Following Christopher Creed Read online

  We stood up. Chief Rye did a double take.

  "Oh. My college students. I forgot about you. Um..." He beckoned to us, and we followed him into a detention room, where Lanz had to sniff the chairs loudly. Probably twenty years of sweat residue was on them. "I just told the Press of Atlantic City I have nothing, but they have a daily deadline. There's nothing I have that they can print for tomorrow, but I can tell you the half of what I've got."

  We sat down at this long table, and he sat beside us, fingering some papers.

  "Did you find Danny Burden?" I asked, flipping on my tape recorder, and I could hear RayAnn click a pen.

  "I hope not," he said. "His mother, honest to gosh, thought those kids were in Las Vegas, same as Darla's mother. Mrs. Burden knows Danny was in Las Vegas, because he called her from there twice, and she still has the number in the caller ID. It belongs to a small hotel, not on the Strip, and the owner has no record of a Danny Burden. So we traced the call time and location from the hotel—he apparently didn't own a cell phone—and he'd been registered under the name Danny Richardson."

  "But ... you're saying Darla wasn't with him?" I asked.

  "We think not. The desk clerk at the hotel said he never saw any sign of a girl. It was only Danny."

  Interesting. "What do you think happened?"

  Rye's jaw bobbed up and down. "Actually, the Pinelands is not our jurisdiction. We're only investigating this because the body was found in our parts. I don't know these Conovertown folks well. But I was cruising around out there, knocking on doors this morning, and if you could have heard the neighbors ... you would think I was asking questions for the whereabouts of the Apostle Paul. Danny Burden never did anything in his life, never even had a speeding ticket. People always told him not to get too close to Darla, she was poison; she was too off-the-wall wild and could ruin him. He, according to everyone, is a godsend. He's got a handicapped older brother, a guy named Wiley, and Danny worked two jobs while going to school last year to afford his brother's therapy. Wiley was born with cerebral palsy. He's never had much therapy, much chance to improve, because anything new was experimental and the state wouldn't pay."

  I agreed that Danny Burden didn't sound like a killer. RayAnn jumped in.

  "So, what was Danny doing in Las Vegas without Darla?"

  "One obvious theory is running from the law."

  "But you don't think he did it," I said.

  "I'm not a court of law"' He held his hands up defensively. "All I'm saying is that nobody in those parts can believe it. They say Darla was wild and out of control even before she was depressed; Darla could have killed herself ... except that, obviously, she didn't dig her own grave and jump into it."

  I remembered Justin saying she'd committed suicide. I couldn't begin to guess what would have made him say that, and I wasn't about to bring up his name now.

  "Did the Las Vegas hotel have any clue where Danny went after he left? Forwarding number? Anything like that?" I asked.

  "No. In fact, he never checked out, so they still have a backpack and a gym bag that were his. Or, at least, the maids turned them in after the third morning it looked like he hadn't slept in the bed. They're looking to see if they threw them out."

  "He took off without his bags?" I asked, confused.

  "Or something may have happened to him. I called the city morgue out there, and they've got a fairly young John Doe who either fell or was pushed off a balcony of one of the bigger casinos. It's an unsolved, but it could be him. I'm waiting to hear from them, too."

  I could see why the Press would only be frustrated with this much. There was nothing reportable in it. Everything was pending.

  "Do you have a cause of death on Darla yet?" RayAnn asked.

  "There are two holes, one in either side of her skull—the small one being the point of entry, and the larger one, on the other side, the exit wound. Blowing out your brains takes on meaning with certain firearms. The Burdens owned one. Danny's mother wanted to hand it right over to the police. It hadn't been touched in years, she said. But when she went to get it, it was missing."

  "What kind was it?" I asked. "Would the bullets be a match?"

  "All we know until we have a ballistics tester down here is that it could have been the gun. The Burden gun is size-appropriate for both the entry and exit wounds. Excuse me."

  He left the room, and RayAnn muttered that Tiny was holding the telephone up from behind the glass window.

