Last Words (7 page)

Perfect, she thought. This is the perfect way to slough off the day. A little wine, a beautiful sunset, a refreshing swim.

She put the glass on the ground next to the lounge and leaned back, closed her eyes and tried to think pleasant thoughts.

What was it the characters in
Peter Pan
used to say? Think good thoughts
…
Christmas. Candy
…

Christmas was half a year away, and Mia never did acquire a taste for candy. Except truffles and the occasional chocolate that came in a gold foil box. But pleasant thoughts could not overshadow the other things that ran rampant in her mind. She sat up and reached for her wineglass, drained it, and decided perhaps a swim would help clear her head of the images of the three little boys they’d pulled from a drainage ditch a little more than a week ago.

She set the glass on the table and walked to the edge of the pool and dove in. The warm water washed over her, head to foot, and enveloped her. She swam laps until her arms hurt, then floated on her back watching the stars appear. So much brighter here than they were back in Arlington.

Bless Connor for having offered her his home.

She got out and toweled herself dry, then went back into the house and returned with the bottle of wine and a plate of crackers and cheese.

I’ll just have my own little cocktail party. She smiled as she placed the wine and the platter on the table next to the lounge. She refilled her glass and ate some of the cheese standing up. She took a few more sips of her wine before returning to her place on the lounge, where she finished the wine and closed her eyes.

Can’t wait until I can close this case. God, I hope I never have to face another family like the Jenners, give them the kind of news I had to give them. Poor babies…

She shivered and opened her eyes. For days she’d been trying to wipe out the vision of the three boys, ages two, three, and five, who’d wandered away from their home and ended up in four feet of water in a ditch hundreds of feet from the back of their thirty-acre property. How a two-year-old had managed to walk that far, she’d never know, but the evidence all indicated that they hadn’t been abducted and drowned. Rather, it appeared they’d gotten out of their yard while their mother was out front planting marigolds around the mailbox and chatting with a neighbor. Piecing it all together, it looked as if the boys had decided to take advantage of her inattention to explore a bit on their own, and had walked off into the woods at the rear of their property. A quarter of a mile on the other side of the woods, the ground sloped down abruptly, ending in a retention ditch. The sides of the hill were clearly scarred with gouges made by the boy’s feet as they slid down to the water below.

Mia rubbed the palms of her hands against her eyelids until all she could see behind them was white light. Better than the faces of dead children, she told herself as she settled on the lounge and lowered the back until she was almost prone, and then wondered if this was how she wanted to spend the rest of her life.

“I’m not a quitter,” she said aloud.

She was second generation in the FBI, and she wasn’t going to be the first one to quit. Well, her brother Grady had that honor, but he hadn’t quit because he couldn’t take it. And her brother Brendan…well, the less said about him, the better. Once there’d been seven of them…
seven
, she reminded herself. Seven Shields, not counting her father and her Uncle Frank, both of whom had retired. The four in Mia’s family and Uncle Frank’s three sons, Connor, Dylan and Aidan.

Of the seven, there were now only four. Mia and her brother Andrew, Connor and his brother Aidan. So much for the dynasty her father had once been so proud of.

That she, the only girl in the family, had followed the others into the Bureau had been a point of pride for Mia. She’d worn the badge for nine years now, but recently had begun to question her decision to join. Her career choice was only one of many things she questioned lately.

Until she woke, slightly disoriented with a pounding head, Mia hadn’t realized she’d fallen asleep. From somewhere nearby there was a rustling sound. She jumped nearly out of her skin as the small table next to her crashed to the ground, sending the wine bottle and the glass to the grass along with the plate and the remaining cheese.

In the shadow of the porch lights, she made out the silhouettes of several furry creatures who were busy with the cheese and the box of crackers.

Raccoons.

She backed away as slowly and as quietly as she could, doing her best not to draw their attention, fighting an urge to run like hell, until she reached the porch. Once there, she sprinted up the steps and through the door. From the screened porch she watched the young raccoons who, she realized, had no interest in anything other than the tasty treats they’d found.

Lucky for me
, Mia thought,
Momma isn’t with them
,
though she’s probably close by.

She stood at the screen and watched the animals chow down on her snack and wrest the cork from the wine bottle, spilling the contents on the grass.

“Thanks, guys, that was a nice chardonnay,” she yelled.

After they’d eaten everything, shredded the cracker box, and licked out the wineglass, she said, “You’re welcome. Do stop by again.”

