost twenty-four hours. The night deputies and some guys pulling overtime were doing their normal shifts, plus plodding through the steps necessary to get the FBI tips line set up, pull in some Feds to help go block-to-block for any sign of Rebecca, and stay with the college rosters as much as they could during the middle of the night. Nick called in the canines from Crawford County and put them on the streets. They lost Rebecca at the corner where Ace had said he was going to pick her up, but found the place Lud said he’d stumbled across the suitcase.

Maybe Lud was telling the truth.

Within an hour, the team had resigned itself to searching the neighborhood for clues rather than for Rebecca herself. She wasn’t in the neighborhood anymore. She was in the dumpster, her back broken and her hips hoisted up over a window frame, saying “I’m scared” while a tiny voice somewhere on the streets cried, “Mommy, Mommy…”

“Sheriff.”

A calm voice, not a motherless toddler. Not Allison.

Sher-eef.

He shot up, found Valeria holding a mug of coffee. Feeble gray light crept between the office blinds. “Jesus, what time is it?”

“Almost eight,” Valeria said.

Nick was confused. “Eight? How the hell—”

“I keep everyone away. You needed to sleep.”

He started moving, hoping his brain would catch up with his body. He checked the date on his watch. Still Wednesday. Justin wouldn’t die today.

“There was nothing for you to do,” Valeria said. “You have the FBI and the entire sheriff’s department and half
of Ohio working to find Rebecca. Deputy Fruth said you only came back in at four-thirty, so you only been sleeping three hours. You needed it.”

“Damn you, Valeria,” Nick said, running his hands through his hair. He took the mug of coffee.

She said, “There’s an FBI agent named Louis Feldman in the conference room. He drove in from Pittsburgh and met some Cleveland agents. And Fruth and Bishop are on their way in from the Engel neighborhood. They stayed with the search all night.”

“Anything?”

“I don’t think so.”

Okay. The search had gone on while he slept; the other guys who’d gone home in the middle of the night would be back soon, and the FBI had arrived. Things were moving. Erin was at Leni’s, and Hannah with his mom and Luke.

Valeria pointed at the hall tree where his jacket hung. “I went to your house and got you clothes. It’s not too bad. The great room and part of the deck, that’s all. The Fire Marshall kept someone there all night and got someone from Ace Hardware to board up the window.”

“Good.” Nick was still catching up. Talk to Katie. Tear apart Ferguson. Question Margaret… The list he’d fallen asleep on started through his mind again.

“Do you think she’s still alive?” Valeria.

A pulse of grief tapped Nick’s heart. “I hope so.”

“You know,” Valeria said, her voice tentative, “my Rosa has worked there, at Hilltop, how many years? Do you think—”

Nick stopped her. “Rosa’s okay, sweetheart. She’s married, stable, a family friend. Not the type of woman Jack was sleeping with.” But even as he said it, the name Robin
Weelkes came to mind. Who was she? What was her story?

Add it to the list.

Valeria said, “By the way, the mayor called. And the commissioner. And the lieutenant governor.”

“The lieutenant governor?” He’d expected the others.

“They all want to know the same thing.”

“Yeah: Where is Rebecca Engel?”

Valeria shook her head. “They want to know why you say ‘fuck’ on TV.”

Feldman was in his early sixties, carried fifteen extra pounds at his belt and a wreath of white hair around his head. He held a phone to each ear and leaned over the shoulder of a woman Nick didn’t recognize, who was looking at her computer screen. A half dozen strangers in dark suits and ties sat manning that many phones and laptops.

The Feds were here.

Feldman signed off the left ear and tapped something on the computer screen. The woman at the screen nodded, and he straightened. “Thank you. That’s good to know, Mrs. Moody.”

He signed off the second phone and said, “Eva Moody’s good. After she left Mansfeld College she took a year off then enrolled at Indiana University. Her mother talked to her last night.”

“Got it,” said the woman, and tapped some keys. “But I got one here that may be hot. Elisha Graham. She left Mansfeld a year and a half ago and never went home. Her parents are religious freaks, said she’d gone to the devil and wasn’t welcome back. They don’t know where she is.”