Blood Vines

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Sunday, March 7

11:50 A.M.

Reed met his brother Joe at the second-floor elevator. Joe and Tom Schwann had been friends since grade school and had run in the same pack as teenagers. With Joe was another of their lifelong friends, Carter Townsend.

“I can’t believe it, Dan,” Joe said, voice thick. “Tom had his faults, but he was basically a good guy.”

“I’m really sorry, Joe.” He gave his brother a quick hug. “I know how close you were.”

Reed turned to Carter. “Sorry, man. How’re you holding up?”

The man looked stricken. “Best I can. Like Joe, I can’t believe Tom’s dead.”

“Let’s find a quiet place to talk.”

Reed led them to an interview room. They sat. “I’m glad you came in. You were both good friends of Tom’s; do you have any idea who could have done this?”

“Maybe Jill,” Carter offered. “They fought all the time.”

“Jill is currently not a suspect. Is there anyone else? A former lover? Business employee?”

The two men looked at each other, then Joe turned back to him. “I can’t imagine anyone who knew Tom doing this. He was an okay guy, not perfect, but who is?”

“Not perfect, can you elaborate?”

The two looked at each other; Joe took the lead. “What you already know. He was a notorious hound dog and drank too much, but as far as I know, he was a straight-up businessman. Didn’t screw with his suppliers or clients. Paid his bills and was generally the life of the party.”

Carter spoke up again. “The newspaper said he was killed with a secateur. How… I mean, where-”

“We’re keeping that part out of the press for now. But I can tell you, it was a bloody, gruesome mess.” Reed threw that out there so he could judge their reactions.

They passed with flying colors. Joe looked sick. Carter went white and clasped his hands together.

Carter broke the uncomfortable silence first. “I read about that altar being found up off Castle Road.”

“Yes?”

“It’s got me spooked,” he said.

Reed frowned. “Why? The two aren’t related.”

“You don’t remember,” Joe said. “You were really young.” He stopped. “Never mind.”

“Bullshit, Bro. I was too young to remember what?”

“There was a whole rash of that crap,” Joe said. “Around the time Dylan disappeared.”

“Rash of what kind of crap?”

“Altars popping up around the countryside. Animals disappearing.”

“Animals?”

“A couple dogs. A lamb and goat. Chickens. Not all at once, but over the course of months.”

Carter jumped in. “I remember people talking. You know, wondering if…”

His voice trailed off. Reed looked from one man to the other. “If what?”

“If Dylan had been taken as a… human sacrifice.”

The words landed grotesquely between the three. Reed cleared his throat. “I’ve never heard any of this.”

“You were young. Remember, I was a teenager.” His brother’s voice shook. “I heard everything.”

“There’s more,” Carter stepped in. “Another murder, by secateur.”

“When?”

“Not too long after Dylan disappeared.”

“Who?”

“Some guy. A fieldworker. I don’t remember his name.”

“Why are you telling me all this, Joe?”

“What if history’s repeating itself? I have kids of my own. What if something happened to one of them? I couldn’t take it, Dan. It’d kill me, I know it would.”

“Joe, look”-he leaned forward-“Dylan was not the victim of some bizarre cult ritual. The Sheriff’s Department did a thorough investigation. So did the FBI. They determined he was kidnapped.”

“But no ransom-”

“Recent findings may explain why. Trust me on this, Joe. Dylan was kidnapped, but something went terribly wrong.”

“And the other murder?”

“Every Tom, Dick and Harry carries one of those Red Roosters around. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been called to a scene where one drunk field hand has pulled his secateur on the other. You remember this so clearly because it occurred so soon after Dylan’s disappearance. I’ll check it, though. Let you know if anything turns up.”

A short time later, Reed had a name: the Sommers’ groundskeeper, Alberto Alvarez. He had been considered a strong suspect in Dylan’s abduction-he had been seen on the property that night, then afterward failed to show up for work-until he turned up dead.

Murdered by secateur to the throat.

The murder had gone unsolved, swallowed up by the furor over Dylan.

Reed frowned and leaned back in his chair. It seemed obvious that Alvarez had either seen something and been murdered because of it, or had been part of the plot and murdered when it went south.

And yet, as he dug, he found no records of an active search for a link between the two crimes. A search for the man’s killer, yes. But no suspicion that his death had been linked to Dylan Sommer’s disappearance.

How had they missed this? It represented shoddy, irresponsible police work. Why hadn’t the FBI followed the lead?

Reed drummed his fingers on his desktop. Who, if anyone, was still on the force from back then? His captain was only an eighteen-year veteran of the force. He dug his department directory out and began scanning. Names of a few old-timers popped out, guys who’d been around thirty or so years.

“Why so serious?”

He looked up at Tanner. She stood in the doorway, a carton of yogurt in her hands. “Alberto Alvarez, ever hear that name before?”

“Nope.” She took a spoonful of the yogurt. “Why?”

“He was a groundskeeper for the Sommers. Took a secateur to the neck shortly after Dylan’s disappearance. Before his murder he was considered a strong suspect in the abduction.”

“Then he turned up dead.” She wandered across to his desk. “Who killed him?”

“Never solved.” He turned his computer monitor to face her.

She scanned the report, eyebrows drawing together. “How’d you find this?”

“My brother. This shouldn’t have flown under our radar.”

“It’s a twenty-five-year-old crime. What bothers me is the ignored no-brainer here.”

“The link between this murder and Dylan Sommer’s disappearance.”

“Exactly.”

“Here’s another weird fact, according to my brother and his buddy Carter Townsend. Around the time of Dylan’s abduction, there was a rash of reports of ritual sites and animal sacrifice. There was talk that Dylan had been taken by one of these groups.”

“You verified any of this?”

“Not yet.”

“Let’s do it.”