CHAPTER FIVE
This time, when they entered the Deton Police Station, the large desk at the front of the bullpen was occupied by a woman who looked like she had been planted there and had never left. She was easily sixty years of age and when she looked up at Kate, DeMarco, and Jeremy Branch, she gave a well-rehearsed smile. When she realized what was going on, though, the smile faded and she was all business.
“You the agents?” she asked.
“Yes ma’am,” DeMarco said. “Where can we park Mr. Branch here?”
“The interrogation room for right now. I’ll get the sheriff on the phone and let him know you’re here. Follow me.”
The older woman led them alongside the bullpen, down the same hallway Barnes had led them down earlier. She opened the door to the second room on the right. It looked pretty much the same as the one they had met Officer Foster in earlier in the day. There was an old scarred desk with one chair parked on either side.
“Sit down,” DeMarco said, giving Jeremy a light push in the direction of the table.
Jeremy did as he was asked, not resisting at all. When his butt was in the seat, he folded his handcuffed hands in front of him and stared at them.
“What was the relationship between you and Mercy Fuller like?” Kate asked.
“I barely knew her.”
“I saw a picture in your bedroom that says otherwise.”
“What would you say if I told you she was that…well, that friendly to most guys?”
“I’d say that’s a pretty daring accusation to point at someone. Especially in a town like this one, about a girl who just lost both of her parents.”
Jeremy sighed and gave a shrug. His nonchalance was aggravating Kate but she did her best to remain professional.
“I told you…I don’t know anything about that family.”
“You’re lying,” Kate said. “And here’s the thing. You can keep lying, but this is a small town, kid. I can unwrap your lie pretty easily. And if I do find out you’re lying to me, then we’ll start digging into the drugs. Maybe find some of the people your not-so-bright brother has listed in that black notebook under his bed. Maybe tell them that you told us where to find the book.”
Jeremy’s eyes widened at this thought and he started to shift in his seat. Kate also wondered if there might be a card to play in terms of his older brother. She wondered which of the two might crack under pressure first.
But apparently, she was not going to have to go that route. She could practically see the moment when Jeremy Branch decided that his own self-preservation was the most important thing.
“Fine, I know her. But we weren’t like dating or anything. We just hooked up every now and then.”
“So it was a sexual relationship?”
“Yes. And that’s about all it was.”
“Did you not care that she was fifteen?”
“I kind of did. I figured I’d just break it off with her when I turned eighteen. So I wouldn’t get in trouble, you know?”
“When was the last time you saw her?” DeMarco asked.
“Maybe a week or so ago.”
“Did she come to your place?”
“Yes. We had this sort of blueprint. When she wanted to come over, she’d text me and I’d pick her up over on Waterlick Road. She’d tell her folks she was going to a friend’s house and I’d pick her up and we’d go back to my place.”
“How long had this been going on?” Kate asked.
“Four or five months. But look, I know it sounds dirty or whatever, but I really don’t know her all that well. It was just sex. That’s all. I was her first…and she was sort of curious, you know? She wasn’t like sex crazy or anything, but we met up a lot.”
“I thought you said she was friendly with most guys,” DeMarco said.
His only response to this apparent lie in an attempt to save face was a shrug.
“What about her parents?” Kate asked. “What can you tell me about them?”
“Nothing. I knew who her dad was, you know? I mean, it’s a small town. You sort of know everyone. Plus, she always used to joke that if her dad found out we were fu—having sex,” he said, apparently not finding it appropriate to drop other terminology in front of two female agents, “he’d kill me.”
“And did you believe her?”
“I don’t know. But I guess. A guy never really wants to think about the father of the girl he’s sleeping with finding out. I didn’t know what to think about her parents. I mean, she hated them. Like loathed them, you know?”
“She did?”
“Based on the way she talked about them, yeah I think so. If I can…”
He stopped here and seemed to think about something for a minute. He then looked at Kate and DeMarco as if he were trying to figure out his boundaries.
“What is it?” Kate asked.
“Look. Yeah, it was messed it up that we slept with each other like twenty times or so and I didn’t know her all that well. But I always thought it was sort of weird to hear her talk about her parents like that.”
“Like what?”
Before he could answer, there was a knock on the door. Sheriff Barnes opened it and poked his head inside. There was a quick look exchanged between Barnes and Jeremy, making Kate think this was probably not the first time Jeremy had spent time in this room.
