If She Hid

Jeremy nodded, clearly very scared now. “I do.”

Barnes folded his arms, leaned back in the chair, and sneered at Jeremy. As Jeremy started to talk, his eyes never left Barnes. If Kate had to venture a guess, he was probably concerned that Barnes might launch himself across the table at any moment to strangle him.

“We’d been fooling around for maybe three or four weeks the first time she ever mentioned running away from home. She asked me if I’d go with her. Said she wanted to go somewhere to North Carolina or something like that. I made fun of her because I didn’t see the point in moving just one state away, you know? Plus, I didn’t like her like that. My brother joked with me how the first guy a girl sleeps with, she gets obsessed. I guess she sort of did. Anyway, there was no way I was going to run away with her. But the way she talked about it…you could tell she had actually thought about it.”

“Do you think she wanted to run away because of just how much she disliked her parents?” Kate asked.

“I guess. I mean, it’s the only real reason I could think of that would make her want to leave home. I mean…my parents are assholes, too. But I didn’t run away or nothing.”

“No,” Barnes said. “You just moved two miles away into your older brother’s trailer. Maybe Mercy didn’t have an option like that.”

“Still,” Kate said, making sure Barnes didn’t take them too far off-topic. “Are you certain she was being for real when she spoke of running away? Not just filling your head with fantasies so you’d stay with her?”

“No. But she kept talking about how her mother would go crazy trying to find her—not because she’d actually want to find her but because she’d feel like Mercy got one over on her by running away.”

“Do you know if there was any abuse in her home?” DeMarco asked.

“I don’t think so. Not recently, anyway. She did tell me one time about how her mother hauled off and just hit her right in the face when she was like eleven or twelve.”

“And you swear she never actually came out and said she was going to kill them?” Kate asked.

“A few times, she did. She would say ‘I can’t wait to kill them.’ And then she talked about whether she’d do it with a knife or a gun. She really liked talking about it. But I told her to shut up. When me and Mercy got together, it was just for the sex. And I didn’t want to hear about her thinking about killing her parents before we got down to it, you know?”

Kate considered it all as Jeremy stopped talking and looked around at all three of them. He had lied about Mercy being promiscuous. Kate wondered if everything else he had said was also a lie.

She leaned down close to a still-sitting Sheriff Barnes and whispered into his ear: “Can we speak outside for a moment?”

He nodded and got up, practically having to tear his eyes away from Jeremy. He didn’t just walk out of the room—he stormed out. Before he said a word to Kate or DeMarco as they followed him, he went straight into his office. He held the door open for them and closed it when they were both inside.

Right away, he said: “Shit.”

“You think he’s telling the truth?” Kate asked.

“I think there are enough truthful tidbits in his story to make it believable. That little story about Wendy Fuller punching Mercy…that really happened. Mercy called the police. She wasn’t sad when she did it, either. It was about five years ago, but I remember it well. She was vindictive about it. Wanted to make sure her mom got into trouble. But in the end, all it took was a little sit-down with the family and all was well. Wendy had a drinking problem back then. From what I understand, she’s been clean and sober for about two years now. As for this shit with Mercy hating her parents with a passion…I just don’t know for sure.”

“Everything he’s telling us is the exact opposite of what Anne Pettus said. She said Mercy loved her parents…that they got along really well.”

“Here’s where I get stuck,” Barnes said. “Jeremy Branch and his older brother are nothing but troublemakers. I’ve busted his brother twice for possession of drugs and once for lewd conduct in the back of his truck out on the back roads. As for Jeremy, I’ve had him in here just once—for petty larceny. But I always figured it would be just a matter of time before he became more of a regular.”

“Would he have any need to lie about Mercy potentially being the killer?” DeMarco asked.

“I just don’t know. But…it makes a lot of sense, right? Girl gets fed up with her parents, kills them, and then runs away.”

Kate nodded. She recalled her own imagined scenario of Mercy approaching her unsuspecting parents and killing them both before the second one she killed was even sure of what was happening.

“How long has Jeremy been living with his brother?” Kate asked.

“I don’t know. For good, maybe a year or so. Even before that, though, he would live with his brother off and on. His brother is Randy Branch—a twenty-five-year-old permanent screw-up. Their parents divorced about ten years ago. Randy got his own place as soon as he could, that miserable old double-wide out on the edge of the woods. For a while, I think Jeremy bounced back and forth between his parents but then their mother moved in with family down in Alabama. After that, I think their father just sort of stopped caring.”

