Name of the Devil Page 17

  “Yes . . .”

  I hear his uncertainty. “What is it?”

  “I’m looking up the name. I don’t show any arrest records in West Virginia for a Marty Rodriguez in that age range. It’ll take me a moment to get the other data.”

  “Maybe he stayed out of trouble. And foster kids move around a lot. What about a driver’s license?”

  “Nothing that matches what we’re looking for. Foster family records will be harder to get, but doable if we can look through actual paper files.”

  “It’s him. It’s got to be him on the tape.” I’m certain. My gut tells me that all the pieces fit.

  “I’m sure too.”

  “Then what’s with the hesitation? You seem unsure about something.”

  “It’s the acoustic model, Jessica. We’ve been able to enhance certain parts and extrapolate reconstructions to test against what we’re listening to. The moment where the voices stop . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “We picked up a sound in there . . . We’ve checked it against various potential sources. One match stands out more than any others . . .”

  “What are you saying?”

  “This isn’t easy.” There’s anguish in his voice. “It’s in no way certain. We have software that shows bullet trajectories and other kinds of physical trauma. You can also use it to create sound models. But it’s not a precise technique.”

  “Tell me.”

  “That sound may be the boy being crushed. The data model matches the noise made when a ribcage collapses.”

  “Jesus.” I have to stop to take a breath. “You mean they killed him?” The thought hits my heart like a hammer. I’d never even considered that possibility.

  “We don’t know that he’s dead. It’s just a computer model. But now that we have a name . . .”

  I suspect Ailes is searching through death certificates as we speak. If his acoustic model is correct, Marty Rodriguez didn’t grow up to become a criminal mastermind as I suspected.

  He died a little boy.

  A foster kid, shunted from home to home and desperate for attention, he came up with a gimmick. It was a game for him. A prank that went too far when some terrified people tried to rid him of the “demons.”

  I’ve heard other stories about children dying during exorcisms. Adults, while trying to hold back their small and flailing limbs, lean on them with too much pressure and kill them.

  It’s murder.

  “Oh . . .” His voice trails off. “On October 20, 1985, a Marty Rodriguez died of suffocation. Oh dear . . .”

  “What is it?” My stomach churns.

  “Cause of death is listed as accidental. The report says he fell off his bunk bed in the middle of the night and it landed on top of him.”

  “They killed him, Jeffrey. They killed him!” I can barely breathe. “That little boy . . . they murdered him!”

  “We don’t know yet.” Ailes tries to soothe me. “This may have happened afterward. It could be a coincidence. The report doesn’t say anything about broken ribs.”

  He’s rationalizing. “You’ve heard the tape. Tell me that’s not the sound of him dying? This kind of thing has happened before.”

  There’s a long pause. He has kids. I can tell he’s just as affected by this as I am. Part of me feels guilty for wanting to think Marty was somehow responsible for all the evil that came afterward. I tried to make him into the next Warlock.

  He was just a victim. The only truly innocent victim in this whole sad story.

  “The death certificate was signed by the sheriff.”

  “Jessup? Of course. Anyone else named on there?” He had to have had an accomplice in his deception.

  “Just the coroner. He died several years ago.”

  “It’s a goddamn conspiracy! They killed the kid and they covered it up.”

  “We don’t have any proof. All we have is an audiotape and some shaky computer modeling. We can’t definitively tie the two events together.”

  “So we leave it?!” I yell. Sometimes Ailes’s dispassionate, logical approach makes me want to strangle him.

  “I’m not saying that. We’re just in a hard place here. If we go out with allegations that all the victims, as well as our missing sheriff, were culpable in the murder of Marty Rodriguez before we can substantiate them, there will be hell to pay. We need to have this locked down.”

  “This could be the link we need, though. It might help us find someone else willing to come forward who knows something.” I’m trying to cling to some single fact we can hold up. “Wait, what about the body? Could we get an autopsy?”

  “No. It says the body was cremated.”

  “For fuck’s sake. Of course. The sheriff knew what he was doing. Damn it. Somebody has to know something! I’m not going to let this go. They can pull me off this. I’ll goddamn spend my vacation time out here.”

  “We won’t drop this.” He means he and I won’t drop this. “But that still leaves the larger question unanswered . . .” He trails off at the end of his sentence, bringing my attention back to the center of all this.

  Of course. In my frustration, I’d forgotten there still has to be someone behind all this. Part of me wants to believe there is an avenging angel serving out retribution for Marty’s death. I don’t know that any of our victims deserved what happened to them, but I do know that they needed to be punished.

  “Who is behind this?” asks Ailes.

  “I don’t know. I just don’t know.” There’s so much to process here. I couldn’t even tell you my phone number right now, let alone the person I think we should be pointing the finger at.

  “There’s something we shouldn’t lose sight of either,” he continues.

  “What’s that?”

  “This tape, what happened, it may have nothing to do with any of this. It could just be one more coincidence that ties them all together. We can’t let our emotions dictate our perceptions.”

