Vile (17 page)

Jess’s step faltered. “Are they sure it was suicide?”

“That’s what Black says.”

Spears had used a young woman to relay a message to Jess once. She too had hung herself. Terry Bellamy had served his purpose and Spears had eliminated that loose end. “Let Black know I’d like to see the case file.”

“Will do.”

Halfway across the parking lot her cell rang. A Birmingham number but not one she recognized. “Harris.”

“Jess Harris?”

Female. Jess’s pulse skipped into a faster rhythm. “This is she.”

“This is Melissa, Dr. Fortune’s nurse.”

Jess stopped. “You have the results of my tests back?”

“We do, and the news is good. Dr. Fortune wanted me to pass along that you do not have Wilson’s disease and the rest of your labs were normal.”

Jess reached for the car to steady herself. Thank God. “Thank you.” She ended the call and dropped her phone back into her bag. At least that was one less thing to worry about.

“You all right, Chief?”

The lieutenant studied her from the other side of his car. “As a matter of fact, I’m better than all right, Lieutenant.”

For the first time in more than a week, Jess felt like herself. Between the pregnancy and Spears, she’d been a little off balance.

“What now?”

“Now we have a killer to catch.”

Brownfield Farm, 4:30 p.m.

“What’re we looking for?” Lori surveyed the living room.

“Since there’s nothing we can do outside at the moment,” Jess tugged on a new pair of latex gloves, “we’re going to dig around for any of Amanda’s secrets in here.”

The excavation team had tagged several locations for digging. The noise outside warned that it had begun.

“Should we start in her room?”

Jess shook her head. “The wall was for us to find. Her real secrets, the ones she doesn’t want anyone to see, won’t be so easily discovered.” Jess moved around the room as she spoke. “She thinks she’s smarter than the people she murders. She believes she’s far superior to the police. She isn’t worried about getting caught. She has just one goal.”

“To satisfy the Player?” Lori suggested. “You think she’s doing his bidding like the Man in the Moon and Ellis did?”

Jess considered the question a moment. “I think she’s trying to impress him. She wants him to be excited by her. To admire her. She doesn’t understand he’s using her.”

Jess had already set Hayes, Cook, and Harper on a similar task in the barn. Whatever secrets Amanda had hidden, Jess intended to find them.

Two hours later, Jess found what they’d been looking for. With the rug moved away from the sofa, the scars on the wood floor showed the sofa had been moved repeatedly. After sliding the sofa eighteen inches from the wall, along the path of the marks on the floor, Jess crouched down to have a look. Lori did the same, moving toward Jess from the other end of the sofa.

Three shorter pieces of wood flooring were loose. A butter knife from the kitchen helped to pry the first board up. The final two popped up easily. There was no subfloor. Since the front of the house was so close to the ground, the floor joists literally touched the earth in this area of the crawlspace. In the cavity between two joists was a metal box. A small one, like an old-fashioned cash box.

Lori reached down and brought it up. She dusted it off and passed it to Jess. Whether it was women’s intuition, some sixth sense, or a premonition, things Jess had never believed in, her hands shook as she slid the small lock button that allowed her to open the lid.

Inside were photos and folded papers. Birth certificates. One for Amanda and another for Maddie. This was the first time she’d seen the child’s. No father listed. Jess rifled through the photos. All were of men. Dozens and dozens of them. Were they Amanda’s boyfriends? Some looked too old, or rather their manner of dress looked too out of date to have been men Amanda would have known.

Jess’s fingers stilled on one photo and her heart seemed to do the same. For three beats she couldn’t breathe much less speak. Her face must have gone deathly white.

“Do you recognize him?” Lori asked, concern in her voice.

Jess turned to her, swallowed to moisten her throat. “I’m not sure.” She felt a little lightheaded. “I think I need a drink of water.”

“I’ll grab a bottle for you.”

When Lori had gone, Jess dragged her bag closer and pulled out her cell. She stared at the photo, her heart thudding in her chest. Her fingers shook as she tapped the screen.

Two rings later Corlew answered. “What’s up, kid?”

