Final Grave (18 page)

Becky met her at the downstairs door and handed her a camel hair coat. From its length it had to be Meg’s.

“No, Becky, I can’t wear her good coat.”

“Trust me, she’s bought two more since this one. Maybe it’ll lift your spirits.”

“And I was worried about yours.” Meri Ann draped the coat over her shoulders.

Becky stood back, stroked her chin. “Hot damn. Some detective, watch out Mendiola. Is he cute?”

“I thought he was good-looking the first time I saw him. Then I smelled his whiskey breath. That was at eight in the morning. Not that I begrudge anyone the right to a work-night party, but his seems to be every night. His personal life takes precedence over work.” Meri Ann was ready to go on but Becky’s held up her hand like a traffic cop.

Meri Ann laughed at her outburst. “I am such a bitch. I suppose he’s okay. I just want Superman working this case.”

“So you’ll be Superwoman.” Becky gave her a thumbs-up.

Meri Ann left feeling lighter than she had all morning. She drove down the lane with the radio loud enough to please Becky.

At a quarter to nine, she stepped into the Ada County detective section. Neles and another fellow she’d seen at the morning’s crime scene glanced up from the open seating area. Meri Ann nodded good morning, as did they. Mendiola, on the other hand, barely acknowledged her.

She tapped on Dillon’s glass door.

The lieutenant wore a loose-fitting blue sweater that matched her eyes, a soft feminine touch, but her military stance indicated business.

She motioned to Meri Ann. “Come on in.”

Dillon poked a yellow pencil at an unruly IN basket. “I’m buried in paper. Some days seems like all I do is sign my name on reports, fill out schedules, and handle personnel issues. I miss the field work. Then I go out on a case, like today, and think reports aren’t so bad. We got ourselves a mess out there.” Dillon indicated a sturdy oak chair at the side of her desk. “Have a seat.”

Meri Ann folded her coat over the chair-back and sat down. “The scene at Camel’s Back made my skin crawl.”

“And it doesn’t stop with the bones,” Dillon said. “I hear someone’s watching your house.”

“Looks like it. I’ve seen the woman and so has my friend. There’s no explanation for her presence and, of course, last night went beyond looking.”

Dillon ran the eraser end of her pencil around her lips. “I’ve ordered an extra patrol to swing by. We’re short staffed, like the rest of the world, but you’ll get four or five passes a night. I’m not ready to put the house under 24-hour surveillance.”

“I understand.” She squared her shoulders and came to the point. “As Mendiola told you, I’d like to work the case.”

Dillon rocked back and propped her feet on the edge of an open drawer. Her eyes held steady. “I suppose he told you I’m okay with that?”

“He told me this morning. It means a lot to me. I appreciate—”

“Don’t bother with thanks. I’ve got an agenda. Having a trained detective on my staff and not my budget works for me. You’re also a calling card for our suspect. Someone’s made contact by phone. On that note, I’d be crazy not to take you and crazier not to fess up to the pitfalls. You’ve got an agenda, too. You’re personally involved and according to your boss in Sarasota, you are one hard-headed woman.”

The thought of Dillon conferring with Pitelli sent a rush of blood to Meri Ann’s face. “He said that?”

“And that you work your butt off, that you’ve got a good record and are up for promotion. You could lose that, you know.”

How many times did she need to be reminded? “So I understand.”

“I’m hoping you do; because if you screw up on my turf, if you don’t play by my rules, you’re back to Balmyland whether they want you or not.”

“I’ve no problem with that.”

“Good. Now, I’d like to hear your ideas on the case, like what’s going on?”

“For what it’s worth,” Meri Ann said, “about two weeks ago, a Sarasota TV station asked for an interview. They were doing an in-depth look at female detectives and my boss volunteered me. The station sent a film crew to the Y where I was teaching a woman’s self-defense class. The network picked up the spot on
Good
Morning
America
.”

Dillon chewed on her pencil. “And this preceded the discovery on Table Rock? Well, kiss my face. What does Jack think?”

Meri Ann had meant to tell him as they were leaving Wheatley’s house but then they’d had words. She shifted uneasily. “It didn’t occur to me until this morning.”

“I see.” Dillon glanced out her interior window in Mendiola’s direction. “By the by, you report to Jack, not me. He reports to me. I’m not saying you can’t come to me, but don’t do it without good reason. I’m a stickler for procedure, and I don’t want him any more upset than he already is over sharing his turf. I’m thinking you understand.”

