Devils Among Us (Devin Dushane Series Book 1) (4 page)

A month to the day before her eighteenth birthday they found
Laney Bennett. The beautiful brown eyes that had charmed so many were staring,
unseeing, into the canopy of leaves above, their light gone forever.

June 2, 2001

Devin was taking her time getting to Fenton. She had a lot
to consider and was in no rush to confront her family’s demons, so she had
opted for the scenic route through the Virginia countryside. She snapped the
radio off with a snort.  The DJ had been comparing the latest boy band to the
Beatles. She’d rather listen to the wind blowing through her window then that
rock and roll blasphemy.

Devin had never been to her father’s birthplace—by the time
she’d been born her grandmother was already in a mental hospital. Her father
had come back a handful of times over the years, mostly to oversee his mother’s
house, which he still owned and rented out. But in all of his trips, he’d never
brought Devin or her brother Tucker, and, to her knowledge, he never brought
their mother there before the divorce. 

She thought back to her parents’ divorce. She’d been nine
and Tucker was just four. It could honestly be said that Bobby and Mary Ann Bennett
had done their very best to make a go of it. But her father could never get
away from the bottle for very long, and her mother could only stand his long
absences and their gypsy lifestyle for so long.

Eventually Mary Ann had made a permanent break from her
husband and tried to maintain some stability for her children. Even with her
best efforts, the small family moved frequently. They lived all over Richmond and in most of the suburbs. Mary Ann had preferred to live in the city, though.
Devin suspected it was to be closer to Bobby. Whenever her father was in town,
he generally ran a garage located somewhere in the city. When Mary Ann committed
suicide five years after the divorce, they were living only three blocks from
Bobby’s garage.

Devin had been the one to find her mother and had to kick the
bathroom door in to get to her. Thankfully Tucker had been spending the night
at a friend’s house. Looking back, the signs had been evident that her mother had
slipped further and further into the darkness in the years after the divorce.
There was a part of Mary Ann that held Devin responsible for the state of their
family, no matter how irrational that was. She’d often wondered if her mother planned
for her to find her body to punish her a bit for what had become of them.

It worked.

After the funeral Devin and Tucker went to live with their
father, and Bobby stayed around just enough to keep them out of foster care.
His partner at the garage, Mickey, frequently looked in on them, and Devin
relied on him heavily. When she travelled to Thailand, Tucker stayed with
Mickey. The arrangement became permanent when Devin and Carter came back from
the NCAA Final Four in Atlantic City, married at twenty-one. Tucker had never
really developed a relationship with their father, but Devin had spent as much
time as possible in his garage when he was around. That’s why she knew way too
much about cars for a twenty-nine year old woman. It was also why Devin had
always been driven to be a police officer, a detective, and one day an FBI
agent. She wanted to have the resources and power to solve her aunt’s murder.
Devin saw the man her father would have been if not for that single tragedy.
Maybe if she could solve the murder, she could put the pieces back together of
what was left of her broken family.

As Devin rounded the next curve, the town limit sign for
Fenton came into view.

Henry had finished mowing the grass this morning before the
heat of the day set in. Now that he was freshly showered, he was going to enjoy
the Saturday paper in the shade of his porch, with a frosty glass of iced tea. In
his years of bachelorhood, he had learned to fend for himself in the kitchen
and made a darn fine glass of sweet tea, if he did say so himself. He was still
quite a handsome man of sixty-three. His blond hair had turned silver, but his
blue eyes were still electric, and he still had the chiseled jaw and broad
shoulders of his youth. Many women over the years had considered him quite the
catch, but his heart could never settle down. It wasn’t his to give away.

Just as Henry got to the sports section, a car started down
the street. He actually heard it long before it turned the corner. The engine
had the sweet rumble of a car built by actual human beings, back in the day
when cars were made of steel and sweat and rolled off the line in Detroit, not Japan. Sure enough, when the car made the turn he could see it was Mustang
Mach 1. If he had to guess, he’d say a ’69. It was a beast of a machine done in
the original maroon and black paint scheme with a vented hood and tail fin, a
true car guy’s car.

