Devils Among Us (Devin Dushane Series Book 1) (15 page)

 She scowled. “Let me guess, you like to pick at scabs,
don’t you?”

With a sharp intake of breath, Shane threw both of his hands
dramatically over his heart. “You know me so well! It’s like we’re soul mates!”
He finished it off with rapid fluttering of his eyelashes.

Devin was already standing beside his truck and hissed out
between clenched teeth “No, it was not my case. Now will you just get over here
and take me home!”

On the ride home Devin pondered why Henry wouldn’t give her
any more information. She knew he wanted to find Laney’s killer more than
anyone. Not to mention the fact that she has just saved his life, his dog and
probably his house. She smacked her hand on the seat in frustration.

“What could be so important for Henry to protect? I mean it
wasn’t like they were out overthrowing the government, so what’s the big deal?
It’s been thirty-five years!”

Shane shrugged his shoulders keeping his eyes on the road.
“I have no idea. Same thing with the girl—why not give a name? She’s a girl he
spent ten minutes with in the back seat of his car three and half decades ago.”

“Gee, and they say chivalry is dead.”

“Hold on a minute, Henry is no saint. He’s quite the ladies’
man and always has been. Back in the day I don’t believe he was known for
courting young ladies at the church socials, if you know what I mean.”

Devin had to laugh at the image. A young Henry brought to
mind fast cars and rock and roll, not Bible bingo and discussions on morality.
But the laughter died on her lips.

“Why then protect this one girl? What was so special about
her that Henry would keep her a secret all these years?”

Usually the jester, Shane was very serious when it came to
breaking down an investigation. He frowned deep in thought. “Do you think it
was Laney?”

“No. No way. If he’d gotten Laney in the car it would have
been to run off and elope. Think about it—he wouldn’t have wasted his time with
the girl of his dreams in the back seat of his car for a ten-minute memory. He
would have whisked her away for a lifetime of memories.”

Shane nodded in agreement. “Okay, then who else was
important to Henry?”

Devin let out an exasperated sigh. “No one! His world
revolved around her…”. She trailed off as the thought hit her. She and Shane
looked across the cab at each other and said in unison.

“Who was important to Laney?”

“Of course, he would protect whatever or whoever was
precious to her!” Devin’s voice was gaining volume with the speed of her
thoughts.

“But the problem will be narrowing it down. She was the prom
queen for goodness’s sake. She must have had a hundred girlfriends.”

“You, my friend, do not understand the female psyche.”

Shane snorted as he turned the truck on to Devin’s street.
“That’s the understatement of the year.”

Devin smiled tiredly at his humility. “A girl may have many
friends, but there is only best friend, one confidant that is like a sister.”

And Laney Bennett’s was more than a friend she was actually
a blood relative, a cousin.

Devin was exhausted when they pulled into the driveway, she
was considering just sleeping on the porch swing. She gazed admiringly at her
flower boxes before she reached for the door handle of the truck. Those petunias
are really coming along nicely. Then her hand froze in mid air. That all-too
familiar shiver of awareness ignited her senses, and adrenaline pumped through
her veins, waking her up in an instant. The dining room curtains were gaping
open three inches, creating a black stripe down the center of the window from
the darkened room within.

Her voice was low and intense, and all the while, her
searching gaze never left the house. “Shane, do you have an extra pistol in the
truck?”

His head snapped up, searching for what she saw. He was
already reaching for the gun. “Why do we need it?”

“Someone’s been in my house.”

As soon as the gun touched her hand, Devin was out of the
truck and on the porch, sliding along the windows to get a look inside. Shane
let out a low string of curses and radioed in a possible break-in and officer
needs assistance, and then sprinted up on the porch to catch Devin before she
went in the house. She motioned for him to go around back, but there was no way
he was leaving her to go in alone with his gun and no badge. So with hearts
pounding and pistols drawn, they cleared each room one by one, first the
downstairs and then up.