“Jeremy Branch?” he asked. “What the hell is he doing here?”
“You want to tell him or should we?” DeMarco asked. She gave Jeremy a few seconds and when he did not start talking, she brought Barnes up to speed. “He was sleeping with Mercy Fuller…as recently as last week. He was just telling us how he found it strange that Mercy would speak so negatively about her parents. How she hated them.”
“Sleeping with her?” Barnes asked. “Damn, son…how old are you?”
“Seventeen. I don’t turn eighteen for another month.”
“Go on,” Kate said, redirecting him back toward the point. “Tell us what kind of stuff Mercy would say about her parents.”
“Just how they never let her do anything. How they didn’t trust her. I think she had some really bad beef with her mother because I know there were at least two or three times where she said something like ‘I just want to kill that bitch.’ She hated her mom.”
“Did she ever talk about the relationship between her parents?” Kate asked.
“No. She rarely talked about them. She’d vent for a while, get sort of mad, and then that’s usually when we’d have sex. I just…I don’t know. I never thought she’d actually do it.”
“Do what?” Barnes asked.
Jeremy then looked up at them as if they had missed the entire point. “Seriously? Look…like I said. She seems sort of innocent, aside from being sort of a nympho, but if you’re looking for her parents’ killer…find her. I guarantee you Mercy killed her parents and then just split town.”
CHAPTER SIX
So far, no one had actually taken the seat on the opposite side of the desk; Kate, DeMarco, and Barnes were all still standing. But when Jeremy made such a bold statement, Sheriff Barnes walked slowly to the chair and sat down directly across from the teenager. There was a mixture of sadness and fury in his eyes as he pointed an accusatory finger in Jeremy’s face.
“I’ve been sheriff in this town for sixteen years. I knew Wendy and Alvin Fuller quite well. And as far as I know, Mercy Fuller was a stand-up young woman. Certainly not a trouble-making piece of shit like you. So if you’re going to sit here and make such an accusation, I suggest you have a damn good story to back it up.”
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.
“Hey there, Sheriff.”
“Floyd, hey yourself. How are you today?”
“Okay, I guess. Working on an old dirt bike motor for the Wells family. The bike is older’n hell. Seems like a waste to me, but he already paid, so…”
He stopped here, clearly distracted as he tried to take in the two women on either side of Barnes. He looked both shaken and slightly excited. Not because there were women on his property, but because it was something unexpected—something new and out of the ordinary.
“Floyd, these two ladies are with the FBI. They’d like to ask you some questions.”
“FBI? What the hell for? I ain’t done nothing.”
“Oh, I don’t expect you have,” Barnes said. “But tell me, Floyd: when was the last time you spoke with Jeremy?”
“Ah shit, what’s he done?”
“We don’t know yet,” Kate said. “Maybe nothing at all. We’ve come here to find out for sure.”
“He’s been involved with Mercy Fuller,” Barnes explained. “Alvin and Wendy’s daughter. We have him down at the station for questioning. I thought you should know that.”
“What? Damn, Sheriff.” Floyd shrugged and shook his head. “It’s no wonder, though. That boy never tells me anything. It’s probably been about three weeks since I saw him. He stayed here a few nights while Randy was tending to his own stuff. But I’m pretty sure he came by for a little while a few nights ago when I was out at the bar. He left the light on in his room. He comes over here sometimes to watch movies. Porn, mostly, I think. Little weirdo.”
“And he never mentioned Mercy Wheeler?” Kate asked.
“No. Hell, we barely even spoke at all. Talked football, some. How the Redskins are going to shit. He asked about his ma but I wasn’t about to have that conversation, you know?” He paused here, as if suddenly struck but a thought. “Damn. The Fullers? I heard about what happened to them. Did Mercy get killed, too?”
“No,” Barnes said. “In fact, she’s gone missing.”
“We spoke to Jeremy about his involvement with her,” Kate said. “He told us that Mercy didn’t like her parents and he’s suggesting that Mercy had something to do with their murders.”
“I don’t know why he’d lie about it,” Floyd said. He did not sound offended that they were making such an accusation. In fact, he seemed rather detached from the whole situation, like he simply didn’t care at all. “Were they dating?”
“Jeremy says it was just a physical relationship,” DeMarco said. “But he also said that she would confide in him—telling him how she hated her parents. How she wanted to kill them.”
