Chapter 28
Twenty-Eight
I’m at the age when my back gives out more than I do.
—Odin to Constance
Odin
Being the medical examiner, showing up at a murder scene wasn’t exactly unheard of.
Nobody questioned my arrival with Black, and Gentry came up to us with a grim look on his face.
“What happened?”
Gentry gestured for us to follow him.
“Crime scene has already been processed,” he said. “Feel free to step anywhere.”
So we did, and I crouched down next to Dr. Pendelton’s body and gave him a quick once-over.
“It’s the same way that Errol was killed.”
“Not quite.” Gentry crouched down. “This one was done with a twenty-two. Errol was done with a forty-five. Pendelton doesn’t have any other guns but a twenty-two. His wife let us check the safe. And she gave us full permission to question her son in any way we saw fit.”
Speaking of his son, Eustace was in the kitchen handcuffed to the table with his mother crying her eyes out next to him.
When we got there, his mother got up and left. But she stopped at the door and said, “Answer all of their questions, Eustace.”
Eustace stayed stubbornly silent.
Gentry crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the wall.
I took up post on the other side, and Black took up the remaining seat that his mother had just vacated.
Black studied the kid for a long while before he said, “We have you tied to five murders.”
Eustace’s eyes widened, but he didn’t break.
“Your friends had some snake bites on them,” he said. “What’d they do? Hurt you?”
Silence.
“Then there was your dad,” Black said quietly. “Did he hurt you in some way? You can tell me.”
Eustace rolled his eyes. “My dad was Mr. Perfect.”
Definitely some resentment there.
“He had to have done something for you to hurt him,” Black said.
“I want a lawyer.”
“Your mother waived your right to a lawyer,” Gentry pointed out.
Eustace snorted. “I’ve taken political science and government. I know what my rights are. I want a lawyer.”
Black stood up and turned to Gentry. “You read him his rights?”
Gentry nodded. “I did.”
“Then take him to Jesper County B&B.”
“What’s that?” Eustace looked worried.
“That’s the jail, kid.” I rolled my eyes. “Hope you enjoy long stays. You’ll be there until Tuesday.”
“What??” he asked. “Why?”
“Because Monday is a holiday, and the government doesn’t work on national holidays.”
Eustace made a sound in his throat.
“Looks like you’ll get to hang out with Paco and Burt.” Gentry walked toward Eustace and reached for his cuffed arm.
“Wait…”
A door slammed, and then Eustace’s mother was barreling through the kitchen, heading right for her son.
None of us made a move to stop her as she took the book in her hands and slammed it against the side of Eustace’s face. “What did you do?”
Her hysterical cries would haunt me.
She sounded ravaged.
“Why did you do it?”
Something slipped from the pages, and I bent down to pick it up.
A Polaroid.
My stomach soured as I saw the same photo that I’d seen once before, though done by a much more professional lens.
The first kid that I’d done an autopsy on hanging from a tree.
“Son of a bitch,” I said, handing it to Black.
Black took it and glanced at it.
He placed it gently on the table, then said, “Mrs. Pendelton, let me have the book and step away from him.”
She didn’t listen.
Not until Black bodily picked her up and walked her out of the room.
I caught all the photos that trailed behind him.
All of them were of the teenage victims.
All of them but one.
The last one was of Pendelton.
Dead in the middle of his living room floor.
Black scanned through the book while Mrs. Pendelton sobbed on the couch right next to the sheet-covered body of her husband.
She sobbed.
And it hurt my heart to see.
I turned back to the kitchen and handed the photos to Gentry.
He took one look at them, then laid them on the table to show the kid.
“Start talking.”
Eustace swallowed as he looked at the photos.
“They were mean to me.”
I shook my head.
“Mean?” Gentry asked. “Mean how?”
“They made fun of me all the time. And my dad said to suck it up. That I was going to suck at life if I couldn’t handle a little meanness every now and then.”
I tended to agree with his father.
The world was a hard place.
Not everyone was going to be nice to you all the time.
“So I killed them,” he said. “Made it look like a suicide.”
“You killed who?” Gentry asked.
He named all three of the teenage boys, as well as his father.
“And Errol Fuller?”
The kid all of a sudden looked even more guilty.
“I didn’t kill him. I stole his credit cards,” he answered. “I hit a limit on them, and I’d go back to steal another one. That’s why you caught me there today. I didn’t kill him.”
“That’s where you got the idea, though. On how to kill your dad.”
Eustace swallowed hard. So hard that I heard him gulp.
“Yeah.”
“And the dogs?” I asked.
Eustace’s eyes came to me. “She was nice to me.”