Every office delineates pecking order, but in light of the recent tension between Mendiola and her, the idea stuck in her craw. She slowly nodded.

“Rule one: you and Jack are in my face on a regular basis with anything pertinent to the case. Failure to communicate is not tolerated.”

Dillon went on, “I don’t deal with emotional outbursts, lack of objectivity, or… or vengeance. You do not seek and find the killer and exact your own personal vengeance. Vengeance is not yours, saith me.” She pointed the pencil at Meri Ann. “Got that?”

Meri Ann thought back to the crime scene and her fury over the person who set it up, turned her mother’s murder into a macabre game. Sure, she prayed for revenge and the pleasure of exacting sweet justice from a sick killer. But she accepted the rules. “I respect the law,” she said.

“That’s all I ask.” Dillon studied her for a moment. “Okay,” she finally said. “Here’s how it works. Technically you do not have jurisdiction outside of Florida. You can investigate, accompany, and write arrest warrants, etc., but you cannot make an arrest alone. You’ll need Jack or one of us along.” Dillon eased back in her chair.

“I understand,” Meri Ann said.

“I’ll work your butt off. And another thing. You and Jack got a ton of personal baggage between you. I sure as hell know his. I’m learning about yours—the loss of your mother, the emotional shit this case must be stirring up. I also know you’re going through a divorce.”

Meri Ann wanted to throttle Pitelli for telling her. She squirmed in her chair, feeling a red heat radiate from her cheeks and ears. “He said that, too?”

“Maybe he wanted me to go easy.” Dillon’s mouth pulled at one corner, like she wanted to smile. “Just relax, all right? The good news is, I don’t gossip. No one in this office knows what I discussed with your boss. Same for Jack, if he wants to share his dirty laundry, that’s his business. My job’s keeping a handle on things. Okay, Fehr. Hear that’s what you like to be called.”

Meri Ann nodded, eager to move on to the reason she’d put her life on hold. “I’m ready to work.”

“Then let me call Jack.” Dillon grabbed the armrests on her chair and pushed up. “He’s a good detective, one of my best. He’s not always so pissed at everyone, just going through his own personal hell at the moment. But trust him to do the right thing.”

Dillon whipped her door open. “Hey, Jack. Get yourself in here a minute. Neles, you too.”

Meri Ann twisted around, catching Mendiola as he sauntered across the room.

“Hey,” he said, as he stepped through the door.

He didn’t take the chair beside hers. He chose to lean against Dillon’s credenza, arms folded, muscled legs crossed. The pointy toes of his boots still carried traces of tan loam from the hilltop. He looked like he’d shaved, but not much else. If anything, the bags under his eyes sagged more than when she had seen him last. Dillon’s earlier comments about him piqued Meri Ann’s curiosity, and she briefly wondered about Mendiola’s personal hell.

Neles came in two seconds later. He settled his lean frame into the extra chair beside Meri Ann’s. He looked to Mendiola, as if he wanted an explanation.

Dillon reached over and swung the door shut. “Detective Fehr is assigned to the Dunlap case, Neles.”

He nodded in Meri Ann’s direction. “We got us a ton of weird on this one, huh?”

Like choreographed Rockettes, one head after the other bobbed confirmation. It stopped with Dillon.

The lieutenant picked up her pencil and slapped it on the palm of her hand. “Any word on Wheatley?”

Mendiola shook his head. “Nothing yet, but we’re watching his house. Neles says the lab’s cast two of the most recent footprints at the scene.”

Neles straightened in his chair. “Yesterday’s rain made it easy.”

“I’m gonna cut to the chase here,” Dillon said. “So if you’ll excuse me, Neles.”

Meri Ann found it interesting that Neles hadn’t made eye contact with his boss, at least not for any length of time. Yet he paid deference to everything she said. She might have missed a personal relationship between her mom and Wheatley but not this one.

Dillon slid her gaze to Meri Ann. “I’ve called a friend of mine, Buddy Simmons, at the FBI at Quantico in Virginia. He’s a profiler, and I asked him what he thought about a killer waiting so many years between kills.”

Meri Ann had wondered herself. She leaned forward.