  "What do you think?" she asked.

  From my dealings with the campus and city police, I was comfortable here, plugging Chief Rye. Crimes are public knowledge, falling under the public's right to know. Cops are not in the business of keeping too many things from the media. Generally, the relationship is friendly, unless a reporter oversteps. It's hard to overstep if you're too confused to put the facts together.

  I just laughed.

  "We're so out of our league," she said. "I feel lost."

  "I have to call Claudia today. Maybe I should do it right now. Maybe she'd have input."

  RayAnn got out some notes from last night, helping me remember that I was supposed to ask if the body had been burned or dropped in an acid to help the decomposition process. I called Claudia and had to listen to her whistle Dixie for a couple minutes about having to cover the spring formal.

  "So, it wasn't the missing kid," she finally said.

  "No. It's a local girl."

  "Damn. You don't have a story."

  She could be shortsighted at times. "Claud, I got more story than I know what to do with. Trust me."

  "You're always saying to trust you," she groaned.

  "Have I generally been right?"

  "Look. If you're going to write a think piece on what happens when a weird kid disappears from a small town, then go interview the town. Don't waste too much time on the forensics of the dead girl. That's not in your cookie jar."

  "Right," I agreed.

  "And you need to think of a hook for our readership. We're a college five hundred miles away. How does he relate to our student body?"

  Because there's somebody like him on every floor of every dorm.

  I said, "I would call your contact at the AP wire service, tell him it will be in Thursday's paper at the latest. Give him a heads-up."

  "You really think you can write this so well that the wire service will buy it?"

  It was a leap, but as usual, I said, "Don't worry about it."

  "Yeah, trust me, he says." She sounded annoyed.

  "Justin Creed showed up at our door at four a.m."

  "The brother of your one and only?"

  "You got it. He'd been missing for two weeks. But when we showed up, he decided to come back."

  I almost had her, but Claudia is hard to impress.

  "And what do you mean, our door? Jesus, Mike."

  Claudia thought RayAnn and I were bosom buddies. No one knew about us at school, save Stedman. Technically we were only bosom buddies, if you discounted the fact that I'd kissed her a hundred times.

  "We're saving money," I chided. "She sleeps in Randolph sweat apparel."

  "You keep your hands off her. Isn't she a minor, something like that? Some homeschooled brainiac ... I haven't talked to her much yet. I don't warm up to children well."

  I sighed. "I know what I'm doing—"

  "You'd better hope so. If you get locked up on a statutory rape charge, I'm not bailing you out."

  "So send me some money for an extra room. I could use it. I'm paying for this myself, you know."

  "Like you'll ever let me forget it. How much?"

  I told her the amount for an extra room, figuring I could use the money for something else. So long as I didn't "statutorily rape" RayAnn, we were in no trouble at all.

  "I'll do a PayPal." She sighed. "I'll create a travel budget and look ever so important. And be back here by tomorrow night, right? I need you. We've got a case of plagiarism in the EE Department involving twelve students. One of them hacked into the pr
ofessor's files and the others were silent takers."

  My neck snapped. EE is electrical engineering. That was a huge story for a campus. But I'm used to remaining calm in the face of some fierce energy.

  "I'll be there," I said, though if I couldn't meet Torey Adams and Bo Richardson before this funeral, I was staying. Somehow.

  "So, where's Chris Creed?" she asked, finally. "According to his brother?"

  "Justin says he's coming here, might already be here," I said.

  "But you don't believe that."

  "Why shouldn't I?" I asked, but my sarcasm bled through.

  "It's too convenient. You're not that lucky."

  Chief Rye was motioning to us through the picture window, according to RayAnn.

  "I am beyond lucky in all ways, and you know it," I said, standing up.

  "And that's why I love you and need you." She blew a kiss through the phone.

