Grace Interrupted (7 page)

“Sorry to have to be the one to tell you, ma’am,” the cop said, his expression belying his words. “Maybe you’d best stay up here with us for a while.” He raised his hand again, to signal the other officer to move the squad back.

I wasn’t about to wait one more minute. “Can’t, sorry,” I shouted out the window as I hit the accelerator. I didn’t even wave thank-you.

A little more than two miles later nearing the encampment site, I eased along the winding road, making a wide arc to allow for any cars coming the other way. The road here was narrow with low-slung trees forming a lush overhead canopy. The early morning sky was still gloomy, and passing beneath the dusky green branches darkened my way as much as it darkened my mood. I tried ignoring the anxiety twisting my stomach into knots. Didn’t work.

Just around the next bend I caught sight of a white-and-blue fender. Another squad car. That made four already. Emberstowne was not a major city, which meant we had a limited police force. Just beyond that squad, another—from a different municipality—sat perpendicular to its neighbor. My gut gave another hard twist.

I rolled to a quiet stop, parking so that two tires rested in the marshy grass and two remained on the road. I alighted and was greeted by the woodsy fragrance of a campfire whose smoke twisted skyward just beyond a copse of trees. As my feet shushed through the damp grass, I shivered against the morning’s chill and zipped up my open sweatshirt. Soft noises in the distance grew louder and eventually voices became more distinct.

At first I thought I was approaching a party rather than a crime scene—so many people. But even though there was much conversation, the mood was somber. Uniformed officers were attempting to corral a group of men, women, and children, encouraging them to “calm down.” Most of these folks were dressed in Civil War–era garb. Some of them appeared oddly calm as they shuffled past, clad in woolen sleepwear with blankets and shawls tight around their shoulders. I scanned faces looking for Pierpont, but received only curious stares in return. The campfire that had lured me crackled in the nearby clearing, its bright flames dancing quietly, desperately, as though trying to coax cheer from the gloom of the damp morning and the overwhelming gray of the day.

There were more people gathered in this part of the estate than we’d ever had here before. And not just people—animals, too. Chickens scurried between moving feet. Nearby roosters crowed. Horses were tethered in groups along the camp’s perimeter. The stately animals shifted and shook their heads, looking as though they’d much rather be galloping through fields instead of tied to makeshift posts. A police officer to my right rested a hand on a soldier’s musket. “I’m sorry, sir, but you’ll have to hand that over.”

About fifty feet away from me another officer shouted into the crowd, his words dissolving into the open air, his hands upraised as though to quell the group’s rising indignation. “I know the weapons aren’t loaded with real bullets, but you know as well as I do that blanks aren’t 100 percent safe. Please place all weapons on the ground and step away from them. Please do so very slowly.”

I hurried toward a cop who looked like he might be in charge but just before I reached him, he got into a shouting match with a man dressed in Union blue.

Were they
sure
this had been murder? Could it have just been an accident? I hoped so. Maybe the cop out front had gotten the story wrong. I glanced around, hoping for clues that the victim was still alive. I kept telling myself there had just been a terrible mistake, until I caught sight of a nondescript van, pulled very high up on the far southeastern rise. The coroner’s van. Its tracks sliced straight and deep through the middle of the encampment.

Tents, in neat rows, stretched out on either side of the central campfire. These were not the cheerful blue, green, and tan sporting goods–store tents that stretched across plastic and relied on nylon to stay upright and dry. These were old-style, drab tents that might have been white a long time ago, but were now dingy with use and splattered with mud. Most sagged. Some bore bright patches of white that spoke of careful repair. Canvas doors flapped in the lonely wind. There were hundreds of tents, large and small, but all of them were nearly identical in style. I thought about how uncomfortable I’d been last night outdoors rescuing Bootsie. The people out here in these cloth tents had surely fared far worse in the terrific overnight storm.

A few re-enactors had clearly given up the idea of costuming and donned heavy, zippered jackets. Too many conversations were going on at once and I couldn’t make out what any single person was saying. Children—some of them babies—were whining and crying. I had no idea so many kids would be involved. Dozens of them clawed at their mothers’ voluminous skirts, complaining about being cold and wanting to go home.

