Spore (11 page)

It’s that cop from yesterday. The grouchy one who kept treating me like a psychotic thief.
Mindy took a mincing step toward the hall as Sean flinched. “I’ll go wait in the other room,” she said.

Sean grimaced and stuffed the bat under the couch. “Probably a good idea.”

Chapter Twelve

“That’s enough,” Deputy Hendrix said, raising a hand to stop Sean from playing the messages. “Since you don’t have caller ID, and the callers did not identify themselves, there’s little I can do without the rigmarole of a court order, Mr. Casey. Since there were no direct threats, only their preferences as to what they’d like to see happen, I suggest that perhaps you should ignore the taunts. Or change your phone number.”

Sean stood there, fuming, while Hendrix wrote in his little notebook. “Aren’t you going to do something? They threatened to kill me and my family.”

“No, they stated what
should
happen, not what
will
happen, so there technically was no threat.”

“This is bullshit!”

Hendrix looked up, one eyebrow raised. “Do you have a family?”

“A girlfriend, yes, but I don’t see—“

“Are you the antichrist or a zombie?”

Sean glowered but said nothing.

Hendrix tore off a sheet of paper and handed it to Sean. “Good day, Mr. Casey.” He turned to go.

Sean glanced at the paper which informed him that his complaint had been addressed and no further action was warranted. “What the hell?” he muttered, following Hendrix to the living room. “No further action? There are armed people in my front yard! On my property!”

“No, they’re on the sidewalk, a public avenue, and only one of the women is actually armed. She has a permit to carry. The others are carrying dummy weapons.” Hendrix gestured to a resin sculpture of Ghoulie with a machine gun that stood on the TV cabinet. “Like for costumes at that freak convention out in California weirdos like you go to.”

Sean glanced out the window and wondered which woman’s guns were real. “This isn’t ComicCon, it’s my home.”

Hendrix sighed and turned to face him. “Yes, a home that you opened to freaks just yesterday morning. Then you blabbed about it to every news station in the state. Do you know what’s happened since you began this journey, Mr. Casey?”

Other than a dead dog buried in my yard, phoned threats, and five people picketing my house?
Sean crossed his arms over his chest. “No. Enlighten me.”

“You should watch the news more, and talk to reporters less,” Hendrix said. “Since you ‘rescued’ those fungaloid freaks, not only have mobs of ag protesters sucked up our time and resources, we’ve had a kid go missing and a woman murdered. Here. In Boone County where a stolen car or domestic assault is a busy investigative week. Now we’re dealing with four massive crises in less than twenty-four hours and it all started with those damn fungaloids you keep blabbering about.”

“Oh come on!” Sean snapped. “First you accuse them of being frauds, now you’re blaming them for kidnapping and a murder? That’s nuts and you know it.”

“Nuts? What’s nuts is that there are real crimes to pursue and I’m here, yet again, dealing with you over a matter that you brought onto yourself.” Glaring, he took a step toward Sean, but Sean held his ground. “Since you’re suddenly such an outspoken critic of our office, which strikes you as a better use of our time? Angry mobs? Missing boy? Murdered woman? Or coming all the way out here to listen to you complain about grumpy phone messages and innocent citizens exercising their right to protest?”

“I’d definitely label the kid as the most important,” Sean said, seething, “but I’m a citizen too. I pay taxes. I vote. Don’t all citizens deserve service and protection?”

“Of course they do,” Hendrix said as he walked to the door. “If any of those costumed folks threatens you with a real weapon or one of your telephone friends says they’re actually coming to hurt you, give us a call. Until then, try to stay off the news.”

“Thanks for taking me with you,” Mindy said, looking over her shoulder toward Pinell as Sean turned his wheezy, rusted out Chevy onto the highway. She’d planned to do more online research about Jeff, but, real weapons or not, the protesters worried her.

“Let’s just hope we get in and out before my mother comes home from work,” Sean said. “I don’t suppose you know anything about light switches or loose door hinges?”

“My dad fixed that stuff, but never taught me. And Jeff…” She shrugged and swallowed the bitter lump in her throat. “He always called a repair person. Said that kind of thing was beneath him. We didn’t even own a screwdriver or hammer.”

Sean glanced at her but said nothing.

“Jeff was an ass. I get it, I do, all right?” Mindy muttered.