Jess opened her mouth to speak but the words wouldn’t come. She stared at the photo… at the man who was her
father
. “I need to see you as soon as possible.”

“I can come over tonight.”

She nodded then realized he couldn’t see. “‘kay.”

“Chief!”

Harper
.

“I have to go.” Shaken to the core, Jess shoved the phone into her bag. On second thought, she grabbed an evidence bag for the photo of her father and then stuffed it into her bag as well. The rest she put back into the metal box. “Right here, Sergeant.”

Jess got to her feet. Her knees threatened to buckle causing her to grab onto the back of the sofa.

Shock must have been going around because Harper looked a little pale himself.

“You’re gonna want to come outside and see this.”

Lori walked up behind him. “Oh my God.” She glanced back out the door. “What the hell happened here?”

Jess smoothed her skirt and forced her legs to carry her to the door. She surveyed the yard. There were dozens of holes.

“We need to get Sheriff Foster back out there.” Harper moved into the huddle with them. “We got remains in every one of those holes.”

17

Mountain Brook, 8:20 p.m.

Dan stopped his SUV in the street in front of his parents’ home. “We can go back home if you’re not up to this.”

Apparently, her silence had Dan worried that she didn’t want to talk to his parents tonight. What Jess really wanted was to talk to Corlew, but Dan had called her at half past five and told her to come home. He’d refused to explain. He’d insisted he needed her to come home. Sensing his desperation, she’d left Harper, Cook, and Hayes at the Brownfield farm. Lori had driven her home. Thankfully, she hadn’t asked about the photo. Jess wasn’t ready to talk about that to anyone but Corlew… not until she understood what it meant. She also refused to consider that she had taken evidence from the scene.

After the fastest shower on record and still no explanation, she and Dan had come straight here. Jess would have preferred to know what was going on before they arrived at the Burnetts’ but, on some level, she’d understood that he wasn’t ready to talk. She’d noticed the haunted look in his eyes the past two nights. Something was wrong and he hadn’t wanted to talk about it. Now they sat in the middle of the street with this whatever it was hanging between them, and a BPD cruiser right behind them waiting for some sort of indication as to what they were going to do.

“No.” Jess broke the silence. “I’m glad we’re here. We might as well give them the news. Lil knows and your parents should too.” Why not? She had the remains of at least twenty people at the Brownfield farm and the body hunters weren’t finished by a long shot. She’d found a photo of a man who was either her father or his twin in a box kept by the murder suspect. It had been a great day! What was one more drama-filled scene before it was over?

“We don’t have to do that,” Dan argued quietly.

The dim glow of the interior lights didn’t allow her to see his face very well and she needed to. Dammit. She needed to know what was going on. “Then why did you call me home from a mass murder scene to come over here and
not
tell them?” Jess laughed. She had to laugh or she was going to cry. “It’s not like family night couldn’t wait.”

“It can’t wait.”

Fear trickled through her. “Dan, please tell me what’s going on.” She reached out and touched his jaw, felt the tension there.

“Harold came by to see me this afternoon. He suggested I take a leave of absence until this thing with Allen is straightened out.”

“What?” Anger blasted away any fear that had crept in. She wanted to kick something. Maybe Harold Black for starters. “Why would you do that?” She had an idea. Possibly, so Black could slip into the position of chief of police.

“He’s trying to help, Jess.”

“You can’t still believe that.” She wanted to shake Dan for continuing to trust the guy. “He’s trying to take you down.”

“He warned me about the search warrant being issued on the house,” he reminded Jess.

“And then your house was virtually destroyed in the fire,” she reminded him. “Doesn’t that smell like a set up to you? Now he can testify that he told you about the warrant. That makes you look all the guiltier, Dan. Can’t you see where this is headed?”

“There’s more.”

Jess sagged against the seat. There was only one other time in her life that she’d ever heard Daniel Burnett talk like this—with that defeated, I’m-done tone… when he gave up on their relationship, breaking their engagement, and leaving her in Boston all those years ago.

He was giving up
.

“Fine. Let’s hear it.” Jess crossed her arms over her chest.

“Pratt is gathering the necessary support to demand my resignation.”

