Chapter Sixteen
If Sharp closed his eyes, he could picture everything as it had been in 1994. Jenny becoming more hysterical as the hours passed. Ten-year-old Lance trying to calm her. He’d been just a boy, but he’d become his mother’s caretaker that night. Sharp had helped as much as he could. His only other option had been to put Lance into foster care, and Sharp had seen too many kids destroyed by that system. In his opinion, unless a kid was in major danger, he was better off with his own family.
They’d survived, but neither Jenny nor Lance had lived a full life. Until now. Until Morgan had entered the picture. It had taken Lance bringing a woman around for Jenny to see that her illness had a death grip on her son as well as herself.
Morgan had made all the difference. And Sharp would be damned if he’d let Vic Kruger’s disappearance put Lance’s newfound joy in jeopardy.
This time, he was going to find the truth. This time, he would not fail them. But what if the truth was more painful than they’d ever imagined? Vic’s car had been found in a lake with a woman’s body in the trunk. If Sharp were investigating that discovery, with no previous connection to the case, he might conclude that Vic had killed the girl, covered up the murder by putting her in the lake, and left town because of his crime. But if he wanted to dispose of a body, Vic could have dumped her in the lake and gone home. No one would have known. There would have been no need to complicate the situation by using his own car.
Unless Vic also wanted out of his marriage and the stressful situation. In that case, it made perfect sense.
Shit.
Should he share the theory with Lance? Not yet. He’d keep it in the back of his mind and see where the evidence led.
Sharp cruised to a stop at the sign and turned right.
Crystal Fox lived in Grey’s Hollow, a mostly rural community just north of Scarlet Falls. Weeds and woods lined both sides of the country road. At six o’clock in the evening, the sun had set, but the night wasn’t yet full dark. In the gray twilight, Sharp passed a rundown farmhouse with a sagging porch and a barnyard full of knee-high weeds.
A quarter mile later, he turned at a broken mailbox onto a narrow, rutted driveway. Trees arched overhead and shadowed the lane.
Ahead, taillights glowed in the dim, and Sharp spotted Lance’s Jeep. Morgan and Lance were already there. As soon as Sharp pulled in next to the Jeep, they climbed out and waited for him on the driveway.
The small one-story house was muddy brown and miserable looking. Paint peeled from the front door. Shutters and roof shingles were missing. A lamppost halfway between the driveway and the house stood dark. The porch light wasn’t on either, and the lawn, more meadow than grass, hadn’t seen a mower since the 1970s.
“The place feels empty,” Sharp said on his way up what had once been a brick path.
A whimper caught his attention. “Did you hear that?”
Morgan was already on it, moving toward an overgrown shrub under a dirty bay window. Flashlight in hand, Lance hurried to get in front of her. Looking out for her took some effort on his part. That girl took care of her own business. Putting an arm in front of Morgan to stop her, Lance crouched, separated the foliage, and shone his flashlight into the shrubs.
Morgan stood back, arms crossed over her chest, one flat shoe tapping on the ground.
“I see something.” Lance pushed his big shoulders into the bushes. Dried leaves crackled as something moved. “Ow. It’s a dog, and it just bit me.”
Morgan tugged him back. “Let me try.”
“Be careful.” Lance shook his hand. Blood welled from his finger.
Sharp leaned over to get a look at the wound. “Practically a paper cut. You’ll live.”
Morgan pulled a tiny packet of tissues from her bag and handed it over. Then she hiked up her skirt, got down on her knees, and crawled into the shrubs, talking in a soothing baby voice. “It’s OK. I won’t hurt you. That’s a good baby.”
A few seconds later, she backed out of the shrub with a small dog in her arms, a ridiculously tiny brown creature. A pink bow held the hair out of its eyes.
Sharp snickered. “It must weigh all of four pounds.”
“Still has sharp teeth.” Lance wrapped a tissue around his bleeding finger.
“It’s a Yorkie,” Morgan said.
Sharp let the little dog sniff his hand. It growled as he read her tag. “Her name is Sweet Pea Fox. She must be Crystal’s dog.”
