Murder in the Smokies (8 page)

As she started toward the department-issued Ford sedan she’d driven to Maryville, she looked for Sutton’s truck. It wasn’t parked anywhere in the lot. Of course, she hadn’t noticed it when she came in, too focused on the questions she’d wanted to ask.

She pulled out her cell phone and dialed his number. He answered on the first ring. “Hey, Ivy.”

Damn, but even his voice could send shivers down her back. “I thought we were going to J.T.’s Barbecue for lunch.”

“Yeah, about that—I’ve had something come up. Rain check?”

“Will I see you back at the house tonight, or are you going to find somewhere else to stay?” She hoped the question didn’t sound needy.

“I’m not sure. I’ll call to let you know. I’ll have to get my things from your place if I stay somewhere else anyway.”

Nice and noncommittal. Hell, she should be glad if he had decided to put a little distance between them. The sooner Sutton Calhoun moseyed off to wherever he’d come from, the sooner she could go back to being a sensible cop instead of a flutter-headed idiot.

Unfortunately, the Maryville police captain to whom she outlined her case disagreed there was enough probable cause to approach a judge for a warrant. “You have a hunch, not evidence. Get me evidence and we’ll talk again.”

So she ended up driving back to Bitterwood in time to run into Captain Rayburn heading out to lunch, accompanied by a silver-haired man dressed in a dark blue suit. She recognized the man as the Sevier County Sheriff’s Department’s deputy chief of operations. They were both smiling as they came out of the building, but Rayburn took one look at her and his expression went from cheerful to thunderous. “Hawkins, I want to see you in my office when I get back.”

“Yes, sir.” She gave a crisp nod and moved out of his way before he and his companion bowled her over heading down the concrete steps to the personnel parking lot. She watched the two men walking away, noting that the silver-haired man was still grinning but her captain’s back was as rigid as a steel girder. She released a sigh. Her day was turning out to be one giant barrel of horse manure.

Antoine Parsons caught her up on what she’d missed while she was in Maryville. “Apparently Rayburn and the chief deputy are old fishing buddies from way back. Tommy Logan dropped by to take Rayburn to lunch but mostly, I think, to give him a few friendly whacks about one of his investigators getting herself caught in a shoot-out up on Clingmans Dome in the middle of the night.” Parsons sent a pointed look her way. “Which, by the way, you didn’t think that was something worth telling your old buddy Antoine?”

He was smiling, but she heard a tone of offense beneath Parsons’s light tone. She dropped heavily into her desk seat.

Yup, a big ol’ barrel of manure.

* * *

T
HE
ONE
-
STORY
clapboard house on Kettle Creek Road hadn’t changed much in fourteen years, Sutton saw. Still shabby, the sun-faded white paint job nearly flaked away by time, leaving weathered gray pine showing in scabrous patches. Just looking at the place made his gut tighten with dread.

But he wasn’t eighteen anymore. He hadn’t come back to get in touch with his past or anything sentimental like that.

He’d come here for answers.

At the top of the cinder-block steps to the rickety front porch, he paused, wondering if the sagging wood slats of the porch floor would hold his weight. They creaked but didn’t snap as he crossed to the ripped screen door that hung by one precarious screw from its hinges. It made a loud groan as he opened it, killing any hope he might have had for a stealthy entrance.

It didn’t matter. He knew who was inside, and he didn’t need sneaky ninja skills to get to the bottom of what was going on.

The front door was unlocked. Not that it would have mattered either way—Sutton knew where to find the spare key.

Some things never changed.

The living room just inside the front door was tidier than Sutton had expected. The old man had never cared much about what the place looked like; he’d saved his concern for first impressions for himself, making sure to wear nice clothes, shave and keep his hair neatly cut. He was selling an image, after all. People had to think they could trust him.

Footsteps sounded on the hardwood floor of the hallway beyond the door on the other side of the living room. Sutton steeled himself for his first glimpse of the old man in over a decade.

But it wasn’t his father who walked through the door. It was the man who’d led him here today. Seth Hammond paused in the doorway, folding his arms over his chest as if to block the way. “Thought you weren’t interested in a family reunion.”

“Yeah, well, you’re not family, so what do you know?” Sutton pushed forward, daring Seth to hold his ground.

For a moment, it seemed as if they might come to blows. Then Seth backed away, making an exaggerated gesture toward the bedroom down the hall. Sutton pushed past him, his shoulder bumping hard against Seth’s, knocking the smaller man backward into the wall.