Jess scoffed. “Who’s surprised about that? He’s been angry with you since the day you asked me to come to Birmingham and help with the Murray case.” And that was the bottom line. None of this was about Dan. It was about her. She closed her eyes and fought the infuriating sting of tears.

Damn you, Spears
.

“Harold insisted there were things he couldn’t share, but he kept repeating that it would be best for everyone,” Dan turned to her, “including you.”

“I will not let you do this, Dan, do you hear me?” She couldn’t allow this to happen.
No
. She wouldn’t allow it. Dammit.

He smiled for her but it was far from his usual charming display. “I love you, you know that, right? I would do anything for you and our baby.”

“Then give me time to end this with Spears.” She battled with the tears stinging her eyes. “Don’t let him get away with this, Dan. He’s taken too much already.”

“You sure you’re prepared to weather the kind of storm Pratt and the people who run this town are prepared to launch against us?”

Laughter swelled in her throat. “I’ve been butting heads with people like Pratt since I was ten years old, Daniel Burnett. There is absolutely nothing he can do to me that will shake me. I’ve never given men like him power over me.”

“You always were the strong one.” He searched her face. “I let you down once, Jess. I won’t let you down again.”

A fresh wave of tears brimmed. “If we don’t go inside, I’m going to embarrass you right here in the street by starting something neither of us will be able to stop. Your mother will be mortified.”

He laughed. “All right. Let’s go make my mother the happiest woman on the planet.”

Jess swallowed back a groan. She couldn’t wait.

9:30 p.m.

“That son of mine is working you entirely too hard, Jess.” Katherine Burnett’s face puckered in feigned concern. “You look so tired.”

“Well, I’ve been digging up dead people all afternoon, Katherine.” Jess heaved a sigh as she set her coffee cup aside. “It does get tiring.”

Dan’s mother put her hand to her chest. “My word.” She looked to her husband and then to Dan before turning back to Jess. “Are you working on that case up in Jackson County?”

“I am.”

Katherine shook her head. “This is related to that little girl left on the street? I saw her on the news. It’s just awful.”

“It is. Yes, ma’am.” Jess leaned into the sofa and tried for the tenth time to relax. It was never easy around Katherine.

“I don’t know what this world is coming to,” Dan Senior said with a somber shake of his head.

“I’m right there with you, Dad.” Dan set his cup and saucer on the coffee table as well.

Since it had been too late for a proper southern dinner, Katherine had prepared finger foods and a lemon pie. Jess hadn’t meant to eat two slices—a fact Katherine would never permit her to forget. They’d retired to the living room with their coffee after dessert. Jess stifled a yawn. Katherine was right about one thing, she was exhausted.

Dan took Jess’s hand and cradled it between his. “There may be some trouble brewing at the office.”

This was so wrong. Jess would do almost anything to take this weight off his shoulders.

Dan Senior leaned forward and braced his forearms on his knees. “What sort of trouble?”

Katherine sent a suspicious look at Jess. “Is this related to that monster that followed Jess here?”

Dan held Jess’s hand a little tighter. He was probably worried she would jump over the coffee table and throttle his mother. She’d gone this long without doing something to his mother she would regret. No need to start now.

“We can’t be sure where the trouble is coming from, but I’m being investigated in the disappearance of Ted Allen.”

Katherine jumped to her feet. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. One of those drug people he was trying to stop probably stopped him first. Why in the world would anyone believe you had anything to do with it?”

“Now, now, Katherine.” Dan Senior patted her arm. “Settle down and let the boy finish what he has to say.”

As the woman wilted into her seat, Jess couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. She was so proud of her son. This was going to hurt.

“Evidence suggesting I was involved has been planted,” Dan went on. “I believe the fire at my house is related somehow as well.”

Katherine was on her feet again. “You could’ve been killed!” She blinked and then turned to Jess as if she’d just remembered. “Jessie Lee, too.”

Dan Senior didn’t bother telling her to sit this time. “This is more serious than you’re telling us.”

With a heavy breath, Dan nodded. “There’s no way to know what’s going to happen next, but it may get ugly.”