Mariah Stewart - Dead End

It could be coincidence, he told himself with every step. It probably doesn’t mean a thing, and I’m blowing this whole conversation out of proportion because I want so badly to solve the case. The thought of Joe being involved was ludicrous, wasn’t it?

Evan could think of only one way to find out.

At the very end of the hall was a door that opened to the parking lot. Evan pushed the door open and stepped outside; at the same time he was taking his phone out of his pocket and speed-dialing Annie’s home phone.

“Annie,” he said when she picked up, “did the full lab reports ever come back on the trace from my girls?”

“I miss you, too, sweetie,” she said, yawning, her voice groggy from sleep.

“Sorry, babe, I’m in a hurry”-he tried to disguise his impatience-“and this is important.”

“The trace from the FBI lab on the girls?” she asked.

“Yes. You were going to have them run a full analysis on some dog hairs that were found on the bodies.”

“Oh. The dog hairs. Yeah.” She yawned again. “I saw that.”

“Annie, it’s important. Where’s the report now, do you know?”

“Probably in my briefcase. What is it you needed to know at one thirty in the morning?”

“I need to know what kind of dog the hair came from. I hate to ask you to get out of bed to look for the report, but I really need to know.”

“That’s all you need? The breed of dog the hair was from?”

“Yes. And I need it now. So could you please go get the report and look it up?”

“I don’t need to, I remember. It was a dog I never heard of, and I actually called the lab back to double-check because I thought maybe there was a typo or something,” she told him. “It was hair from a Clumber spaniel. You ever hear of that breed?”

“Yeah. Unfortunately, I just did. Thanks, babe. I’ll call you in the morning.”

Evan went back into the bar and slid into his seat. Joe was on his cell, explaining to his wife that he might be a little late.

He looked up when Evan sat and told him, “Rosie said to tell you hi, and that she’s proud of you.”

“Thanks, Rosie.” Evan’s throat was tight, and he wondered how in the name of God he was going to be able to do what he was about to do.

He stared at his beer while Joe completed his call, then, when he’d hung up and put the phone back into his jacket pocket, Evan asked quietly, “Why’d you do it, Joe?”

“Why’d I do what?” Joe frowned.

“The girls. Why’d you get involved in that whole thing?”

Joe’s face froze for several long minutes, then he said, “What girls are you talking about, Evan?”

“Joe, for the love of God, don’t.” Evan closed his eyes, squeezed them tightly shut. He couldn’t bear to look at his former partner, even as he accused him. “Don’t even try to talk around it, okay? I know you were part of it. I need to know what part, and I need to know who else.”

“Jesus, Evan, how could you even think I’d…” Joe tried to stand, but Evan’s arm shot out and grabbed him by the throat.

“Talk to me, Joe. Talk to me now.”

“I got nothing to say. Let go of me.”

Evan tightened his grip.

“You raped and murdered three little girls, Joe. You-”

“No, no.” Joe went white and shook his head vehemently. “No, I didn’t have a hand in none of that. I would never… no, God no, I never touched those girls, Evan. You have to believe me.”

“How did the hair from a Clumber spaniel get on their bodies, Joe? You just told me how rare the breed is, how there’s only one breeder in this part of the state.” Evan’s voice rose to a near shout. “How did the dog hair get on their bodies?”

The music had been lowered as the crowd had thinned, and those standing close to the booth turned, wide-eyed, as even-tempered Evan Crosby pulled his former partner out of his seat and slammed him against the bar.

“How did the dog hair get on their bodies?” Evan repeated.

“I didn’t kill them, I swear to you.” Joe was beginning to shake. “I only moved them.”

“Moved them from where to where?” Evan demanded.

“From the place where they were… from where I was told to pick them up, to where I left them.”

“Jesus God, Joe, how could you?”

The two men began to struggle, and the startled bystanders intervened to subdue Evan and to surround Joe with questioning eyes.

“I didn’t kill them, I didn’t rape them. I never harmed those girls,” Joe said, looking from one man to the next, wanting them to understand that his role had been limited to taking care of the girls after the fact. “I tried to help them, see? I left them where they’d be found right away, I made them look like that other guy had done them, so they’d get some press, maybe someone would recognize them and they’d go back to their families. I tried to do the best I could for them…”

He turned to Evan, tears running down his face.

“I tried to do the best I could so they’d be found, so they wouldn’t be lying out in the rain. I couldn’t stand to think of them lying out in the rain, all alone like that…”

“Here. Catch.” Annie stood on the back steps of Evan’s townhouse and tossed him a bottle of water.

“Thanks,” he said, catching it in one hand. “The sun is brutal today.”

She looked up and squinted. “I don’t think this is a good time to be planting roses. We’re better off waiting until later in the day, when the sun drops down a little. I read someplace that you’re not supposed to plant in the heat of the day.”

“Hey, that works for me.” He jammed his shovel into the overturned dirt in the flower bed they’d spent the morning preparing and wiped his brow with the hem of his T-shirt. “I’d just as soon wait until it gets a little cooler.”

“We can still finish getting the bed ready, dig the holes, put in that stuff you bought that’s supposed to be good for the roots.”

“Or we could wait until later and do everything when it cools off.” He grinned hopefully.

“I say we dig now, plant later.” She walked to the side of the yard, where four rosebushes stood, still in their black pots, in the shade. “The poor rosebushes have already been waiting an extra week to be planted. It’s a miracle they’re still alive.”

“They look awfully comfortable there, in the shade. Are you sure we should move them?” Evan opened the water and took a long drink.

“It’s going to be overcast tomorrow morning, then rain for the rest of the weekend. Planting them tonight will be perfect.”

He took another drink, then replaced the plastic cap and set the bottle on the fence, between pickets, where it tottered unsteadily.

“I am worried, though, about them drying out while we’re in Santa Estela.” Annie frowned.

“Maybe I can get Amanda to stop out a few times during the week to water them.”

“Good idea.” Annie pulled her hair back behind her ears and looked for the container of root food she’d left near the fence.

“How do you think that’s going to go, meeting the girls’ parents?” she asked.

“I hope it goes okay, at least with two of the families.” He leaned on the handle of the shovel. “The police suspect that the third girl, the one who still hasn’t been identified, was probably sold by her family in the first place. They aren’t likely to come back now and claim the body.”

“Maybe by the time we get down there, they will have.” She pulled on her gardening gloves and tossed a handful of granules into the first hole Evan had dug.

“I still can’t get over John pulling all those strings, getting the locals down there to start showing the girls’ pictures around until they located the families. Arranging for the bodies to be transported back to Santa Estela, and for us to accompany them…”