“I don’t know if you really do,” Sean said as they stopped at a four-way. “Maybe I’m wrong, but you don’t seem like the kind of person who’d be swayed simply by money. How’d you end up with someone like him, anyway?”

“College,” Mindy said, shrugging. “We met at a party. He was in a frat, and I was a dumb, naive freshman who got caught up in the drinking and a cute, popular guy paying all kinds of attention to me.” She felt shame flare on her cheeks and she chewed her lip before admitting, “I felt so special, and he was so sweet, telling me how amazing I was. Before I knew it, I was drunk, naked…” She flinched and looked away. “Only I got pregnant.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, well, it’s the bed I made, right? After he, we…” She took a breath and let it out. “He promised to call, after the party. Of course he didn’t. When I missed my period and got the pregnancy test back, I found him and told him. He tried to deny it, to get out of it, but he was the only guy I’d been with. There wasn’t any doubt, at least to me.”

“I’m sorry.”

She shrugged off Sean’s concern. Back then she was eighteen, broke, and barely into her first semester at college. Her father had been livid. Ashamed. He’d left her no choice, marry the guy or take her shame and never come back. And Jeff… He’d become sweet again once he learned the baby was his. Said he wanted the baby. Said he loved her. She didn’t trust the nice Jeff, but what else could she do?

“Even though I’d figured out by then he was a jerk, my dad was Catholic and insisted I marry him. His folks insisted on a paternity test first. So they stuck a needle in me and, not long after, we got married. The baby died about a month before she was due. That was… Awful.” She shrugged, not wanting to relive those details. “It kinda went downhill from there.”

Sean glanced at her, frowning. “How could it not? You married your rapist. I thought they only made women do that shit in third world countries.”

“That’s not what happened. Just because I didn’t mean to—“

“I know exactly what happened. A guy got a girl he just met drunk and coerced her to have sex with him. Last I heard, that’s rape.”

“I was
pregnant
,” Mindy said, hating the bitter taste of it in her mouth. “My parents insisted. What was I supposed to do?”

“File charges? Sue for child support? Cut his balls off?”

Mindy fidgeted, her eyes downcast. “Those weren’t options.”

Sean remained quiet for a mile or so. At last he said, “You definitely deserve better than him
or
your dad. A
lot
better.”

She thought of Sean and Mare’s playfulness, their passing caresses, their comfortable silences. “How about you and Mare? How’d you two end up so happy?”

“A lot of luck, I think.” Sean smiled. “We met in college, too. In class, not a party. We became friends, started dating, and never looked back. We just…mesh,” he said. “She’s happy with me how I am, and I’m happy with her how she is. All in all, it’s been pretty great. We have our grumpy moments, especially when money’s impossibly tight, but mostly we’re really good together.”

“But no kids?”

“Want ‘em, can’t have ‘em,” Sean said, shrugging. “It’s a medical thing.”

She’d wanted another baby but Jeff had said trapping him once was bad enough. Mindy stared at her hands, still clasped between her thighs. “I’m sorry.”

“Me, too. It’s been a tough hurdle for us. We can’t afford to adopt, so we tried fostering a little boy. He was four when he came to us, and we had him almost a full year. God, we loved that kid. They told us he was messed up, a neglected drug baby, but we thought he was simply awesome.”

Sean sighed and turned onto a residential street. “When they sent him back to his birth mother, it was the worst pain I’ve ever felt. Mare bawled for weeks. Was awful to be so helpless, so hurt, loving a kid we couldn’t have. Everyone thought it’d tear us apart, but facing the grief together made us stronger, I think. We decided we didn’t want to endure that pain again, so it’s just us, no kids. But that’s okay. We’re happy.”

Mindy nodded, wishing she could offer some comfort. Then she blinked and raised her head. “Am I staying in his room?”

“Yeah.” Sean pulled into a driveway beside an immaculate bungalow and turned off the car. “It’s actually kind of nice to have someone in there again.”

“What was his name?”

Sean opened the car door. “Jamaal. But don’t tell Mare I told you. Every time she hears his name, she starts crying.”

As Mindy exited the car, a tidy, graying-haired woman hurried down the steps, beaming and oblivious to Sean’s exasperated sigh. She wore a sleek teal blouse and tailored khakis, but cheap, scuffed loafers.
Maybe she’s been gardening?
Mindy thought. Jeff would have sent her back into the house for stepping outside without proper footwear.
And here I am in second-hand flip flops. He’d surely bust a gasket over that.