It made the most sense to head toward the coroner’s van. On the way, I hailed another officer. “Where can I find Terrence Carr?” I asked him.

He gave me a quick once-over. “Are you Miss Wheaton?”

I nodded.

Like his brother in blue at the front gate, this cop looked like he’d been on the job for at least twenty years. He settled into lecture mode, tilting his head southward. “You heard what happened back there?”

I didn’t want another slow explanation. I had the basic facts: Someone had been murdered but the most important question had yet to be answered. “Who was it? Do you know who died? Have you caught the person who did it?”

“I don’t know the victim’s name, miss. They didn’t provide none of that information yet. And from what I been hearing, we don’t have no idea of who did the killin’. Not yet. But nobody’s been questioned neither. We’re just waiting on orders here.”

People streamed in and out of one of the giant central tents, hands clasped around steaming tin cups. That had to be the mess, I assumed. There wasn’t enough wind to keep flags snapping, but when the breeze fluttered past, the flags’ corners lifted long enough to identify the Union flag to my left and a Confederate flag to my right.

The officer pointed to a rise just past the last row of Union tents, not far from the coroner’s van. “Mr. Carr is back there with the detectives right now, miss. Would you like to wait here with us until he returns?” He pointed to a man emerging from the mess. “You could get yourself some coffee while you wait. I’m thinking about getting some. The folks here told us to help ourselves.”

“I think I’d better go find Terrence,” I said. “He’s expecting me.”

“I’ll take you.”

I waved to encompass the crowd. “You have your hands full. But thank you.”

The hems of my blue jeans were soon soaked from the damp grass and my gym shoes streaked with green as I made my way toward the low hill in the distance. Not another single soul stopped me nor questioned my reason for being there and for that I was grateful.

The rise was much farther south past the last line of tents than I’d originally guessed. The combination of my quick pace, the wet ground, and the incline made my thighs burn with exertion. My shoes made squishy noises as I climbed. Perspiration gathered at my hairline and when a sharp wind sliced past, I shivered again.

This time, however, it wasn’t just the morning’s chill.

As I cleared the top of the rise, a flock of birds rushed skyward in a flurry of rustling wings and panicked cries. From my perch at the apex, I looked down into the ravine below. Up until that point, I’d been holding my body tense but the view below caused my limbs to weaken. I had been telling myself that another murder
hadn’t
occurred under my watch. But the small group huddled around a motionless blanketed form dispelled any hope.

There were seven people—not counting the deceased— gathered just inside a wide swath of trees. Terrence was the only black man in the group, and I raised my hand in greeting as I made my way down. He didn’t see me. Pierpont had his attention, talking and gesticulating wildly while the others looked on. Two of them were our local detectives Rodriguez and Flynn. I’d worked with them when Abe had died and I desperately hoped they had a better handle on this situation than they’d had on the last one. They weren’t bad at their jobs, they just weren’t experienced in murder investigations. About ten feet inside the tree line, two other men worked around the body, taking measurements and photos. They picked up small items with tweezers and gingerly placed them into plastic containers.

The final man in the group was actually a woman. Roughly forty years old and solidly built, the clothes she wore rendered her shapeless. With a wide, round face, and close-cropped black hair, it was no wonder I mistook her for a man at first. By her stance and positioning, I gathered she had accompanied Rodriguez and Flynn.

There weren’t many murders in Emberstowne.
At least not until I got here
, I thought. And even though Rodriguez was far more seasoned than his young counterpart Flynn, neither had dealt with enough major crime to become crack detectives. They simply hadn’t had the opportunity. I supposed we should be grateful for that.

I half-walked, half-slid the last few yards. When I reached bottom, still about thirty feet from the group, I looked back up the way I’d come. For a person intent on murder, this was a perfect location to do the deed. Unless someone happened by at just the right moment and stared directly into the trees searching for movement, the crime would have been committed completely out of sight.

