When the Devil Speaks Read online

  “Either the perp is a circus strongman,” Dylan said, “or we’re looking at more than one person.”

  “I was wondering about that.” Mayer came to a halt and gestured to his left. “The body was tied to that tree over there.”

  Dylan spotted the yellow crime scene tape that had cordoned off the site. He carefully descended a sharp drop in the trail and headed toward the square of tape. Every few steps, he paused to survey his surroundings, on the hunt for anything that the sheriff’s people might’ve overlooked. When he reached the tape, he ducked underneath it and came to face the side of the tree to which the John Doe’s body had been bound.

  All that remained was a few rope fibers stuck in the bark and some reddish stains on the exposed roots at the base of the trunk. The leaves had been thoroughly raked through, by Bosco, he assumed, and the sodden earth beneath had essentially been tilled by whatever tools the deputy had used to search the scene.

  It didn’t appear that the perp had dug a hole anywhere.

  Dylan decided not to drop to his knees and dig through the mud.

  Instead, he craned his neck upward and studied the treetops for a long while. But nothing stood out. No paint. No ribbon. No flag.

  Nothing obvious marked this place as the dump site, and with a thick patch of brown vines obscuring the tree from the sight of those on the trail, it was unlikely that anyone would have come upon the body for days, maybe weeks, if Singleton hadn’t fallen off the trail.

  You wanted someone to see that body posed that way, Dylan thought. Who was the intended audience?

  An idea slowly drifted to the surface of his thoughts. He turned around, the same direction the body would’ve been pointing. “Hey,” he called out to Mayer, who was still on the trail, “how far east do these woods go from here?”

  “About a mile,” Mayer answered. “Then there’s a small dairy farm.”

  “Do the owners of that farm ever enter these woods?”

  “I don’t know. Why?”

  “I have a hunch.” Dylan set off to the east. “Meet me at the farm.”

  “Meet you there?” Mayer’s voice filled with confusion. “Where are you going?”

  “If I’m right, I’m following a lead.” Dylan crushed a dry vine lined with thorns under his new rubber rain boots. “If I’m wrong, I’m going for a hike in the rain.”

  Mayer muttered something that didn’t sound complimentary. Dylan ignored it.

  He was onto something.

  He could feel it in his bones.

  Or maybe that’s just my hip telling me to go home and curl up on the couch, he thought facetiously as the rain grew heavier.

  A mile wasn’t that great a distance, but in these unfamiliar woods in this terrible weather, it took Dylan more than half an hour to find his way to the edge of the tree line. When he finally reached the muddy cow pasture, he was bleeding from a hundred pinpricks thanks to the thorny vines, his jeans were muddy up to his butt because he’d slipped and fallen, twice, and the cold had sapped so much heat from his body that he could barely walk straight due to the shivering.

  Straight ahead, directly east, lay a farmhouse.

  The victim’s eyes had been pointing at it.

  To Dylan’s left and his right lay several layers of footprints that followed the line of the electrified fence around the cow pasture. At several spots along this line, one or two sets of prints veered off into the woods. Which meant that whoever those prints belonged to did in fact have a habit of traipsing through the woods.

  Dylan figured that, on a nicer day, that person might be fond of traipsing quite a distance—a mile, for example. Perhaps that person traipsed all the way to the trail, and in so doing, passed right by the tree to which a corpse had been bound.

  That was all speculation, of course. But Dylan had done more with less.

  Careful not to wander too close to the electric fence, he rounded the entire cow pasture and crossed the wide yard in front of the farmhouse. Mayer, who’d parked his cruiser near the farmhouse, gawped at Dylan through the windshield as Dylan stomped past, ascended the creaky steps of the porch, and knocked on the front door.

  As he waited for someone to come to the door, Dylan pulled his phone out of his pocket and brought up a picture of the John Doe with the eyeless sockets helpfully censored out by a black bar.

  The front door swung inward, revealing a frail woman of middle age with short gray hair, a crocheted shawl wrapped around her shoulders. She said through the screen door, “You need something?”

