LEVI

  FULLER

  A Suspense Mystery Thriller

  Behind Her Mind

  1

  ALSO BY LEVI FULLER

  ALMA NOVELS

  Sound of Fear

  Eye of Fear

  Vision of Fear

  Taste of Fear

  Game of Fear

  ISLE OF BUTE NOVELLAS

  The Scent of Bones

  The Secret of Bones

  The Unburied Bones

  The Missing Bone

  Hide The Bones

  LUKE PENBER NOVELLAS

  Bend The Law 1

  Bend The Law 2

  Bend The Law 3

  Bend The Law 4

  Bend The Law 5

  NANTAHALA RIVER

  The Reticence 1

  The Reticence 2

  The Reticence 3

  The Reticence 4

  The Reticence 5

  TURQUOISE VALLEY

  The Kay Sister 1

  The Kay Sister 2

  The Kay Sister 3

  The Kay Sister 4

  The Kay Sister 5

  KATE SUMMERS

  Behind Her Mind 1

  Behind Her Mind 2

  Behind Her Mind 3

  Behind Her Mind 4

  Behind Her Mind 5

  AUDIO BOOK

  Sound of Fear

  Eye of Fear

  Copyright ©2021 by Blue Scallop Digital LLC. – All rights Reserved

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2021 by Blue Scallop Digital LLC. – All rights Reserved

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

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  Contents

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  1

  The early dawn air smelled like burned wood, ashes still drifting down through the air. But under it all was a sweeter scent, the kind that made your stomach turn and made Kate Summers fight the urge to flee.

  She looked at herself critically in the reflection from her car window. Her dark blond hair was in a neat short tail, out of the way and under control. Her brown eyes showed nothing of the chaos going on inside her head as she fought demons from her past. Twenty years ago, she had lost her parents to a freak house fire. She had arrived home in time to see their scorched and charred bodies being removed from the wreckage. Kate met her own eyes and drew a deep breath, bringing up the strength she could always find in their depths. She had been eleven, and it had taken the better part of two decades to stop the nightmares. Twenty years to fulfill her job as a forensic analyst and come to scenes like this with no ill psychological effects.

  She turned away from her reflection and the destroyed house, under the pretense of looking over the firefighter’s overview. Anything to delay the moment of entering the burnt-down house and sifting through the ash and debris until the remains she could smell on the air were found.

  She shook her head. How was it that fires like this were so common? In all her time working for the force here in New York City, she had been called into dozens, most of them accidents, like the one that took her parents.

  “Hey, Dr. Summers? Are you going to read all day? We’re on a clock here, that road needs to be reopened asap, or it’s my ass that’ll get fried.”

  She looked up to the man who had shouted her name. Middle-aged, ruddy-faced with a short temper and a big heart, Kirk Mackenzie waved her over impatiently.

  “Coming,” she called back to her boss, the Police Commissioner.

  Kate swapped out the firefighter’s report for her field kit and headed to the edge of the scene. She heard three sets of feet fall into step behind her and knew her team was following. For now, it was just her and her hand-picked few. If their investigations brought up anything to make this seem intentional rather than accidental, more manpower would be sent her way.

  “What kept you?”

  She flashed Commissioner Kirk a small smile. “You know me. I like to be thorough. The nature of the fire is important.”

  His eyebrows rose towards his receding hairline. “And? Did your careful and overly lengthy perusal of the fire department’s preliminary report give you any insight?”

  She felt her eyes darken and nodded. “The flames movement and difficulty to control and quench makes me think arson rather than accident, although the start point does seem to have been the kitchen.”

  Kirk let out a heavy sigh, then swept his eyes over her once, his voice stern. “Then get to it. I can buy you two hours of relative peace, but then the media and all the freaks this city has to offer will be descending like vultures. Give me something to tell them, okay?”

  Kate patted his shoulder with her free hand. “Don’t worry, boss, I’d never let them tear you apart.”

  “That’s my girl.”

  She threw him a mock glare for his embarrassing words, then steeled herself and entered the blackened, crumbled remains.

  “Split up,” she said, glancing to her team. Two women and one man, all of whom had worked with her for nearly a decade. There was no need to give better instruction; they knew what to do.

  Following her own words, Kate moved towards the area of the house she would be scouring. She had little doubt that the fire department’s final report would be a call to investigate suspicious circumstances. It was up to her to find what was needed to add more weight to that or prove it unfounded. Sometimes people kept the weirdest things in their homes that lead to accelerating an accidental fire.

  She began sifting through the ash in what was once the kitchen and jumped as something moved in the debris.

  Kate let out a shaking chuckle, scolding herself. It was just her own reflection in a twisted bit of half-melted metal.

