A Merciful Silence (Mercy Kilpatrick #4)(26)

Mercy made herself look at the destruction on the skulls. “We have to consider it. I’ve never seen abuse like this outside of those other two cases, and all of them happened in the same county.”

“But the bodies were left in their homes twenty years ago. These were moved.”

It was a primary difference between the old cases and new.

“Maybe the parents weren’t killed.” Dr. Harper’s sad gaze met Mercy’s, and she knew exactly what the odontologist was thinking. It was a possibility she couldn’t ignore.

Who would do that to their children?





TWELVE

The next morning Mercy yawned at her desk for the tenth time.

She’d slept poorly, unable to get the small skull and broken teeth out of her mind. She’d woken up too early and paced in her home. The cat had curled up with Kaylie in the teen’s bed, and Mercy hadn’t held back her smile as she watched them both sleep. The cat was affectionate and had immediately attached herself to Kaylie. The thought of the sweet animal shivering alone during the winter made Mercy want to cry.

I hope no one claims her.

She checked the time. Her phone call with Grady Baldwin was in one minute. She cleared some papers off her office desk and mentally ran through the questions she wanted to ask the convicted mass murderer.

Her desk phone rang. She answered, identified herself, and was soon connected with Baldwin.

“What does the FBI want with me?” Baldwin bluntly asked without exchanging pleasantries. He sounded as if he’d smoked cigarettes for the last twenty years in prison.

Mercy eyed the old mug shot of Baldwin on her screen and wondered what he looked like now. In the mug shot, the tendons stood out on his thick neck, and his glower made her shudder. He looked as if he had spent a decade lifting weights. Or was the muscular build from his physical work? Grady was now in his fifties, and she pictured him with softening jowls and graying hair.

“I have questions about the Verbeek and Deverell murders.”

“Doesn’t everybody? I’ll tell you the same thing I tell everyone else. I got nothin’ to say because I wasn’t there.”

Mercy had expected the statement. “You’ve had a lot of time to think about it. Who do you think did it?”

“Do you have a suspect?” A faint glimmer of hope was in his tone.

“No.”

“Then why the fuck are you talking to me?”

She and Jeff had discussed whether or not to tell Baldwin about the new victims. The discovery of the skeletal remains had already made the news, but the empty Hartlage house and the identification of the Hartlage children had not. They’d agreed to only tell Baldwin the information that was already public.

“Is this about those remains found on March Mountain?” he asked.

How did he instantly connect that case to my phone call?

“You heard about that?”

“I’m popular recently. A reporter tried to schedule a visit with me yesterday. I turned him down, but I looked up what he’d published recently.”

“Who was the reporter?” asked Mercy through her teeth.

“Something Winslow.”

Chuck Winslow. How did he connect the dots to Grady Baldwin?

Probably the same way she had. Her memory had recalled a common factor between the cases. No doubt Chuck had talked to a local who also remembered.

“The remains have raised some questions,” Mercy admitted. “There’s a few similarities between the new case and the two old ones. Enough to make us take a second look at the old murders.”

“Probably because whoever murdered the Verbeeks and Deverells is still walking around. Drinking beer. Going fishing. All the shit I used to do.”

The bitterness in his tone struck Mercy deep inside. So many freedoms were taken for granted. Until they were taken away.

“Take a look at the Verbeek girl,” Baldwin suggested. “I think she’s hiding something.”

“Britta? She was unconscious.”

“So she says,” he snapped.

“She was a child.”

“She had eyes, didn’t she? She’s still scared of something.”

Mercy gripped her phone, Britta’s description of the anxiety she lived with echoing in her head. She was scarred for life. “What do you mean, she’s still scared? How would you know?”

Baldwin was silent.

Suspicion filled Mercy. “Mr. Baldwin, do you know where Britta is now?”

“I know she’s moved back.”

“How do you know that?”

“I have a little bird on the outside.”

Mercy briefly closed her eyes. “Why would you bother keeping tabs on Britta Verbeek?”

“She goes by the last name of Vale now. I’ve got nothing better to do with my time. I’ve always thought that girl knew something. Her behavior tells me she’s nervous.”

“You have someone following her?”

“Nah, nothing like that. My brother Don keeps tabs on her movements through the internet.” His tone turned coy. “She’s moved around a lot, hasn’t she?”

Mercy was stunned into silence. Does Britta know he’s watching her?

Maybe she has a reason to feel paranoid.

She moved Don Baldwin’s interview up her to-do list.