All That Remains (Lancaster Falls Book 3) Read online

  All That Remains

  Lancaster Falls, 3

  RJ Scott

  Copyright

  Copyright ©2020 RJ Scott

  Cover design by Meredith Russell

  Edited by Sue Laybourn

  Published by Love Lane Books Ltd

  ISBN 9781785641763

  This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission. This book cannot be copied in any format, sold, or otherwise transferred from your computer to another through upload to a file sharing peer-to-peer program, for free or for a fee. Such action is illegal and in violation of Copyright Law.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

  Dedication

  Always for my family.

  Contents

  All That Remains

  A letter from RJ

  What’s next for RJ Scott?

  Books from RJ Scott

  Meet RJ Scott

  One

  Lucas

  Lancaster Falls was much as I expected it to be. A grid of roads with neatly spaced houses and one main shopping street with storefronts and bright awnings on either side. The town had an air of disuse—probably due to the heat and drought—and like many other towns, it was also struggling financially. The council records, the mayor’s report, the addition of PD information, all painted an image of a town in transition. Kids had moved away, businesses closed, and the opening of a new road north of town had cut down drive-through traffic.

  Lancaster Falls had once been a tourist trap for the nearby Pennsylvania Grand Canyon, but now it was on its way to being a ghost town. However, its one redeeming income earner was that it did have a regular Christmas festival, which began in November and went straight through to January. I wondered if that would ever replace the new title of Home to the Hell’s Gate Serial Killer, or the equally distressing title of Murder Town, PA.

  It wasn’t the FBI’s job to help a town through a crisis, but we did have robust protocols for positive marketing that we ran alongside any case. Avery was good at that, and I hoped that Bryan would release her from the current case they were wrapping up in Philadelphia and send her over to work Lancaster Falls with me.

  She’d be all “Sure there’s a serial killer, but whoa, look at that Grand Canyon and Christmas Event you got going on!”

  Of course, it was always possible the town might aspire to play on the uncovered horrors with guided tours, hotels with themed rooms, and guest speakers. Although the very detailed three-page memo we’d received from one Mayor Stokes had told us that our presence was not to exacerbate the issue.

  Because finding a killer, apparently, would make things much worse than bodies in a sinkhole.

  My satellite navigation took me to the Falls Hotel, shabby but welcoming, with a tended front yard that was a mix of stones and planters. The front yard space meant it was set back from the road, and an antique sign proclaimed that this was Falls Hotel, Lancaster Falls, home of the Famous Christmas Festival.

  I counted twelve windows at the front, including one on the left ground floor that was large enough for me to see through to reception, currently manned by a young boy who stared right back at me. This could well be my home for the foreseeable future, and the pressure in my chest was enough for me to rub there, as if that would help. Fear and nerves fought and itched under my skin. I picked up the ice water next to me and took a gulp. I’d been so nervous that I’d stopped at a gas station ten miles out of town, just to give myself an excuse to delay arrival.

  The irony of fighting to be the one here, the point man, away from the safety of my desk, wasn’t lost on me when my chest tightened. I’d told my boss I was ready, that I wanted the liaison role, that I’d even take a damn pay cut if they needed me to. I’d said it was because I wanted the challenge, but therein lay the issue. I didn’t want or need a challenge, but I was desperate to be in the middle of this case, and Senior Special Agent Bryan Dupuis, my boss and friend, knew precisely why. From a professional point of view, at twenty-nine and with very little experience in the field I was nervous I wasn’t ready, but guiding information flow was one thing I could do, and this was just a cold case.

  A cold case that meant everything to my grandfather, whose health was failing.

  I’m ready to do this. I had to give up on being the one working behind the scenes—for Grandpa Toby. The safety of information-gathering and dissemination with the team in Washington, at my desk, helping to solve cases in different ways, was a real thing.

  Only this case wasn’t easy; it was a cold case involving human remains discarded postmortem into a vast sinkhole. To date, they’d been identified as women, plus one unfortunate young man named Casey McGuire, but that had been a more recent find, and might not even be connected.

  I was here to be on the front line to find out if the woman my grandpa had loved, Carmen Kreuger, was one of those sets of remains. The Carmen issue, as my grandpa referred to it, had only come to light after Grandma Louisa had passed away. Then it had all been revealed, how he’d loved another woman, had gotten involved in her life, how he’d nearly destroyed his marriage.

  Carmen had last been seen, just a few days after her fortieth birthday, in West Falls, a town not more than a twenty-minutes’ drive from Lancaster Falls. She’d once taught at a college in West Falls, but hadn’t been back to town for years. That day, she’d been in a sedan driven by a man no one seemed to be able to identify. There was no evidence as to why she’d been driving through West Falls, but she’d never been seen again. Grandpa’s notes spoke of a corrupt system of officials in Lancaster Falls, a police department that wasn’t any help at all.

  When I’d approached Bryan, to ask to be attached to the Lancaster Falls case, he had sighed, but he hadn’t dismissed my request to be assigned to the task force out of hand. I could recall his warning word for word.