  “Keep it together, girl,” she told herself, resuming her digging through the ashes.

  She worked slowly, methodically, from one end of the space to the other and then back again in a careful grid pattern. She would often pause to photograph some piece of evidence in situ before bagging and tagging it. From other parts of the ashy world of grays and blacks, she could hear, and sometimes see, her colleagues doing the same. No one had yet found remains, or they would have called her over.

  She moved again and slowly began to shift things aside when a charred hand, wrist, and forearm became visible in the ashes.

  Found you.

  Kate loosed a heavy breath and began snapping photographs, more each time she uncovered another piece of the body.

  Finally, she picked up her voice recorder. “Charred remains, little to no soft tissue remaining. Structural indicators show the remains to be an African female, mid to late thirties. Wedding band still in place, no other jewelry or clothes remaining. Preliminary visual, in situ examination, shows no other damage to the bones. Probable cause of death, burning or smoke-related asphyxiation.”

  “You found one too,” said a soft male voice from behind her as she stopped recording.

  She snapped another picture then tilted her head back so that she could see Matt, the youngest but most promising member of her team. “You found a body? Why didn’t you call me?”

  He took in the annoyance in her tone then merely gestured towards the edge of the scene. Several media vans were already crowding the police cars lined up, and cameras were out and rolling.

  “I didn’t think it was a good idea to shout it across the house.”

  Kate looked back. She’d clearly been digging through the ashes longer than she had thought for the media to have descended upon them. “You did the right thing. I am done here. You can get the others to bag this one. Where is your find?”

  Matt half-smiled at the rare compliment. “In the bedroom. Took some effort to get to, what with all the roofing debris, but I took all the professional photographs.”

  Kate rose, brows furrowed. “If you’ve already done all the work yourself, then why bother calling me now?”

  Matt’s hazel eyes rose to hers. “Because I don’t think that one died from the fire, but I don’t have the experience to make a call like that. Nor standing with the commissioner.”

  Kate caught the jab about her close, father-daughter type relationship with the commissioner, but let it slide.

  She moved off towards what would have been the bedroom.

  Matt had done as he’d stated. The roofing debris had been shifted aside. As had the remains of the furniture and possessions that once populated the room. It was a testament to the fierceness of the fire that the roof had been reduced to ea sily movable parts.

  She bent closer and then moved slowly around the body, a stretch of charred bones, snapping her own photos.

  The flash rebounded off something near the head, and she stopped, bent down, and reached out a gloved hand. A gold frame was poking out of the ashes. She tilted the skull slowly to expose more of the object. It looked like a solid gold book, slim and tightly sealed. She took a few more shots before pulling it from the ash.

  She opened the case slowly and sighed. In it was a photograph of the people these bones had once been. They were smiling, holding each other tight. In front of them lounged a dog, some crossbreed mix, tongue lolling out and clearly as happy as his owners.

  Kate glanced automatically over the ashy world, wondering if the dog had made it out or if his bones were buried here somewhere too.

  Shaking her head, she turned back to the man, whose wedding band was also still in place, and found the source of Matt’s worry quickly. There were two long gouges between the third and fourth ribs. Although the fire damage made it more difficult, she managed to spot a corresponding triangular nick in the spine. Proof that whatever object had struck him had gone cleanly through his lung and hit the spine. It was as Matt had suspected. A fatal wound. This man did not die in the fire.

  2

  Kate moved back from the microscope and stretched out her arms. It had been a long three days since the Duncan house had gone up in flames. Her investigation on Mrs. Duncan had revealed a blow to the back of her head delivered prior to her death. However, there was no reason to assume that this had not been caused by her collapsing from smoke inhalation. They had also found the weapon that had taken Mr. Duncan’s life, or at least, the blade of it; the handle had been reduced to ash. Unsurprisingly, no evidence remained on the knife to help them any further. Anything like their usual fare of forensic tidbits had been eaten up by the flames.

  She shook her head. The angle and force of the blow made her conclude that the man had stabbed himself. Her extraordinary conclusion had been met with high skepticism, not helped by the lack of other evidence. Despite this, the theory was that he and his wife had fought; he’d pushed her so that she injured her head, thought her dead, and started the fire before committing suicide with a hunting knife.

  “Hey, Dr. S?”

  She turned towards the door. “Yes, Matt?”

  “Boss wants you. I wouldn’t keep him waiting.”

  She took in the look on his face and saw the same look on Nadine and Sarah’s faces, the other two forensic techs in the lab with her and felt her heart sink and then begin to beat out a slow rhythm of anger. “Does it have to be now?”