He didn’t know what he’d expected to find when he finally saw his father again after so many years. An older man, his handsome face a little more lined, his dark hair liberally lined with silver.

Anything but the wheelchair-bound shell of a man who sat hunched and bitter beside the bedroom window, one hand curled into a gnarled claw and both legs thin and atrophied beneath his saggy blue jeans.

“What’s wrong with him?” he asked quietly as Seth entered the room.

Seth’s voice was gentle, tinged with unexpected sympathy. “Five years ago, he suffered a massive stroke. He hasn’t walked or talked since.”

Chapter Eight

“Did I not tell you to keep clear of Sutton Calhoun?” Glen Rayburn had a way of speaking to the officers under his command as if they were stupid, rebellious children, Ivy thought, chafing at his tone. Perhaps she deserved a dressing-down for violating the spirit if not the letter of the captain’s order, but there was no call to treat her like a teenager who’d broken curfew.

“You told Mr. Calhoun not to try to involve any of us in his investigation. He didn’t. I was the one who tailed him last night.”

Rayburn’s face reddened. “Why the hell would you do that?”

“His interest in the case interests me,” she answered honestly. “We’ve been chasing our tails for four murders now, looking for evidence that can’t be found, trying to come up with theories that make sense.” She didn’t add that some of their problems stemmed from Rayburn’s own stubborn refusal to consider linking the murders together. It put them behind on the investigation by the time the second murder was a few hours old.

“And you think Calhoun’s going to give you answers?”

“I think a fresh set of eyes can be beneficial,” she answered carefully.

“Perhaps I should remove your eyes from the case altogether.”

She couldn’t tell if he was bluffing. “Sir, that would only put the investigation that much further behind. You’d have to bring a new detective up to speed.”

“I can’t have you gallivanting all over the Smoky Mountains, getting yourself shot at and making this department look like a clown act to our fellow law enforcement agencies.”

A clown act? She bristled, trying not to show it. “Sir, someone deliberately targeted Sutton Calhoun for murder. He could have just as easily succeeded as failed last night.”

“Didn’t happen in our jurisdiction.”

“It happened to me,” she snapped back, clamping her lips closed to get her mouth under control. “I believe it’s connected.”

“I don’t see it,” Rayburn disagreed.

She tried changing directions. “Mr. Calhoun and I are not collaborating on the murder investigation.” Well, not directly. She’d probably shared a little more information with him last night while waiting for the cops than she should have, but it didn’t really seem to be much he didn’t know already.

“And yet, he’s staying at your house, isn’t he?”

She stared back at the captain, wondering how on earth he knew that.

“After my visit with Deputy Chief Logan I made a call to the motel where Calhoun was staying. The office said he’d checked out last night and left with you.”

Small-town grapevine, she thought bleakly. Faster than a bullet.

“You going to tell me he slept on your sofa?”

Her gaze, which had started to wander, snapped back to meet his, appalled by his insinuation. “Sir, my personal life, insofar as it does not affect my work, is not anyone else’s business.”

“Personal life?” Rayburn’s tone edged toward sleazy. She darkened her expression, and he seemed to realize he’d crossed a line. “You’re right. I can’t police your personal life if you’re breaking no laws. But don’t forget that you have an obligation to protect the integrity of this investigation.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very well. Dismissed.”

She walked stiffly back to the investigators’ bull pen, ignoring Antoine’s curious gaze as she dropped into her desk chair and started riffling through her messages. Mostly junk, except a follow-up call from the medical examiner who’d done the autopsy on Marjorie Kenner earlier that morning. He wanted to discuss the results. “You didn’t take the call from Shelton?”

“I was out on a witness call. Does he have the autopsy results?”

“Yeah.” She finished going through the notes. Nothing from Sutton. “I’ll give Shelton a call.”

The medical examiner, Carl Shelton, worked for the regional forensic center at the University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville. He was out to lunch when she called, so she left a message.

“Where’ve you been all morning?” Antoine asked when she hung up.

She told him about her visit to Davenport Trucking. “They rent trucks out to farmers to transport livestock to the butcher and butchers to transport meat to the packing plant. I watched a guy cleaning out the back of the truck just today. It almost looked like he’d killed someone in there.” She looked at Antoine, willing him to make the same connection she had.

His dark eyes widened. “Oh, my God.”

