Mari Bauer is a resident of Holstein, Iowa where she has owned and operated the Holstein Advance for the past sixteen years. Bauer basis the information used in her storylines from numerous classes she has taken in forensics, abnormal psychology, criminology and hours of research. Besides writing she spends her free time working with her horses, gardening, and spending time with her two children, Tyler and Kelsey.
After her ordeal with Serial Killer, Justin Parsons, Maddy Sheridan finds herself struggling to cope with the mental trauma she is experiencing because of it. While at a visit to her psychiatrist, Maddy is approached by a young girl who recognizes her from the stories in the paper about the kidnapping. The girl, seventeen year old, Jillian Masters, later confides in Maddy that she thinks a family member is sexually assaulting her friend, Wendy Patterson. Jillian calls Maddy to take her to her friend because she is worried something awful has happened. What Maddy finds is Wendy dead from an apparent suicide. Or is it? The scene just doesn’t add up for Maddy and leads her to believe Wendy’s death is not a suicide but a murder. In order to keep Maddy from returning to her former position as an FBI profiler, Jackson Parker gets Maddy a job as a consulting Offender Profiler and Crime Scene Analyst for the SCPD. The Patterson murder becomes her first case. Three days into the case, Wendy’s stepbrother, Josh, is found dead in what appears to be a violent car accident. After examining the vehicle and Josh’s body, Maddy comes to the conclusion; this too, is not as it appears to be. In Josh’s car, they find the evidence missing from Wendy’s murder, but Maddy doesn’t believe he is the perp but was set up to make it look like he was the killer. The two people who can be linked to both kids are Jillian and Wendy’s boyfriend, Chad Tucker. Maddy uncovers a diabolical plan perpetuated by the psychopathic teenager and her friend’s boyfriend who, he himself, is caught up in Jillian’s web of lies and deceit. Now the hard part—proving it. The investigation becomes a game of cat and mouse between Maddy and Jillian as Maddy struggles to find some way to link Jillian to the murders. Suspicion doesn’t get you a conviction. The second volume of the Maddy Sheridan series finds Maddy working with Chief of Detectives Jack Parker, former FBI agents Detective Bryan Mayland and Detective Andy Whittmer, or as they are known around the precinct as the Feeb Squad. This volume highlights Maddy’s skills and a profiler and crime scene expert. Maddy reveals more of her desire for the truth, her wicked sense of humor, and fiery Irish temper.
Excerpt
Maddy pulled in the drive and waited while Jillian ran to the house. First she rang the doorbell. When she apparently got no response, Jillian beat on the door then tried the door handle, but it was securely locked. She ran around the house, first peeking in the garage then the house windows. Then she disappeared to the backside of the house. She came back to Maddy and stood by her door talking through the open window on Maddy’s side of the car “I can’t get in. Her parents’ cars and her brother’s car are gone. Just hers is in the garage. I heard a popping noise from inside the house. You’ve got to help me get in the house, Maddy.”
Maddy said a silent prayer. A locked up house, the popping noise she suspected was gunfire. Maddy didn’t want to alarm Jillian. She reached in her glove compartment and pulled a pair of latex gloves. Just out of habit, Maddy told herself.
The freezing rain peppered her face, stinging her exposed skin. The temperature wasn’t drastically cold or the ice would have been snow. The sidewalk to the rear of the house had not been scooped. The snow crunched under the pressure of her feet as she trudged through it. Jillian was dogging her so closely she thought she would over run her.
Maddy tried the door. Locked. She looked around for the slim possibility of a hidden key. She took off a glove and ran her hand along the doorframe. No key. A grill was just off her right covered in snow. She knelt down and searched for a magnetic key holder. No luck. Sheesh, these people could have made it easier to break in. If a key would have been hidden under a rock or other outside object, the snow was too deep to find it. “Stand back,” she told Jillian. She took her elbow and jammed it to a small windowpane section in the back door shattering the glass. She slid her hand through the opening, grazing her hand on a small shard of glass still in the door. A tiny scrape on her skin began to bleed. Damn, so much for keeping the scene clean. She pulled on the latex gloves and flexed her fingers. She easily popped the deadbolt lock and let them in. Jillian started to take off looking for her friend but Maddy held her hand up. “No, you stay behind me, you got that?”
“But I need to find Wendy,” she stammered.