  “Yes. I have a quick question for you.” He showed her the phone screen. “You know this man?”

  The woman looked at the photo, and blanched. “God almighty. That’s Joe Pritchard.”

  Chapter Six

  The woman’s name was Elizabeth Jordan, and Joe Pritchard had been her estate lawyer.

  In the living room of the farmhouse, Dylan and Mayer sat side by side on a loveseat—though Dylan was also sitting on a towel, due to his muddy pants—while Jordan explained that Joe Pritchard had come to town on Monday to help her work out the details of her will.

  Jordan had been diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer last year. The doctors had only been able to offer her palliative treatment. Over the past few months, her condition had substantially worsened, so she’d decided to bite the bullet and get her affairs in order.

  “Mr. Pritchard was recommended by a friend of mine, Kristy Sanders. I didn’t have any connection to him beforehand.” Jordan, curled up on a recliner, chewed anxiously on her thumbnail as she spoke. “I have no idea why anyone would want to kill him. He seemed like a nice enough man. Very professional. Well dressed. Polite.

  “He spent several hours helping me figure out how to properly divide all my various belongings among my kids and grandkids and such. He was supposed to come back yesterday to wrap everything up, but he never showed.”

  She bit her lip. “Now I know why.”

  While she’d recounted her experience with Pritchard, Dylan had taken in the house. It was a nice place despite its age.

  The original wood floors were polished. The walls had been repainted in the last few years. The whole place was spotless, not a cobweb in a corner, not a speck of dust on the fireplace mantelpiece. Despite her advancing terminal illness, Jordan had pridefully kept her home in tiptop shape.

  “Did Mr. Pritchard ever seem nervous while he was with you?” Mayer asked when Dylan didn’t offer up a question of his own. “Did he act like he thought somebody was following him?”

  “No,” Jordan said, perplexed. “He seemed perfectly fine.”

  “It’s not about him,” Dylan said abruptly. “It’s about the property.”

  Mayer’s eyes bugged out. “How can you possibly know that?”

  “One, if someone was out to get Mr. Pritchard, they wouldn’t have followed him all the way from St. Louis and murdered him in Crenshaw Point, where the locals are quick to notice anyone from out of town.”

  Dylan got up and moved to the picture window that overlooked the cow pasture out front. “Two, if someone was out to get Ms. Jordan here, they wouldn’t have taken out their frustration on a lawyer she barely knew. It follows, then, that the motive for the murder of Mr. Pritchard and the dump site—within walking distance of Ms. Jordan’s dairy farm—had something to do with what Mr. Pritchard and Ms. Jordan were working on at the time of the murder.”

  “That’s a terrible thought.” Jordan tugged her shawl tighter around her body. “I don’t understand why someone would be upset about my will. The farm’s a small business, turns a small profit. It’s not going to make a big payday for any of my beneficiaries, even if they sell it. Besides the farm, all I have is a couple of old cars, a few thousand in the bank, some pieces of antique furniture, and a load of junk in the attic that needs to be dropped off at a thrift shop.”

  “People use all sorts of ridiculous motivations to justify murder,” Dylan said, turning back toward the living room. “You have bad blood with any of your relatives?”

  “No. I got one sister who’s retired in Florida, two kids with good jobs who live out of state, and three grandchildren under the age of ten.” She sighed in exasperation. “No bitter ex-husbands. No siblings who got ‘robbed’ of an inheritance. Nothing.”

  Yet someone was angry enough about the estate planning to brutally murder your lawyer. Dylan wrung his hands, pacing back and forth beside the picture window. “For future reference, who’s being given the farm?”

  “Both my daughter and son are getting half of the ownership,” Jordan said. “They can do whatever they want with it after that.”

  Mayer rapped his knuckles against his knee. “So everything’s pretty equitable.”

  “I’d say so.”

  “Did your family purchase the farm from somebody else?” Dylan asked her.

  “Nope. My great-grandpa built it.”

  How strange. Dylan bit his tongue. The only reason to kill the estate lawyer would be to send a message to the property owner about the way she’s planning to split the estate.