They had just come back into the dining room and flipped on
the lights when sirens hit the street. Shane went out to meet them. Devin could
hear orders being shouted about and footsteps pounding into the perimeter
around her house. The flashing lights penetrated the crack in the curtains,
creating a psychedelic effect in the room. Shane came back in with Adam and the
sheriff. For some reason she had half expected to see Sheriff Bittner in a
flannel bathrobe and slippers topped with his patrol hat, but he looked the
same as always, as if he sat at home waiting for catastrophes to strike. Adam,
on the other hand, looked completely caught off guard. He was wearing a yellow
Fenton Sheriff’s Department sweatshirt paired with khaki pants and shiny penny loafers
with no socks. He reminded her of the men that dressed in a hurry when their
wives were in labor, only the bare essentials and no concern for what made an
outfit as long as they were clothed and shoed.

“Miss Devin, this is not the hospitality I was hoping to
roll out to you.”  Sheriff Bittner was frowning as he hooked two thumbs in his
duty belt just under his immense belly.

She couldn’t help but grin at that grandfatherly face. “Are
you kidding? Arson and break-in? Welcome to a Friday night in my town. I feel
right at home.” It helped reduce the tension in the room.

“All right, sweetheart, what happened?” The sheriff was
listening, but it was Adam who pulled out the pad and began taking notes.

Devin didn’t get very far in her story. “When Shane brought
me home from the hospital, we pulled in and I could see immediately that the
dining room curtains were pulled apart about three inches—”

“
Curtains?
I called in a breaking and entering over
curtains?” Shane threw up his hands in disgust and stalked to the other end of
the table. Adam and Sheriff Bittner were looking at her as if she were a bit
touched in the head.

Devin clenched her jaw. “Really? There is a point here.”
Shane turned around and folded his arms, his jaw just as tight. She explained
about the darkness in the room before she left for dinner and thinking about
needing to open the curtains tomorrow.

The three were unmoved by her evidence. It didn’t help her
case that a deputy came in at that moment and reported that no signs of an
intruder had been found on the property. There was some damage around the back
door lock where someone could have tried to jimmy it, but the marks didn’t
appear to be fresh and the newest finger prints appeared to be Devin’s.

Devin pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to deter the
headache that was forming.

Great, maybe I can have Grandma’s old bed at the mental
hospital.

Adam broke into her thoughts with his gentle voice. “Devin,
is anything missing or disturbed?”

I wonder if a strait jacket will make my butt look big?

“As far as I can tell, nothing is missing, but my papers in
here have definitely been rifled through. I am very obsessive about how I work
through case files and notes, and now this is in complete disarray.”

Adam frowned at the tabletop. “It is very messy for you.”

Shane growled at the both of them. “Guys, you are totally
over thinking this. Devin is rushing to get to dinner she walks quickly through
the dining room and slams the front door. The gust of wind knocks the papers
around and messes up the curtains.” He clapped his hands together and then
flashed his palms out again as if he has just completed a magic act. “Life is
simple—it’s not one big conspiracy theory. We’ve wasted enough county resources.
We should go.”

The Sheriff cut in with a sharp tone. “Shane, this is
exactly what our resources are for, and it is always better to be on the safe
side. You call us for anything you need, Miss Devin.

She thanked the sheriff for his courtesy but her hard stare
never left Shane, like a predator locked on the prey. “If you believe that life
is really that simple, then it’s a good thing you took up small-town law
enforcement, because you wouldn’t last a day as a cop in a city with a major
crime rate.”

She hadn’t pulled any punches and neither would Shane.
“Really? How would you know? They threw you out. Maybe it’s because you’re
cracked and analyzing curtains!”

Neither Sheriff Bittner nor Adam underestimated her
reaction. They did, however, underestimate her speed and agility. They both
threw themselves between Devin and Shane. So she went over them. Planting her
left foot on the seat of the chair she had just been sitting on and her right
on the tabletop, she was able to stair step up and jump right over them,
rolling right over their heads and glancing a kick off of Shane’s chin. Fortunately
with the tight quarters Adam was able to pull her back before her right hook
made contact. The Sheriff grabbed Shane by the front of his shirt and started
dragging him towards the door.

