He Kills Me, He Kills Me Not

Looking around the cemetery, she didn’t see anyone who might have placed them on the grave. The only person she saw was the flower vendor, Mr. Reynolds. She’d spoken to him on Sunday after the O’Donnell murder and had asked him if he knew who put flowers on Dana Branson’s grave. He’d claimed he didn’t know, but the flowers today were far too fresh for him not to have seen who put them there.
    “Look in that trash can,” she said, pointing to a garbage can near a tree. “See if someone left the packaging from the flowers in there.”
    He lowered the camera from his shoulder and gave her an arch look. “You want me to dig through the trash?”
    She narrowed her eyes. “I want you to dig up a story. Now.”
    His shoulders slumped and he mumbled beneath his breath. Tiffany didn’t care what he said as long as he did what she told him. A minute later he ran back with some tissue paper in his hand.
    “Jackpot,” he grinned, holding the pink paper up in the air. “It’s got that flower vendor’s logo on it.” He pointed to Reynolds’ flower stand.
    A slow smile spread across Tiffany’s face. “Call the station. See what they can find out about our flower vendor. I need leverage.”
    “T his is one royally screwed up perv,” Pierce said.
    Logan raised a brow. “Is that the FBI’s official assessment?”
    “Hell, yes.” He stepped past one of the technicians who was dusting the boxcar for prints. “He went to enormous trouble to make this torture chamber.”
    Bile rose in the back of Logan’s throat as he took in the black, dried blood that had sprayed across the walls and formed sticky pools on the floor. There were small holes drilled into the sides of the abandoned railroad car to allow ventilation, but even partially shadowed beneath the huge branches of an oak tree as it was, the temperatures inside had to be close to a hundred degrees.
    “I’m surprised Carolyn O’Donnell didn’t bake to death in this hell hole,” he said.
    One of the techs pointed to some of the holes drilled higher up near the top of the car. “There’s a hose hooked up to that hole. The other end is hooked to a generator outside, and a small air-conditioning unit. We think he used that to keep the temperature more bearable, at least while he was here.”
    The tech stepped around Logan and began dusting the next section of the wall for prints.
    “Let’s get out of here,” Logan said. “We’re just in the way.”
    He and Pierce stepped out of the steel tomb, their shoes kicking up dust as they crossed the dirt, away from the hive of activity. The Feds were examining every inch of the forty-foot steel shell while Logan’s detectives walked the grid outside searching for evidence.
    Officer Karen Bingham was taking the witness’s statement. She was sitting on a fallen log beside a white male about twenty years of age. Dressed in camouflage shorts, he wore a white t-shirt that boasted a picture of a marijuana plant.
    Logan glanced around as he and Pierce strode toward Karen. “Where’s Riley?”
    “He’s directing your men in the grid search,” Pierce said.
    Logan spotted Riley then, about fifty feet away, walking with one of the other detectives around the abandoned boxcar, pointing to various spots in the dried-out grass and dirt as he spoke to the man beside him. Logan didn’t know why Riley felt he needed to walk the grid. There were more than enough techs doing that already.
    “Chief,” Karen called out, capturing his attention. “This is Gerald Mason. He’s the hiker who found the boxcar.”
    Logan shook the hiker’s hand and introduced Pierce. “Mr. Mason, we appreciate you calling the police when you found the boxcar. I’m sure you already answered a lot of questions from Officer Bingham, but would you mind telling Special Agent Buchanan and me what happened?”
    The young man looked over at Karen as if asking permission. She nodded and smiled reassuringly. His neck bobbed as he swallowed. “I used to hike through these woods when I was a kid. I’m home on break and—”
    “You’re a college student?” Pierce asked.
    “Yeah. FSU.”
    Logan exchanged a glance with Pierce. Mason was from the same campus as Carolyn O’Donnell, Florida State University. “Go on, Mr. Mason. Tell us how you found the boxcar.”
    “It’s been here forever, even when I was little. The railroad left a couple of them in this field and another field a little ways from here when they pulled out years ago.