Henry watched as the Mustang pulled into the driveway directly
across from his house. A long-legged young woman stepped out, pulling the clip
from her hair and tossing it back into the car. So much for it being a car
guy’s car, Henry chuckled to himself. Once her hair was loose, the dark mass
tumbled around her shoulders and halfway down her back. Henry couldn’t help but
think of another young brunette that had lived in that house. For a moment he
was transported back to watching Laney bouncing across the street to tell him
the latest gossip while she watched him work on his car. Henry swallowed hard
and shook off the memory. Thirty-five years had passed, and he still mourned
her every day.

He set his newspaper aside and started across the street. Might
as well introduce himself to Bobby’s new renter. With the shape the house was
in, this girl would need all the help she could get. As he reached the opposite
sidewalk, he noticed her standing at the front of her car studying some
paperwork, probably making sure she had the right house. By the looks of the
weedy yard and dirty windows, she probably hoped she had the wrong address. She
wore jean shorts with a purple tank top and flip flops. Henry couldn’t help but
wonder at how women’s fashions had deteriorated since the sixties. Where was
the class and style?

As he stepped up on the curb he called out to her.
“Afternoon. Are you the new tenant?”

She turned as he approached and slid off her sunglasses. She
smiled as she looked up at him, and he thought she called out some greeting,
but he couldn’t be sure. He couldn’t speak; he couldn’t even breathe. It was as
if Laney Bennett were standing in front of him, alive once again. After a
moment, Henry could, of course, see the differences—she was older than Laney
had been when she died, which made her features more angular, and her hair had
a hint of red to it that made it more mahogany then Laney’s black. The biggest
difference was that Laney had been full of light—she seemed to glow with her
happiness and enthusiasm—but this young woman had a hardness about her, an edge
that whispered she’d seen too much. But those warm chocolate brown eyes were
exactly the same and that’s what held him speechless.

Devin stood in front of her family’s aged home and waited
benignly for the elderly gentlemen to compose himself. She wasn’t completely
surprised by his reaction. She’d expected something similar while she was here,
just not the moment she stepped out of the car. Devin had seen that same expression
on her father’s face many times, and it usually preceded one of his long
alcohol-induced absences. She’d overheard her father once sobbing to her mother
that he just couldn’t stand to look at Devin day in and day out and be reminded
of his dead sister. Knowing it had been the alcohol talking didn’t remove the
sting.

After a moment Henry seamed to regain himself. “I am so
sorry, it’s just that you look so...I was just…you look like someone I used to
know,” he finished quietly. “Are you the new tenant?” He repeated his earlier
question looking hopeful of moving the conversation along.

Devin tended to alienate people because she was distant and
gruff, but she didn’t want to start that just ten minutes after arriving in
Fenton, so she smiled again, trying to act as if nothing was amiss with his
behavior. “Sort of. My Father actually owns the house, and I’m going to be
staying here for a few months.”

“You’re Bobby’s daughter.”

It was a statement not a question, but Devin answered it
anyway. “Yes, I’m Devin Dushane.” She put out her hand for him to shake. “And
you are?”

“Henry Maddox.” He gave a crooked grin that she imagined had
made many ladies swoon over the years as he took her hand. “I was your Dad’s
neighbor when we were kids, and I guess I’ll be your neighbor now.” He inclined
his head towards the house he had just come from.

Devin saw him glance at her left hand. “Dushane?” he asked,
“Is that your mother’s name?”

She grinned as she settled her sunglasses on top of her
head. “It was my husband’s name. We’re divorced, but I thought it had a nice
ring to it.”

“Oh.” Henry looked on the brink of mortification at
committing yet another social faux pas as he quickly changed the subject. “Well,
being Bobby’s girl definitely explains the car. It looks like one of his. She’s
a real beauty.” Henry ran his hand tenderly down the fender of the Mustang.