  "Your involvement in this is coming down from high, from people who knew Special Agent Tobias Ruskin and respected your grandfather for the kind of man he was. They want your input. They have the files Agent Ruskin created on the case, the same as you. This isn’t a trek into your family’s past. This is a multi-team operation with a potential serial killer.”

  I wanted to find out what had happened to Carmen Kreuger, and in doing so, give Grandpa Toby some kind of peace.

  I pulled myself back to the here and now and cut the engine. The air conditioning went silent, and the heat it had held at bay began to surge. I'd driven most of this journey through wicked thunderstorms, but even though they were meant to break the heat, they hadn't managed it yet. There’d been rain so heavy I’d had to pull over on two occasions. When the storms finished, any evidence they'd even been there was gone as soon as the heat returned; the towns I’d driven through drying in an instant as the rain dissipated in steam from the sidewalks.

  I waved at the kid in the window who was tall and skinny, with dark hair. He appeared startled at the action, but then he grinned and waved back. He made a gesture to indicate a question as to whether I was coming in, and I gave him a thumbs-up, but I also tapped my watch to indicate later and then looked away.

  I wasn’t ready to get out of the car yet. I'd always been the shy kid at school, the one who’d sat at the back of the class and never said boo to a goose. It had taken years of focus and work for me to emerge from my shell. I could work with others to the point where no one thought of me as anything other than confident. On my downtime
, however, I was a person who craved peace and a good book, but I worked up my Special Agent persona to the best effect when it mattered.

  Still, I could take comfort in the fact that I wasn’t the guy at the top of the food chain here. There would be other members assigned to the team, likely reporting to Bryan himself, starting with Avery. The FBI didn't do things by half, and this was a complicated burial site. Also, we had the issue that this case was already in the papers; the whole shitfest was journalist heaven.

  I might not need to do much coordinating, so I didn’t know why I was sitting in my damn car, panicking that everything rested on my shoulders alone. There were two ways this could go. The wider team, plus any ancillary staff requested to attend, could connect the dots and finish everything. Or maybe they’d find out that the women identified through their remains had no connection at all. It could be that the sinkhole was merely a convenient place to dump bodies in this area, and they were individual unlinked crimes, the same as how a river might hold secrets of murders going back centuries. There’d been one single thing in the pathology to indicate a signature from the killer, one common finding that led us to think serial killer though. A blade of some sort had cut the victim’s necks, deeply through skin and muscle so they would have been dead before disposal—the only blessing in this whole fucked-up mess. With the church burned to the ground and potential witnesses in the pastor and his wife deceased, we would be starting with a blank canvas, and anything was possible.

  I’d almost gotten to the point where I could leave my car, and I rolled my neck, nodded to myself, and had my hand on the handle to get out.

  Something slammed on the roof, and I jumped so high I wrenched my back.

  What the fuck?

  I glanced left and saw the flash of color and uniform and pressed the button for the window, realizing belatedly that with the engine off, this car was nothing but a useless brick. So instead, I gestured that I would open the door, and I stepped out, making each movement evident so as not to alarm her into thinking I was reaching for a weapon.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but you need to move your car.” The cop was a slim woman, steely hair in a tight bun, and she held herself with complete confidence, her hand on the butt of her weapon. I hadn’t seen any signs prohibiting parking, but maybe this space was traditionally only used by guests.

  “It’s okay, Officer,” I said with a smile. “I’m staying at the hotel.”

  “Sir, please, you have to move the car.”

  I didn’t have to be a trained agent to hear the slight shift in her tone or the way she glanced behind her, and it gave me pause. I looked that way, and a crowd was gathering.

  “Is everything okay, Officer?"

  “I won’t ask again.”

  I checked but could see nothing. “What’s happened?”

  I could see her indecision, along with a flare of irritation.

  “There will be a press conference for media at a time to be instructed, sir.” She added that last honorific with a touch of exhaustion in her tone.

  “Media? I’m not a journalist. I'm a federal agent,” I said. “Let me show you my ID.”

  She stiffened when I slowly reached into my pocket, her fingers twitching on her holster. I pulled out my ID, holding it up so she could see it, and her eyes widened fractionally.

  “Special Agent Lucas Beaumont. Okay, we were expecting this. I’m Officer Heather Beiler,” she said. “However, Agent Beaumont, I’m still going to need you to move back one block for now.” She gestured to the opposite side of the road. “And then…” She gave a sigh and shook her head. “I guess there’s something you need to see.”

  I moved the rental to where she’d indicated and straightened my jacket and tie as I locked the door. The heat was oppressive, my white shirt already damp with sweat, but I wasn’t ready to take off my armor against the world just yet. I was going to be efficient, calm, and in charge of whatever the hell had spooked Officer Beiler. I fell into step next to her as we rounded a corner, skirting a park with an empty fountain, then headed toward the group huddled together and talking in low voices. A tape barrier fluttered beyond them, and Officer Beiler lifted it so I could go under. Inside the hallowed circle was a smaller group. One of them broke away to stop me as I approached.

  “Special Agent Lucas Beaumont, out of the Washington Field Office." I held out my hand, which he shook firmly.