“So I’m not crazy?”

“We need to get our hands on a list of renters.”

“Davenport won’t supply it without a warrant. I made a case to one of the Maryville LEOs, but he said we didn’t have enough probable cause to apply for a warrant.”

“For mercy’s sake, do we have to supply a truck with body parts in it?”

“I hope not.”

“It would explain everything.” Antoine sat back in his desk chair, rubbing his chin. “Why there’s no blood evidence around the bodies.”

“He washes them down inside the truck.” Ivy tamped down a shudder at the image flickering in her head. “Removes trace evidence, gets rid of the spilled blood—”

“Then transports the clean body back to her home.” Antoine shook his head. “Why do it that way, though? Just to get rid of the evidence?”

“If we could find the truck or trucks he’s used, we could probably find trace evidence.”

“What about the drain at the trucking company?”

“Apparently there are trucks going in and out of that cleaning bay daily. Anything that might have gone down the drain the night of Marjorie Kenner’s murder has washed away already.”

“There’s got to be some way we can test out this theory.”

“Unfortunately, I can’t think of anything short of a warrant, which we can’t get yet, or waiting for the next murder, which I sure as hell don’t want to do.” Ivy rubbed her temples, where a frustration headache was beginning to set up shop and make a racket. She’d skipped lunch after a hasty breakfast of instant oatmeal. Why she hadn’t stopped for barbecue without Sutton, she didn’t know. Or maybe she knew but just didn’t want to think about how pathetic she was acting where he was concerned.

She checked her cell phone to see if she’d missed a call from Sutton while she was talking to Captain Rayburn. No messages.

He’d seemed preoccupied when they’d parted ways at the trucking company. Had he seen the truck in the cleaning bay and come to the same conclusion she had?

If so, what was he up to now?

* * *

S
ETH
H
AMMOND
WALKED
past Sutton, who stood frozen and numb in the middle of his father’s bedroom. Setting a tray of food on the table next to Cleve’s wheelchair, Seth stuck a straw in a glass of iced tea and shifted the fork to the left side of the plate.

“Made your favorite,” he told the chair-bound man, whose expression softened as he looked up at the younger man. “Chicken bites with honey mustard dip. And this time, you eat those carrot sticks I cut up for you instead of throwing them at the TV.”

Seth looked at Sutton. “Cleve likes to watch Judge Everett, but he gets a little too involved and ends up throwing things at the litigants.” He grinned at Cleve. “Always the vegetables, I notice, Cleveland. You’re not foolin’ me, you old coot.”

Cleve made a grunting sound and waved his good hand at the television.

“Hold your horses, old man. I’m getting there.” Seth picked up the remote from the side table and handed it to Cleve. The older man frowned his displeasure and tried to hand it back to Seth. “No, sir, you know you’re supposed to be doing things for yourself. You’ve got a good hand. Use it.”

Sutton felt a flood of nausea rise up his throat as Cleve growled his displeasure at Seth, but Seth just laughed it off and nodded for Sutton to follow him out of the room.

Seth closed the bedroom door behind him and headed toward the living room, nodding his head for Sutton to follow. “He knows how to use the remote. He just likes to have someone snap to attention whenever he barks.”

Sutton stopped in the middle of the hallway, forcing Seth to stop and turn around. “Five years of that?”

“It was a lot worse for the first year or so. He couldn’t do much for himself at all then. I know it’s hard to tell, but he’s made a good bit of progress. Not as much as he should’ve, but you know what a stubborn old cuss he can be, and the stroke made him that much worse.”

“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

Seth’s eyes glittered with meaning. “You wouldn’t take my calls.”

Damn. Seth
had
tried to call him about five years earlier, but Sutton had ignored the messages. He’d been up to his eyeballs in jihadists on a daily basis. The last thing he’d wanted to deal with was his old friend’s latest mess. “I thought you wanted me to bail you out or something.”

“Lucky for me I didn’t,” Seth murmured, gesturing toward the doorway into the living room. “Come on, let’s sit down. You’re looking a little pasty.”

Sutton dropped into the nearest armchair, his knees feeling shaky. “God.”

Seth sat on the sofa adjacent, leaning forward a little. “Seriously, you okay? You want a glass of water?”

“Did the doctors know what caused it? High blood pressure?”

Seth’s lips quirked slightly, though they didn’t quite make it to a smile. “I reckon Bart Ludlow would call it divine retribution.”

