Free Freak by Jennifer Hillier Page B

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chapter 9
    THERE WAS ONE simple reason Jerry didn’t like cemeteries. They were full of dead people.
    Standing a safe distance away (lest any dead bodies spring up from the earth and attack him), he watched Mike Torrance pace a little too close to the perimeter of the eight-by-four hole being dug by a couple of workers. Off to the right sat a small forklift, not yet in use.
    “Maddox better not be lying.” The detective stopped and glared at Jerry, as if it would somehow be his fault if she were. “I swear to God I’ll show up to every fucking parole hearing for the rest of her sentence if she’s lying about this.”
    “You and me both.”
    “I can’t believe she wouldn’t give you anything else other than the location.” Torrance started pacing again. “You did try, right?”
    “What did you expect, Mike?” Jerry snapped. It had been a long day already, it wasn’t nearly over, and the question was insulting. “This whole thing is a chess game to her, and she’s the reigning grand master. We’re lucky she’s even letting us play. I told you, this is what she does.”
    Jerry had questioned Maddox at the prison for over an hour. Sheila had sat quietly, listening but not interrupting. Of coursehe’d tried to get as much information as he could, but Maddox wasn’t stupid. Quite the opposite. She held all the cards and damn well knew it. She would tell the police what she wanted them to know when she was good and ready, and not a moment earlier. He could still picture the look on her face as she spoke—serious, but slightly amused, enjoying every second of their undivided attention.
    “She’ll be mid to late twenties, dark hair, slender. She’ll resemble me. But you knew that already,” Maddox had said to him, her eyes shining in a way that had made Jerry uneasy. “She’s buried somewhere in Heavenly Rest Cemetery. Her body will be underneath someone else’s casket. Check for graves that are fresh; she was probably killed in the last couple of weeks or so.”
    “Name?”
    “No idea.”
    “And you know all this how?”
    “I’ll tell you tomorrow, when you come back to tell me I was right.”
    “And why the hell would I believe you?” Jerry’s jaw was clenched and the words were almost painful to spit out.
    “Because you know I can’t bullshit about something like this.” Maddox had been unfazed by his frustration. “It’s a simple matter of checking, Jerry. If you don’t find a body, then you know I’m lying. If you do find a body, then you know I have something to offer your investigation. Right now, all we have is trust.”
    She was fucking deluded if she thought he’d ever trust her, but okay, she had a point.
    “Tell me this at least,” Jerry had said. “How’d he manage to get the body in the ground before the casket was buried?” He paused for a moment, trying to re-create the scenario in his head. “That doesn’t even seem plausible.”
    “It’s all in the timing.” That glint appeared in her eyes again, and it was unnerving. “And when you see that I know what I’m talking about, I’d like you to come back tomorrow with my deal in place. You. Not the cops or the PA.”
    “Tomorrow’s Sunday.”
    “Not my problem. You’ll figure it out.”
    Jerry and Sheila had stood up to leave, but before he could knock on the door, Maddox said quietly, “By the way. Say hi to Ethan for me.”
    “Excuse me?” He turned back to face her.
    “Heavenly Rest Cemetery, where you’re going to dig up the body?” Maddox looked up at them with moist eyes. “It’s where Ethan is buried.”
    And now here they were, digging by the light of the moon and a few spotlights, the nasty chill in the air only adding to the misery of it all.
    They’d been at it for an hour, but since “six feet under” really was six feet under, progress was slow. Luckily, Heavenly Rest had only had one burial in the last two weeks, for one Mrs. Doris Wheaton, age ninety-two, according to the background