Shane looked down at the blood he had wiped off his bottom
lip with his thumb. “You are crazy!”

“Well, crazy solves cases, pretty boy! I’ve solved more
cases in the last year then you’ll solve in your entire career! Go wax that!”

The Sheriff didn’t let Shane answer. “Miss Devin, you’ve had
an incredibly difficult night. So I’m not going to arrest you for assault.”
Shane started to protest so Sheriff Bittner shoved him completely out the door
before he continued. “
This time
.”

Adam still had his arms wrapped around her, gripping her
tightly to his chest as they watched the Sheriff make his exit. She tapped her
fingers on his arm. “Adam? I’m not going anywhere. Hello, Adam.”

For a moment he looked as if he had no idea what she meant.
After a few seconds of blank staring his face became bright red and he let her
go.

“Oh! Yeah, of course. Shane can be so thick headed and he
always wants to look like a hero, not a heel.” Adam grabbed his bag and headed
for the door. He paused right on the stoop and cocked his head to the side as
he looked back at her. “Go wax that?”

She grinned. “He looks like he’s waxed off all his body hair
to me, it is not natural for a man to have skin that smooth, and he has these
perfectly shaped eyebrows. Even his hair looks like wax is holding it in place—it’s
shiny and pointy. He’s like a polished wax doll.”

Adam returned her grin. “Nice. See you in the morning,
sunshine.”

Fabulous, in four hours I have to teach a self-defense
class and I’ve alienated two of my three assistants. Way to go, Devin.

Even though Devin arrived at the high school gym two hours
early, there were already two trucks and a motorcycle in the parking lot. She
didn’t know what to expect when she walked inside, but a clamoring of St.
Bernard puppies would have been an easier way to start the day. Both Shane and Deputy
Lambert were trying to be first in line to apologize this morning, and they had
gifts to try and win her forgiveness. She practically ran over Jake as she
burst through the double doors—he was waving a bouquet of supermarket flowers
and a box of doughnuts. She had to dodge a daisy he was stabbing towards her
eye.

“No thanks, Jake. I can’t eat those this early in the
morning, but thanks for coming to help with the class.” She was looking back at
him as she walked and had to come to a complete stop to not collide with Shane.
He held up a tall paper cup with a lid and fancy wrapper. Devin was sure it was
an expensive frothy whipped coffee drink of some sort.

“Devin, I’m so sorry. I’m a jerk and an idiot.”

She was as chipper as she could be that early in the
morning. “Yes, you are. You’re a sorry jerk of an idiot. But I already knew
that. Thanks for showing up though.” She gave him a huge smile and patted his
arm before walking away, leaving him standing there with the coffee. She called
back over her shoulder, “and I don’t drink coffee!”

Finally she made it to the edge of the basketball court,
where Adam was standing with an ice-cold diet soda and a granola bar. She took
both from him and stretched up on her tiptoes to plant a kiss on his cheek.
“Bless you, sweet man. You could be my soul mate.”

Devin was very pleased with how the first class had gone.
They ended up with fifty-two participants ranging in age from twelve to
sixty-eight, so she had gotten a few stares from ladies that had known her aunt,
but they adjusted. Shane had insisted on sparring with her to demonstrate her
qualifications to the class. Devin had been unnecessarily rough in the demonstration,
but he was working through his guilt, after all. By the end of the class, she
had met a lot of really nice ladies and had a good time to boot. Maybe she
could survive a summer of community service.

Later in the afternoon on Saturday, Devin decided she
deserved some good old-fashioned rest and relaxation. This was supposed to be a
vacation, right?
I can do something vacationey.
She rummaged thru her
dresser until she found her two-piece bathing suit. She bought the aqua string
bikini with Marcy last summer when they were renting a house at Smith Mountain Lake with a group of friends. But thinking about that trip made her think of
Greg flipping burgers on the deck and getting sunburned beyond belief… and
being alive. She slammed the dresser drawer shut so hard the floor trembled
with the force, as if closing the drawer could close the memory. 