  Matt nodded once, and Kate swallowed a curse. Someone somewhere in this building had caused her trouble, again. It had been happening in every house fire case she had been put on for the past five years.

  She stood and left without a word, keeping her eyes forward until she reached the Commissioner’s office.

  “You wanted to see me?” she asked, entering without knocking.

  Kirk’s instant anger met the one burning in her eyes, and he did not voice the reprimand she could see in his face. “Close the door.”

  Kate did as he asked, then moved and collapsed into a chair uninvited. “They did it again, didn’t they?”

  It was a further mark of their relationship that he didn’t comment on her rudeness. Instead, he nodded and swiveled his screen so that she could see the news article.

  “I need you to think, Summers, when did you say something like this in the past three days?”

  Kate heard him but didn’t immediately reply, scanning the article and fighting her clenched fists, which seemed intent on driving her nails through her palms. The report was for some back-alley tabloid, like all the others. It spoke of a girl with an undisclosed tragic past. One no force had wanted until the golden new Commissioner that was Kirk Mackenzie took pity on her or perhaps saw talent no one else had. An ability related to fires. According to them, she had some kind of unnatural ability to predict if a fire was accidental or deliberate. It was never the work of years of study to be the top of her class, or the intensive experience she had gained since then, barely ever taking a day off. Like all the others, this article contained a quote from her, stating that the Duncan fire was not an accident. It then went on to make a meal of the fact that she had said it before the scene had been investigated and laid out ridiculous reasons why she had been right.

  “I told you, and only you, my observations from the fire department’s prelim,” she said, meeting his eyes and responding to his question, letting her anger fade. “If you’re thinking it had to be someone in earshot, then that narrows the pool drastically.”

  Kirk sighed. “I hope it helps as much as your tone shows you want it to.”

  Kate felt her anger begin to build again. “You mean they’re still not going to do anything to help us?”

  Kirk sighed. “You know they won’t. The news doesn’t care about confidentiality, and it never misquotes you. Your past is never actually dug up and put on parade. There’s nothing there that the powers that be would get off their asses for.”

  Kate swallowed a string of profanities. He was right. The article had been right too. Despite being top of her graduating class, it had been nearly impossible for her to find work in criminal forensics. Someone who suffered tragedy was considered damaged and an unwise choice for work in a field where they would encounter more tragedy daily. Only Kirk had seen her promise and her strength. He had become something like a mentor.

  “You telling me to just go home, take the weekend and come back on Monday pretending that no one here has it out for me?”

  Kirk met her eyes then chuckled. “You still think they’re trying to ruin you?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “All these articles paint you like some superhuman. Looks more like they’re trying to give you a cult following,” Kirk smiled. “But you were right about the first part. I do think you should go home. Unless you think you’re close to a break-through.”

  Kate huffed a small laugh, then shook her head. “No break-through. Everything in our calculations indicates that he stabbed himself. Even the location of the blade was near enough to his body to support that.”

  “But why? And why commit suicide in such a gruesome way? Surely the common methods are common for a good reason.”

  Kate shrugged. “If you want a solid why I suggest you hire a medium. I’m just a science geek. I can tell you only what science tells me. Did the neighbors give anything good?”

  “Looks like there was a third person possibly. But nothing that’ll help us catch them. It was too dark for anyone to be sure. Just a silhouette that looked smaller and slimmer than the Duncan’s. They said the dog didn’t kick up a fuss, so they thought nothing of the late-night visit.”

  Kate frowned. The dog. Charred animal remains had been located in what had been the downstairs bathroom, but with a clear murder-cum-suicide, they had focused on the human remains.

  Kirk’s eyes narrowed. “I know that look. Can't it wait?”

  Kate met his eyes briefly as she stood. “I’ll go home when I have examined the dog.”

  “The dog? What in…”

  His voice faded as she let the door shut behind her. Her mind was already thinking ahead. If a third person had indeed been there, this might have been some kind of revenge ploy. But if there had been a stranger in the house, the dog should have been going nuts. Unless it had been killed first.

  She reached the lab and summoned her three colleagues. “Sarah, how far are you through the particles?” she asked, referring to the near one hundred little evidence bags they brought back with various bits in them.

  “About a quarter through. Nothing that doesn’t belong yet.”

  Kate nodded. “Nadine, help her. Our other cases can take a back seat for the moment. I want them all done by tomorrow evening.”

  The women nodded and moved off, leaving Matt watching her expectantly. Kate had a fleeting moment of suspicion that he might be their leak, then shook herself. “Matt, I want you to run the measurements on Mrs. Duncan’s head wound. Match it to anything and everything that might have caused the damage and then run simulations for the amount of force required, angle of the blow, etc.”

 

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