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I realize there are a mixture of nails in the bag, and not just the small ones. Longer ones like we found in the stomach of one victim are also in here.
“They fed him nails. Made him swallow them,” Burrows says, swallowing hard like he can taste the nails. “Sheriff Cannon shoved the nails into Robert’s mouth himself. Robert was crying, begging them to stop, still pleading his innocence. I tried,” he says quickly, looking me in the eyes. “I tried to stop them. One of his de
puties pistol whipped me and left me bleeding in the corner.”
He swallows the gum, and he pops in two more pieces, chewing just as vigorously as Leonard slowly lowers himself to a chair.
“The nails sliced through his esophagus. He was spitting up blood and screaming in pain. They took out their batons and did terrible things to his backside then. They used the batons to rape him repeatedly, held his face against the table as he bled out from both ends. The sheriff then beat him the rest of the way to death once everyone had their turn at depravity.”
He chokes on his gum, and he spits it out into his hand, leaving a slobbery, sticky mess until he dumps it into the trash.
“I told the leading agent back then. Johnson was his name. Miller Johnson. He said it was small town justice, and he had real killers to track down.”
Leonard and I exchange a look, and fury creases his expression. This is what Miller has been covering.
“He knew,” Burrows goes on, biting his nails now as he shifts his weight from one foot to another and back again. “He knew before it happened. There was no surprise on his face when I told him. They came to me later that night, and they told me if I wanted to tell what I saw again, they’d repeat the performance on me. I left town, finished out my residency elsewhere, and moved into the field of forensics. Bugs are safer than people.”
Leonard blows out a long breath, and I suppress my urge to find Johnson and beat the actual fuck out of him.
“He was innocent, you know?” Burrows says, peering over at me again. “Evans, I mean. He didn’t kill those women. Couldn’t have. The serial killer was left handed, and Evans was right handed. His left hand was broken after a kid slammed his hand in a locker as a joke. Kyle Davenport, to be more specific.”
My blood chills more.
“Victoria Evans broke up with Kyle because of that. She yelled at him in front of the school. Three months later, Robert Evans was convicted of those murders. Quickest trial process in the history of murder cases. And two kills occurred the very week after his left hand was broken. He couldn’t have been the murderer. But that didn’t matter. They wouldn’t listen to the science. They only listened to that pompous prick Agent Johnson. Sheriff Cannon just wanted someone to persecute.”
He pops in a fresh piece of gum and wipes his hands on his wrinkly, smelly shirt.
“Who else would know about what happened to Evans?” I ask him.
“No one who would talk. Most of the deputies were involved. And Kyle Davenport, of course. He was there. I heard rumors he did basically the same thing to the kids, only he didn’t bring the nails for that night.”
Kyle Davenport seems to be at the root of every problem.
“Any chance he was left handed?”
“Kyle?” Burrows asks, his face paling. When I nod, he barely whispers, “Yes.”
Nineteen. Nineteen is just too young of an age to be so methodical as the original killer. Each kill was filled with rage, according to the reports. A temper tantrum could send a sociopath into a homicidal rage, if Lindy was right and not just abusing the word she used to describe him.
If he’d been ten to twenty years older, he’d fit the profile perfectly.
“We need to find a way to speak with Kyle Davenport,” Leonard says grimly.
“Right now,” I add.
“I’ll call that medium on the way back to Delaney Grove,” he says as we head toward the door. “And I’ll send Hadley over here to see if she can pull anything from the house,” I say on a sigh, closing the door to Burrows’s home behind me.
“Doubtful. Our unsub never leaves any trace.”
“Is that all?” Burrow shouts from behind us, and I turn to see his head poking through the door.
“For now.”
“Can I get a hotel room? I don’t feel safe right now.”
Since I don’t feel like making a scientist see a ghost story as ridiculous, I just nod.
Leonard seems distant, thoughtful even.