  He shoved his hands into his pockets. “You have a copy of the will?”

  Jordan cocked her head to the side. “Um, no. Mr. Pritchard took the draft with him when he left the other day. He was planning to write up some more changes on his own time and bring the updated draft back when he came again.”

  “You know where he was staying?”

  “The bed-and-breakfast, I think.”

  “Okay. That’s all we need for now. Thank you for your time.” He motioned for Mayer to get up. “We’ll be in contact if we have more questions, or if we have any information pertinent to your well-being, or the status of the property.”

  “Lord, I feel so bad for Mr. Pritchard.” She massaged her
forehead. “I hope you catch whoever killed him.”

  “Me too, Ms. Jordan.” Dylan made for the door. “We’re sorry we had to give you bad news. We’ll see ourselves out.”

  On the porch, Dylan sucked in the cold air till his lungs hurt, gazing out across the property. His eyes lingered on the spot where he’d emerged from the woods.

  Mayer joined him on the porch, quietly shutting the screen door. “No offense, but do you always make wild-ass guesses?”

  “That wasn’t a wild guess. That was an educated guess.” Dylan made his way down the squeaky steps. “Pritchard’s death has something to do with this farm.”

  “What?”

  “I have no freaking clue,” Dylan said. “Let’s go to that bed-and-breakfast.”

  Chapter Seven

  The owner of the bed-and-breakfast was a little old lady named Patricia Hightower. She greeted Mayer and Dylan with a bright smile, offered them donuts and apple juice boxes from the establishment’s complimentary breakfast—which they politely declined—and then accompanied them upstairs to room number two, where Joe Pritchard had been staying until his untimely demise.

  Dylan though it unlikely that Pritchard had been killed at the bed-and-breakfast, since the place employed a maid who cleaned all three rooms on an almost daily basis. But just in case, he asked Ms. Hightower to remain near the top of the stairs.

  Don’t want to give the old woman a heart attack, he thought as he turned the key in the lock and pushed the door open.

  Mayer, gun in hand, entered first and swept the room. It took him all of ten seconds, as the room was tiny. After peeking behind the shower curtain, he called out, “Clear.”

  Dylan shuffled into the room and took stock of its condition. No bloodstains. No signs of a struggle. The bed was made, and fresh towels had been set out on the dresser.

  Pritchard’s suitcase lay in a chair beside the window, partially unzipped. A small pile of clothes, probably the outfit that Pritchard had worn on Monday, lay on the floor next to the chair. The clothes he’d been wearing yesterday, at the time of his murder, were conspicuously absent. They were probably in a dumpster by now, or buried in the woods.

  Tugging on a nitrile glove, Dylan unzipped the suitcase the rest of the way, revealing what Pritchard had brought to town. Two more changes of clothes. A toothbrush and a travel-size tube of toothpaste. A comb. A can of spray deodorant. An electric razor.

  That was it.

  Shouldn’t there be something related to work? A notebook? A laptop?

  Mayer loitered in the bathroom doorway. “Doesn’t look like anything happened here. Maybe someone grabbed him while he was out and about.”

  “His car is still parked outside,” Dylan said, dropping to his hands and knees to see under the bed. “If he wasn’t here when the perp abducted him, then he must’ve been somewhere within walking distance.”

  “Every place in town is within walking distance. But given the timeframe in which he was killed, he could’ve been out eating breakfast.” Mayer lowered his voice so it wouldn’t carry down the hall. “Ms. Hightower is nice and all, but her homemade donuts are always hard as a rock.”

  “We should check everywhere that serves breakfast then. See if anyone remembers him being there yesterday morning. If we can ascertain where exactly he was abducted, then…” Dylan spotted what he’d been searching for and pulled it out from under the bed. A laptop charging cable. “He had a computer.”

  Mayer glanced around. “Think he took it with him when he left here yesterday?”

  A quiet cough alerted them to the presence of Ms. Hightower, who was now listening at the door. “I saw him when he was on his way out. All he had with him were some papers in one of those manila folders.”