  I blew one back before clicking us off. Maybe that's why Claudia could imagine me in the same sentence with statutory rape. She was a sexual harassment charge waiting to happen if she ever got around some disgruntled prude. Claudia was beautiful, if you're into tall, lanky, and full of oneself. But she told vulgar jokes like a guy, liked to stun starting reporters with her unflowery speech, and blew kisses to those of us she was grateful for and admired. She liked ruffling people, but she hadn't managed to ruffle me. I was experienced with women so domineering that she only made me laugh.

  Lanz stopped me before I walked straight into Chief Rye, who was coming out of the window room with papers in his hand.

  "Well, apparently the motel where Danny was staying did not destroy his belongings. The manager found the bags, searched them, and found what sounds like a suicide note. While I was getting the fax, the morgue called with a list of distinguishable body markings on the DOA. There's a birthmark on the ankle shaped like a missile and a tattoo on the left arm of a sinking schooner. When we talked to Mrs. Burden this morning, she mentioned a birthmark on his ankle and a tattoo of a sinking ship."

  "So, it's him."

  "We'll know for sure by around four o'clock, but I'd say it's all formality."

  I felt RayAnn reach past me, and papers rumpled. I assumed she had the fax in her hand. Or maybe he refused to give it to her, because suddenly Chief Rye began to read.

  "Dear Mom, Dad, and Wiley:

  "I've rewritten this letter thirty times. I'm trying to figure out how to say everything. I can't, so I'll just throw down thoughts and leave you to believe that everything I am saying is true.

  "Something is going to come up if it hasn't already. It will look like I committed a murder, Darla's, and you all know how I loved her and wanted to make our baby a decent life. I was prepared to, and when Darla lost the baby, I was sad that I would not have a baby. I knew it would be hard, but I was looking forward to the baby.

  "I guess Darla was too, because while she never said that, she was very upset when the miscarriage happened. She cried for a month, and it was because I kept saying I would not marry her without the baby. I wanted to go to community college and get my degree first."

  RayAnn and I had turned to look at the fax, too, and Chief Rye just dropped it into our hands. "I've read it twice. There are too many flaws in what he's saying. Something's wrong with the big picture, even if he's telling the truth, but have at it."

  He went back into the office. We read silently and slowly, as Danny Burden's penmanship was a mess and I wasn't as good as the chief was at interpreting it.

  "So here is the hard part. She threatened to off herself and even though I promised to help her get in rehab or to go see a doctor for some depressed pills she would not listen. On Sunday night, December 29, you guys were at church and she was over and I couldn't stand to listen to her complain and feel sorry for herself anymore so I shouted GO AHEAD THEN! GET IT OVER WITH!

  "It was the worst mistake of my life because she knew where Dad's gun was. I had told her once and now she took it and ran and I ran after her and she fired it into her own head in the shed at the back of the property. The one with Dad's motorbike in it, so she is in there and I am so sorry to have to tell you that. Just call the cops and don't go in there, it is a bloody mess and I am a crazy person.

  "I could not have called the cops, however. I had just screamed at her and I know the Baldwins were home and probably heard that and she had Dad's gun and I have touched it so many times and they would think that I killed her because I didn't want to marry her or something. Remember when Chris Creed disappeared and everyone automatically assumed that someone down here did him? Well I didn't think I should end up in jail just because Darla made a bad mistake on our property and with Dad's gun.

  "I came out here just to run run run. I didn't get to Darla in time. I could have stopped her if I had been faster or smarter or something. I could not hug or kiss her goodbye because if I touched one thing in that shed it would have looked even more like I did it and I didn't want you guys to ever deal with any suspicion that I did something bad. I am sorry about the mess, totally sorry, I should have called the cops and not run.

  "I did love her. I know most people don't understand that because they think she was a loadie and any one of them could have thought she made me so crazy just from her constant yelling to get out Dad's gun. But I did love her and I could never kill her and now I can't stop seeing her head blow open and that stream of blood running down the side of the wall back behind Dad's bike. I want to be with her even if it sounds crazy. It will be better than being in jail. She didn't want me to get blamed, she's not that evil. She just didn't think. But who will believe me? Nobody, so I'm going on to Darla. She knows the truth. I love you all and especially you Wiley."

