Bones Never Lie

CHAPTER 38

I REPLAYED THE scene again and again. Froze the image. Studied the features, the body shape, making sure. Hoping I was wrong.

I wasn’t.

No point showing the video to Slidell. The face would mean nothing to him.

Not so with Ryan.

Fingers shaking, I sent the link north, then hit callback for the last incoming number. Slidell picked up after two rings.

“Tawny McGee was at the Corneau farm.” Circling the room.

A moment of silence as Slidell ran the name through his mental Rolodex. “The kid Pomerleau had in her cellar?”

“Yes.” I told him about the video.

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Jesus freakin’ Christ. How’d you stumble onto that?”

“I’ll tell you later.” After Mama explains it to me.

“How does McGee fit in?”

“How the hell would I know?”

“Think she’s the big dude the mechanic saw?”

“She’s tall.”

“Or maybe the big dude was Ajax and we got us a threesome?”

“Or maybe it was some other dude.” Churlish, but I didn’t like feeling confused. “The DNA on Leal’s jacket says our doer is male.”

“I need to talk to McGee.”

“You think?”

“Can you blow up that frame and print it?” Slidell asked.

“The face will be too blurry. But McGee’s mother has a snapshot that’s fairly recent. I’ll get that.”

“I’ll put out a BOLO. Have Rodas do the same in Vermont.”

“I have a feeling McGee’s living under a different name. Ryan dug pretty deep, looking for her.”

“How’d she get to Vermont?”

“I don’t know. Maybe lean on Luther Dew over at ICE?” I was using the acronym for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Slidell snort-laughed. “The mummified-mutt guy?”

I’d helped Dew on a smuggled antiquities case involving Peruvian dogs. Slidell never tired of the canine-corpse jokes. I ignored this one.

“The video shows McGee at the Corneau farm in 2008. I’m not sure when passports became mandatory for travel between the U.S. and Canada. Or what kind of records they kept back then.”

“I’ll give it a shot first thing in the morning.”

“Why wait?” My eyes bounced to the clock: 10:27.

“Good thinking. Calling now will make Dew want to knock himself out.”

Three beeps. Slidell was gone.

Crap!

Who to phone first? Mama or Ryan?

Mama decided it. I answered her ring and jumped in before she could speak. “How did you find that video?”

“Sweetheart, good manners dictate a greeting when answering a call.”

I drew a deep breath. “Hi, Mama. How are you?”

“I’m well, thank you.”

“How did you discover the YouTube video?”

“Is it the farm where that terrible woman was hiding?”

“It is. How did you find it?”

“Oh, my. Do you want the full journey?”

“Just the process.”

“It wasn’t complicated. But it did require hours and hours of watching tasteless drivel. Some unkind fool actually posted a clip of a reporter having a stroke on-air. And—”

“But how did you find it?”

“There is no need to be brusque, Tempe.” Disapproving sniff. “I Googled various combinations of key words, of course. Corneau. Vermont. Hardwick. St. Johnsbury. One link led to another and another. I plowed through endless news stories, viewed interminable images of maple trees and shopping malls and snow-covered campuses. Did you know the mascot for the University of Vermont is a catamount? That’s a—”

“Big cat. Go on.”

“Eventually, I landed on the second in a series of five YouTube videos documenting a college bicycle trip. St. Johnsbury appeared in the title.

“After watching that clip, which I must say was excruciatingly tedious, I moved on to the third. While I was observing the group posing on the shoulder of a road, my mind filled in the missing letters on the sign above their heads.”

“How did you know about the Corneau farm?”

“You spoke of it when you were here.” Surprised and mildly condescending. “The bridge. The Passumpsic River. The broken sign.”

I remembered Mama’s ceaseless questions, didn’t recall going into so much detail.

“Is it helpful?”

“More than you can imagine, Mama. You are a virtuoso of the virtual. But I have to hang up now.”

“Pour téléphoner, monsieur le détective?” Almost a purr.

“Oui.”

Ryan didn’t answer. Which wasn’t calming. I was amped. Wanted action. Answers. Resolution.

I tried reading. Couldn’t focus. Knowing Ryan would call when he’d viewed the video, I gathered Birdie and went up to bed.

Hours passed. I lay there feeling wired, helpless. Asking myself what I could do. Coming up blank.

Around two, I finally drifted off. More sleep would have helped.

The next day the world spiraled into madness.

Ryan called at seven A.M. I’d been up for almost an hour. Eaten breakfast, fed the cat, read a proposal for a student project. I told him everything.

“McGee was driving a 2001 Chevy Impala,” he said. “Tan. Not the F-150 parked in the shed.”

“Could you read the plate?”

“No. But it was green, probably Vermont.”

“Contact Rodas?”

“Already did. He’s requested an enhancement. If that works, he’ll run the registration through the DMV.”

