The Dead Will Tell (3 page)

Her dress clung to a body that was still slender and strong and supple. The pouring rain and darkness obscured the details of her face. But she still had that rose-petal mouth and full lips. Long hair that had yet to go gray. He knew it was impossible for her to be standing there, unchanged, after all these years. After what happened to her. After what they
did
to her.

“It can’t be you.” The voice that squeezed from his throat was the sound of an old man on his deathbed, gagging on his own sputum, begging for a miracle that wasn’t going to come.

Her mouth pulled into a smile that turned his skin to ice. “You look surprised to see me.”

“You’re dead.” He scraped unsteady fingers over his face, blinked water from his eyes. But when he opened them, she was still there, as alive and familiar as the woman who’d been visiting his nightmares for thirty-five years. “How—?”

Never taking her eyes from his, she opened the driver’s-side door, and killed the engine. Keys in hand, she went to the rear of the vehicle and pressed the trunk release. The latch clicked and the trunk sprang open.

“Get in,” she said.

When he didn’t move she produced a revolver and leveled it at his chest. He thought of the Walther in his pocket, wondered if he could get to it before she shot him dead.

He raised his hands. “What do you want?”

Stepping closer, she jabbed the revolver at him so that the muzzle was just two feet from his forehead. Her arm was steady, her finger inside the guard, snug against the trigger. “Do it.”

Shaking uncontrollably, he climbed into the trunk and looked up at her. “We didn’t mean it.
I swear we didn’t mean it.
”

He didn’t hear the shot.

*   *   *

Belinda Harrington stood on the porch of her father’s house and knocked on the door hard enough to rattle the frame. “Dad?” She waited a minute and then used the heel of her hand and gave the wood a dozen hard whacks. “
Dad?
You home?”

She’d been trying to reach him for two days now, but he hadn’t returned her calls. That wasn’t unusual; the man was independent to a fault. He’d been known to ignore calls when it suited him. Still, two days was a long time. Even for Dale Michaels.

Wishing she’d remembered to bring her umbrella, she scanned the driveway through the cascade of water coming off the roof. His Lexus was parked in its usual spot; he had to be here somewhere. She wondered if he’d found himself a lady friend and they were holed up at her place or a hotel up in Wooster. Belinda wouldn’t put it past him. Mom hadn’t come right out and said it, but she let Belinda know in no uncertain terms that fidelity had never been one of Dale Michaels’s strong points.

Cupping her hands on either side of her mouth, she called for him. “Dad!”

Her eyes wandered to the barn twenty yards away, and for the first time, she noticed the sliding door standing open a couple of feet. Though he’d never been burglarized, her father was a stickler about security. He wouldn’t leave the barn door open, especially if he wasn’t home. The initial fingers of worry kneaded the back of her neck. Had he gone out to feed the chickens and fallen? Was he lying there, unable to get up and waiting for help? He wasn’t accident prone, but she supposed something could’ve happened. What if he’d had a heart attack?

Tenting her jacket over her head, she jogged across the gravel. The rain was really coming down, and by the time she reached the barn, her shoes and the hem of her pants were soaked. Shoving open the barn door another foot, Belinda stepped inside and shook rain from her jacket. The interior was dark and smelled of chicken poop and moldy hay. A few feet away, three bantam hens scratched and pecked at the floor. Stupid things. She wondered why her father kept them. Half the time, they didn’t lay eggs and spent their days tearing up the petunias she’d planted for him last spring. Pulling her jacket closed against the cold, she flipped the light switch, but the single bulb didn’t help much.

“Dad? You out here?”

Belinda listened for a response, but it was difficult to hear anything above the incessant pound of rain against the tin shingles. There were a dozen or so places where water dripped down from the leaky roof to form puddles on the dirt floor. At least the chickens had plenty to drink.

The barn was a massive structure with falling-down horse stalls and high rafters laced with cobwebs. As kids, she and her brother had played out here; they’d even had a pony once. But neither she nor her brother had been interested in animals, and once her father had gotten his real estate company up and running, the place became a workshop where he tinkered with cars. The workbench with the Peg-Board back was still there, but the tools were covered with dust. A dozen or so boards were stacked haphazardly against the wall. The old rototiller stood in silhouette against the window where dingy light bled in. When her brother was twelve years old, he’d nearly taken his foot off with that thing.