  I almost had a charley horse from shifting my head every half line to read it. Sad, sad, sad. Bad, bad frequency. Like most people who are well liked, Danny Burden was unaware of it, unaware of the gifts it can hold. Between the neighborhood's word and the evidence, the police would probably have believed him.

  "So, Danny Burden is saying he committed suicide because he missed Darla and he was afraid he'd get blamed for it," I summarized tentatively. The kid was a massive run-on sentence.

  "Essentially, yes." Chief Rye had emerged from his office and took back the fax. "You need a copy?"

  "Yes, please," I said, sensing his anxiety. "You're obviously not taken in by this. Any specifics?"

  "At first glance, only that the body was dropped in acid to speed up the decomposition. The clothes were thrown in with a semi-decomposed body to keep all potential evidence together."

  The answer to my number one question.

  "And if she committed suicide, why burn the body?" Rye asked. "And how did she get into that grave?"

  TWELVE

  WE LEFT THE POLICE STATION with plans to come back in a couple hours for some confirmations, including the formal ID of the body. Authorities were at the Burdens', looking to see what evidence they could still find in the shed. Rye had said the property was irregular, narrow enough to have close neighbors in the front but proceeding backwards and out for four acres. The shed was at the back, which might help explain why the neighbors never heard a shot fired. I was especially interested in the results of that search.

  But not enough to ask RayAnn to head over there. I was thinking of Claudia's stance, which was correct: The town was my business; the body was not, except in how the town was responding to it. Having visited the Adams homestead today, I was ripe to speak to Mrs. Adams.

  But as we got into the car, I spouted, "I'm worried about Justin."

  "He didn't look good when we left him," RayAnn agreed. "Do you want to stop by the Lightning Field?"

  Walking for ten minutes at least into the Lightning Field and back out seemed like a waste of precious time, but my heart had hooked in to Justin more than I cared to admit. I wanted to make sure no druglords had found him, and I also wanted to frame out this place in the daylight. It had been nothing less than crazy at night.

&nb
sp; We parked as close as we could, and RayAnn led the way, with me encouraging Lanz to keep up with her. Only twice did he turn his nose to stop me, both times from puddles of rainwater from yesterday's deluge.

  The field was just as eerie in daylight, but in a different way. The trees still glistened, a pasty color at the tops of the burned-out trunks, some ending thirty feet up, mixed with black trunk nearing the bottom. Whatever fire ripped through here probably left the ground bald, but now there was a nice bed of soft foliage resembling the wintergreen that grew around tree trunks near my childhood house. Ex cept the flowers were white instead of purple. It was a very white place, between the endless tiny blooms and the weird dead trees. The eeriness, I suppose, came from the silence. The trees in the distance, when I focused long enough, bore a slight shade of green, implying that the summer leaves indeed were in bud stage. But there were no leaves yet to rustle in the breeze.

  "Justin!" RayAnn shouted it over and over, and I did, too.

  No answer.

  "He wouldn't do anything stupid like jump in the freezing bay," I said. "Right?"

  "I don't know him," RayAnn replied. "But crying over your life and taking your life are a mile apart. Let's hope."

  RayAnn searched over by a pile of large jetty rocks down near the water, as it was the only place big enough to conceal a person. She came back alone but with something in her hands. She held up Justin's prescription bottle and shook it.

  "Leaves his charger at home, leaves his medication in the field," she said. "I don't think he's very organized."

  "He's got a lot on his plate," I said, holding my hand out and taking the bottle.

  "Yeah. Maybe we should just put it back where I found it. He'll probably think of where he left it and come back. I'm guessing he sat down there for a while, then decided to charge his phone at Mary Ellen's. The rocks are kind of shaped like a giant seat, like a throne."

  We could try to give it to him, but I had no idea where Mary Ellen lived, or even if he'd actually been there.