Mariah Stewart - Dead End

Once he’d entered the hall, Evan’s stride lengthened and he headed for the lobby, his cell phone in his hand.

“Beth, Evan Crosby. I need to talk to Sheridan… no, no, I’ll hold…”

By noon, Evan had the name of the person to whom the property on Lone Duck Road was registered, though he doubted that he’d be face-to-face with Lawrence Bridger anytime soon. A warrant for the search of the premises was obtained, but by the time the county detectives, along with several officers from the Carleton police force, arrived, the house was empty.

“They can’t be gone for more than a day,” Evan observed. “The Sunday paper and the one from today are the only ones on the front porch. Damn. ”

He kicked the newel post.

“I can’t believe we got this close…”

“What do you suppose tipped them off?” asked Bob Benson, Carleton’s chief of police.

“Who the hell knows?” Evan grumbled. “Guess we need to get the crime-scene techs out here. Let’s go over the place, basement to attic. Fingerprints, fluids, whatever we can find.”

“You want to call in the county people?” Benson suggested. “They’re faster and there are more of them.”

Evan called Sheridan for the fifth time that day and told him what they’d found-an empty house-and asked that he send out the best techs he had on staff.

“I want Carlin Schroeder and Mark Schultz,” Evan told him.

“You got ’em,” Sheridan replied without hesitation. “And I’ll call Jeffrey Coogan down there in the lab and let him know this gets priority or I’m going to recommend a career change for him. Let’s get every iota of evidence from that house. Let’s find these bastards and nail them.”

“Amen.” Evan paused, then added, “I have to tell you I’m feeling real uneasy about the timing.”

“You mean the fact that they folded their tents just when you’re starting to ask questions on the street…?”

“Yeah.”

“Who knew you were asking?”

“Every john in the county who’d been busted more than once over the past two years.”

“So someone tipped off someone over the past few days.”

“Jesus, I just started making my calls on Saturday. How could anyone have moved that fast?”

Bob Benson walked around the side of the house, waving to Evan excitedly.

“Looks like Benson’s men found something,” Evan said as he walked toward the back of the property.

“Go check it out. Just keep me in the loop, Crosby,” Sheridan told him. “I’ll get the techs you asked for and send them out ASAP. In the meantime, we’ll keep looking for Lawrence Bridger and any other properties he might own, and I’ll have someone track down Chuck Stock and see what he can tell us about the place.”

“Thanks. I’ll be in touch.” Evan closed the phone and slipped it into his pocket.

“What have you got?” he called to Benson.

“There’s a small shed out back; the door’s padlocked; but we got it open,” Benson told him. “Lucky for us, someone had the presence of mind to include ‘any and all outbuildings’ on the warrant. Anyway, there’s a mess in there. My officers thought it was paint at first, but it sure looks like blood. All over the walls, the floor… even on the ceiling.”

Two officers stood silently outside the wooden shed that was set at the very back edge of the property, where it backed up to dense woods. They stepped aside as Evan and their chief approached, and held the door open for the two men to enter.

The shed was no more than twelve feet wide and fifteen feet long. Rusted garden tools lay in a forgotten heap against a back wall. There was a metal folding chair near the door, and dirty blankets were piled in the middle of the floor. One small window on each wall was covered with dark paper, and in the August heat, the room was claustrophobically still. Benson waved away a yellow jacket and pointed to the wall.

“Check out the spatter,” he said to Evan. “Odd patterns, don’t you think?”

Evan knelt near the door and studied the way the blood had hit the back wall.

“Lot of blood to have come from one person,” he noted. “The D.A. is sending the county CSI team over, including our two best techs. Let’s see what they find. First, let’s get a confirmation from them that this is, in fact, blood.”

Ordinarily, Evan wasn’t one to speculate, but his gut told him whose blood they would find mingled in the harsh abstract work that adorned the dark walls of the shed. The thought of what had happened to those young girls-his girls-in this room made his hands shake with rage.

His phone rang, and he was grateful for the excuse to back out of the airless enclosure. He stood under a half-dead maple in the backyard and listened to the news. When the call was complete, he hung up and motioned to Chief Benson.

“The D.A.’s office has located another house registered to Lawrence Bridger.”

“Nearby?”

“Between here and Reading.”

“That one vacant, too?”

“No.” Evan smiled for the first time since he’d arrived on the scene. “No, that one is a busy place, apparently. The sheriff has had it under surveillance for several hours. Whoever lives there has had a lot of visitors this afternoon. All of them men.”

“Well, fancy that.”

Still smiling, Evan headed toward his car.

“Hey, Detective, aren’t you going to wait for the lab people?” Benson called after him.

“Nope. I don’t need to be standing around watching them swab the stains and dust for prints. It’s going to take them hours-maybe days-to process this place. You give me a call if anything comes up, but for now, I need to be down in Oakmont. The sheriff is waiting on a warrant, and I want to be there when it arrives. I intend to be the first person to speak with the lady of the house…”

“Dorothea Rush.” Evan looked from the woman to her driver’s license and back again. “That your real name?”

She nodded sullenly.

“I want my lawyer.”

“There’s the phone.” He pointed to it. “But you haven’t been arrested yet; you’re aware of that, right?”

She nodded again, this time warily.

“Then why did they bring me down here to the police station?” she asked.

“We just need to ask you a few questions. Look, Dotty… is that what people call you, Dotty?”

“My friends do.” She stared at him straight on.

“Well, maybe by the time this is over, you’ll consider me a friend.”

She scowled, and he amended his statement to, “Okay, maybe not a friend, but I may be in a position to help you.”

“Help me how?” That got her attention.

“Look, we know you don’t own that house, we know you don’t bring the girls in, we know your only role is in running the day-to-day. Keep the riffraff out, keep the girls clean, that sort of thing, am I right?”

“Sure.” She nodded without meeting his eyes. “That’s pretty much it.”

“So you have to know that you’re not the person we want. We want the person who owns the house.”

“I don’t even know who that is.”

“You live in a house, but don’t know who owns it?”

She shook her head. “I never met him.”

“What did you do with the”-Evan searched for the word-“proceeds?”

“Someone comes by on Mondays and Thursdays. I hand over what we took in since the last pickup. On Mondays, he pays me. On Thursdays, he pays the house.”

“Pays the house…?”

“Expenses for the girls. Doctor’s visits, prescriptions, that sort of thing.”

“How often do the girls see a doctor?”

“Only if they’re sick.”

“When was the last time someone was sick enough to call a doctor?”

She shrugged. “I don’t remember.”