I blinked. “Who was?”
“Mrs. Pratt.”
“And?” I asked.
“She heals dogs. They were…not good. I messed them up.”
“Why?” Gentry asked.
“They tried to hurt me. When I k-killed them.” He shrugged. “I took them. Tried to get them to like me. They never would.”
I couldn’t help but shake my head.
This kid really was a sociopath.
I jerked my head toward Gentry.
He followed me out until we were far enough away from the kid that he couldn’t hear us.
“Black’s shit-faced. You’ll have to take him home,” I murmured.
Gentry nodded as our gazes went to the couch where he was consoling the mom.
“I’m going home to my girl,” I said.
His face blanked.
“Maybe you should stop being so stubborn and go for yours.”
He snorted. “Never thought I’d hear you give me dating advice.”
I slapped him on the shoulder. “Life throws you curveballs all the damn time.”
The house was dark when I arrived back at Constance’s place.
I disarmed, then rearmed the alarm, and headed straight for her room.
I found her asleep in the middle of the bed, asleep with her damn hands resting underneath her face like an angel.
I shook my head, disbelieving.
Then she burst out laughing and sat up. “Gotcha.”
“Little shit.” I chuckled. “Were you waiting up for me?”
She sat up and watched as I shucked my clothes and shoes.
When I got to my underwear, I left them on, then crawled up the bed to her.
She waited for me to arrive and said, “You forgot to take off your underwear.”
I tackled her to the bed, then pulled her down to me and yanked the covers over us.
“Your kid going to get freaked out when she finds me in here with you?”
“I had a talk with her,” she answered, her fingers once again going to play in my chest hair. “She understands that you’re going to be here for a while.”
“Good,” I said.
“Tell me everything.”
So I did.
I didn’t leave anything out.
“Who’s going to be the doctor now?” She tugged my chest hair.
I winced.
“I, uh…”
“Do you miss it?” she asked.
I swallowed hard. “Like I’m missing my own heart.”
“You have a lot of good in you, Odin,” she said. “No one said you have to have a good bedside manner, but I think the people of Jesper County deserve to have you take over. And I know you’re bored at the medical examiner’s office.”
How had she known that?
“Plus, you can do both, can’t you?”
She had a point.
The area was small. Less than fifteen thousand people. Twenty-five if you counted the surrounding area.
Pendelton saw five patients a day, max.
On top of my current caseload, it wouldn’t take much to add in seeing Pendelton’s patients.
“I’ll think about it,” I said.
She squeezed my torso.
“Do you think that the kid killed Errol?”
I shrugged. “I have no clue. I mean, he admitted to all the others. Why wouldn’t he admit to that one if he did it?”
“True.” She paused. “What was it that you were saying about it looking professional?”
“Something Gentry said,” I answered. “He said that he was shot execution-style in the back of the head with a forty-five. I’ll confirm when I get to the office in the morning.” I groaned. “Now that I have two murder cases to comb through, I should probably be there right now.”
She tightened her hold. “Do you have to?”
I shook my head. “There’s nothing that I can find tonight that I won’t find tomorrow. His murder was too long ago. I’ll be lucky to find anything useful.”
“I’m not upset if you don’t,” she admitted. “He deserved to be dead. Mackey’s parents…” She trailed off, her breath hitching.
“What is it?”
Her chest hair petting came to a halt.
“His parents said something once,” she said softly. “Mackey’s dad in particular.”
“About what?” I asked, curling a few loose strands of her hair around one finger.
“That Nepal didn’t have extradition to the United States.”
My lips quirked. “You think his parents hired a hitman?”
She sat up and reached for her phone.
She typed in a number and waited, her breathing slightly accelerated.
A woman answered with a worried, “Constance. Is everything okay? Wendy okay? I know it’s the middle of the night there.”
A worried grandmother.
“Everything is fine,” Constance promised. “More than fine. I wanted to tell you the good news.”
There was a quietness to her tone before she said, “I’m glad, honey. If anyone deserved it, it was him.”
Silence.
“He was found in an old RV just outside of town,” she said into the darkness. “Really close to Wendy and me.”
More silence and then, “I know.”
My grin kicked up at the corner.
“Thank you, Mrs. Jones.” she paused. “Did you hire me a bodyguard?”
There was a long, drawn-out sigh. “He wasn’t supposed to be seen.”
She giggled. “I’m glad he’s gone. Thanks for the assist.”
“He deserved it,” she whispered one more time before she hung up.
I pulled Constance back into my arms. “One less psycho in the world.”
“One less psycho,” she agreed. “Now, about those underwear…”