Eventually the raccoons lost interest in the backyard, and wandered off into the woods. As amusing as the incident had been, Mia wasn’t oblivious to the fact that it could have been a dangerous encounter.

Not to mention the fact that anyone coming into the backyard finding her asleep in her bathing suit in the middle of the night might have had more on their minds than eating her snacks and drinking her wine.

What the hell was I thinking? She chided herself as she locked up the house. Falling asleep in the backyard is just plain stupid. The fact that the entire back of the property was enclosed by a secure privacy fence made it no less stupid. She shook her head, wondering at her carelessness, and locked up the house.

The clock on the small chest next to her bed read one o’clock.

Jesus. She shook her head again. She’d been in the business long enough to know the kinds of things that could—and did—happen to careless women.

No more cocktails by the pool for me. At least not by myself.

She showered and slipped into a nightshirt and got into bed. As she turned off the light, she noticed the light on her cell phone, which she’d left on the bedside table, was blinking. She picked it up and looked at the number of the last call.

Shit.

She picked up the phone and listened to the message her boss had left for her hours earlier.

“Mia, John. Call me whenever you get this message, doesn’t matter what time it is. It’s important. There’s a new case we need to talk about….”

7

Mia watched the boats out in the harbor from the conference room window in the St. Dennis police department. It was a perfect July day, with the clearest of blue skies, low humidity, and temperatures in the mid-eighties.
What an incredible view,
she thought as a large sailboat entered the harbor, its sails at half-mast.
How does anyone get any work done around here?

She rested her elbows on the windowsill and tried to keep her impatience in check. The conversation she’d had with John last night had been short and sweet and to the point.

“Female vic found encased in plastic, left in the backseat of the police chief’s car, second such victim found in three days. Chief of police has requested assistance. You’re the closest agent to the scene. First thing in the morning, you’re there. Good luck—it’s your baby now.”

Or would be, if the chief of police would have the courtesy to show up.

She drained the cup of coffee the dispatcher had brought her when she first arrived over a half hour ago. It was cold and not so bad, as cop coffee went, but her stomach was leaning toward slightly upset and she could have used a Coke.

She’d been told that the chief was in a meeting off-site, but was expected to arrive any minute. She hoped it would be soon. She pushed aside the coffee and stepped into the hall.

“Excuse me,” she called to the dispatcher.

He turned to her, the phone in his hand.

“Sorry,” she said. “I was just wondering if there was a soda machine…”

“What’s your pleasure?” He hung up the phone.

“I’d kill for a Coke.”

“Can okay?”

“Whatever form it comes in is more than okay.”

“Right through that third door you’ll find the kitchen. Help yourself to whatever you want.”

“Thank you. Sorry to have disturbed you.”

“Not at all. I’m sorry you’re having to wait so long.”

Mia found the kitchen and the promised cold can of soda. She popped the lid and took a long drink. Better than coffee for an upset stomach, she told herself as she returned to one of the uncomfortable chairs in the conference room. Yesterday’s local newspaper was there on the table; she scanned the headlines.

ALL WRAPPED UP!
shouted the front page of the tabloid paper.
Body wrapped in plastic left for anguished parents! Ballard woman suffocated!

No wonder everyone’s panicking, reading crap like this. What moron gave out all that information to the press?

She folded the paper and tossed it to the opposite end of the table in disgust.

“…waiting for you in the conference room,” Mia heard the dispatcher say.

“Great. Give him some coffee and tell him I’ll be in in just a second.”

“Ahhh, Chief—”

“Be right there, Garland. Gotta take this call, I’ll make it fast…”

Why did they always expect a guy?
She shook her head. Women had been in the FBI for years, and yet people were still surprised when the agent they were expecting wore a skirt. Or in her case, well-cut black linen pants and a crisp white shirt.

His entrance into the room caught her off guard.

If he was surprised to find that Agent Shields was a woman, he hid it well.

“Agent Shields, I’m Gabriel Beck.” He approached her with an open hand and a weary smile. “I apologize for making you wait. I see someone’s brought you a drink. Can I get you a refill?”

“No thank you.” She took his hand and gave it the firm shake she reserved for those times when she felt she needed to assert herself. She fished her credentials from her bag and handed them over. “I’m sure you’ll want to look these over.”

He did. When he was finished, he handed them back and took the chair directly opposite hers.

“You’ve been brought up to date?” He asked.

“Only by the local paper.” She pointed to the end of the table.

