Name of the Devil by Andrew Mayne Read Free Book Online Page B

the tread on the print. I checked the report. It’s not the sheriff’s footwear. At least, it doesn’t match what he was last seen wearing. And I’ve been up the tree. There’s no way he climbed up there carrying someone. He’s built like a linebacker.”
    Ailes pages through a file. “So how did his teeth marks end up on the victim’s body?”
    â€œI’m not saying he didn’t kill those people. There’s just more to this. Have they even announced he’s a suspect?”
    â€œNot yet. They want some more lab tests.”
    â€œOn what? They got dental. Did they just think it was some kind of weird coincidence his bite mark was on the corpse?”
    â€œThey just want to make sure it wasn’t planted with plaster casts swiped from a dentist. This is, after all, their sheriff. Given the other circumstances, keep in mind it’s West Virginia gun country. Nobody wants to start a cannibal cop panic. We’ll have people shooting at mailmen.”
    I hadn’t thought of the larger implications. “Christ. This is a PR disaster waiting to happen.”
    â€œMitchum is being methodical. She’s a good agent. Her forensic work is excellent.” Ailes pulls up something on his laptop. “She’s got one of the best records in the agency for admissibility. Her stuff doesn’t get thrown out of court.”
    â€œYeah, because she only goes for the low-hanging fruit. Wow, that metaphor was more spot on than I realized.” My trip up the tree is still fresh in my mind, as are the sores on my palms.
    Ailes shakes his head. “Have you slept at all since your trip up the tree?”
    â€œDefine sleep . . .”
    â€œWe’ve got every law enforcement agent in three states looking for the sheriff. Mitchum is building her case while the manhunt tries to find the suspect. You have time to sleep unless you want to go out there and look for him yourself.”
    I’d been up all night trying to sort things out. I’d hurried back to the Hawkton Ops Center to get the samples back to DC and Quantico. Then went over everything I could on Jessup, and looked through Hawkton arrest records. “No. It’s just that there’s something else we’re not seeing. This footprint for instance.”
    â€œWhich could have been from a hunter trying to get a good spot.”
    â€œOr a sixth person. And then there’s the writing on McKnight’s chest.”
    â€œHe was a Kabbalist, among other things,” replies Ailes.
    â€œReally? Him? That wasn’t in the report.” I’d have never connected a backwoods hillbilly to something bored Beverly Hillshousewives are into. It does match with the personality type fascinated by the paranormal. Did McKnight fear this was coming?
    Ailes gives me a rare grin. “That’s because Mitchum wasn’t on the phone this morning with the CEO of a certain online bookseller, looking up his book purchases.”
    That man and his connections. “And how is that admissible?”
    â€œWe can subpoena it later if it’s valuable. You just have to know when you’re bending the rules as opposed to momentarily sidestepping them. Handing me this sample and asking me to use a hundred-million-dollar laboratory to do a test that Mitchum doesn’t have access to isn’t playing fair.”
    â€œAnd calling up one of your billionaire buddies to peek into a customer account is?”
    â€œThe deceased don’t have privacy rights. I got a little curious when you decided to stay in West Virginia.”
    More like worried. “It’s not a contest between me and Mitchum. If I find anything useful, I’ll pass it on to her. And she can ignore it at her discretion . . .”
    â€œWhy the urgency?” persists Ailes.
    â€œThe missing man isn’t our absentee sheriff,” I reply.
    â€œThe evidence will tell us in time.”
    â€œIn