Cross Fire - James Patterson [60]
Maybe someone was buried down there in Louisville, but I was willing to bet that it wasn’t the real Steven Hennessey. Not with his prints on that Suburban.
The question was, who had Hennessey become in the last several years? Also, where was he now? And what were he and this phantom partner of his doing in New Jersey?
My plan was to meet Detective Cowen at Turn Mill Pond, where the car had been pulled out of the water. I wanted to catch that scene while there was still daylight, then follow him back to the impoundment lot to see the vehicle itself.
But when I called Cowen to tell him I was almost there, he didn’t pick up.
The same thing happened when I got to the meeting point at the south end of the pond. I was pissed, but there was nothing to do now except get out and take a look around.
Turn Mill was one of several bodies of water in the Colliers Mills Wildlife Management Area, which encompassed thousands of acres. From this spot, all I could see were trees, water, and the dirt road I’d just driven in on.
Plenty of privacy for dumping a car anyway.
The ground at the edge of the waterfront was heavily rutted and tamped down, presumably where the police had pulled the Suburban out. It looked to me as though the vehicle had been pushed into the water from the edge of a wooden bridge where the pond narrowed into a channel.
Looking down from above, one would assume the water was plenty deep enough, but it obviously wasn’t. In any case, it wasn’t the kind of thing you could undo.
Once I’d taken all of that in, I headed back to my car. I figured it couldn’t be too hard to the find the police station in town, but that’s when I saw a cruiser coming up the road, fast.
It sped along the pond a ways, curved into the woods, and then came back out again. It stopped right behind where I’d parked.
A uniformed officer, a blond woman, got out and waved as I came over.
“Detective Cross?”
“That’s me.”
“I’m Officer Guadagno. Detective Cowen asked me to drive out here and bring you back as quickly as possible. There’s been a homicide in town, a woman by the name of Bernice Talley.”
I assumed she just meant that Cowen had been pulled away from my case.
“Do we need someone else to let us into the impoundment lot, or can you do that for me?” I asked Guadagno.
“No,” she said. “I mean, you don’t understand. Cowen wants you to come to the scene. He thinks Mrs. Talley’s murder may be related.”
“To the Suburban?” I said. “To my sniper case?”
The cop fiddled with the brim of her hat. She seemed a little nervous. “Maybe both,” she said. “It’s nothing conclusive, but this same woman’s husband was found shot dead two years ago, right over there.” She pointed to a patch of woods about a hundred feet up the shore. “The ME called it a hunting accident at the time, but nobody ever came forward. Cowen figures whoever dumped that Suburban didn’t just stumble onto this place, and frankly we don’t get too many homicides around here. He’s naming the son, Mitchell Talley, as a person of interest in all of it, both deaths.”
She stopped then, her hand on the open car door, and looked at me more directly than before.
“Detective, this may be none of my business, but do you think this guy could be your shooter down in Washington? I’ve been following the case since it broke.”
I demurred. “Let me go take a look at that scene before I say anything,” I told her.
But, in fact, the answer to her question was yes.
Chapter 79
THE POLICE VEHICLES in front of Bernice Talley’s home were two-deep when we got there. They had a tape line around the house, while the neighbors watched from the fringes. I had no doubt that all of them would be locking their doors and windows that night and for many nights to come.
My escort officer walked me inside and introduced me to Detective Scott Cowen, who seemed