“Get Tawny’s photo from Bernadette Kezerian. Scan it and email it to Rodas, Slidell, and me.”

“Done. I’ll also contact border control on this side, see if they have any record of McGee crossing into Vermont. Or back into Quebec.”

We’d barely disconnected when Slidell showed up at my door. I offered him coffee. He accepted. We settled at the kitchen table. I briefed him on my conversation with Ryan.

“Dew says no can do.”

“What do you mean, no can do?”

“As of January 23, 2007, you gotta have a passport to enter the U.S. from Canada.”

“That’s good. ICE keeps records—”

“You wanna let me finish?”

I settled back, having vowed to be more patient with Slidell.

“That’s for airports. The reg didn’t kick in for land and sea borders until June 1, 2009.”

“Not likely she’d have flown such a short distance.”

“No.”

“Crap.”

“Yeah. But I got this.” He pulled a printout from an inside jacket pocket and flipped it onto the table.

I unfolded and read it. A tox report. I looked up, stunned by the implications. “They found chloral hydrate in the coffee grounds?”

“Yeah.” He tipped his chin at the paper. “A boatload.”

“Ajax was drugged?”

“Doubt he laced his own Joe.”

“You think someone sedated him, then put him in the car?”

“Explains the washup on the cup and coffeemaker. The grounds being outside in the trash.” Slidell thought a moment. “Kind of an odd choice, eh?”

“Chloral hydrate?”

“Yeah.”

“It was found in the victims at Jonestown.” I was referring to the 1978 poisoning of more than nine hundred people at the Peoples Temple in Guyana, a massacre orchestrated by a power-mad evangelist, Jim Jones. “Also in Anna Nicole Smith and Marilyn Monroe.”

Slidell said nothing.

“Ajax died between midnight and two.” My mind was spinning. “There was a cruiser parked at the curb all night. The surveillance team didn’t see anyone enter or leave the house until Cauthern showed up at dawn.”

“The Ajax property backs up to a walking trail behind Sunrise Court and a couple other dead-enders along that stretch. Whoever capped him probably parked on another cul-de-sac, took the path, then crossed the yard to the kitchen door.”

“That could explain the fibers on the hedge. The dirt on the floor.”

Our eyes exchanged the same questions. Who? Why?

“You taking it to Salter?” I asked.

“Soon.”

I raised my brows in question.

“I want to go at this scumbag Yoder one more time.”

“Why is he a scumbag?”

“There’s something smells there.”

“Not exactly an answer.”

“We ask Yoder about Leal and Donovan, the next thing you know, Ajax is dead with a kit in his trunk.” Slidell looked at me a very long moment. “What’s your gut? We looking at the same doer?”

“The girls and Ajax?”

Slidell nodded.

“My gut says yes.”

“Sonofafriggin’ bitch. And we got squat.”

“We know our killer is male.”

Slidell stared into his cup as if the answer were floating in his coffee. I’d never seen him so discouraged. “Think the guy’s a sexual sadist?”

“None of the victims was sexually assaulted.” I’d chewed on this a lot. “I think his arousal comes from control, from the ability to manipulate.”

“Us or his vics?”

I hadn’t looked at it that way. “Both. He’s definitely toying with us.”

Slidell rose. I walked him to the door.

“How’s he do it?” As he stepped outside.

“Do what?”

“Move under the radar and leave us nothing.”

I was in the study checking email when the phone rang again. I glanced at the caller ID. S. Marcus. Not recognizing the name, I let the call roll to voicemail. Seconds later, I heard the voice of my little cat-sitter friend, Mary Louise, on the answering machine. She wanted to visit after school. Had something for me.

Sorry, sweetie. Not today. Adding my guilt over Mary Louise to my guilt over Ajax, I turned back to the computer.

Ryan’s email attachment had opened. Tawny McGee looked at me from the deck of a boat, breeze lifting her collar and tossing her hair.

“Why?” I whispered. “Why did you go to Pomerleau?”

McGee continued to gaze straight ahead with her empty, still eyes. She was tall and full-breasted. But she didn’t flaunt what a lot of women paid big bucks to have. She downplayed it with a modest turtleneck.

I recalled the odd dynamic between the Kezerians. Bernadette’s comments. Jake’s.

Tawny hated being photographed. Hated being seen naked. Never dated or felt comfortable around men or boys.

Bernadette said her daughter had body-image issues. Jake said she was nuts.

I studied the long limbs, the double-D’s, the expressionless face. Wondered what was going on behind the vacant eyes.

From nowhere, another conversation winged into my consciousness.

Ryan’s report on Lindahl. He’d said the therapist had hinted that something was off.

As I stared at the woman on my screen, an idea slowly shaped up in my brain. An improbable possibility.

Heart hammering, I reached for the phone.