“He says these freaks, UNSUBs, meaning unidentified subjects, can kill once, twice, a hundred times. On rare occasions, one might quit after the first incident. But most of them don’t quit until they die, or they’re caught. The length of time between kills varies. It doesn’t always happen, bing, bing, bing.”

“Obsession is key,” she continued. “Interpersonal violent crimes happen when these freaks get their jollies preying on innocent folks. What makes these guys click on is a precipitating factor. Like trouble at home, loss of a spouse. Or sometimes a visual factor. Something triggers their need to exert power over someone or some situation, like maybe a victim’s daughter appearing on national television.”

Meri Ann’s heartbeat quickened as she thought about the killer watching her on television.

Mendiola unfolded his arms. “Excuse me?”

Dillon said, “You do the honors, Fehr.”

Meri Ann humbly explained about her television interview. “I didn’t connect the two events until today.”

Neles smacked his fist in his hand. “So the perp saw you and maybe wants—”

“He wants her out here,” Mendiola said. “I said that early on, and wish to hell I’d known about the interview.”

“You would have, if I’d thought of it before this, if I’d ever imagined it had any relevance to the case. It still seems fantastic to me, that someone who knew me and my family fifteen years ago might actually catch a 60 second blurb on television. And more fantastic still that he or she realized I was Joanna Dunlap’s daughter,” she said. “Can we move on to the UNSUB’s profile. I’d really like to know who we’re looking for.”

“Good idea, Fehr.” Dillon exchanged her pencil for a notepad. She shuffled through until she found the appropriate page. “Let me say, this isn’t written in blood. It’s off the top of Buddy’s head with what little we know so far. He says we’re looking for a white male, age thirty-five to fifty-five. Somebody with a strict upbringing who seeks power. Because of the skeletal remains, possibly someone with a medical background. Some smart son of a bitch who hates people in authority. Thinks they’re too dumb to catch on to his perverted little game. Oh, and the perp probably killed small animals as a youth.”

Meri Ann caught her breath; Graber’s vivid image came to mind. Her palms dampened and she rubbed them together. When the phone rang, she started, Neles too. He actually jerked at the sound.

Dillon answered, her eyes shifting to each face in the room as she listened. Finally, she said, “Thanks very much.” She returned the receiver to its cradle.

“That, my friends, was surveillance reporting back to me. They said that Wheatley’s wife left her house about ten minutes ago and drove to St. Luke’s hospital. The deputy followed her. Turns out her hubby’s there with a twisted ankle.”

Dillon pointed to Meri Ann. “You’ll stay here and read the case file. Neles and Mendiola, you two will pick up our good Mr. Wheatley. Check with his doctor, of course, but I’ll betcha he’s well enough to sit down for a few questions.”

Mendiola and Neles nodded agreement. They practically bolted from the room.

“You mind, missing out on the excitement?” Dillon asked Meri Ann.

“Not a bit.”

On the contrary, she didn’t balk at being left in the office, not when she still held misgivings about Wheatley’s guilt. The Dunlap file, on the other hand, drew her like sunlight at the end of a cave. She stood and straightened her back, which felt stiff from tension.

“I’ll be more than fine,” she said. “Just show me the case file and where to sit while I read it.”

Chapter Twenty-two
 

M
eri Ann sat at an assigned desk, facing a stack of three folders, each one as thick as a novel, and each one soiled from handling and then years of storage. The nasty look of them did not deter her one iota. On the contrary, anticipation made her fingers tingle. They felt like feathers as she opened the top folder, lighter still as she scrolled down a list of logged entries.

Here were her dad’s first calls to the sheriff’s office on the night her mother went missing. He’d called every three or four hours until the detectives took the case a full day later. She’d stood at his side, listening to his voice tremble as he’d placed those calls.

The night’s horrors began earlier for her as she’d waited for her mom outside Boise High’s gym. The first twenty minutes, she puffed with annoyance, the self-serving righteousness of a fourteen-year-old.
Mom’s
probably
running
errands
for
her
boss
while
I’m
freezing
to
death
.

As the second twenty minutes wore on, concern set in. But it wasn’t deep concern. After an hour of waiting, she walked the four miles home, wondering just what had happened. Her father was at the kitchen table when she got home, a bottle of Coors’ in his hand. “So, where’s Mother,” she’d said, accusingly. He’d seemed baffled, then angry. His first call was to Wheatley’s office, followed by calls to close friends, then to more distant ones and then the hospitals. Finally the sheriff’s office.