What They Don't Know by Susan Furlong

Author:Susan Furlong
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781645060413
Publisher: Seventh Street Books
Published: 2022-02-21T16:00:00+00:00

~ PART III ~

NO MORE DENIAL

TWENTY-FOUR

Saturday, October 31 Present Time

It’s cold in the barn. As cold as a grave. Rightly so, thinks Reyes, as he watches the body bag being zipped over his victim’s legs and torso, and then looks up to see Meyers arriving on the scene. “Wait,” he tells the techs. “One more minute, my partner just got here.”

They back off as Meyers joins him. He takes one look at the skull fractures and markings on the victim’s face, and says, “I hate cases like these. How could someone do this to another person? And she was a pretty woman, too.”

Reyes gives Meyers a quick glance, noting that his face is pale and slick with sweat, despite the low temperature. This was a difficult crime scene. Ben Ellison placed the 911 call a little after one thirty this morning. Dispatch said he was so hysterical that they barely got anything intelligible from him.

“Sorry, I’m late,” Meyers says when Reyes doesn’t respond. “Should I step out while you do your communicating thing?”

“I don’t communicate with the dead,” Reyes says. “That would be strange. I simply talk out loud to them at their death scene. It helps me get a sense of things. But if you have something else to do, that’d be fine with me.”

“Right. Have your chat. I’ll go check to see if they’ve turned up anything outside.”

Other officers are canvasing the surrounding fields, hoping to find the murder weapon, but the markings on her face and head are distinctive enough. Reyes squats close and whispers, “Did he use a hammer on you?”

He doesn’t expect much in return. He remembers from questioning her that she was an exact person, she picked and measured her words carefully. She gave him little to no information, even though he sensed that she knew more. No doubt she’ll be just as elusive in death as she was in life.

He stares at her face, or what’s left of it, blue skinned, haunting eyes bulged over chiseled cheeks, her red lipstick garish on her bloodless lips. He closes his eyes and tries to imagine the first blow, her reaction—did she turn and glimpse her assailant, or was she dead before she got a chance? His mind felt like a lightning storm, striking out in a dozen different directions. Why here? The same place where Gus Ellison killed himself. Two deaths in the same barn. And another death, Mia Jones, killed and dumped not more than a few miles from here.

Meyers pops his head back in. “Hey, buddy. You better come out here. They’ve found something.”

Reyes follows him outside, and they start to weave their way through parked vehicles toward a group of officials huddled out in the middle of the field when one of the officers peels away and runs in their direction. “It’s a female,” he says, out of breath. “Exposure’s bad. I’m going for blankets. Transport’s about five minutes out.”

Reyes starts jogging, jagged cornstalks left over from harvest snagging his trousers. Meyers is right behind him.

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