Morgan set it on the ground. It took one step, dragging one leg, and she scooped it back up again. “She’s hurt.”
“Let’s see why Crystal’s dog is outside.” Sharp headed up the walk. There was no doorbell, so he knocked on the door.
Something scraped from the back of the house. Lance put a finger to his lips and took off in a jog around the corner. Sharp motioned for Morgan to stay put. Then he headed around the opposite side. A rickety chain-link fence defined the backyard. Sharp went through the open gate.
He heard the scraping sound again. Shoving aside the branch of a monstrous rhododendron, he saw a hooded figure drop out of a window and haul ass through the weeds. Sharp sprinted after him. He could still clock a six-minute mile and closed the distance between them rapidly. Reaching the fence, the figure put one hand on top and leaped over. His feet hit the weeds on the other side, and he turned on the speed. Sharp followed him over the fence and continued to gain ground. He heard Lance’s heavier steps and the rattle of the fence behind him. But Sharp focused on the hooded figure. He was tall and slim but clearly unconditioned. His strides were slowing.
As the man reached the end of the meadow at the edge of the woods, Sharp lunged forward, grabbing him by his hoodie and yanking him backward. Momentum worked with him. The man’s feet continued forward, his shoulders pitched backward, and he landed on his back on the grass.
“Don’t move.” Sharp put a foot on his throat, intending to pin him to the ground.
The man grabbed his foot, knocked Sharp backward, and scrambled to his feet. Sharp got a boot under his body and launched himself forward. He landed on top. He was in good shape for his age, but the man under him was younger and stronger. A wild fist caught Sharp on the jaw. Stars exploded in front of him. In two seconds, he found himself on his back with a weight on his chest and hands around his throat.
The kid leaned on his hands, cutting off Sharp’s air.
Sharp crossed his arms over his chest, using his elbows to bend his assailant’s arms and ease some of the pressure, just enough to suck in one breath.
As suddenly as the weight had landed on his chest, it disappeared. Sharp gulped oxygen, his lungs burning, as a shadow fell over him. Lance had the kid by the neck of his hoodie, the kid’s toes barely on the ground.
“What’s going on?” Lance asked. He wasn’t even out of breath.
Sharp looked up, wheezing and feeling old.
Lance shook the kid like a kitten. “Why were you running from Crystal’s house?”
The guy was young, maybe eighteen or nineteen. His wide-open, panicked eyes made him look younger.
“I didn’t do anything.” His arms flailed.
Lance eased the kid’s feet to the ground and released him. Sharp sat up and waited for the kid to spill his guts, but he clamped his mouth firmly shut. Sharp bet this was not the kid’s first B and E.
“If you try to run”—Sharp jerked a thumb toward Lance, whose bowling-ball-size biceps served as useful threats—“I’ll sic him on you again.”
The kid’s gaze darted back and forth between Sharp and Lance, then he nodded.
Sharp checked the kid’s pockets for weapons and found a wallet. He read the driver’s license. “Ricky Jackson. OK, Ricky, let’s go see what you were so anxious to run away from.” Sharp pushed him back toward Crystal’s house. He pocketed the wallet, just in case the kid managed to beat feet.
There were no houses in sight. The dilapidated farmhouse a quarter mile away was the closest neighbor. Ricky dragged his feet, but he was smart—or experienced—enough not to give anything away.
“Are you cops?” he protested.
“No,” Sharp said, keeping one hand on the kid’s arm.
The kid tried to twist away. “Then get your hands off me.”
“Walk.” Lance pointed toward Crystal’s place.
As they approached, Sharp studied the open window. Sharp caught a vibe—and a smell—that indicated bad shit had gone down. “I’m sure they’d love to know why you were climbing out Ms. Fox’s window.”
The kid went quiet.
They hauled him around front.
“What happened?” Morgan asked.
“Caught him climbing out a window.” Sharp handed the kid off to Lance, then went to his car for a set of zip ties. Returning, he pulled Ricky’s hands behind his back and fastened his wrists together.
