A Merciful Silence (Mercy Kilpatrick #4)(81)

“I’m sorry—”

“It’s okay, Mercy. I shouldn’t have come back. I was stupid to think it would all be in the past.”

The door closed behind her.

Truman exhaled. “I don’t know what I think of her.”

“She’s scared. She’s been uneasy all her life,” Mercy said, wondering what she could have done differently to stop Britta from running off. “The simple fact that she gets up every morning and functions astounds me.”

“I don’t know how well she’s functioning. I thought she was going to tear Steve Harris to pieces. She’s like a loaded cannon.”

“Yes, she’s tightly wound. Everyone wants a piece of her. Even us,” she added. “I feel as if she could help us with the Hartlage and Jorgensen cases.”

“Both of them happened after she returned to town,” Truman reminded her.

“I haven’t forgotten. But we’ve found nothing to tie her to the deaths.”

“Fingerprints, hair samples, footprints. Something has to point at the killer.”

“Nothing yet. Even the hammer used at the Hartlages was completely clean and untraceable.”

“Start again,” Truman suggested. “You’ve got to find him before he murders again. Go back to the beginning.”

Mercy sighed, feeling the weight of Truman’s words.

What if he kills another family? Have I done everything I could to find him?

“Do you know how much evidence has been logged?” she asked. “How many interviews there have been?”

“I can imagine.”

“It has to break open at some point,” she said. “I’ll review everything.”

I won’t rest until I know who killed those children.





THIRTY-NINE

“I know this smell means bad shit,” Floyd Cox said solemnly as he led Truman toward the back of his property. His rental business had thirty storage units of different sizes, and they were all full.

Floyd had called the police station, concerned about an odor coming from one of his units. Now the wide sixty-year-old man waddled around the puddles on his grounds. Floyd didn’t have any front teeth, but that didn’t stop him from constantly grinning or talking. In fact, the short man was one of the most gregarious people Truman knew.

“You didn’t call the owners?” Truman asked, thankful it wasn’t raining.

“Nope. I wanted the police here when it was opened. If I called the owners, they might clean out something illegal first. I don’t put up with that sort of thing on my property. Everyone signs a form saying they won’t use the units for anything against the law.” He looked over his shoulder at Truman, scrutinizing him and eyeing the splint. “Good to see you back, Chief. Our whole town was mighty worried.”

“It’s good to be back.”

“What happened to the arm?”

“Had a nasty fall,” Truman lied.

“You can drive like that?”

“For the most part.”

Most of the injuries to his face had healed, but he still had some scabbing. He wasn’t about to say he’d had the crap beat out of him—especially to one of the most talkative men in town. The forgers had been charged, and Truman figured he had weeks if not months of trials to deal with. The real story of his injuries would come out in testimony.

“What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever found in one of your storage units?” Truman asked to divert Floyd’s attention. “I imagine people leave stuff behind all the time.”

“Haven’t found money, that’s for sure,” Floyd said mournfully. “I keep hoping one of these days someone will leave behind a pile of cash. Hasn’t happened yet.” He hitched up his pants. “I suppose the weirdest thing was about four years ago. They stopped paying on the unit, and I couldn’t hunt them down. When I finally opened it, I found dolls. Hundreds of them in all different shapes and sizes, from Barbie dolls to mannequins.” He lowered his voice and waited for Truman to come up beside him. “Every single one of them was naked. Several didn’t have heads.”

“Were they in boxes?”

“Nope. There were boxes in the unit, but the dolls were sitting on top of the boxes, arranged like an audience. Creeped me the hell out when I went in and found all those eyes staring at me.”

I’m creeped out by listening.

“Who does that?” Floyd went on, confusion in his voice. “The image of those dolls still pops into my head at odd times. I didn’t understand. Why display them in that way? Probably something sexual,” he said, whispering the word with disdain.

“People do weird stuff.”

“I wish they’d keep it behind their own closed doors, not mine,” Floyd asserted. “Here we are.” He gestured to a unit that was about six feet wide and eight feet tall with a roll-up door.

Truman smelled it. Rotting flesh. Not good. “Maybe an animal got in there . . . or they stored something from hunting.”

“I hope you’re right.” Floyd bent over to unlock the padlock at the bottom of the door. “But you can understand why I wanted a cop here when I opened it.”

Truman understood. And wished Samuel had taken the call.