“As soon as we check out Roy’s farm and talk to the local authorities.”
“Doubt they’ll be much help.”
“No, I think they will.”
“Why?”
“Up to this point it seems everyone believed that Roy was guilty. Now, with Bergin and Hilary dead, something Roy could not have been involved in, it might make people take a second look. And cops are no different.”
“Who do we deal with on the federal side in Virginia? Not Murdock?”
“I know the RA in Charlottesville,” Sean said, referring to the Resident FBI Agent. “He’s a good guy. Owes me a favor, in fact.”
“Lots of people seem to owe you. What’s his debt?”
“I wrote a recommendation letter for his daughter to get into UVA Law.”
“That’s all?”
“Well, I got him tickets to the Skins-Cowboys game in D.C. He’s originally from Dallas.”
“Now that is valuable.”
The FBI agent was suitably cooperative. And he told them something that was particularly intriguing.
“I know Brandon Murdock. He’s a good guy. But I don’t know why he would be involved in something like this.”
“Why’s that?” asked Sean.
“He doesn’t work VICAP,” the man said, referring to the Bureau’s Violent Crime Apprehension Program, which also dealt with serial killers.
“What does he do?”
“Went to D.C. a while back.”
“So, Hoover, WFO?” asked Michelle, referring to the FBI headquarters and the Bureau’s Washington Field Office, respectively.
“No.” He looked doubtful. “I shouldn’t be talking about this with you, Sean.”
“Come on, Barry. I’m not going to go blab it. You know me.”
“And he got you the Cowboy tickets,” Michelle reminded him.
The man grinned wryly. “Okay, Murdock is with the counterterrorism unit. Really specialized stuff.” He pointed a finger at Sean. “And I expect tickets for this. And better seats.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Next, Sean and Michelle spent time with the local prosecutor, who had heard about Hilary Cunningham’s death.
“You’re right, Sean,” the prosecutor had said. “This thing is really starting to stink.”
They were given copies of the file on the Roy case and then drove out to the farm. It was isolated, with one dirt road in and out, the Blue Ridge Mountains as a backdrop, and not another house, car, or even stray cow in sight. Michelle pulled her Land Cruiser to a dusty stop in front of the one-story, wood-planked house, and they stepped out.
Though the crime scene had long since been released, strands of yellow police tape still hung down from the front porch posts. Twenty yards west of the house was a two-story barn painted dark green with a cedar shake roof. In the back they could see a chicken coop and a small split-rail corral that looked far too small for horses.
“Pigsty,” noted Michelle, as she glanced at it.
“Thanks for the insight,” said Sean. “I thought they might have been breeding really small horses.”
“Bodies in the barn.”
“Six of them. All men. All white. All John Does as of now.”
They found the front door locked, but a minute later it was unlocked due to Michelle’s delicate manipulations of the deadbolt.
The house had a simple floor plan, and it didn’t take them long to make their way through it. Michelle picked out one of the books from a wall shelf full of them. She looked at the spine. “The only word I recognize in this title is
“Well, you’re not a genius.”
“Thanks for reminding me.”
“No pictures of family. No testimonials from work. No college degrees. Nothing to show the guy even lives here.”
“Except for the books.”
“Right, except for them.”
“Well, this was his parents’ house. Maybe he just has his stuff somewhere else.”
“No, Paul told us their parents bought the place after they got married and before their son was born. This is the only home Roy has ever known.” He looked around some more. “I suppose if he had a computer the cops took it.”
“Good bet.”
They headed to the barn. The doors were unlocked. They opened them and went in. The space was big and mostly empty. There was a hayloft reached by a wooden ladder, some workbenches, and an assortment of rusty tools hanging on pegs on the walls. An old John Deere tractor was parked at the far end of the ground floor.
Michelle studied a patch of the dirt floor that had been dug up on the left side of the barn to a level of about five feet.
“I’m guessing the burial ground was here?”
Sean nodded and walked a perimeter around the turned-up soil.
“How’d they know to look here?” she asked.
“File says an anonymous tip was called in to the police.”
“That’s really convenient. Anybody try to run down this tipster?”
“They probably tried. But it also probably would have led nowhere. Throwaway phone card. Untraceable. That’s standard operating procedure for homicidal maniacs these days if the tipster was actually the murderer.”
She circled the site carefully, studying it like an archaeological dig. “None identified as of yet. Were their faces disfigured or their prints burned off somehow?”
“Don’t think so. They’re just not in any database, apparently. It happens.”
“Kelly Paul seems convinced of her brother’s innocence.”
“Half brother,” Sean reminded her.
“Still a sibling.”
“I find her more interesting than her brother in some respects. And I noted there were no pictures of her in Roy’s house, and no pictures of him in her house.”
“Some families aren’t that close.”
“Granted, but still, they seem to be really close right now.”
“Well, to be fair, we’ve never even heard the brother say anything. And she was equal parts loquacious and stingy with details.”
“Regarding details about her personal history, which was my point earlier.”
Michelle looked around. “Okay, we’ve seen the burial grounds. Now what?”
Sean examined some old tools on the workbench. “Let’s assume he was framed. How do you get six bodies in here, bury them, and no one knows?”
“First of all, the place is in the middle of nowhere. Second, Roy wasn’t here all the time. He worked outside the house and also spent time in D.C. Or at least so we were told.”
“So, easy enough to plant the evidence. Then the question is why?”
“Meaning if he was an unimportant cog in the nation’s mighty tax collection machine, why go to all the trouble?”
“There are two possible answers to that. Either it’s something in his personal history that we don’t know yet. A personal grudge of significant importance to justify six bodies. Or—”
“Or he wasn’t just an unimportant cog. He was a lot more. Other things being equal, I’m leaning in that