  It seemed as if he wanted to stare anywhere but at me. I understood that. I wasn’t there to take over or make his life hell, but I knew the feds had a reputation, not helped by popular media, of getting up in people’s faces and causing stress.

  “Captain Sawyer Wiseman, Lancaster Falls PD,” he replied.

  “Captain,” I swallowed my nerves, pulling out my best interested-in-everything FBI persona and hoping the nerves stayed hidden. “Want to bring me up to speed?”

  “In what context?” he asked.

  We made it a rule not to take control of a crime scene if it had already begun, and right now, whatever this was, some fight or something, didn't require our involvement. I was there for the cold case, the remains in the sinkhole. “I'm just here for consultation and assistance, not to take over, so catch me up on what we have here.” Two other men, one in uniform, one not, formed a protective formation behind Sawyer, blocking my view of whatever the issue was.

  Sawyer frowned. “That's not my worry. If the feds leading this means we find a solution, then I’m good with that. I'm not precious, and this is my town to protect. I just wanted to know where you stood.”

  “Ready to help with whatever you need.”

  He paused a moment, and I wondered if he’d had issues with the FBI in a past case because he looked suspicious. I was having a hard time judging him as he glanced over his shoulder to where the other cop stood.

  Hennessy, according to his name badge, began to explain. “A dog who belonged to Adam Gray, one of the town’s fringe residents, a survivalist, has turned up and dropped remains on the ground.” He faltered a moment, and like Officer Beiler, he acted as if someone had taken a bag of cement and belted him around the head.

  “More remains from the sinkhole?” It wasn't unheard of for animals to retrieve parts or eat them, or other horrible ends to what used to be human.

  “No, this is…” He cleared his throat and then made a visible effort to pull himself together. “Unconfirmed, but we have reason to believe, from tattoos, that the remains belong to the survivalist. To Adam Gray.”

  I’d seen a case like this before. A man had died in his apartment and hadn’t been found for two months and had been half-eaten by his pets, not a scene I ever wanted to witness again.

  “Have you ascertained—?”

  “We found the dog and the hand ten minutes ago,” Sawyer interrupted whatever I was about to ask, and I blinked at him. “The dog wouldn’t let anyone near it, apart from Officer Hennessy. Animal control is on their way, but we’ve managed to leash it.”

  I fixed on one thing. “I’m sorry. Did you say ten minutes?” My head spun. “You should be shutting down the—”

  “We’ve photographed the remains, the…” He stopped talking and stepped aside, so I got my first look at the hand, expecting it to be chewed and raw. I crouched down, and the sleeping dog who now didn't seem all that bothered by anyone’s presence lifted his head and panted. His muzzle was bloody, and his fur matted with both blood and dirt.

  “Nothing to worry about,” someone said loudly behind me, and I saw Sawyer’s jaw tense.

  “Mr. Sandoval,” Sawyer snapped. “I’d ask that you leave the scene.”

  I didn’t turn. Former Captain Peter Sandoval wasn’t on my to-do list just yet. I heard Sandoval muttered a curse under his breath, but he stayed quiet, or left the scene, and I returned my attention to the hand.

  This hand hadn’t been bitten and chewed on. It was nearly a surgical cut and horror washed over me—was this a fresh murder? Was it connected to the sinkhole remains? God. If it was, and t
his was a new murder, then we were facing a whole different ball game in the potential serial murder stakes.

  There’s nothing to suggest there is a connection. There might never be a connection. This could be some random ax murderer. And since when was that an option I was pinning hopes on? A current murder, linked to historical deaths, and we’d arrived slap bang into the realm of copycats or even a resurgence of a dormant perpetrator.

  “What the hell is going on?” A strident voice broke into our quiet assessment, and I turned to see an older man, all bluster and swagger, in a golf shirt that was way too tight across his stomach and checked trousers that made my eyes water. “Let me through!” the man demanded.

  I was closest to him, blocking his way. “You have to stay behind the tape, sir.”

  “And you are?”

  “Special Agent Lucas Beaumont.” I held up my badge.

  “Do you know who I am?” the man snapped. “I’m the mayor of Lancaster Falls, Gerald Stokes.”

  He stepped toward the cordon, staring at the hand and the dog and the police. I pressed a hand to his chest. “Stay that side of the tape, sir.”

  “I could have your badge for this disrespect.”

  I doubt that, you pompous prick. “You can speak to my field office to register any complaints.”

  He huffed a little, but behind me, Sawyer was issuing orders “Heather, you have the scene. The coroner will be here in thirty, animal control in ten. Logan, you’re with me." He turned to me then. “Mayor.” He acknowledged and dismissed in the same breath. “Agent, we're heading to Adam’s property. Are you armed? We don’t know what we’re facing.” He didn't wait for me to say whether I was going with them, and I wasn’t there to take over what was happening in town. I wasn’t the big guns. I was the scout, the liaison, the logistics expert. I sprinted back to my car and slipped on the bulletproof vest and removed my weapon from its lock box, then pulled on my suit jacket to cover it all.