“That was a pretty bad piece.” He shook his head. “You wonder what people are thinking when they write crap like that.”

“They’re thinking about how many papers they’re going to sell.” She folded her arms on the table.

“I’m sure they had a banner day, then.” He leaned back in his chair. “I had a long talk with your Agent Mancini yesterday afternoon, I assumed he passed on everything we talked about.”

“He told me about the two bodies that were found, how they were found, and where. Both victims were from towns nearby, is that correct?”

He nodded. “Right. The first was found on the front porch of her family home, the second was found here, in the backseat of my car.” He added wryly, “My personal car.”

“Nice touch on his part. How’d he get the car open?”

“Apparently I’d left it unlocked.”

“So he just walked onto your property in the middle of the night and dumped the body in your car and no one heard or saw anything?” she asked.

“Not a thing. It had to have been between the hours of one and five in the morning. I was downstairs reading until a little before one, and I was up again at five. I try to run four mornings each week. I left the house at ten after five and got back around five forty-five.”

“And you didn’t notice anything at all?”

“The car was parked behind the house, in front of the garage. I left and returned through the front door. It wasn’t until I was leaving for a meeting around seven thirty that I found the body.”

“The car’s been impounded?”

“The lab people are still working on the bare amount of trace our people were able to recover. The killer had apparently hosed down the plastic to remove anything that might have clung to the wrappings before he put her into the car.”

“Fingerprints?” she asked.

“Not a one.”

“Careful, wasn’t he?” She tapped her fingers on the table. “And thorough. Not taking any chances at all. But that’s a brassy move, leaving her for you to find. She was from St. Dennis?”

He shook his head. “No. She was from a nearby town, Cameron. At least, we’re thinking she was. A young woman named Mindy Kenneher went missing there a few weeks before the woman who’d been found on Sunday night. I’m expecting to hear back from the ME any time now. I was meeting with the chief of police from Cameron when you arrived. He was on his way to the morgue to take a look at the body.”

“He hadn’t seen her yet?”

“The ME spent hours with the remains yesterday and last night. The condition of the body apparently made it very slow going. As hot as it’s been this past week, decomposition accelerated inside the plastic. She—the ME, Dr. Reilly—is very thorough. She’s taking her time with this.”

“It’s my understanding there was a tape found with the first body,” she said. “Was there one with the second as well?”

“Yes, but because of the breakdown of bodily fluids inside the plastic, the tape was saturated and has been compromised. Agent Mancini said the FBI labs could work on that, see if they could improve the quality. Unfortunately, right now it’s inaudible.”

“I’m sure we can help with that. Any chance I can listen to the tape that was found with the first victim?”

“The chief in Ballard has that; I’ll have him make a copy. And I’ve already requested a copy of his file, and the file from Cameron. We’ll get you whatever you need.”

“Chief, why do you suppose he left the body for you to find?”

“Beck,” he told her. “Everyone calls me Beck. And I don’t know why he picked me, except for the fact that I attended the press conference Chief Daley held over in Ballard the other day. There were four of us, police chiefs from four communities. Five all together, including Daley.”

“Why were you all there?”

“Mostly to let our communities know we were going to work together to solve the case.” He made a face. “It seemed like a good idea at the time. In retrospect, not so much.”

“Because he—the killer—may have felt threatened? Maybe thought you were ganging up on him? Or then again, judging by his response, maybe he’s playing with you. Maybe he saw the whole thing as a challenge? ‘You guys think you’re so smart, well, I’ll show you. You don’t know who you’re dealing with.’”

“You got that part right.” Beck nodded. “We don’t know who we’re dealing with.”

“Why you?” she asked. “There were other local chiefs there. Why did he pick your car and not one of the others?”

“I have no idea. I’m trying not to read too much into it.”

He pushed the chair back from the table and stood.

“You feel like taking a walk?”

“Sure.”

“Garland, I have my phone if it’s important,” Beck said as he passed the desk. “We’ll be back in a while.”

Garland was on the phone, but raised a hand to signal he’d heard.

Mia followed Beck through the lobby and out the front door. She dug in her bag for her sunglasses, then swung the bag over her shoulder.

“Pretty town,” she said as they walked toward the water.

“One of the prettiest towns around. I want to keep it that way.” He stopped at the end of the macadam drive. “St. Dennis sits right at the convergence of the New River, which you can see straight ahead there, and the Chesapeake Bay, out there to your left, where that big cruiser is headed. During the War of 1812, the town was shelled by the British. Several of the houses in town still have cannonballs embedded in their walls, but none fell. St. Dennis is very proud of that.”