“Hey, you can’t do that.” The kid wriggled.
“Shut up.” Sharp dragged Ricky to a lamppost and used a second zip tie to hook him to the post. He patted him on the shoulder. “You stay here.”
“You suck, man. I’m gonna sue your ass.” The kid spat onto the ground.
“I caught you breaking into a woman’s home. This is a citizen’s arrest, my young friend.” Sharp glanced at Morgan. Her face was set in a disapproving frown. He ignored her. His instincts told him they were not going to like what they found inside the house, and that the kid had been up to no good.
Besides, Grey’s Hollow was Sheriff King’s domain. The sheriff might not love PIs, but he would enthusiastically approve of heavy handedness when it came to punk-ass kids breaking into houses.
“Keep an eye on him,” he said to Morgan, then motioned Lance forward. They approached the front door. Sharp pulled gloves from his pocket and tugged them on. Lance did the same. Sharp tried the knob, but the door was locked. He and Lance walked the perimeter of the house, looking in windows. They tried the side entrance and a sliding glass door around back before stopping in front of the open window.
The sill was chest high. Sharp peered into a spare bedroom. He scanned past the boxes and piles of clothing to focus on the doorway. Across the hall and through another doorway, a pair of feet dangled just off the floor. “Shit, I see dangling feet.”
Lance laced his fingers as a step. Sharp took the leg up and scrambled inside. He maneuvered his way through the piles of junk. Lance came through the window behind him.
“Let me go first.” Lance shouldered ahead, his gun in his hand. “I’m armed.”
But Sharp could already see there was no reason to hurry. The woman was beyond help. He stopped in the doorway, the breath whooshing out of him as he viewed the body. The smell of death brought back his years on the police force. The body had not yet begun to decompose, but the bowels and bladder had released.
She dangled from a rope attached to the ceiling fan, her toes not quite brushing the carpet. Her eyes bulged, and her swollen tongue protruded from her mouth. A chair rested on its back beside her.
“I’ll clear the house,” Lance said.
Sharp heard him moving through the rooms.
Crystal Fox had been the single best new clue in Vic’s disappearance.
And she was dead.
“You really need to carry your gun.” Lance stopped next to him.
“I generally don’t need one, and I want people to feel comfortable talking to me,” Sharp said. “Besides, you’re the muscle, and I’m the brains in this operation.”
Lance holstered his weapon and pulled out his phone. “I’ll call the sheriff.”
“No rush. She isn’t going to be more dead five minutes from now.” Sharp took a camera from his pocket and began snapping pictures. “Once King gets here, the scene will be off-limits. And the ME won’t talk to us about an active investigation either. The sheriff will button down all his hatches, as usual.”
“But the kid knows we’re here,” Lance argued, sliding his phone out of his pocket.
“True.”
“And I always get the feeling the sheriff would like nothing better than to toss us both in jail.”
“Also true. King likes jailing people in general, but he has Ricky to lock up tonight. That should make the sheriff happy.”
While Lance made the phone call, Sharp snapped more pictures, zooming in on the rope, the knot, the woman’s face. “It’s a simple slipknot. No special skill required.”
“Do you think this isn’t suicide?” Lance asked, lowering his phone. “The sheriff recently informed her that her daughter was murdered. Seems like a reasonable motivation.”
“Maybe.” Sharp photographed the body in sections. “But her daughter has been missing for twenty-three years. Don’t you think the possibility that Mary had been killed would have occurred to her by now?”
“But the reality is very different from the possibility,” Lance said quietly.
Damn. What a shitty thing to say to someone whose father had also been missing all that time.
Sharp lowered the camera. “I’m sorry. You would know better than I would.”
“You could be right.” Lance rolled a shoulder. “Even my mom, with all her problems, was almost relieved when she thought my father’s body had been found. She’s more upset now, knowing that it wasn’t him.”
“We’ll get to the bottom of this.” Sharp pointed to purplish red dots on the dead woman’s swollen face. “Facial congestion and petechial hemorrhages are consistent with death by asphyxia caused by hanging, manual strangulation, or smothering.” He used one gloved finger to lift the hem of her pant leg and expose her foot and calf. “No sign of lividity yet.” The blood hadn’t had time to settle in the lowest part of the body. “She hasn’t been hanging here very long.”