Just put on your bathing suit and go lie in the sun like
a normal person.

Gathering up the celebrity gossip magazines she had bought a
week ago and her mp3 player, Devin headed out back to spread a blanket in the
middle of the lawn. She knew it was irresponsible not to use sunscreen, but in
her line of work, skin cancer was probably not her biggest threat, and the
warmth of the sun felt so good against her skin. In fact it felt so good that
she closed her eyes and lifted her face up to the sky. The magazines would have
to wait another week.

She had been soaking up the music and sunshine for about a
half an hour when she heard the growl of a diesel truck pull into her drive.

I’m not moving.

Even through her ear buds, she could hear the impatient knocking
on the front door.

Still not moving, go away.

Then the back gate unlatched and, the grass started to swish
towards her. Devin still didn’t move or open her eyes—she was trying to reach a
gelatin-like state.

“What do you want, Shane?”

The grass stopped moving. “How did you know it was me?”

Devin moved just enough to pull her earpieces out, but her
eyes remained closed.  “I only know two people in town with diesel trucks, and
Adam would never come into my backyard uninvited.”

A shadow fell over her, and she opened her eyes to see Shane
standing over her, waving a manila folder. “Oh, trust me. Once you see this
I’ll be welcome here.”

Gelatin forgotten, Devin bolted upright. “Why what is it?”

“Only a very interesting arrest record for one Hank James
Maddox.”

“Henry has a record?” Devin grabbed Shane’s arm and pulled
him down on the blanket to sit beside her.

“Oh, I think you’ll be more interested in what’s
not
in the record.” He paused as she pulled a t-shirt on over her bathing suit.
“Thank you, now I can concentrate.” Shane pretended not to notice her eye
rolling. “As I was saying, his record starts off in his teens where they were
constantly busting him for loitering, petty theft, reckless driving, speeding,
public drunkenness, you name it. He couldn’t throw a cigarette butt on the
ground without getting arrested for littering.” She could tell he was getting
to the good part, because he was picking up speed as he spoke. “Then suddenly,
eight months before Laney’s death, in October of 1963, everything stops. He
doesn’t get so much as a speeding ticket until he’s charged with her murder,
and, of course, those charges are later dropped.” Devin scanned over the print-outs,
looking for an error.

No one is that sneaky in a small town.

“Now in December of ’64, he gets a drunk in public,
disorderly conduct and resisting arresting all in one night. After that there
are some sporadic tickets—nothing of consequence. He seems to be an upstanding
member of society.”

Devin dropped the papers into her lap. “But what happened
during that silent year?”

“What, indeed?” Shane glanced up at the gathering clouds.
Devin’s sun had disappeared. “I think its going to rain on our little
investigative picnic. Do you to want move this inside and order take-out? My
treat.”

Devin studied him for a minute with an appraising gaze and
finally made her ruling. “You’re manipulative.”

He grinned the sparkly smile she liked best, but would never
tell him so.

“And you’re making me work very hard.”

She started to laugh, but they ended up having to make a run
for it to the house because the rain storm had begun.

Over fried rice and kung pao chicken, they tossed around
theories about what they had dubbed the “silent year”.

“Maybe he was paying off some dirty cops to leave him
alone.” Shane was very proud of his Hollywood story line.

Devin was quick to burst his bubble. “That seems like a lot
of trouble to go through for such petty charges.”

“Well, maybe he was into something bigger and they were
blackmailing him.”

“Maybe.” But she still wasn’t convinced.

Think it through, Dev, if I stopped arresting one of my
regular petty criminals, what would be the benefit? What would I get out of it?

She slowly put down her chopsticks. “He was an informant.”

“Informing on what?”

“I don’t know, but it makes perfect sense. They couldn’t
have him in jail for any amount of time, because they needed him out where he
was useful gathering information.” The take-out now forgotten, Devin jumped up
and started digging out her laptop. “Do you remember hearing about any major
cases from that time period?”