The loose dirt from the floor stuck to her shoes as she crossed to the workbench. Belinda called out for him one final time and started for the door. She was midway there when something to her right, on the other side of a fat beam caught her attention. Cautiously, she moved closer and looked up, found herself staring at the leather soles of shoes and the hems of slacks. She stumbled back, her eyes taking in legs and then the torso of a man. One arm hanging down. Neck bent at an unnatural angle.

A sound she didn’t recognize tore from her throat. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew that thing hanging from the rafters was her father. That he was dead and she was sad his life had ended this way, and without so much as a good-bye. But the shock of seeing his lifeless body, so grotesque in death, overrode any impending sense of grief or loss.

“Dad! Oh my God! Dad! What did you do?”

Screaming, Belinda Harrington turned and sprinted through the door and into the pouring rain.

CHAPTER 2

John Tomasetti is standing at the kitchen counter chopping green peppers when my cell erupts. I’m sitting at the table with my laptop open, pretending I’m not watching him, drafting an e-mail to Mayor Auggie Brock, and absently wishing diplomacy wasn’t such a big part of my job.

“Saved by the bell,” he says.

I toss him a sideways look as I rise and go to my cell, which is about to vibrate off the counter. I catch it on the third ring. “Burkholder.”

“It’s Glock.”

Rupert “Glock” Maddox is one of four police officers that make up my small department. A former marine with two tours in Afghanistan under his belt, he’s well trained, level-headed and laid back, traits I admire greatly, especially in law enforcement. He usually works first shift, but I vaguely recall he’d traded with another officer for a couple of nights this week.

“Hey.” Out of the corner of my eye I see Tomasetti grab an onion off the cutting board and attack it with the knife. I can’t help it—I smile. “What’s up?”

“I got a DOA out here at the Michaels place. Guy hanging from the rafters in his barn.”

“Suicide?”

“Looks like it.”

“Any idea who it is?”

“I think it’s Dale Michaels.”

The name is vaguely familiar, but I don’t believe I’ve ever met Michaels. I recall he had something to do with the development of the affluent Maple Crest subdivision. “Who found him?”

“Daughter.”

“Doc Coblentz on the way?” I ask, referring to the coroner.

“Should be here shortly.”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“Roger that.”

I unplug the phone from where it had been charging and turn to see Tomasetti drying his hands on a dish towel. “Sounds like you’ve got a dead body on your hands,” he says.

I nod. “Glock thinks it might be a suicide.”

“You know who it is?”

“Guy by the name of Dale Michaels. I don’t know him.”

“Sheriff’s office going to take it?”

“It’s city, so I’m obliged.” I glance at the bottle of Argentinean cabernet he’d opened on the counter to breathe, and a wave of disappointment moves through me. “I’m sorry, but I have to go.”

“I guess that means I have to finish chopping all of these vegetables by myself.”

“Not to mention drink all that wine.” I smile. “One of the perils of cohabiting with the chief of police.”

He crosses to me. His arms encircle my waist and I fall against him. He smells of aftershave and green peppers and his own distinct scent I’ve come to love. I close my eyes and press my face against his chest. I know it’s a trifling thing in light of the discovery of a body, but I don’t want to leave.

“Domestication looks good on you, Tomasetti.”

“You’re just using me for my culinary skills.”

“That, too.” I rise up on my tiptoes and brush my mouth across his. “I might be a while.”

“I’ll wait.”

Pulling away from him I grab my jacket off the back of the chair. I look at him over my shoulder. He’s already picked up the knife and resumed chopping the onion. “Don’t drink that wine all by yourself,” I say.

“Don’t stay gone too long.”

We’re both smiling when I go through the door.

CHAPTER 3

It’s the worst kind of night to be on the road—windy and stormy—and the drive from Wooster to the scene, which is just inside the township limits of Painters Mill, takes almost twenty minutes. Twice I have to slow down—once because the road is flooded, and the second time because the windshield wipers can’t keep up with the deluge. The Michaels farm is located on a narrow road that runs parallel with the railroad tracks that cut through town. My headlights illuminate a gravel lane with a hump of weeds in the center when I make the turn, and for the second time tonight I’m glad I drive a high-clearance vehicle. Ahead, I see the flashing lights of Glock’s cruiser.

