“No. Now, on the laptop…that’s not much of a surprise. Maybe you could tell by the state of the house, but the Fullers weren’t exactly the type of family that could afford a laptop for their daughter. As for a phone, the Fullers’ cell phone plan shows that Mercy Fuller did indeed have her own phone. But no one has been table to trace it just yet.”
“Maybe it’s powered down,” DeMarco said.
“Probably,” Barnes said. “But apparently—and this was news to me—even when a phone is off, it can be tracked back to the place where it was powered down…the last place it was on. And the state guys figured out it was last powered on here, at the house. But, as you pointed out, it’s nowhere to be found.”
“How many men do you have actively working the case?” Kate asked.
“Three at the station right now, just basically running interviews and digging through things like last purchases, last known places they visited and things like that. There’s one guy left behind from the Staties that’s helping, though he’s not too happy about it.”
“And you have one guy on your force that you’d consider the lead on it other than yourself?”
“Correct. As I said, that would be Officer Foster. The man has a mind like a lock box.”
“Could you lead us to the station for a quick debrief meeting?” Kate asked. “But just yourself and this Officer Foster. Let’s keep it small.”
Barnes nodded grimly as he got up from the chair and flicked the last of his cigarette into the yard. “You want to talk about Mercy as a suspect without letting too many people know about it. Is that right?”
“I think it’s foolish to rule it out as a possibility without looking into it,” Kate said. “And while we look down that path, yes, you’re right. The fewer people that know about it, the better.”
“I’ll make the call to Foster on our way to the station.”
He walked down the steps, staring down the reporter and her cameraman. It made Kate wonder if he’d had at least one bad altercation with a news crew sometime during the last two days.
As she and DeMarco got into their car, she also gave the news crew a distrustful glance. She knew that in communities like Deton, a murder like this could be earth-shattering. And because of that, she knew that news crews in these areas would usually stop at nothing to get their story.
It made Kate wonder if maybe there was more of a story here than she was seeing—and if so, what she might need to do to get all of the pieces.
CHAPTER THREE
The Deton police station was about what Kate had expected. It was tucked away on the far end of the main stretch along the highway, a plain brick building with an American flag billowing at the top. A few patrol cars sat parked along the side of it, their meager numbers a reflection of the town itself.
Inside, a large bullpen area took up most of the space. A large desk sat at the front, unattended. Actually, the place looked basically deserted. They followed Barnes to the back of the building, down a thin hallway that boasted only five rooms, one of which was labeled by a placard on the door with Sheriff Barnes. Barnes led them to the last room on the hall, a very small room set up as a conference room of sorts. An officer sat at the table inside, rifling through a small stack of documents.
“Agents, meet Officer Foster,” Barnes said.
Officer Foster was young man, probably creeping up on thirty years of age. He wore his hair in a buzzcut and had a scowl on his face. Kate could tell that he was a no-nonsense officer. He would not be cracking jokes to ease any tension and probably wouldn’t bother with small talk to get to know the agents sitting in front of him.
Kate decided that she liked him right away.
“Officer Foster has basically served as the hub for this case ever since we got that call from Pastor Poulson,” Barnes explained. “Any piece of information that has come through here has gone through his ears or eyes and he’s added it to the case files. Any questions you have, he can probably answer.”
“That’s some lofty praise,” Foster said, “but I can certainly do my best.”
“Well, what do we have on information regarding who all three of the Fullers spoke with—aside from one another—before the murders occurred?” Kate asked.
“Alvin Fuller spoke with an old friend of his from high school as he was checking out at the Citgo out on Highway 44,” Foster said. “He was coming home from work, stopped by to grab a six-pack of beer, and they ran into each other. The friend says they simply chatted about work and family. Very surface-level stuff just to seem polite. The friend said Alvin did not seem strange in any way.
“As for Wendy Fuller, the last person to speak to her other than her family was a co-worker. Wendy worked at the little shipping warehouse just outside of town. The co-worker in question said the last thing they spoke about was how Wendy was concerned that Mercy was starting to show a lot of interest in boys. Mercy had apparently had her first kiss recently and Wendy was afraid of what that could mean. But other than that, things seemed pretty much the same as always.”
“And what about Mercy?” DeMarco asked.
“The last person she spoke with was her best friend, a local girl named Anne Pettus. We’ve spoken with Anne twice, just to make sure she told the same story. She said the last conversation they had was about a boy named Charlie. According to Anne, this Charlie kid was not Mercy’s boyfriend. Anne also told us something that sort of bumps up against what her parents might have known about her.”
“Like a lie?” Kate asked.
“Yes. According to Wendy’s co-worker, they spoke about this supposed first kiss. But according to Anne Pettus, that’s not true. Apparently, Mercy had her first kiss a very long time ago.”
“Was she promiscuous?”
“Anne would not say as much. She just said that she knew for a fact that Mercy had done much more than kiss a boy.”
“In regards to her disappearance, where does the evidence lean at this point?” Kate asked. “That she was taken or that she left of her own accord?”
“Unless the two of you found something new in the house, there is no evidence to suggest that Mercy was taken against her will. If anything, we have small pieces of circumstantial evidence that suggests she might have left on her own.”
“What sort of evidence?”
“According to Anne, Mercy had a small amount of cash saved up. She even knew where she kept it: at the bottom of her sock drawer. We checked and there was about three hundred dollars hidden there. That actually goes against her leaving on her own because she would have taken that money, right? However, the last thing put on Mercy’s credit card was a full tank of gas. She got it about two or three hours before her parents’ bodies were found. Before that, two days prior, she purchased a few travel-sized cosmetics at a Target in Harrisonburg: toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant. We have that in her credit card history as well as confirmation from Anne Pettus, who went shopping with her that day.”
“Did she happen to ask Mercy why she needed travel-sized cosmetics?” Kate asked.
“She did. Mercy said she was just low on stuff at home and hated to feel like a child asking her parents to buy her stuff.”
“And no known boyfriend?” Kate asked.
“Not according to Anne. And she seemed to know just about everything about Mercy.”
“I’d like to speak with Anne,” Kate said. “Do you think she’d be open to it or are we going to get pushback?”
“She’d be very open to it,” Foster said.
“He’s right,” Barnes added. “She’s even called us a few times