“You need to do what you’re told.” Those words coming back to haunt her. She hoped Jillian listened better than she did. Maddy did a quick scan of each room as they passed through. Jillian called out for Wendy. The kitchen was tidy except for a few dishes in the sink and a frying pan on the stove. It was an eat-in kitchen. A smaller table, only large enough to seat four people, was placed under a double window. Interesting, five in the family, four seats. They didn’t eat together. The room smelt faintly of bacon.
A swinging door opened up into the living room/dining room. The dining room table had a mass of scattered papers thrown about it. They appeared to be bills, magazines, junk mail and the sort.
The living room was furnished with an old blue floral couch and a matching over stuffed chair. The coffee table was covered with dried out glasses, beer and pop cans. Nice, real nice.
Jillian tried to brush past her to head for the stairs, but Maddy grabbed her arm. “I said don’t,” she said harshly. “You don’t listen to me, I will drag your ass out of here, understand?”
“Like you could, I’m bigger than you,” she smarted off.
“Listen little girl, I am a trained FBI agent. I could flatten your ass in heartbeat. You don’t believe me, just push it.” Maddy’s voice was stern. She would do it if she had to.
“Bullshit, you’re a reporter.”
Maddy raised her eyebrow, “Really? Just a reporter? How do think you I got to work on the Parsons case? As a reporter? I don’t think so. Now wait behind me while we go up. If I say stop, you do it. Which bedroom is Wendy’s?
“Second on the left. So you’re not shittin’ me about the FBI thing?”
“No.” Maddy slowly pushed the door open a crack. The scent of spent gunpowder and the acrid, metallic smell of blood assaulted her senses. “Okay, Jillian, I am dead serious about you not coming in here. Actually I want you to go downstairs, sit down and wait for me. Will you do that, please?”
“Why?”
“God damn it, just do what I tell you, okay?” Maddy snapped.
“You don’t have to be such a bitch about it, Maddy. Man, I thought you were different.”
“I am different… you have no clue how different.” Maddy waited as she watched Jillian disappear down the steps.
She pushed the door all the way open to expose the room without going in. Wendy’s room was done up in different shades of pink and white with lots of frilly pillows and stuffed animals. Her bedspread was white chenille. Wendy was lying across the bed at a slant. A bare foot hung over the edge, the other tucked below one knee. Her toenails were painted pink. She was wearing yellow pajamas. Her body was slender with well sculpted legs. Maddy’s eyes continued to move up her still body. One arm was flung over her head; the other flopped off to the side. It was what was in between that sent waves through Maddy’s body. Blood covered the edge of the bed, the source seeming to be stemming from somewhere on her head. Maddy very hesitantly moved forward into full view of something that will be forever burned in her memory. One side of her face looked like Wendy. High cheekbones, long blonde hair slightly strung over her face. There the likeness ended. Her skin had an ashen paper like quality, the one eye, her left, she could see, was pale blue, staring unseeing into space. Her eyes followed Wendy’s face line. There on the right side of her mouth was a gaping entrance hole, blood, tissue, and teeth spattered in her pillow. The shot had followed up jawbone and made an exit out of the back end of her scalp. Blood spatter, brain matter, and bone shards sprayed the desk, the chair in front of it and the wall. She had bled out down the edge of the bed and onto the wood floor below her head.
Maddy peered around the edge of her bed. On the floor lay a steel blue handgun. Her first thought was the recoil must have placed it where it rested. But something about it struck her as being odd. She snatched a pen from a near by desk, poked it between the trigger and the finger guard and lifted it up. She heard Jack’s voice echoing in her ears, ‘Don’t touch anything.’ Bullshit, she had gloves on, and she had worked scenes. She pulled out the clip. Odd, three open rounds. Her eyes scanned the room looking for the spent casings. There should be at least one on the bed near the head or perhaps within a few feet, depending on how far the gun ejected it. Nothing, not a trace. She stepped back then got on her hands and knees and looked under the bed. Now this was just not right. It didn’t just walk away. Maddy went to set the gun back in its same location when something about the gun caught her eye. There was no blowback on the gun.
A pink envelope was propped up against a PC on Wendy’s desk. Suicide note? She couldn’t open it, it was sealed.
Maddy backed out of the room and closed the door. Jillian was standing against the wall, tears streaming down her face.
“She killed herself?” her voice was quivering, there was fear in her eyes.
“It appears that way,” Maddy said softly. “Come on, let’s go back down stairs. We need to call the police.”
She led Jillian downstairs and had her sit on the couch. “Jillian, I need you to go sit out in my car. How much have you touched things since you came in the house?”
