Little Girl Gone (An Afton Tangler Thriller #1)(63)

“Son of a bitch.” Max swore under his breath as he stepped from the car. They’d been forced to park a block away. Now they were running the gauntlet of watchers and law enforcement.

Max badged both of them through two different rings of security. Then, rounding the corner of the house, they caught a glimpse of Don Jasper. The Chicago FBI agent was standing at the back door, talking to a crime scene tech in a navy jumpsuit. When Jasper saw them, he motioned for them to come forward.

“How bad?” Max asked as he and Afton crowded onto a sagging back porch.

“Bad,” Jasper said. His affable nature and normally twinkly eyes seemed dulled by what he’d just witnessed. “See for yourself.”

They pressed into the kitchen, where it was crowded and stuffy with at least a half dozen people jostling around. Cameras strobed wildly and Afton surmised that Muriel Pink must be lying in the middle of that maelstrom of activity.

Max elbowed his way through the crowd, Afton practically riding his coattails. He stopped abruptly and they saw her. Muriel Pink was lying on the linoleum floor, eyes staring blankly up at the ceiling, her face as yellowed and crinkled as old parchment paper. Her floral robe was flung open revealing the fact that her torso had been slashed from sternum to stomach. An enormous pool of blood had congealed around her and soaked up into her clothing. An older white-haired man in green scrubs was leaning over her. Afton figured he might be a local doctor, doing his turn as county coroner.

“Who found her?” Max said to no one in particular.

A Saint Croix County sheriff’s deputy turned to answer him. “Neighbor. When the old lady didn’t come over for her usual cup of coffee, the neighbor got worried and peeked in the back window. Saw this.”

“Damn,” Max said. “Somebody really went to work on her.”

The officer removed his Smoky Bear hat, as if in deference to the slain woman, and ran a hand over his blond brush cut. “Carved her up pretty good.”

“You ever see anything like this before?”

“Not exactly like this,” the deputy said. Then he paused. “Well, maybe once when I arrested a couple of hunters. They’d shot a doe, but didn’t have a proper deer license. They were hurrying to . . .” He gestured futilely, not finishing his sentence.


*

AFTON stepped around the circle of onlookers and walked quietly into the living room. A brass clock over a small red brick fireplace ticked reassuringly. Dolls smiled out from the shelves of a bookcase. A pair of fuzzy white slippers were tucked next to a well-worn lime green easy chair. An AARP magazine was spread open on a nearby end table. But Muriel Pink was never again going to sit in here and enjoy her cozy little home and read her magazines.

Just who were they dealing with? Obviously, a person so callous they would break into a person’s house, beat the crap out of the babysitter, steal a baby, and then double back and stab an old lady witness. Sometimes the world was a pretty sick place.

“Afton!” Max called. “Afton!”

Afton spun around to find Max huffing toward her. It was clear he hadn’t cooled off. If anything, he seemed to have doubled down on his anger.

“We’re not going to get anything here,” Max told her. “Between the FBI, local law enforcement, and crime scene techs, they’ve got it under control.” He drew a deep breath. “But there’s only been one officer so far who canvassed the neighborhood.” An expectant look filled his face.

“What are we waiting for?” Afton said.


*

BACK outside, the gawkers who had been standing on the front lawn had all but disappeared. Their absence was either a result of freezing temperatures, the fact that being on the fringes of an investigation was pretty boring, or the Saint Croix County deputies shagging them away. The only evidence that something unholy had taken place here was the string of law enforcement cars and vans snaking around the corner.

Max took one side of the street, Afton took the other. She knocked on the doors of three houses before she found someone who was at home. But when she introduced herself and asked the woman if she’d seen anyone walking around outside last night, the woman shook her head. No, she hadn’t seen or heard anything until the police has shown up at poor Mrs. Pink’s home a couple of hours ago. And wasn’t that an awful thing?

Afton continued to plug away, but was having miserable luck. And by the set of Max’s shoulders as he covered the other side of the street, he was striking out, too.

It wasn’t until Afton hit her sixth house that a woman named Ellie Schroeder remembered seeing someone walking down the street last night.

“What time was this?” Afton asked her.

“Oh, pretty late,” Schroeder said. “Maybe ten o’clock?” Schroeder was thin and mousy looking, wearing baggy slacks and a sweatshirt that said, WORLD’S GREATEST GRANDMA. “But I don’t think the person I saw was your killer.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because he was carrying a pizza box,” Schroeder said.

Inside her chest, Afton’s heart did a slow-motion flip-flop.

Schroeder went on. “I just assumed it was Mr. Foster from down the block.” She leaned in and squinted at Afton. “He’s a divorced dad, and when his kids stay over, he usually buys pizza.” She said it disapprovingly, as if Mr. Foster should be grilling a medley of organic carrots and broccoli instead.