Unholy Shepherd by Robert Christian (rooftoppers txt) 📕

until they were a few feet below the level of the road, out of the crowd of vehicles, looking out at the crime scene. No more than two hundred yards out into the field, she could see what looked like a heap of burned wood surrounded by a wide square of yellow police tape. A dark-haired woman paced around it, followed by a young man scribbling furiously on a notepad. Two officers were flanking them at two of the corners of the yellow square. The whole area was dotted with little orange flags.

As Maureen continued to scan the faces in the assembled mass, her eyes fell upon Agent Layton standing to one side, speaking closely with the female agent. She’d barely met the woman yesterday on her way back to her holding cell after Layton had finally ceased with his relentless questioning. The fact that he’d tried so hard—and failed—to break her made her smirk at seeing him again. She turned to glance to her side at Detective Benitez. To her surprise, he was looking at her, expectantly.

“What?” she asked, unnerved by his stare.

“Well, are you getting anything from the crime scene?”

You’ve got to be kidding me. That’s what I’m doing here? Maureen thought to herself. She might have laughed if she hadn’t been so annoyed and offended by his presumption. Did this man honestly think that she was some sort of a psychic? Did he think she was going to pick up on some aura of the scene and solve the whole case for him using only her mind? Clearly, he’d seen too many bad movies. She decided to mess with him, to give him what he deserved for the indignity.

Maureen closed her eyes, raised her handcuffed hands to her temples, and began a monotonic hum. She paced back and forth, acting as if she was a divining rod, changing direction as she pretended to narrow in on a supposed mystical force. It only took a few seconds, however, before she was tired of her little game, and she stopped in her tracks and gave the detective her best annoyed stare.

“It doesn’t work like that, boss,” she chided when it was clear he still didn’t catch on to her teasing.

Detective Benitez let his chin fall to his chest. She could tell he felt foolish for even asking her to do something like that. “I should have known you wouldn’t be any help.”

“Hey, I’m not the one who brought me here, out of that nice comfy cell, to perform little tricks because he can’t solve this case himself,” she shot back. “I mean, what did you expect to happen?”

The detective opened his mouth, but no words came out. Fortunately for him, the approach of footsteps saved him from trying to stumble his way through something stupid. A tall, young man in a firefighter’s uniform came up to meet them.

“Manny, I thought that was you,” he said. “Can you believe this?”

“Hey, Ben,” he greeted the fireman before turning toward Maureen. “Maureen, this is Ben Naismith. I went to high school with him and his wife.”

“It’s just like the scene on Thursday morning,” the fireman told him.

“Why don’t you give me the details.”

“Well, we got the call around—”

“Hang on a second,” the detective interrupted, looking around. He seemed to find what he was looking for and called out, “Yancy, can you come over here?”

Maureen had remembered seeing this man walking through the hallway of the police station once or twice while she was being herded back and forth from her cell to the interrogation room. As she recalled, he really didn’t say much, and he only made brief eye contact with her once.

“Hey, Carl,” the detective said as the officer came up to stand next to her, “can you please keep an eye on Ms. Allen here while I go talk to Mr. Naismith? Thanks.” He and the young fireman walked away before an answer came.

As Yancy’s eyes looked her up and down, Maureen could sense his indignation at having to babysit her. She didn’t blame him. Where could she go? She looked at him and they exchanged shrugs, a silent pact to endure each other for a few minutes.

Maureen turned her head to watch the detective and the fireman speak in hushed tones next to a cadre of police vehicles. She could see two vans with the county name on them and three more behind these, which must have belonged to the Sycamore Hills Police Department. Further down the road, apart from the others, a plain, black sedan was parked. The Feds’ car, she thought bitterly.

As her gaze continued to scan the field, Maureen felt a light tug on the hem of her shirt. She looked down to see a little boy, maybe three or four with sandy-colored hair and big, blue eyes, standing at her feet and staring up at her.

“What’s that?” He was pointing at the handcuffs on her wrists.

Maureen didn’t know what to do. She didn’t have any experience dealing with children. Should she make something up? Tell the truth? Should she just ignore him?

“What’s that?” the boy chirped louder, insistently pawing at her wrists. Clearly, he was not going to leave her alone until he got some sort of answer.

Maureen looked to her right at Officer Yancy and raised an eyebrow, silently asking what she was supposed to do. He just shrugged. Maureen sighed and crouched down to look the little boy in the eyes. Staring at him as menacingly as she could, she gave her answer. “They’re called handcuffs,” she whispered gruffly. “They put them on bad people to keep them from running away. I’m a bad person. So run along back to your mommy.”

Rather than run, the little boy giggled and raised his tiny hand to her face, running his hand down her cheek.

“Benny, get away from her,” a voice shouted. Maureen stood up to the sight of a young, dark-haired woman rushing down from the side of the road toward them. The moment she