  “They murdered that kid. It has to be related.” Ailes may be correct logically, but ignoring this feels wrong.

  “Yes. I believe so. But who killed them? Is it our sheriff, acting out of some weird delayed guilt? Is the sixth man just hired help?”

  “Is that what Mitchum is going with?” I’d bet anything she’s pushing for a self-contained case in which all the parties are accounted for.

  “I think so. Easiest path.”

  “Damn it. So the sixth man becomes a minor player. A footnote and then they bury this thing. We can’t let her do that.”

  “We need more, Jessica.”

  “I’ll find something. I can’t . . .” I have to put down the phone. I don’t want him hearing me get emotional.

  I regain my composure. “I can’t let them just throw that child away.”

  31

  HOW THE HELL do you prove a murder took place twenty years ago when all the witnesses are either dead or missing, and the victim has been erased off the surface of the earth?

  The one person we know was involved in the cover-up, if not the actual murder, was the coroner who signed the death certificate, Dr. Kinder. But, as Ailes discovered, he died several years ago.

  The county medical examiner’s office was only able to provide me with the slimmest of files for Marty Rodriguez. Inside is the death certificate, stating Marty Rodriguez died of asphyxiation, and the standard black-and-white photocopy of an outline of a human body.

  The attached photo of Marty is a slightly faded Polaroid. It looks like it was taken in some government office. Probably Child Services. He’s got a light brown complexion, dark hair, and the uncertain look of a child who has no idea what life holds for him. Hopefully a future better than what came before.

  I take a picture of the photo with my phone. I want to remember this face whenever I have my doubts about carrying on.

&
nbsp; Dr. Kinder’s notes are sparse. They don’t identify a first responder by name, only that the sheriff’s office was called. This is peculiar on the surface, but according to the map, the nearest emergency room was ten miles away at the time.

  The first responder, presumably Jessup, stated the boy was found unresponsive under the mattresses and collapsed bunk bed. The Alsops had been in the other room watching television when the accident allegedly took place. No other witnesses are cited.

  The medical examiner reported that the cause of death was consistent with asphyxiation. Trapped under his blankets, unable to get enough air into his lungs with the heavy mattresses on top of him, Marty couldn’t breathe.

  There is no mention of any other injuries. This is a red flag to me. What hyperactive ten-year-old boy doesn’t have a skinned knee or a bruise somewhere? The omission makes me suspicious, as does the absence of x-rays or photographs accompanying the report. Marty’s body was delivered, the medical examiner signed off and then Marty was sent to the crematorium.

  Why would Dr. Kinder sign off on this, unless he was somehow involved?

  Could he be the other man in the room we haven’t identified?

  Without any hospital records to confirm he was on call at the time, the only person who might be able to give me some insight is his widow.

  She greets me at the door of her small house, which is set back behind a well-kept garden in a town fifteen minutes away from Hawkton. As orderly and composed as her yard, she’s exactly what you’d expect a retired rural doctor’s wife to be.

  She offers me coffee as we have a seat in her living room. Photographs of children and grandchildren adorn the walls, their smiles less forced than the ones in Groom’s office. And I’m about to imply the man they love, who is no longer around to defend himself, was an accomplice to murder. I’m not sure how to begin.

  “I assume you’ve been following the events.” I know it’s a stupid question.

  She gives me a curt nod. “I’m not sure what to think. The people in Hawkton are nice folks. A bit rural, but sweet.”

  “You’re not from here?”

  “No. I was raised in Northern California. I met George when he was going to Virginia State. We married when he got the job out here.”

  “I need to ask you something about his job. I’m trying to track down some information about a case that happened a long time ago.”

  She shakes her head. “I probably wouldn’t know anything about his work. He kept it to himself. Have you called the office?”

  “Yes. But they don’t keep call schedules going back that far. I just want to know if you can tell me whether your husband was working a specific night.” Finding out if he could have been in the room when the death occurred is the first step in understanding his involvement. “This would be Sunday, October 20, back in 1985.”

  I’m surprised when, without hesitation, she replies, “Oh. George was working that night.”

  “You remember?”

  “I know that because he had weekend shifts during that time. Our night out was Monday.”

  I make a note on my pad. At least he probably wasn’t there when it happened, which makes me feel slightly less hostile toward him. Though that still leaves the question of why he’d help conceal a murder. “What was his relationship with Sheriff Jessup?”

  Mrs. Kinder sets her coffee cup down a little forcefully. “Not good.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ll be honest. My husband had his flaws. Jessup liked to . . . exploit them.”

  “Oh? How so?”

  “George battled with alcohol. He was a really sweet man, but his job was very stressful. The sheriff pulled him over more than a few times. At first Jessup was doing him a favor, but then he started expecting something in return.”

  “Like what?” This is an angle to Jessup I hadn’t heard about.

  She shrugs. “Having a county medical examiner in your pocket makes certain things easier. Abuse could be ignored. Injuries could be exaggerated. This tore my husband up.” The words just flow, as if she’s made this speech in her head a thousand times. She’s been waiting to tell someone. “It’s why he drank himself to death. It was having to lie in court that got him the most. He didn’t have much choice.”