Sharp finished with the body and moved on to the room. His gaze landed on the dresser. The drawers were open and had been rifled through. A jewelry box lay on its side, its contents spilled onto the top of the dresser. “That little rat was robbing her.”
“What’s going on in there?” Morgan called from the open window.
“Don’t let her in here.” Lance frowned at the body. “She doesn’t need to see this.”
“She’s tough,” Sharp said. “She can handle it.”
“But she doesn’t have to,” Lance said in a low voice, then he turned and called back to her. “Wait out front. Crystal is dead. I called the sheriff. He’s going to be mad enough that we contaminated his scene.”
Sharp gave him a look. “She is more durable than you think.”
Yet, the fact that Lance was always trying to protect her was a good sign. For the last ten years, Sharp had been wondering if the young man would ever let himself have a personal life. But Morgan was the kind of special that had little to do with her pretty blue eyes and was all about her compassion, smarts, and pure grit.
“If we’d gotten here earlier . . .” Regret slammed into Sharp. A woman was dead, and his first big lead gone before he’d gotten a chance to talk to her.
Staring at the body, Lance’s face tightened. If Sharp was disappointed, he couldn’t imagine how Lance felt.
“We’d better go outside and pretend we left the scene the second we saw the body.” Sharp backed out of the bedroom. “But on the way out, look for signs of a break-in.”
They left the way they came in, doing their best not to touch the windowsill.
Sharp examined the window lock and snapped a few pictures. “The lock is broken. The way it’s rusted, it’s probably been that way for a long time.”
“If she didn’t commit suicide, do you think Ricky killed her?” Lance asked.
“Hanging a person takes a lot of work,” Sharp said. “Ricky doesn’t seem like the industrious type.”
They rounded the house and returned to the driveway.
“She was dead when I got there!” Ricky shouted the moment they were in sight.
Ignoring him, Sharp handed Morgan the camera. “Put this in your pocket.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Because the sheriff won’t search you,” Sharp said.
Nodding, Lance gestured between his own chest and Sharp’s. “We don’t intimidate him.”
A few minutes later the sheriff’s vehicle slid to the curb. Two deputies parked behind him.
King climbed out of his vehicle and stomped up the driveway. His face was locked in a stony expression. “What happened?”
“We came to talk to her and knocked on the door. No one answered, but we saw this guy”—Sharp jerked a thumb at Ricky, still zip-tied to the lamp post—“climbing out a window.”
“I didn’t kill her!” Ricky yelled.
Sharp gave the sheriff a very abbreviated version of events. “Lance and I cleared the house, verified that she was dead, and called you.”
Sheriff King propped one hand on his hip and stabbed a finger at Sharp. “You should have called me and stayed the hell out of the house.”
“What if she was still alive?” Sharp asked, though they all knew the chances of someone being alive when hanging by the neck were slim to none.
The sheriff glared. “Wait. Here.”
He led his deputies to the front door. He checked the knob, then led the way around the house. Ten minutes later, he returned to the driveway. “Nobody leaves until I give them permission. And I want all three of you in my office at eight a.m.”
Morgan shook her head. “I can’t be there until nine thirty. I have to take my daughter to preschool and drop my nanny at dialysis.”
The sheriff’s jaw worked as if he were chewing nails. “Nine thirty, then.”
He stomped to his vehicle, leaned in, and grabbed his radio mic.
“He’s pissed,” Lance said.
“Hey, we didn’t kill her.” Sharp shrugged. “But it’s probably a good thing we have our lawyer with us.”
“Who didn’t see you break any laws.” Still cradling the injured little dog in her arms, Morgan stroked its head.
“Exactly.” Normally, Sharp was all about following the rules, but this case was different.
This one was personal.
He would do whatever it took to learn what had happened to Vic Kruger, and he thought Crystal Fox’s suicide was just too convenient.