“Ahhh, spoken like a proud native,” she said. “Born and bred here, I assume?”

“No.” He turned and started toward the brown, shingled building that stood at the end of the parking lot.

“Really? Could have fooled me.” She hustled to keep up. “Where are you from?”

“Here and there.”

O-kay
…

“So where are we headed?” she asked.

“I want to give you the lay of the land around here. St. Dennis is split pretty much in two by Charles Street, which is the main road you came in on. Half of the town faces the water, the other half faces the farms on the opposite side of town. Along Charles, we have shops where you can find just about everything. Eateries that run the gamut from pretty damned posh to a storefront with tables on the sidewalk where you can sit barefoot and eat hot dogs. We have an art gallery and an antiques shop and a bookstore where you can find comic books and first editions as well as the latest best sellers. There’s a marina where you can dock your boat and a boatyard where you can buy one if you don’t already have one.” He paused. “We have a population of about fifteen hundred.”

She slowed down. She got it.

“That big a commercial district plus a low population equals a tourist town.”

“Mostly on the weekends, yeah. And we have several old inns, bed-and-breakfasts, that sort of thing, so we get a lot of people staying around in the summer months. We had our Harbor Festival last weekend. Close as we can figure, our population just about tripled.”

“That’s a lot of people coming and going, some staying,” she said. “So you have to wonder…”

“Yeah. Was he one of them?” Beck turned back toward the municipal building. “Let’s walk up to town.”

He was tempted to add
If you’re up to it, in those shoes.

What was it with women and high heels? He’d seen Vanessa teettering on heels that had to be four inches. And Steffie, too, whenever they’d gone out to dinner. Agent Shields’s weren’t that bad, and she didn’t seem to have a problem keeping up with him, but still. It was one of those things men just didn’t get.

“Of course, he could just as easily be a local, living in any one of these small towns. Until we can learn a little more about him, we’re all just speculating. One of the reasons I wanted the FBI involved was to have access to your profilers. Maybe help us get a handle on what type of person we’re dealing with.”

“We can do that. Let’s try to get a handle on the whole picture first. We’ll start with the victims, see what they have to tell us.”

“But they’ll send someone, right?” They reached the end of the walk that led to Charles Street and stopped at the corner. “They’ll send us someone who can do all that?”

“They did.”

He stared at her for a long moment.

“You mean you—”

“I’m trained to do it all.” She tried to smile good-naturedly, but a weak grin was the best she could come up with.

“Sorry. I thought you were just here as an investigator.”

“That’s all part of it. However, if I feel we need someone with more experience, I won’t hesitate to call in one of the big guns.”

Someone in a passing Buick slowed down to yell a greeting at Beck.

“How’s your wife feeling, Tony?” He called back.

“Doin’ better, thanks!”

“Tell her I was asking for her.”

“Will do!” The driver of the car waved and continued on his way.

“Nice shops.” Mia glanced across the street to the row of storefronts.

“Like I said, a little something for everyone.” Beck gestured toward the place on the corner. “Let’s grab something cold, then I’ll give you a short tour.”

He held open the door to Sips, a narrow one-room affair that sold only drinks. After a chat with Sam, the owner, about the body in Beck’s Jeep while he poured them each a large drink, Beck cut the conversation short.

“Won’t take much to feed that fire,” Beck said after he and Mia stepped back outside. “It’s all anyone wants to talk about.”

“How many homicides do you have in the average year?” she asked.

“Average?” He pretended to think it over. “Maybe one. Most I recall was one year when a couple of runaways from Baltimore holed up in one of the abandoned shacks down near the river. One of them flipped out and beat the other one to death with a shovel while he was passed out. We also had a shooting that same year, so that was two. Hal might know of others. You can ask.”

“Hal?”

“He was the chief of police before me. He still works part-time when we need extra hands, which we always seem to, this time of the year.”

“He was the chief and now he’s a part-timer? That sits okay with him?”

“I haven’t heard any complaints. Actually, it was his idea.”

“Hey, you.”

Mia turned to see a pretty young woman step out from the doorway of the shop they just passed.

“You’re just going to walk by and not even poke your head in to say good morning?” The woman walked toward them, not bothering to mask the fact that she was appraising Mia from head to toe.