  “That must have been difficult for the two of you.” I’ve seen this pattern before, of one small thing cascading into a nightmare.

  “He tried to never let it affect us or the kids. He was good that way. But you could see he was suffering.”

  “What do you remember about that Sunday night?”

  She shakes her head. “Nothing in particular.”

  I could swear she was on the verge of revealing something. The admission about Jessup confirms everything I’d suspected, that the sheriff had to have something on Kinder to get him to go along with faking a death certificate.

  Mrs. Kinder picks up her cup, takes a sip and places it back on the saucer. “What you meant to ask me was what happened on that Monday.”

  “Monday?” I sit up. She knows something after all.

  “Yes. That’s when Jessup asked my husband to go in and do a medical examination, even though it was his day off. I wasn’t too happy about that.”

  “What happened?”

  “He came home a wreck. I’d never seen him like that before. Sullen, but never . . . furious, I guess is the word.” She points to a threadbare easy chair in the corner. “He sat there and drank until the sun came up.”

  “Did he tell you why?”

  “Not specifically. But I knew what it involved. The Alsops’ foster child who died. That’s it. George took what happened with him to his death.”

  “You never asked?” I try to restrain my anger at her apathy.

  “I couldn’t. I wasn’t sure if I would have been able to forgive him.”

  “I understand.” I have to see it from her point of view. She has her family on one side, and the sheriff on the other. “Did he by any chance keep a diary?”

  “No,” she replies.

  “I was afraid of that. All the records are gone. There’s nothing left,” I admit out of frustration.

  “What about the body?” she asks.

  “Cremated. They didn’t leave anything behind.”

  Mrs. Kinder looks straight at me and shakes her head. “No. It wasn’t.”

  “What?” There’s yet to be one shred of physical evidence in this entire case that ties the explosion to Rodriguez’s death.

  “George was very drunk, and he kept saying something that didn’t make sense at the time. Later on, I understood.”

  “What?”

  “He substituted the child’s body for that of an indigent who was to be buried at the county lot. He lied to the sheriff. He couldn’t bring himself to destroy all trace of the boy . . . Marty’s still out there.”

  I almost spill my coffee when I put my cup down on the edge of the saucer.

  32

  MY OLD FRIEND, Special Agent Danielle Barnes, greets me in the parking lot next to the graveyard well after midnight. “We have to stop meeting like this,” she says, giving me a hug. We first met on our way to another crime scene in a cemetery. This time, she drove all night to come help me on a whim. Sweet-natured, with a spunky personality that matches her red hair, I like her a lot. Outside Ailes’s group and Knoll, she’s one of the few I truly get along with.

  She understands my quirks, and how to deal with all the bureaucracy around her without losing her cool. I’ve seen her treat senior agents like one of her out-of-line teenagers, and watched as they sheepishly apologized.

  It’s not she’s motherly, per se. She’s more like a coach everyone respects and loves.

  Ailes put in the request to exhume the body, but we got immediate pushback from the county. They’re already stretched thin with the current lines of inv
estigation into Hawkton. Trying to start another one was met with unsympathetic ears. They were going to make us jump through all the hoops. Dr. Kinder had done us a favor by making sure that Marty’s body wasn’t destroyed. The problem was that burying him in someone else’s grave made exhumation a legal nightmare.

  All I have is hearsay from Kinder’s wife. The evidence is flimsy and only tangentially related to the current investigation, so no amount of string-pulling will work. That’s why I asked Danielle to help me.

  The thing about FBI departments is that they like new toys, and also justifying the expenditure on said toys. As the head of computational field analysis, Danielle gets the newest and shiniest ones. She’s also a great forensic expert. After I gave her the rundown, she agreed to help me because this will be an interesting field test for some new equipment she has. But she met me in the middle of the night because she’s a saint.

  “Are you sure this won’t get you into any trouble?” I ask. I don’t want any blowback to hit her.

  “If this boy is buried here, and what you think happened happened, then they can kiss my butt for all I care.”

  I lead her over to the grave where Kinder’s widow said Marty was buried. Honer Jackson was the transient found dead of heart failure under a railroad trestle the day before Marty was killed. His unfortunate demise gave Kinder a place to hide Marty’s body out of sight, unbeknownst to the sheriff.

  Danielle stops at the marker and looks warily into the shadows of the trees surrounding the graveyard. “How long you been out here, hon?”

  “Not that long,” I lie. I’d actually spent the last few hours waiting near Marty’s grave. I can’t imagine anyone has ever visited. The thought of a forgotten child lying there, alone, for thirty years nearly brought me to tears. I’m getting soft.

  I raise my flashlight over my shoulder as Danielle starts unpacking equipment. “I’d be scared to death to be out here alone.”

  We haven’t really talked since what happened in Mexico. To be honest, I haven’t spent much time dwelling on it. It’s something I’d rather not think about. “This place is fine,” I reply. “It’s the living that give me the most problems.”