“Forgive me for asking such a dumb question,” Floyd said, “but why are you here? Hell, Sheriff Barnes…you probably know Jeremy better than I do.”
“Does he have a room here?” Kate asked.
“Yeah. Last one down the hallway.”
“Would you allow us to look around it?”
Floyd hesitated here, unsure of how to answer. He looked to Barnes, as if for help or backup of some kind.
“You got something in that trailer I might not approve of, Floyd?” Barnes asked.
Instead of answering outright, Floyd asked: “Just Jeremy’s room. Right?”
“For now,” Barnes said with some skepticism. “Thanks, Floyd.”
Barnes escorted Kate and DeMarco to the trailer. As they walked up the rickety porch, Kate looked back out at Floyd Branch. He was walking back into his shed, seemingly unaffected by the exchange.
“He wasn’t nearly as bad as you were letting on,” Kate said.
“Apparently he’s getting a late start on drinking today.”
They walked inside the trailer and Kate was surprised by what she saw. She had been expecting it to be in a state of disrepair, cluttered and messy. But Floyd apparently owned very little, including anything that could consist of clutter. The place was fairly clean, though it had the same sort of smell Kate had experienced at his son’s trailer earlier: stale beer and something slightly pungent that was probably old pot smoke.
The hallway was thin and only held three rooms: a bedroom, a bathroom, and a smaller bedroom near the back. Kate and DeMarco entered Jeremy’s room while Barnes hung back.
“I’m here for any support you need,” he said. “But there’s barely enough room for the two of you in there, much less the three of us.”
He was right. The room was very small, taken up mostly by a twin mattress sitting on the floor and an old desk that was piled up with DVDs and CDs. A small television and dusty DVD player sat on the floor at the foot of the mattress, their wires and cables snaking around the floor. A cell phone sat on top of the television, hooked to a charger that ran to a multi-outlet adapter that also powered the TV, DVD player, and the small box fan in the window.
Kate picked the phone up. It was an iPhone, about three models behind the most current. When she pressed the Home button, the screen instantly popped up. No password needed. The home screen showed only a few apps: a few games, settings, photos, and clock. She figured this was just a passed down phone, one with no service but still used for games. She had a few friends who had eased their older kids into owning a cell phone this same way. Before gifting them with a full-service phone, they had allowed their kids to have a hand-me-down without full services, capable of only texting selected users and playing games that did not require Wi-Fi.
Behind her, DeMarco was flipping through the movies. “Floyd really wasn’t kidding about his son watching porn back here. Half of these are amateur porn titles. The other half are Cinemax-style sex stuff.”
Kate kept looking through the phone. She opened up photos and found that it was packed. Some were of girls, all partying. A few were topless. A few were kissing one another, the expressions on their faces a clear indication that they were wasted. There were a few videos of these events, all rather brief. She slid right past these until she came to one that was just under five minutes long. In the thumbnail of the video, she saw Mercy Fuller’s face.
She pressed Play and it took her less than three seconds to understand what she was seeing before she shut it off. In the video, Mercy was lying on her back, being videoed from just above her. The director was apparently Jeremy, filming while having some fairly rough sex with her. It was not forced, if the sounds coming from Mercy were any indication.
“Jesus,” Kate said, sliding out of Photos.
“What was that?” DeMarco asked.
“Proof that Jeremy Branch was telling the truth about at least one thing: they were definitely having sex.”
Kate saw that while the phone in her hand had no access to Contacts—it did not need it, as calls were impossible from it—she did see that there were a few text threads. She opened up the messages and saw only three conversations. One was with a contact that had been titled BRO and the texts made it obvious that they were to and from his brother, Randy. One of the others was to a guy named Chuck and the entire thread was about which celebrities they would like to have sex with and why.
The third message thread was from a contact Jeremy had titled BOOTY CALL. The little picture above the name was Mercy Fuller, head tilted and making a kissing face.
“I might have hit the jackpot over here,” Kate said.
DeMarco came over and they both started reading through the thread. It was quite long, spanning back over the last several months. The vast majority of it consisted of long drawn-out messages from Mercy with very short, often only one-word responses from Jeremy. The more they read, the clearer it became that Jeremy Branch had been lying to them. He may have been truthful about the nature of their relationship, but the picture he had painted of Mercy and her parents was totally untrue.
And that raised a very important question.
If he was lying about that, what else was he hiding?