Page 116 of Reading Between the Lines
“I’m muting you,” Doyle said. “I have to place a call to the authorities in the area. Give me a second.”
It took over twenty minutes before Doyle came back on the line. “Nothing. No reports of unidentified female remains recovered in that cemetery or any nearby cemeteries at all in the last five years.”
“Then she’s still there, and no one’s discovered her.”
“And you’re sure about this?”
I glanced at Tallus, who nodded.
“Hundred percent.”
Aslan blew out a breath. “I’ll pass this on to my boss. If she agrees with your assessment, she’ll have to contact the team out there, and they can go to Holy Oak and check it out.”
“That could take hours or days. Meanwhile, we’ve got an unhappy serial killer with eyes on us.”
“My hands are tied, Krause. What do you want me to do?”
A police cruiser slowed and pulled into the diner’s lot. The tinted windows made it impossible to see inside, but they parked in a spot by the front of the diner.
Constable Hercules exited the vehicle, hiked his pants up as he stared directly at us, spoke into the radio pinned to his shoulder, and marched toward the rental Jeep. His expression bordered hostile, not friendly.
“Shit. I gotta go.” I disconnected the call.
“D, what’s happening?”
“I don’t know. Stay quiet.”
I powered down the window. An ominous stirring in my gut told me this wouldn’t be a friendly “how do you do” encounter. Constable Hercules hadn’t come for a bite to eat. He’d shown up specifically to speak with us.
I’d had the engine running and the heat vents aimed at Tallus to keep him warm. The second I broke the seal around the window, frigid air filled the cab. It felt like a premonition.
Constable Hercules bent to glance in the window, eyes narrowed. “I need you two to follow me back to the station.”
“What?” Tallus said as I furrowed my brow. “Why?”
“We need to chat, and I’m not doing it in a parking lot. You can bring yourselves, or I’ll gladly give you a lift.”
I placed a hand on Tallus’s thigh in case he felt the need to get sassy. “What the fuck are you talking about? Chat about what?”
Hercules braced a hand on the roof of the Jeep and smirked menacingly. “We got a call that a couple of out-of-towners might have been responsible for arson out on Abercrombie’s property last night. He reported his old hunting cabin went up in flames, and we have eyewitnesses saying you’ve been poking around the area all week. In fact, I have a police report with your statement attached”—he pointed at Tallus—“that puts you both out there.”
“I made that statement because someone dropped a tree on us,” Tallus said with an indignant huff. Mumbling, he added,“When we were taking a perfectly legal leisurely stroll on the path by the water… minding our own business… looking at… birds.”
“Uh-huh. I don’t buy it. You’re here because Weston Mandel’s mother can’t accept the truth about her son’s accident. You’ve been poking around where you don’t belong, and I also hear you’ve been hassling underage kids in town.”
Before I could defend our cause, inform Constable Asshole that Weston wasmurderedby one of those kids, he continued. “We’ve also recovered a stolen station wagon at the trailhead registered to Herbert Lace. I spoke with the gentleman this morning. He didn’t know his vehicle was gone, but his wife says you’ve been staying at their B&B. She called you a strange couple. A rough-looking pair. Says you vandalized her property as well.”
“If those fucking clocks wouldn’t go off at—”
Hercules raised his hand to stop my venom. “Enough. As you can see, we’ve got a lot of stuff to clear up. So, I’ll say it again. I need you at the station right now. Either you drive your own vehicle, and I’ll escort you, or we can do it the hard way. I can cuff you and put you in the back of my paddy wagon.”
“Unless you’re arresting us, we’re leaving.”
Constable Hercules looked momentarily taken aback. He probably wasn’t used to people bucking his authority. Not in small-town Port Hope.
“You’ve got two detectives visiting from the Toronto homicide unit. They’re here because you have three dead bodies and no clue who’s responsible. Well, we found the answer for you. You tell those homicide detectives to call Aslan Doyle, and he’ll catch them up. In the meantime, I want you to get a fucking unit out to Holy Oak cemetery ASAP because your killer at large knows his gig is up, and if he doesn’t move a body fast, he’s going to prison for a long, long time.”
Constable Hercules flinched. He didn’t seem to like my tone, the fact I knew stuff I shouldn’t, or that I was giving him orders. “The fuck are you talking about?”
