A little sound escaped her, not a laugh and not quite a sigh. "Saw him? Oh, hell, I talked to him."
Stephanie Boyd, manager of The Lodge, had her hands full. Not only had a dozen of her guests checked out without hesitation as soon as a skeleton had been found in one of the gardens, but those who were left had been vocally unhappy about the situation. They wanted her to reassure them that this was a one-time unfortunate event, that the police would soon be gone, and that no media would get wind of it.
So far, there had been no media that she knew of. She was crossing her fingers that continued. But, who knew?
And now she had a new worry.
"Captain, you can't be serious," she said to Nate McDaniel, trying hard to keep the dismay out of her voice.
"I'm sorry, Miss Boyd, but I am serious." He sounded serious. He also sounded frustrated. "It may be a cold trail, but I have to treat this as an active murder investigation. We expect dental records and DNA will positively identify the remains as those of Jeremy Grant, age eight when he disappeared from here at The Lodge ten years ago. His father worked here as a gardener at the time, but died himself of cancer a few years later. The mother relocated; we're trying to trace her now."
"You can't know that child was murdered on the grounds of The Lodge," she heard herself objecting. "Or by anyone connected to this place."
"He was buried in the English Garden, Miss Boyd."
"That wasn't part of the formal gardens then, Captain."
"No, but it was inside the fence. On the grounds of The Lodge."
She leaned back in her chair and stared at him across the desk. Her office felt more than usually small with his rather large presence occupying it. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but you have no evidence aside from the location of the remains that this is in any way connected to The Lodge."
"Miss Boyd — "
"Make it Stephanie." Dryly, she added, "From the sound of things, we're going to be seeing quite a lot of each other, at least for a while."
"I'm afraid so — Stephanie. I'd like to be able to offer Jeremy Grant's mother more closure than just the information that her son was murdered." He paused, then added, "And I'm Nate."
She nodded rather absently. "Just how do you mean to conduct an investigation into a ten-year-old crime? There are certainly a few longtime employees here who probably remember when the boy disappeared, but evidence? How can you possibly find anything after all this time?"
Nate didn't want to admit that the two aces he was counting on were one obsessive FBI agent with an even older murder to solve and one fragile guest and maybe-psychic who, if Nate was any judge, was about a whisper away from some kind of breakdown.
So all he said was, "We have to try, Miss — Stephanie. Now, obviously, it'll be better if we can conduct our investigation and interviews as quietly as possible. Which means keeping things inside The Lodge as much as we can. We don't want to be transporting employees back and forth from here to the police department, do we?"
"That has the nasty ring of a threat, Nate."
He lifted both eyebrows. "Not at all. Granted, without more evidence than I have that a crime was committed here, I don't have the legal authority to force you to turn over a room or cottage or other adequate space to me so that I can set up and conduct interviews here at The Lodge."
"No, you don't. And after ten years, I doubt a judge would grant you the right to do that."
Nate kept his tone pleasant. "But I doubt any judge in the county would forbid me to investigate this crime, especially given that it's the murder of a child. So you can have it one of two ways, Stephanie. Either I ferry employees back and forth — in police cars — from here to the station to be interviewed, for however long that takes, or else you do set aside a space for us to do what we have to do quietly and discreetly here on the grounds of The Lodge."
She didn't like either of the alternatives, but she knew damned well she was stuck with them.
Discarding her manager's hat for a moment, she said, "You really believe that child was murdered here?"
Nate hesitated, then said, "It gets worse. Another child was murdered here twenty-five years ago, and there could be more."
"What? Jesus."
"I guess they didn't tell you about any of that when they hired you." It wasn't a question.
"We didn't really discuss the history of The Lodge. That history, anyway. Twenty-five years ago? And you think that is related to this? Two murders that occurred fifteen years apart?"
Nate sighed. "It's reaching, I admit. But it's not unheard-of for a serial killer to operate over that span of time."
Even more startled and dismayed, she said again, "Jesus. Serial killer?"
"Just a possibility. But one I have to investigate, surely you see that?"
"All I see is a hotel on the front page and empty of guests," she said. Then she grimaced. "Sorry. I know that sounds callous, especially with children dead. But...if this boy was killed ten years ago, and nothing like that has happened since, then—"
Nate hated to do this to her, but interrupted to say, "In the last twenty-five years, we have here at The Lodge or in the area three children dead of illnesses, one reported runaway, two so-called accidental deaths, two undoubted murders — counting what we found today — and two unsolved disappearances of children. We also have at least two adults who disappeared without a trace while they were staying here."
It took a full minute before Stephanie could say, "How much of that happened since the little boy?"
Nate ran through the facts in his head — the ones Quentin had provided — and said slowly, "One kid disappeared nine years ago; two of the ones who died of illnesses died six and eight years ago; and the runaway was seven years ago. So, since Jeremy Grant disappeared, we have four kids dead or missing."
"You said some of them died of illnesses. Can't we discount those? I mean... You know what I mean."
"I know. And, no, we can't discount them. I'm told in all three cases the attending doctor ascribed the deaths to some kind of fever, which is why the police weren't involved at the time."
"Wouldn't that fall under the definition of natural causes?"
"Not necessarily. I'm also told some poisons would present that way." He was hoping she wouldn't ask who'd told him all this.
Stephanie propped her elbows on her blotter, rubbed her face with both hands, and muttered, "Oh, shit."
Nate felt more than a twinge of sympathy for her, helped along by the fact that she really was a very attractive woman. He'd always had a soft spot for brown-eyed blondes, especially when they were nicely woman-shaped rather than absurdly thin, as fashion so often pushed them to be. And she wasn't wearing a wedding or engagement ring. As soon as those thoughts occurred, he reminded himself that his first marriage had ended badly and that he liked living alone and being unattached.
He did.
He was almost positive he did.
But when she uncovered her face, he couldn't help but notice that her brown eyes were both intelligent and humorous, even now.
"So, Nate, you seriously believe that we might have a serial child-killer who's been operating here at The Lodge or at least in the area for the past twenty-five years?"
He yanked his mind back to work, hesitated, and said, "I believe it's possible. And, to complicate your life even more, you have a guest staying here who also believes it, and he's had experience with just this sort of thing."
She frowned. "The FBI agent?"
"You knew he was staying here?"
"Well, yeah. He has his weapon, and when he checked in he was good enough to inform us of that as well as furnish his badge number so we could verify his identity."