Terrence spotted me and waved me forward to join the small group. “The press hasn’t gotten wind of this yet,” he said without preamble. “But they will soon. Too many people already know what’s happened.” He flicked a glance up the hill. “Couple of my guys are waiting for me to tell them what to do. Glad you’re here, Grace. I’ll let the detectives fill you in and I’ll catch up with you later.”

“This is just terrible, terrible,” Pierpont said as Terrence left. I swore the little man actually wrung his hands. His gaze kept drifting toward the covered body in the wet grass. “I can’t imagine who could have done this.”

I had to know. “Who was killed?”

Rodriguez answered me. “Zachary Kincade. Mr. Pierpont here has made a positive identification.” The well-fed detective raised tired eyes. “I understand you met the deceased yesterday as well.”

I had a thousand questions running through my mind but I was prevented asking any of them by Flynn’s interjection. “We want to talk to you about the attack yesterday.”

“You mean those two women and the Taser?”

Flynn looked at me like I’d grown a plant out of the top of my head. “No,” he said with poorly concealed impatience. “I mean the fight between the victim and your gardeners. I understand threats were made.”

“Davey didn’t press charges.”

Flynn made a noise that sounded like a snort. “ ’Course not. Not if he planned to take Zachary out later.”

“Wait, wait,” I said. “This is all moving too fast. You suspect Davey?”

“You got it. His brother, too. From what I hear, murder runs in the family.”

“What?”

Rodriguez placed a restraining hand in front of his partner. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, amigo.” To me, he said, “We need you to handle the press. Tell them that someone has died, but don’t use the word
murder
. Don’t lie, okay? Just don’t say much. If they ask too many questions, just tell them, ‘No comment.’ Got it?”

“Hey . . . guys?” a woman interrupted, clearly peeved to be left out of the conversation. Her lips tight, she waved Rodriguez and Flynn back and extended her hand for me to shake. “Name’s Ginger, but everybody calls me Tank.”

“Tank?” I repeated. That was a horrible nickname.

“I guess I have a tendency to roll right over people,” she said with a wink. “That right, guys?”

Rodriguez didn’t answer. Instead, he said, “Your boss, Marshfield, donated a nice chunk of change to the PD to help improve the department after Mr. Vargas’s murder.” He tilted his head toward Tank. “She’s from up north.”

“Michigan,” Tank added. “I’m here for the next few months to work with these guys and whip the department into shape.” She clapped her hands together gleefully. “This is exactly the kind of situation we need for training.”

“I don’t imagine Mr. Kincade would agree with you,” I said.

Tank’s eyes narrowed. “True enough,” she said, clearly surprised by my asperity. “But there’s no changing the fact that he’s dead. Now it’s up to us to set things right. If we all work hard and smart, we will bring the guilty party to justice. And we’ll do it fast.”

“The officer at the gate said Zachary had been stabbed,” I said. “Who found him?”

“Guy by the name of Jim Florian. And yeah, stabbed.” She lifted her chin toward the evidence technicians. “They’ll probably give us an idea of how many times.”

More than once? I cringed.

“You say the uniforms told you?” Rodriguez rolled his eyes and said, “We warned them to keep it quiet for now. We need to keep details out of circulation.”

Flynn kicked a rock, sending it skittering into the ravine.

“Part of the risk you run when you involve uniforms,” Tank said. “When the call came in,
we
should have gotten here first. Half the department had tromped through the crime scene already. Didn’t they, Rodriguez?”

Unable to meet her glare, the older detective gave the briefest of nods.

“They’re like little kids,” she went on, “everybody wants to see the dead body.”

The blanket covering Kincade’s still form was a pale shade of gray. Blood had soaked through the blanket on the left side of the corpse and I couldn’t quite tell which way it was facing. “Why did you cover him? Won’t that interfere with the collection of evidence?”

Balancing on the balls of his feet, Flynn practically danced his impatience, but it was Tank who answered. She waggled her index finger to indicate Pierpont. “One of his guys covered him up before we got here.”