6

“I should have said ‘no comment,’” Warren Daley said for the third time since Beck picked up the phone. “I never should have let a reporter catch me off guard like that. God damn it, I could just kick myself for getting suckered into that. No way I should have let on about that girl being wrapped up. Just fuels the crazies, far as I’m concerned. Christ, I can’t think faster on my feet than that, maybe I should just do what my wife keeps nagging me to do and retire. Maybe it’s time.”

“You had no way of knowing someone would have passed all the gory details on to the press,” Beck replied. “Hey, it happens.”

“Yeah, and when I get my hands on the son of a bitch who opened his mouth, I’m going to have his ass nailed to my office wall so I can use it for target practice.”

“Who do you think slipped up?”

“I doubt it was a slip. Probably someone hoping to make a little time with Ahern.”

“Could be.” Beck glanced at his watch. “Sorry I’m going to have to cut this call short. I have a meeting with the mayor and a couple of council members at eight. Second time in two days I’ve been summoned over to Pratt’s office, which is a record. Everyone in town who saw the news is up in arms over this case.”

“Tell me about it. Same here in Ballard. At least you don’t have a body.”

“Thank God for small favors.”

“Look, I’m sorry to have called so early in the morning. I figured you’d be up…shit, I don’t know what I was thinking,” Daley said.

“Hey, don’t worry about it. Anytime.” Beck downed a mouthful of coffee. “Gotta run…”

Beck finished off his coffee, his focus on the meeting. He knew the council members were going to grill him about the case in Ballard. What are the chances this guy is going to kill again, and this time in St. Dennis? He’d already heard it from the mayor last night. He heard the panic in her voice, and knew there wasn’t going to be a damned thing he could do to calm people down. In retrospect, Warren Daley’s press conference, such as it was, hadn’t been such a hot idea.

For all his years in law enforcement, Beck’s counterpart in Ballard had never had to deal with anything like what had been done to Colleen Preston. The young woman’s death, and the manner in which she died, had the entire Eastern Shore shaken up from Chestertown straight on down to Easton.

Rightfully so.

He locked up the house and walked the length of the driveway to where he’d parked his Jeep the day before.

Beck sighed and opened the door. As he slid into the seat, something in the back caught his eye. He looked in the rearview mirror, and stared for a moment, until it registered.

“Jesus Christ Almighty…”

He got out of the vehicle, and shielding his eyes from the early morning glare, peered through the tinted glass before backing away as he pulled the phone from his pants pocket.

He hit speed-dial, his eyes still on the window and what lay beyond.

“Hal. I need you. Now. At the house. Call Lisa. And Duncan. Tell him to make sure to bring the evidence kit. And tell Garland to get the ME over here. Now. I need her now.”

He hung up before Hal could ask any questions and opened the back of the Jeep. He got a flashlight and took a pair of clear plastic gloves from a box and pulled them on. As carefully as he could, he opened the left rear door and leaned in.

The body was slightly too long for the bench seat, and so had been left with the legs angled forward. The overhead light automatically came on when the door was opened, and it shed an eerie glow on the plastic encasing the body. There were bubbles of moisture on the outside of the wrappings, and inside the tightly wound plastic was a barely contained mess of fluid. He then went around to the passenger’s side to get a better look at the victim. What he saw was the remains of what had been, not so very long ago, a vibrant young woman.

That she’d sucked furiously for air was evident. The plastic was pulled tightly across her face, indented at the nostrils and the mouth. Through the plastic, Beck could see her eyes seem to bulge, and her mouth was open in a grotesque grin, the head tilted back at a slight angle. Fluids had been trapped within the layers of wrappings, blood and urine and feces and whatever else had been released when her abdomen split as her intestines had swollen, then burst with the inevitable buildup of gases.

“Beck.” Hal called as he approached rapidly from the end of the drive. “What it is?”

Beck turned and walked away from the Jeep.

“I think it’s what’s left of Mindy Kenneher…”

It had taken almost an hour for Viv Reilly to arrive, and when she did, she stood next to Beck’s Jeep shaking her head.

She glanced at Beck, who stood nearby, and said, “I’ll never understand why. I can figure out how, but I cannot understand why.”

Beck had personally processed the scene with Lisa and Duncan’s assistance, but had found no traces. No fingerprints, no hairs, no fibers.

“It’s as if she was transported here in a vacuum,” Lisa told Beck. “There’s nothing on the outside of the vehicle or the door handle, so we can assume that he used gloves, which would account for the lack of prints. But no fibers? Nothing at all on the plastic?”

“I think I know why.” Hal pointed to the grass where the garden hose lay in a careless heap. Water dripped from the spigot attached to the side of the house.

“I haven’t used that hose in weeks,” Beck said as he walked toward it. “ Duncan, bring a trowel and some paper bags over here. Let’s bag up the grass and the top layer of dirt in the areas that are wet. If he hosed down the body, maybe he washed away some evidence.”

He waited until the body was removed from the Jeep under Viv’s direction, then leaned in to examine the backseat more closely. The fabric was such that he could not tell if it was wet without touching it, so he removed a glove and did just that. In the heat overnight, much of the wetness had evaporated, but the seat was still damp.

“You must sleep like the dead, Chief, for someone to come into your yard, turn on your hose, open up your vehicle, put a body inside, then sneak away.” Viv looked over her shoulder as she followed the gurney to her van.

“No dogs in the neighborhood barking last night, Chief?” Lisa asked. “Didn’t hear the doors slamming?”

“I sleep on the opposite side of the house and had the air conditioner on in my room last night. I wouldn’t have heard anything.”

He pointed to the house next door, on the other side of a row of ancient pines.

“You can ask the Dawkins if they heard or saw anything, but it’s unlikely. They’re both in their late eighties and can’t see through the hedge anyway. But maybe someone else on the block heard something during the night, so you and Duncan start going door to door.”

After Lisa and Duncan had gone to check in with the neighbors, and the ME’s van had pulled out of the driveway, Hal turned to Beck and asked, “Did you leave the Jeep unlocked?”

“I must have.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “We haven’t had any break-ins in so long-cars or homes-I just never really worried about it.”

He tried to remember what was on his mind when he parked the vehicle the day before. He’d gone to the press conference in Ballard, then drove home. He’d parked in the driveway, then saw a neighbor who’d waved and crossed the street to tell him she’d been a friend of the Preston family for over thirty years and how devastated she was to hear about Colleen. Beck had tried to be sympathetic while at the same time avoiding adding any fuel to the fire of panic that he sensed would soon be spreading throughout St. Dennis if it wasn’t checked. He’d received a call from Garland reminding him about his five o’clock appointment, and decided to walk to the station. It had not occurred to him to check to see if he’d locked the Jeep.