I park behind a newish Lincoln Navigator and cut the engine. The windows of the large Tudor-style house to my right are dark. The immense barn hulks to my left. The sliding door is open and I can see the yellow cone of Glock’s flashlight. I pick up my radio. “Ten twenty-three.”

“Copy that, Chief,” comes the voice of my second-shift dispatcher.

“Ten twenty-eight.”

“Go ahead.”

I squint through the rain streaming down the windshield and recite the plate number on the SUV. “David, Henry, Adam, three, seven, zero, niner.”

Keys click on the other end as she enters the tag number into the BMV database. “Comes back clear to an oh-six Lincoln. Registered to Christopher Thomas Harrington here in Painters Mill.”

“Ten four.” Grabbing my slicker and Maglite from the backseat, I get out. My hair is half soaked by the time I get my hood up. I start toward the barn.

I enter to the din of rain against the tin roof. I get the impression of a cavernous space with a dirt floor and huge wood support beams. On the other side of one of those beams, I see the body hanging from the rafters. It’s too dark for me to discern much in terms of detail, but in the light thrown off by a single bare bulb, I can see the contorted neck, and in silhouette, the protrusion of a tongue from the mouth. Well-worn wingtips dangle six feet from the floor, where Glock is in the process of setting up cones and taping off the immediate area. As always, his uniform is military crisp, the arch of his boots shined to a high sheen. He looks like he just came off the set of some police recruiting video.

A thirtysomething woman wearing a quilted jacket over yoga pants, her feet jammed into lavender-colored skimmers, is standing just inside the door to my left, crying softly into a well-used tissue. Daughter, I think. Probably the owner of the Navigator and the one who found him. Her hair is the color of a new copper penny and sticks to her scalp like wet corkscrews. Glock must have offered her his slicker, because she’s got it draped over her shoulders. I can see her shivering beneath it.

I make eye contact with her, nodding to let her know I’ll speak to her in a moment as I cross to Glock. “She found him?”

He nods. “Name’s Belinda Harrington. Lives in Painters Mill.”

“Have you talked to her yet?”

“Just to get an ID. Swinger’s her dad. Evidently, she’s been trying to reach him for a couple of days. He didn’t return her calls, so she drove over to check on him. When he didn’t answer the door, she got worried and came out here to the barn.”

I look at the body and try not to shudder. The neck is bent at a severe angle with the rope biting into the larynx area of the throat. The fingers of his left hand are trapped between the rope and his flesh, as if he’d changed his mind after jumping, but the weight of his body made it impossible to escape. I’m no expert, but I’ve seen the result of a few hangings in the years I’ve been a cop. This one wasn’t clean.

“Hell of a way to go,” I say in a low voice.

Sighing, Glock glances up at the body. “What are people thinking when they do shit like this?”

I don’t bother trying to answer. “Did you find a note?”

He shakes his head. “I’ll do a more thorough search once we get some lights out here.”

“We’ll need to check the house, too.” I motion toward the platter-size wet spot in the dirt beneath the body. “Any idea what that is?”

“Not sure. Some kind of biohazard.”

It’s not unusual for a hanging victim’s bladder to release at the time of death, but something about it bothers me. I run my beam over the length of the body. That’s when I notice the dark stain on his slacks near the waistband. Too dark to be urine. “That looks like blood,” I say to Glock.

“Shit.” He adds his beam to mine. “Looks like a stain on his shirt, too. Bloody nose? Maybe he bumped something on his way down?”

“I don’t know, but we need to figure it out.” The victim is wearing dark slacks. A white shirt and a sport coat. Looking up, keeping my beam poised, I circle. Sure enough, in the small space between the lapel hems of the jacket I see a dark stain on the shirt.

“Get some photos of the scene and the victim, will you? We’ll take a closer look once the fire department gets him down.” I motion toward the woman standing near the door. “I’m going to talk to the daughter.”

“Sure.”

I leave Glock to his work and make my way toward the woman. “Ms. Harrington?”