She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be - J.D. Barker Page 0,121

hand holding the flashlight. “I’ve got someone here, just stepped out of the woods.”

No reply.

“I said, drop it!”

More movement, to the right of this man.

A woman stepped from the trees, also wearing a long, white coat, also holding something in her hand. Another after that, another man, about ten feet down the tree line. Two more came out from the far left.

Putney wanted to take a step back, deeper into the stone archway covering the house’s entrance, but he didn’t, he didn’t move.

Others began filing out from the trees. He had no idea where they were all coming from, fifteen or twenty of them now.

He pressed the transmit button again, his voice low. “I need backup at the entrance. Anyone copy?”

No reply.

The figures in white all stepped toward him, toward the house, moving as one unit. When they took a second step, then a third, Putney tightened his grip on the Glock. Rules dictated that he could not draw his weapon unless threatened. At the very least, he’d be looking at a suspension, possible termination if he fired a shot. He drew the Glock anyway and held it out toward the first man to appear. “Not another step!”

The group continued toward him.

The woman he had noticed second raised the item in her hand, held it in front of her chest.

Putney aimed the Glock at her. “Don’t do it!”

She raised her other hand, sparked a lighter, and brought the flame to the thing in her other hand.

A candle. Only a fucking candle.

Putney felt a wave of relief slip over him.

The others followed, candles lighting up all around. Two dozen, maybe more. They were still stepping out of the woods.

“If this is some kind of vigil, you need to move back to the street. This is a crime scene,” he told them.

The crowd continued toward him, their pace quickening from a walk to a run, the candles held out before them, flames winking and pulling as they rushed forward, these people in white.

Not a vigil.

4

Former Detective Terrance Stack, just Terry now, was waiting for Fogel when she pulled into his narrow driveway. Sitting on the front stoop, beer in hand, his eyes focused on something in the cracked sidewalk. At first, he didn’t look up. When he finally did, she wished he hadn’t. His eyes were lined and bloodshot, with dark bags beneath. He raised the beer at her in a mock toast, took a drink, then looked back down at the sidewalk.

Fogel crossed the overgrown yard and took a seat beside him. The scent of beer hung over him, mixed with other odors she cared not to think about. His hair was greasy. He desperately needed a shower.

“I told Faust this case would put him in an early grave, not that he paid me any mind. They might as well dig two, if you plan to keep chasing this. Maybe three, since I’m not much for my own advice. We can all take the long sleep together.” His speech was slightly slurred. Not the speech pattern of a drunk but of someone who drank so much, their body had grown accustomed, lingering in that slightly buzzed but not yet stoned state of the professional alcoholic.

This was a bad idea, Fogel thought. She should have gone home.

“What happened to him?”

Fogel told him about the black GTO, the man who drove it, how they split up. How they found Faustino’s body. Everything else that happened in the past twenty-four hours.

Stack listened in silence, nursing the beer, nodding occasionally as she went. When she finally finished, he said, “My missing kid from ’78 is Stella Nettleton, right? The two adults we found in the Dormont house, they were her parents, Richard and Emma.”

Fogel reached into her briefcase and pulled out a copy of the letter from Richard Nettleton and handed it to Stack.

Stack waved it off. “Faust gave me a copy of that as soon as he got it. I know all about the Thatch kid too. What we could piece together, anyway.” He stood, his body protesting with a series of cracks and pops. “Come on, I got something to show you.”

He held the screen door for her and she stepped into the house, holding her breath as she passed him. The small television droned in the living room, the volume low. Some black and white movie with Katherine Hepburn in her prime. A rumpled newspaper was on the table next to a recliner, a picture of the Milburn Court house above the