“Don’t know, not much. Why?”
“Just asking, now please go sit in my car. Go back out through the backdoor, walk in the same tracks we left coming in here.”
Maddy dug out her cell phone from her coat pocket, punched in Jack’s cell number and waited for him to answer.
“Hey, Kitten, I need to call you back. I’m kind of in the middle of a meeting.”
“It’s going to have wait. I’m at a scene you need to check out. Jillian called me to take her to her friend’s house. She was worried about her so I brought her here and it’s not good.”
“What the hell are you doing out on these roads? Thought Bryan told you to stay home.” Jack said alittle tersely.
“God damn, it would you listen to me…for once? We got a sixteen-year-old dead girl here with a GSW through her head. I need you to get your ass over here, bring the coroner, a wagon, and CSU.” Maddy ordered him.
“You serious?”
“No, Jack, I’m fucking with your head.” She gave him the address and asked that he hurry.
Maddy left the house, exiting from the back door. She scanned the yard for disruption. Nothing, no footprints other than theirs in the snow. She found a shivering and shaking Jillian sitting in her car. She was no longer crying, her face was stoic, her eyes fixed and vacant. Shock was setting in. Maddy started her car and cranked up the heat.
She squeezed Jillian’s hand. “Sweetie, there is nothing you could have done. Once people make up their minds to do this, they do it. They tell no one and plan it so no one can stop them.”
Jillian turned to her, “I could have told someone who could have helped her. If I had given you her name yesterday, maybe you could have done something.”
“But you didn’t know. Chances are she never gave any hints she would do this.”
“She would never do this,” Jillian cried, “She loved Chad, she told him so last night.”
Maddy gave a soft sigh. More than likely she was telling him good-bye. Still, something wasn’t right. The scene just wasn’t right.
They sat quietly in the car until two patrol cars with flashing lights pulled up behind her car. Jack’s Impala followed up the rear. She watched as he got out. Bryan got out of the passenger side. What was he doing here?
“Stay here. They’re probably going to ask you some questions. Jack, the man you met yesterday, will more than likely be the one you talk to.” Maddy opened her car door and got out.
Jack saw a somber Maddy as she stepped out of the Cobalt. Someone else, he assumed Jillian, was sitting in the passenger seat. “What do we have here?”
“Apparent suicide, but I want you to take a closer look at the scene, see if you see what I see.”
Jack raised an eyebrow, “Did you fuck with the scene?”
Maddy glared at him, “Do I really need to answer that question after everything you’ve seen me do at crime scenes?”
Jack turned from her without answering and strode towards the front door.
“You have to go in the back, front door’s locked,” she told him as she dogged his heals. Just like in the old days, she thought.
When Jack arrived at the back door he observed the broken windowpane. He looked back at Maddy. “Your handiwork?”
“We had to gain entrance. You will also find a trace of my blood on the glass.”
Jack slipped on a pair of latex gloves and handed Maddy a pair. “I am assuming you gloved up before you went in?”
“Of course I did. I’m not stupid.”
“Never said you were.” He stepped through the door and held out his hand. “Lead the way.”
Maddy guided him to Wendy’s room. She stood in the doorway while he entered.
He got on his radio and asked if CSU had arrived yet. When it was confirmed, he told them to send up the photographer. He viewed the young girl’s body, the way she was splayed on the bed. “What did you touch? Did you move anything?”
“I picked up the gun and checked the chamber, then placed it exactly where it was in the same position. Now look around, see if you come to the same conclusion I did.” She waited. He had to see it.
“You’re the crime scene expert, why don’t you just tell me,” he said flatly, looking at her.
“Why are you getting so pissy with me? Jillian called me asking for help. This is what I found.”
“Cuz you profiled the room before you called us. You had to get your read in first, didn’t you?” Jack picked up the gun in the same manner as she had.
Maddy rolled her eyes. She marked her territory before he got a chance to. Man, at that moment she wished she were still an agent. She could pull rank on him and squish him like a bug. “Would you quit whining and just look?”
Jack took the magazine out of the gun. She saw a puzzled look cross his face. “Three slots open. How many shots she get off?”
“Don’t know. I couldn’t locate any of the casings.” She watched his face. “And I do mean any casings.”
“None? Not even the fatal one?”
Maddy shook her head. “Unless she is laying on it. No, I didn’t touch the body.”
Jack lifted one shoulder of the body, and then gently adjusted the head to look beneath it. Nope, she was right, no casings. “The body is still warm. What do you figure for TOD?”