“But he lives around here?”

“Yeah, out on Waterlick Road.”

“Any idea if Jeremy ever stays with him at all?”

“Not personally. I hear rumors, though. And one of those rumors is that Randy has these pretty raunchy parties. Orgies, I guess, I don’t know. And he doesn’t let Jeremy hang around. So from what I hear, the weekends he has these parties, Jeremy stays with his old man.” He paused here and then, almost skeptically, added: “You don’t think it was Mercy?”

“You do?”

He shrugged. “I don’t want to believe it, but it’s starting to look like it. If I’m being honest, it’s a conclusion I started to consider even before you showed up.”

“Let’s hold Jeremy here for a bit longer,” Kate said. “In the meantime, do you think you could have someone trace down the address and contact information of Jeremy’s father?”

“Yeah, I’ll get Foster on it,” he said, reaching for his phone. “He’ll be glad to be able to add a little more information to his case files.”

Kate and DeMarco stepped outside of the office, walking back toward the bullpen area. Speaking under her breath, DeMarco asked: “Do you think Jeremy Branch is telling the truth?”

“I just don’t know. His story certainly adds up and connects a lot of dots. But I also know that with all the drugs I found in that house, he has every reason in the world to cover his ass and get the attention off of him.”

“I can’t help but wonder if he was in on the deaths himself,” DeMarco said. “An older guy, wanting to keep a younger girl under lock and key. If she truly hated her parents and he was crazy enough, wouldn’t he be a suspect?”

It was a promising train of thought, one that Kate had considered herself. She had not ruled it out, hoping that a visit to Jeremy’s father’s house would give them some more information.

“Agents?”

They both turned to see Barnes coming out of his office. He handed a slip of paper to Kate and nodded. “That’s the address for Floyd Branch. Fair warning, though…he can be a bit of a bastard. Badges and all that don’t really bother him.”

“It’s the middle of the day,” Kate said. “Are you even sure he’ll be home?”

“Yeah. He works on small engines and stuff like that out of his garage.” Barnes checked his watched and smiled. “It’s just about three thirty, so I bet you just about anything that he’s already started drinking. If I were you, I’d head out that way soon…before he gets hammered. Want some backup? He’s kind of a hillbilly. I don’t know how else to put that. He’s going to see two women he doesn’t know and not take you seriously.”

“Sounds lovely,” Kate said. “Sure. Come on along, Sheriff. The more, the merrier.”

She honestly didn’t believe in that little tidbit but she did know the sort of man Barnes was describing. She’d seen a lot of it in the South, especially. There were some rural areas where men had simply not caught up to the world, not only disrespecting women but unable to see them as equals…even when they were carrying a badge and a gun.

They left the station together, heading for the bureau’s rental that DeMarco had driven in from DC. Wow, that was just this morning, she thought.

It made her think of Allen and the plans he had tried making for them—a quick escape away to the mountains to drink wine, sleep in, and other things in a bed that weren’t exactly sleeping.

And while she was still rather down about missing out on such a thing, she was also willing to admit that she was just as excited right now, with a case unfolding in front of her. She still had some work to do in keeping a proper balance between her personal life and her unique bureau schedule but for now, she felt that she was exactly where she needed to be.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Floyd Branch’s property was a living embodiment of all Southern stereotypes. As DeMarco pulled the car into the lightly graveled driveway, the lyrics to about a dozen country songs all presented themselves in the form of Floyd Branch’s trailer, yard, and scattered possessions.

The grass was only slightly better than what they had previously seen at Jeremy’s place. Portions of the lawn around the trailer had at least been mown, dead spots showing through here and there. The mower itself—an old riding mower with a rusted hood, was parked directly beside a shed to the back of the house. Two junked trucks—one completely missing its back end—sat on concrete blocks next to it. Beside the shed was a weak-looking dog pen, made primarily of wooden planks, a few metal poles, and what looked like chicken wire. As DeMarco parked the car and they all got out, two pit bulls inside the pen started to make ungodly noises, something between a bark and a roar.

Kate, DeMarco, and Barnes had taken only a few steps away from the car before a middle-aged gaunt-looking man came out of the shed. He carried a broom with him, looking angrily toward the pen and cursing at the dogs. He then saw that he had visitors. His anger dropped and he tossed the broom back into the shed as if embarrassed by it.