“I see you got my message!” the woman said as Sean ducked into the back seat for the toolbox.

“Yeah, Ma.” Sean slammed the car door. “Same light switch?”

“And the bathroom door hinge,” she said, beaming at Mindy. “I’m Helene, Sean’s mother. Aren’t you a pretty little thing. Has Sean finally come to his senses and chosen a nicer girlfriend?”

“Uh, um… No?” Mindy said, confused.

Sean stomped past with the toolbox. “Still with Mare, Ma. Mindy’s just a friend of ours.”

“Why can’t you pick someone who’ll take better care of you?”

Sean stopped, shoulders sagging, before he turned. “We’ve been through this. Like it or not, I love Mare and she’s not going anywhere. Mindy’s split from her husband and needs a place to stay so she’s in Jam’s old room. Do you have a problem with that, too?”

Embarrassed, Mindy took a step backwards, her spine against the car, as Helene ran an appraising eye over her. “She’s cute. You should keep her and ditch the other one.”

Sean continued into the house. “Not gonna happen, Ma.”

“A mother can hope,” Helene sighed before following. She stopped at the foot of the steps and motioned Mindy to her. “Come on now. We can look through my scrapbook while he works.”

Oh, yay,
Mindy thought, meekly following.
Maybe I should have stayed with the zombie gang.

“I don’t give a shit how pissed off drivers get,” Todd said, looming over the relief deputy as a semi sped past without slowing. “Divert traffic to the next road south. Now.”

They all had been working nearly non-stop since the fungaloids had erupted the morning before and, between various panics, thefts, a murder, and a kidnapping, the department had been forced to rely on functional idiots to fill low priority positions. Only this functional idiot had become the first responder to a totally fucked-up scene: a child’s body found nude and mangled in a ditch along highway E26 south of Fraser. After less than four hours of sleep since the previous morning, Todd had long since run out of bullshit tolerance and this guy had picked a bad day to fuck up.

Ignoring the queasy-sick twist in his gut, Todd couldn’t stop thinking,
It could be Hailey down there. Thank God it isn’t.

The relief deputy glared back. “It’s my crime scene, my—“

“Yeah, a crime scene you walked and puked all over before the investigator got here. Have any idea how much trouble that makes for DCI? For us?”

A kid lay in the ditch, not a measly stolen apple. Todd ground his teeth to keep from screaming. “You’re not certified for crime scene investigation, so you can either divert the fucking traffic so professionals who know how to do their jobs won’t get run over by rubber-necking motorists, or you can hand me your resignation right goddamn now and go the fuck home.” Todd took a breath and loomed closer to the much smaller man. “Pick one and get out of the way.”

He didn’t wait for a response before taking a few steps up the breakdown gravel and descending into the ditch. Brad Jorst, county investigator, was kneeling on the cornfield side of the remains, taking pictures.

Brad’s face was drawn and exhausted. After collecting cemetery and creek bed samples all day yesterday, plus two dead bodies in the last twelve hours, he’d had an impossible couple of days, too.

“What do you need me to do?” Todd asked, sticking to the beaten-grass path Brad had broken to the body. He struggled not to flinch.
It’s a kid, just a poor, defenseless kid.

“Rewind the whole damn planet to day before yesterday.” Brad yawned as he took a photograph of the boy’s open and emptied belly. “And remove us of idiot newbies, while you’re at it.”

“I wish.” Todd remained outside the circle of police tape Brad had set up. The less footprints and stray hairs left behind, the better.

The boy that had once been Justin Lansing lay nude on his side in the weedy ditch, his skinny-kid body bruised and his feet gone. Wind ruffled his ginger-red hair and his eyes, once blue but now a milky gray, stared at Brad’s knee and the relief deputy’s pile of puke congealing beside it.

Brad’s path down was simple, straightforward, a clear but non-damaging trek through the abundant vegetation. Idiot newbie’s tracks, however, peppered the whole scene and mangled the nearby weeds. There was no way to tell what fiber or trace evidence might have been lost under his clumsy feet. At least it was muddy enough to cast and disregard his excess prints, but they never should have happened in the first place.

Brad shifted and nudged aside a sprig of goldenrod to take another photograph. “Backup coming?”

“Supposed to be,” Todd said, scowling as the relief deputy paced along the edge of the road, obviously following neither of the instructions demanded of him. Sirens blared from far, far away, their urgent wail fading and strengthening in the wind.