  Dylan and Mayer exchanged perplexed looks.

  “No one’s been in this room since he left?” Mayer asked.

  “Only Jessica, the maid. She came in right after he left to clean up,” Ms. Hightower said. “But she’s no thief. She’s been working for me for almost ten years, and I’ve never had a problem with her.”

  “I’d like to talk to her anyway.” Dylan set the charging cable on the nightstand. “She might’ve seen something important while she was cleaning.”

  “She’s off on Wednesdays, but I can give you her address and phone number.”

  Mayer tipped his hat toward her. “That’d be much appreciated.”

  Ms. Hightower beamed, feeling important. “I’ll go write it down for you boys.”

  She disappeared from the doorway and trudged down the stairs.

  “This place isn’t exactly Fort Knox,” Dylan said. “Someone could’ve broken in and taken the laptop.”

  Mayer didn’t seem convinced. “Ms. Hightower’s got security cameras on the entrances, and she watches the feeds like a hawk on some smartphone app. If a burglar had snuck into the place to steal Pritchard’s laptop, she’d have realized it by now.”

  “Unless the burglar didn’t use a door.” Dylan walked over to the window, which was unlocked, and pushed it up. It slid open without so much as a squeak. He stuck his head out the window and peered down at the row of tall, prickly bushes that bordered the house. Behind those bushes lay a ladder just tall enough to reach the window.

  “Check this out,” Dylan said to Mayer.

  Mayer poked his head out and spied the ladder. “You’re shitting me.”

  Leaning back into the room, Dylan removed from his pocket his own container of fingerprint powder and a brush. “Move back. I’m going to dust the sill.”

  While Mayer watched in mild disbelief, Dylan spread a light layer of powder on the white-painted sill and used the brush to move it to and fro, until all the imperfections atop the paint were marked in dark contrast. Among those imperfections was a clear set of fingerprints from someone’s right hand, along with a badly smudged set from the left hand.

  “Okay,” Mayer said in resignation. “I’m a little impressed now.”

  “Thanks.” Dylan stowed away his fingerprint kit. “I’m going to go check out Pritchard’s car. You got one of those handheld fingerprint scanners, right? Can you run these prints for me?”

  Mayer smirked. “I can run these prints for the sheriff’s department.”

  “You’re a comedian.” Dylan snapped his glove at Mayer’s arm. “If the prints pop a name, let me know right away. I don’t want a violent perp on the streets any longer than necessary.”

  “You and me both.”

  On his way down the stairs, Dylan ran into Ms. Hightower, who gave him the phone number and address of Jessica the maid scrawled on a piece of scrap paper. He thanked her and again declined the offer of her one-of-a-kind homemade donuts. He hurried outside before she could offer him anything else that might make him sick to his stomach.

  Dylan called the provided phone number.

  A soft-spoken woman answered the phone.

  Dylan explained who he was and why he needed to speak with her. “Can we meet sometime today?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Specter,” Jessica said, “but I’m in Kansas City today. Family get-together. Is it okay if we meet tomorrow? I can do early in the morning, before work.”

  “Sure, that’s fine. How about seven o’clock?”

  “That works for me. Where do you want to meet?”

  “We can meet outside the bed-and-breakfast.”

  “Great! I’ll see you then.”

  They ended the call on a genial note, though Dylan was mildly annoyed by the delay.

  Every minute counted in a murder investigation. Trails could quickly grow cold.

  Putting his phone away, he meandered over to Pritchard’s Audi crossover. He’d taken a quick look at it on the way into the bed-and-breakfast, but he hadn’t made the car a priority since it appeared to have been undisturbed.

  He looked through each window at the footwells and the trunk area to see if Pritchard had stashed the laptop in the vehicle. When he failed to find it, or anything else—the only thing in the vehicle was a standard roadside breakdown kit—he decided to explore the area around the bed-and-breakfast.

  If he could determine what path Pritchard had taken when the man left the bed-and-breakfast on foot yesterday morning, then he might get lucky and come upon the abduction site.