Sutton frowned, not following.

“Remember when Ludlow filled your daddy’s backside full of buckshot for messing around with Ludlow’s wife?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, they didn’t get all the buckshot out, as you probably remember. Apparently one of those pellets did something they call ‘embolize.’ Went right up his bloodstream, lodged in a vessel in his head and caused a stroke.”

“God.” How bloody typical, he thought, that one of his father’s myriad sins would have come back to bite him. “Who found him?”

“I did. I usually checked on him every day or so. Doctor said the timing was damned near a miracle. Too much longer and they couldn’t have saved him.”

“Did he ask to see me after he was awake?”

Seth’s eyes narrowed. “I told you, he can’t talk.”

In other words, Sutton thought, he hadn’t. Why would he? Sutton had left the second he turned eighteen and made it clear to his father that he didn’t want to see him again. “He can understand you, right?”

Seth nodded. “The doctors aren’t sure why he’s not able to talk. They think it might be psychosomatic. You know how vain Cleve’s always been about his looks. The doctors speculated staying mute might be a way to avoid interacting with other folks when he’s this way.”

“What about therapy? Is he still getting therapy?”

“I take him once a week. It’s all he’ll agree to, and he fights them all the way. I get the feeling the folks at the rehab place would be happy as pigs in slop if Cleve never came back, but I’m not ready to give up on him yet.”

Sutton stared at the other man, not sure what he was feeling. Guilt, certainly, but was there also a little envy? Envy that Seth Hammond was playing the role of Cleve’s son, doing the things Sutton should have been doing? “And he never asked for me?”

“I reckon he knew you wouldn’t come.”

“Nobody gave me the chance.”

“I called—”

“You could have kept at it. Sent a letter or, hell, you could have had Delilah tell me.”

“I wasn’t sure it was a good idea.” Seth’s voice lowered a notch. “You made it real clear you weren’t coming back here and Cleve was a big reason why. I wasn’t sure draggin’ you back here kicking and screaming would have been any good for him. He needs somebody who actually gives a damn, not somebody who feels guilty and obligated.”

Sutton wanted to argue. He wanted to slap that mildly scolding look off Seth Hammond’s face and tell him to get the hell out of his house. But it wasn’t his house. And apparently, for the past five years, at least, Seth had been a far better son to Cleve than Sutton ever had.

“I know he didn’t show it, but I think he was real glad to see you.”

The only thing worse than Seth’s disapproval was his compassionate pity. “Give me a break. I saw how he looked at me.”

“Why did you come here today, Sutton?”

Sutton thought about lying, but he realized the truth might get him a lot further with Seth. Like a lot of con men, Seth was as good at spotting a lie as he was at telling one. “I was following you.”

Seth’s eyebrows notched upward a moment before his expression went neutral. “Should I be flattered or take out a restraining order?”

Sutton didn’t answer.

“It’s about the murders, right?”

“You work at a place where three of the four victims worked.”

“So, naturally, I’m the prime suspect.”

Sutton wished he could say yes, just to wipe the annoyed look off Seth’s face. What did he expect? He’d happily followed in Cleve’s scam-pulling footsteps, taking to the confidence game as if he was born for it. “Your hands aren’t the cleanest in the county.”

“I haven’t pulled a con in years. And I’ve never been violent. You know that.” Seth smirked. “I’m a lover, not a fighter.”

“You’re awfully interested in the murders. I mean, you went to a lot of trouble to get in contact with me about what you knew.”

“Mr. Davenport hired me when a whole lot of people wouldn’t have let me in the door. He took a chance on me, and if I can do anything to protect him and his business—”

“Sounds personal.”

“Like I said, he took a chance. Not many would’ve.”

“Did you hear there was another murder yesterday?”

Seth looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “I knew about it before lunchtime. You know how this town is.”

“Did Marjorie Kenner ever work at Davenport Trucking?”

“No, as far as I know, she retired from the school and took to tutoring out of her house to make a little pocket change.”

“Could there be any connection between her and anyone at the company? Maybe she rented a truck?”

“I don’t think so.” Seth’s brow furrowed. “I’ve been working there a little over a year, so she might have done it before my time. But why would a serial killer target someone who just rented a truck?”

Damned good question, Sutton had to concede. April Billings had been twenty years old. Marjorie Kenner had to be in her late fifties at the very youngest. “Did you know either of the other two women who died?” he asked Seth.