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“Why’s he using a fake ID if he’s clean?” Justine asked.
“Maybe because his brother, Joe Bostic, has a long criminal record for illegal gun sales and dealing in unlicensed explosives,” Mo-bot replied. “Any vetting agency would find the link and no employer would take the risk of allowing him anywhere near detonators or high explosives.”
“What better way to access product than to have your brother on the inside of a firm like Ryedale?” Sci remarked.
“Does the brother have any history of violence?” Justine asked.
“No,” Mo-bot replied. “At least none that I can see on his record. He looks like a dealer. Nothing more. Why?”
“I want to know if he’s likely to pull a gun on us if he finds us inside his brother’s house,” Justine said, and Sci smiled. “Thanks.”
She hung up.
“You’re going to get your way. Come on,” Justine said, opening the driver’s door. “Let’s go take a look inside.”
CHAPTER 30
THEY CROSSED THE street toward Francis Johnson’s, or rather Billy Bostic’s, two-story wood-clad home. They walked past the green Volkswagen Golf and went to the back gate. Justine reached over the top and glanced around to make sure no one was watching. She felt for and found a bolt, drew it back and opened the gate. She and Sci hurried through and he closed it behind them. They went along a narrow path between the house and the neighbor’s fence and found the back door near the far corner of the building.
“I brought my tools,” Sci said, reaching into his back pocket for a leather wallet that contained his lock-picking set, but as he touched the handle it moved, and when he tried the door, it swung open without resistance.
Justine and Sci exchanged a glance of surprise before heading inside. She took point and moved slowly into a modest kitchen.The place was reasonably clean apart from two partially eaten plates of food surrounded by takeout cartons, which covered the small table. The ripe smell filling the room suggested the food had been there some hours and was beginning to turn.
“Two diners. Interrupted,” Justine whispered, and Sci nodded.
They crept through the small kitchen and went into a hallway that linked the room to the front door. There was a solid wooden floor that was pockmarked and scored with age, and the walls were covered in old wallpaper that peeled here and there. The once-colorful bird pattern that adorned the paper had faded with age. There were no photographs or artwork anywhere to be seen. The living room lay to their right and Justine saw two couches and a TV through the open doorway.
A set of stairs stood to their left and she and Sci crept up to the second floor. Justine strained her senses, but all she could hear were their footsteps and the creak of the floorboards beneath them. The bare walls beside her bore the outlines of the pictures that had once lined the staircase. She couldn’t shake off the nervous tightening around her stomach as they neared the top.
Justine recognized the smell when she stepped onto the landing. The sweet ripeness with a hint of the putrid stench that was to come as decay set in.
She hurried into the bedroom directly opposite the staircase and found the bodies of two men splayed on the floor. She recognized one from his Ryedale Engineering employee photograph, Francis Johnson, otherwise known as Billy Bostic, and guessed that the man lying next to him, who bore more than a passing resemblance, was his brother Joe.
Both men had been shot in the head at close range.
“We’d better call this in,” Justine said.
Sci had already produced a pair of latex gloves. “Go ahead. I’ll see what I can find before the police get here.”
CHAPTER 31
“AND YOU DIDN’T touch or disturb anything when you found the bodies?” Otis Urban, one of the detectives leading the murder investigation, asked.
It was late afternoon by now and Justine was feeling the heat as she gave her statement to the detective. He was a short, slight man with dark hair and a heavily stubbled jaw. He had an air of intensity that reminded Justine of a hummingbird. His black suit was lined with mustard-yellow silk, which added to the mental image she had formed.
They were standing in the shade of a beech tree in the neighboring garden, but even in the shadows it was hot on this sweltering day. Justine could see Sci being interviewed by Urban’s partner, Siobhan Sullivan, in a garden across the street.
Howard Avenue had been cordoned off and Bostic’s house was now a crime scene, with forensic experts checking every inch ofthe interior and grounds. Police officers and plain-clothes detectives were canvassing the neighborhood, talking to locals about what they might have seen or heard.
“We came straight out and called 911,” Justine assured Urban.
She didn’t feel comfortable about misleading the detective, but Sci had insisted there was no need for them to know he had spent quite a while combing the crime scene. He had been careful, he said, and insisted that their knowing the truth would only complicate matters. A good defense lawyer would be able to say the scene had been compromised, even though Sci had been meticulous as ever.
Urban checked his notes. “Okay,” he said. “I think I’ve got everything I need for now.”
“You know where to find me if you need anything else,” Justine said.
The detective nodded. “Thanks,” he responded before moving toward the house.