Now he was finally asking the questions which needed asking. “Approximately forty-five minutes ago. Jillian heard the gunshot when she went to the house to check on her. We entered the house within minutes. I discovered the body within seven minutes of entering the house.”
“How long did you spend with the body before calling me?”
“Maybe ten minutes tops.”
“Give me your phone.”
“Huh?”
“I said give me your phone.” He held out his hand.
Maddy dug it out of her pocket and handed it to him. First he looked at the time Jillian’s call was received and then at the time she placed the call to him. There was an hour and forty-five minutes between one and the other. He raised one eyebrow as he looked at her.
“The roads are shitty, damn.”
Then he brought up her photo file. Maddy’s mouth dropped. “Hey! Thanks for trusting me. I didn’t take any damn pictures.”
He grinned, “The old Maddy would have in a heartbeat.”
She snatched her phone from him. “I am not the old Maddy.”
“There is something else about the gun. See if you can figure it out,” she glanced from the gun to his face. He was just staring at her. “Well, go ahead,” she urged him impatiently.
Jack shook his head and smiled.
“What?”
“I love seeing you like this again.” He examined the gun closely. “There’s no blood on it.”
Maddy’s eyes lit up, “Exactly. It should have blowback on it and it doesn’t.”
“So what are you saying?” Jack asked her.
“I honestly don’t believe this is a suicide. Oh, and by the way, what’s Bryan doing here?”
Jack was still looking over the gun, “We’ll talk about it later. Give him a buzz and tell him to get up here. See if he sees what we see.”
She smiled to herself. Ha! She saw it first. She pulled her cell out and placed the call. “Jack wants you up here ASAP. Second bedroom to the right.”
Jack took out an evidence bag and was getting ready to slip the gun in. Maddy put up her hand, “No wait! Bryan needs to see it before you bag it.”
Just then Bryan poked his head in. “You called?” Then he saw the scene. “Holy shit, what the hell happened here?”
“Suicide,” Jack stated.
“Maybe,” Maddy added. “Look around, see what you see.”
Bryan quietly walked around the room. He examined the body more carefully than Jack or Maddy had. He seemed more interested in directional aim of the wound and the intensity of the blood splatter. “What kind of gun?”
“M-9.” Jack held it up by the pen.
“Let me see it.” Bryan took it from him by the pen, held it up and examined it. He then popped out the magazine. He just raised his eyebrow and dropped the gun into the evidence bag Jack was holding. Then he looked around the room, examining the walls. He took a penknife out his pocket, reached up to a poster and dug something out of the wall. A slug. “Now there is no way in hell this got here from there.” He pointed at the body.
Jack looked at Maddy, shit-eating grin on his face, “Ha! Miss Crime Scene Expert, you missed that one.”
She smacked him on his arm, “Shut up. I never said I was perfect.”
Bryan moved between the body and the desk, being careful not to disturb the body matter. “Look at the direction of the blood spatter. Was she lying down when she shot herself? That’s what the spatter is indicating. And what, she take a practice shot with the gun?” Bryan knelt down and examined the desk. He noticed a fraying in the wood on the edge of a cracked open drawer. He gently tugged at the drawer. Something fell within the drawer. “I need a needle nose pliers or a tweezers.”
Maddy popped out in the hallway and pushed open doors until she found a bathroom. A makeup bag was on the sink. She dug through it, tweezers, tweezers, ah, here we go, tweezers. She pulled them out, dashed back to the room and handed them to Bryan.
“Got another bag?”
Jack slipped one out of his coat pocket and held it up. “What you got?”
“The fatal shot,” he dropped it into the bag. “Blood and matter signature right on it. So now we have two accounted for, where is number three?”
Maddy felt her heart swell with pride. She hadn’t seen Bryan work a crime scene like this since the really old days. He was nothing like this when he worked the Parsons case. He acted more as an observer then. “What about the gun?”
“Well obviously there were three shells spent. Two are accounted for. What do we have for casings? There’s no blowback on the gun. Why? Have CSU search for the missing shot. Then I would get a trajectory study done. Kind of odd she would shoot herself lying down.”
“Yes, boss,” Jack chuckled. “Maddy searched for casings, nada.”
Bryan’s face turned a shade of red, “Sorry, force of habit, Mr. Lead Detective.”
“No worries,” he smiled. “Come on, crime scene expert, let’s go check out the rest of the house.”
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