“Talking about cars was pretty much the only language he was
comfortable communicating in when I was a kid. So I would hang out in his
garage after school, and we rebuilt this Mustang together. He gave it to me
when I graduated high school.” Devin’s tone had become wishful as she reminisced.
Even though their time together had been sporadic while building the car, there
were times she had seen him every day for a week. She hadn’t seen her father
for more than a few minutes at a time since those lessons in the garage years
ago.

She fished a set of keys out of the pocket of her shorts. “I
was hoping to run into you, Henry. Dad said you might be able to help me out.”
Devin saw him glance around the yard and knew she was going to catch him off
guard again, but she plunged ahead anyway. “I’m a detective with the Richmond
PD, and I’m using my time here to investigate the murder of Laney Bennett.”

She had definitely caught him off guard. All of the color
drained out of his face, and his easy smile faded. “They’ve tried to pin
Laney’s murder on me for more than thirty years.” His voice was as rough as
crushed gravel as it ground out of his clenched jaw. “I loved her and could never
have hurt her. I would’ve thought your father, of all people, knew that.” Henry
spun around and started back towards his house, seething with anger, but he
froze at Devin’s next words.

“He does know that.” Her voice was soft and warm, “I’m here
to find out who actually killed her, not to speculate.” Devin studied the ring
of keys, trying to pick out the correct one for the front door. She was as
nonchalant as if they were discussing the weather.

Henry studied her for a moment before he spoke, as if trying
to decide if she was a figment of his imagination. He spoke ever so softly.
“Who do you think killed her?”

“That I don’t know. Yet. Dad always said they never
investigated the right people, and from my research so far, it looks like they
finally just made up an excuse for her death and tucked it away in a cold-case
file. I believe there has to be a trail somewhere.”

From the very beginning the detectives from the sheriff’s
department and state police had focused on Henry as their prime suspect.
Although he had never been able to provide an alibi, there had been no other
evidence to suggest he was guilty, so they had been forced to release Henry,
and by that time all other leads had grown cold. With no new evidence they had
proclaimed that the murder had been committed by an outsider passing through. A
random act of violence.

 “You think you can solve this on your summer vacation?
Hundreds of man hours have gone into this investigation over the years.” Henry
tried to sound casual, but there was an undercurrent of hopeful longing in his
voice.

Devin smirked at him, “Maybe that’s the problem—too many
man
hours have gone into this. I think it’s time this murder was looked at from a
fresh perspective, and I have a unique set of skills that could get me a little
further than your average detective.”

Henry cocked a quizzical eyebrow at her until she
elaborated. “I work for the major crimes unit, my partner and I solve the
unsolvable, it’s our…
was
our specialty.” She ignored the pang at the
mention of Greg.

“It’s been thirty-five years. Where do you even start
looking? Who’s going to remember anything?”

“Well,” Devin sighed as she looked over the worn house and
overgrown yard. “First I have to get settled in here, and then I’m meeting with
the sheriff on Monday morning to take a look at the case files. I’ll need your
help identifying who I should talk to and help with introductions. People will
be more likely to talk to me if I’m not an outsider. They’ll remember more than
you think, and besides—the evidence never forgets.”

“I think you’re going to need my help with the yard, too.”
Henry smiled ruefully as they both turned to face the house.

Devin spent the rest of Saturday scrubbing, bleaching and
making trips to the grocery and hardware stores. Everything in the house was
covered with a layer of dust and grime, and there were endless repairs and
replacements that needed to be made. Obviously her father had only provided
basic maintenance over the years leaving the bulk of the responsibility to his
renters. It was not a decision that had paid off. For today, she was just
concentrating on getting the house livable; she’d have to check with her father
about doing any painting or renovations. If he would let her that would be a
great project for her alimony money. She was sitting on quite a nice nest egg
that Carter had provided for her. The house had been built in the 1940s, and
nothing had really been changed since 1960. In fact her father had locked up
Laney’s room, and when he committed his mother to the mental hospital, it
remained a shrine to Aunt Laney’s wasted youth since the night she died.