Shane leaned on the table racking his brain for some piece
of information while her computer warmed up.  “The murder case took precedence
over anything else that was going on here, but still I’d think I would have
heard something over the years. You may be looking for a federal case that had a
connection to Fenton.”

Devin’s fingers were flying over the keys as she logged into
various programs. “Maybe an organized crime group out of D.C. was running
stolen cars through here to be chopped.”

Shane leaned over her shoulder to get a better look at the
screen. “That’s a real good possibility.” He hesitated for a moment. “It was
the sixties. There could have been some drug trafficking, but I really don’t
think that could have gotten to Fenton yet. Shoot, it’s barely here now.” He
laid his arm across the back of her chair ever so casually.

“You’re going to need to move that arm if you want to keep
it.” She shot him a sideways look and a smirk.

He slid his arm away and mumbled. “Work, work, work.”

She grinned. “Feel the burn!”

Devin turned back to the keyboard. “So drugs are out?”

“Yeah, I just don’t think that was likely in that time
period.” He squatted down next to her so he was eye level with the computer
screen, and waited to see if this was allowed. Apparently it was. “So basically
our biggest import/export at the time would’ve been hot car parts. Bring them
in from the city, chop them up here, and ship them across the state and into
North Carolina and West Virginia.”

Devin began entering the information into the search engine,
but something Shane said was pulling at her memory. She looked down at him and
motioned for him to rewind. “Say that again, about bringing the cars from the
city yaddy, yaddy, yaddy.” Though he looked baffled, he repeated it back for
her, and when he got to the part about shipping across the state, it clicked.

Devin remembered the conversation she’d had with Adam and
the charges he’d explained to her. She thought about the supped up muscle cars and
all of the speeding violations in Henry’s record. No longer interested in the
laptop, Devin grabbed her keys and headed for the door. She stood up so
abruptly that Shane fell on his backside from his squatted position.

“Devin, what are you doing?!”

“You’re wrong. The biggest illegal export wasn’t hot cars. It
was moonshine.”

Devin and Shane were rolling across the shadows of the
setting sun in her mustang, headed for the hospital.

“You do realize that visiting hours ended a half an hour
ago?”

“I have a badge, and you have a badge. Wave those suckers around
and people will let you go all kinds of places.” Her window was down, so when
she looked over to smile at him dark tendrils swirled to frame her face and the
post-storm sunset cast a golden pink halo in her curls.

She was right, of course. They didn’t even have to slow down
as they charged through the hospital corridors. If anyone looked like they
might even think of saying something to stop them, a badge was flipped out, and
the path was cleared. When they reached Henry’s room, he was sitting up in bed,
enjoying the evening snack of tapioca pudding and watching the news. Devin shut
the door and turned off the television.

“So Henry, what do you want to talk about first? Beth
Christianson or informing on the moonshine business?”

Henry went as white as his pudding, and his heart rate
monitor beeped precariously. After a few steadying breaths, he was able to
speak. “Girl, are you trying to kill me?”

“Relax, I’ve got an eye on the monitors. You’re fine.” In
truth, she was keeping a
very
close eye on the monitors and staying
close to the nurse call button.

Henry passed a hand over his eyes. “You were here less than
twenty-four hours ago and didn’t know anything. How could you have possibly
discovered all of this in one day when no one has put it together in
thirty-five years?”

Devin leaned in on the railings of his bed. “Henry, I’m not
some novice detective trying out sleuthing as a hobby. I solve unsolvable
cases. I’m the best at what I do.” She motioned over her shoulder towards
Shane. “I have professionals helping me, and we have technology on our side.”
She paused for a moment and wove her fingers together. “That…and we guessed.
You just confirmed all our theories.” She grinned at his horrified expression.
“Ohh, don’t worry about it. We were 99% sure already. We just didn’t have the
proof yet.” She plopped down in the same chair she had been in the night
before. “So, take me back to that night again, but with all the details this
time.”