Field of Graves(72)

He got the fire lit and returned to the chair facing the sofa. “Can I get you anything else? More tea? More food? Soup? You have some nasty canned stuff in the pantry. I could heat it up for you?”

“Nasty canned stuff? Thanks for the commentary on my taste. No, I’m fine. I just want to sit here and relax. It seems like weeks since I even sat down.”

“It has been a crazy couple of days.”

“Do you think Fitz and Marcus have found anything yet?”

“Taylor, they told you they’d call the minute they had anything worthwhile. There have to be thirty or so professors for them to look at, and the school is still closed after the storm. It’s going to take them some time. They’re good cops. They won’t miss anything.”

“I know. I just feel so stupid lying here doing nothing.” She coughed.

“Like you coughing and sneezing all over the faculty at Vandy is going to help things? C’mon, Taylor, give yourself a break. Let’s give them some time, and we’ll call and check on their progress later. Why don’t we just talk about something other than the case for a bit?”

Taylor gave him a sidelong glance. “Like what?”

“How about these panic attacks you’re having? You want to tell me about that?”

“Not particularly. Want to tell me how things are going with you?” she challenged.

Baldwin looked off into space and gave a big sigh. “Okay, if I talk then you have to. Fair enough?”

“No, but I’ll think about it.”

“Great, thanks. So what do you want to know?”

She looked him frankly in the eyes. “I want to know why you were busy playing with your life when I met you.”

He snorted. “You are direct, aren’t you?”

“C’mon, Baldwin. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

He sat back in the chair. “If I tell you this, you may feel you need to get involved, and I don’t want that.”

“I’m already involved, Baldwin,” she said softly.

He met her gaze with a long look. “That’s not exactly what I meant, but it’s good to know. I’m feeling involved myself. Very involved.” He smiled at her, then his lips curved down in a frown. “You know the whole story about the shooting in Virginia, right? How I got three good men killed for no reason?”

“I’ve heard some. You went into a suspect’s home—he came back unexpectedly, drew down on you, and you shot him. But he got off shots and hit the three you were with. It shook you up, and you left for a while. That’s what I know.”

“That’s the official story, but it was a little more complicated than that.” He got up and went to the fire, throwing on another log and using the poker to mess with the hot embers.

“Tell me, Baldwin. Is that not the whole story?”

He gave her a rueful smile. “No. It’s not the whole story. Harold Arlen was a bad man, Taylor. Evil. We just didn’t have the evidence to sink his ship. He was raping and killing little girls, and we couldn’t get him for the murders. There was no evidence at his house except tons of child porn, which wasn’t enough. We couldn’t find any other properties he may have used to rape and kill them. Nothing. But I knew it was him. Knew it in my heart. I knew if we let it go, he’d just kill again. I couldn’t let that happen.”

“What did you do, Baldwin?”

He turned to her. “No one knows this, Taylor. At least not officially. Have you ever done something you know in your heart is wrong, but it’s the only way you can see to resolve a situation?”

Taylor was getting an idea of what he was talking about. “You planted evidence,” she said flatly.

He hung his head, turning back to the fire. “Yeah, I did. I know it was wrong, but I had to get this guy. There was blood evidence in the case—enough from one of the girls that could be slipped out and used. I took a handkerchief and put some of the blood on it, broke into his house, put it in one of his dresser drawers. When we went in with the warrant, one of the guys found the handkerchief. We had him, and he was going away for a long time.”

“God, Baldwin. How could you do that?” Taylor knew she sounded judgmental, and tried to change her tone. “You just weren’t thinking, right?”

“I don’t know what I was thinking. I was in a pressure cooker situation, with other...” He stopped abruptly, as if he’d changed his mind about telling her something. “It seemed like the only course of action I had left. I knew he was responsible. But I did something really stupid, and it got three guys killed. That day... Arlen got off the shots before I could react. I hit him and he went down, but it was too late.” His eyes were welling up; he shook his head sharply to stop them from spilling over. “But that’s not the worst of it. It all worked, for a while. Arlen was dead and the case was solved, right? A few weeks later another little girl turned up. She’d been dead for at least a couple of weeks and was majorly decomposed. But there was no way to know for sure if it was another one of his victims that we had missed or a copycat killer. The scene was in close proximity to where we found the other girls. The body was placed in the same position as the others. There was no discernible DNA. It looked just like one of his. But there were a couple of unfamiliar hairs found on the girl. They ran them for DNA, but it wasn’t a match to Arlen.