She gasped. “You’re right. I dared you to jump and the challenge escalated from there.”

  The great diving incident had been the last day they spent together without the cooler kid from Cali. He’d heard about Naomi’s escapade and wanted to meet her. He and his mother were in the high-end condo community next door to the one Casey and Naomi were at. From that point on the west coast kid spent his every free moment on their side of the brick wall that separated the two communities.

  “We were kids,” he said, continuing on the path to the shack of a cabin. “Kids are reckless sometimes.”

  “I’m just glad to have survived.”

  Casey moved more fully in front of her as they reached the narrow porch on the shack. At the door he raised a fist and knocked a couple of times. It was way too quiet. They’d made plenty of noise on the walk up. The last thing he wanted to do was surprise the old guy.

  “Mr. Cotton,” Naomi called. “Are you home? It’s Naomi Honea. I brought a friend.” She glanced at Casey. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “We’re friends?”

  She smiled. He forgot to breathe. He gave himself a mental shake and knocked on the door again.

  No response. Not even the slightest sound.

  An old truck sat next to the house. There were other vehicles, too, but none that would run without taking a sapling or two with them. “You know if that truck is his current ride?”

  “No idea. It’s the same one that was here before. The others, too.”

  Casey knocked again. Louder this time.

  Still nothing.

  He hitched his head to the right. “Move over there.”

  She did as he asked, and he reached for the door. The knob turned without any resistance. Unlocked.

  “Stay put,” he ordered as he drew his weapon.

  He moved beyond the threshold. Exigent circumstances were questionable. He actually had no real reason to believe Cotton was in danger. But he wasn’t answering the door. An operable vehicle sat in the yard. The resident was a hermit and the door was unlocked. Casey doubted he would go anywhere without locking the door.

  “Mr. Cotton?”

  The house was dark with only narrow slats of light slipping in through the closed shutters on the windows. He used the flashlight app on his phone to look around. No light switches, not even a pull string from an overhead fixture. Cotton was obviously a hoarder. Stacks and stacks of newspapers and magazines and boxes sat around the perimeter of the room. Otherwise, it was surprisingly clean and tidy.

  A fireplace appeared to be his heat source. Beyond the living room area was a small kitchen as well as a bedroom. He checked the bedroom first. Narrow bed tucked against the wall. Small dresser with drawers. No closet. He walked back into the kitchen. A window over the sink drew his attention. He crossed the small room in three strides and looked out over the small clearing that comprised the backyard before disappearing into the dense woods.

  Then he understood why Mr. Cotton wasn’t answering.

  “Naomi!”

  She stepped in through the front door. “Did you find him?”

  “I did.” He turned to her. “I want you to stay here in the house. I’ll be right back.”

  He exited the back door, which was also unlocked, before she could question him. The grass was knee-deep in the back. There was a small shed at the edge of the woods. An old-fashioned hand-operated well.

  Elmer Cotton hung from an orange nylon rope. The ladder lying about three feet away appeared to be the way he’d reached the sturdy tree limb and tied the rope there. It would seem that he’d made a noose on the other end, put it around his neck and then jumped from the ladder. There was no question he was dead. The lividity in his bare feet was obvious.

  “Oh my God.”

  Naomi stood at the back door, her hands over her mouth.

  “Stay where you are,” he ordered, “until I’ve had a look around.” The unknown subject could still be in the area.

  He moved all the way around the clearing. Scanned the ground for trampled grass. At the front of the house he found no indentation showing a vehicle had been in the yard other than his SUV. The killer likely parked on the road and slipped through the woods. Taking the elderly man completely by surprise. He moved back into the house then. Naomi waited in the kitchen near the back door just as he’d asked her to do.

  “Don’t touch anything,” Casey warned. “This is now a crime scene.”

  It was possible the old man had taken his life. He’d been pretty upset when Naomi told him about Arlene’s death. But Casey never liked a scenario that was too easy. Too convenient. Until he was certain, he wasn’t taking any chances.

  Casey was grateful for enough bars on his cell to call Sheriff Tanner and report the situation. Once the call was made, Naomi followed him back to his SUV where they donned gloves. They’d already been inside so no point in bothering with shoe covers.

  “Let’s have a look around.” He glanced at her. “Let me know if anything looks different than the way it was when you were here before.”

  She nodded. “Got it.”

  Fearless Naomi was a little shaken at the moment. Her lower lip had trembled when she spoke. Jumping off a pier and breaking the rules was vastly different from murder and so far she’d stumbled into several murder scenes. This may or may not be another but it involved a death nonetheless.

  He surveyed the wall of articles and photos Cotton had collected and displayed. Definitely a conspiracy theorist. His focus appeared to have been primarily on politics from decades ago. More recently he’d gone off on a tangent about pesticides and food additives. A few articles were related to climate change. But most of the recent articles were about how humans were being poisoned in an effort to depopulate the earth.

  “Hey! I think I found something!”

  The shout came from the bedroom. Casey joined Naomi there. Above the small dresser was a painting. Maybe eleven by fourteen. The woman was nude, seated on the edge of a pool or fountain, looking back over her shoulder at the artist.

  “I think this is Arlene,” Naomi said. “She looks much younger, maybe thirtyish, but I think it’s her.”

  Casey reached out and carefully lifted the unframed canvas from the wall. He turned it around and there was a large envelope tucked into the back.

  “How about holding that for me while I put the canvas back?”

  Naomi removed the envelope. He placed the canvas back on the wall and took the envelope from her. “Let’s have a look.”

  With the top of the dresser clear, he opened the envelope and spread the contents there. More yellowed newspaper articles. A few pages cut from magazines. A couple of photos. Old photos.

  “Some of these are in German,” Naomi pointed out.

  One article showed the date: 1958. November.

  Casey carefully laid out the articles in German and snapped photos. “I’ll send these in for translation.”

  “Here’s one in English.” Naomi pointed to another article. “This one is from 1964.” She pointed to the photo next to the article. “This is the woman in the painting.”

  “Has to be.” Casey quickly read the article. Naomi did the same, hovering close to see over his arm.

  Ursula Becker escaped East Berlin with her five-year-old daughter, Anna. Becker, a brilliant scientist, defected to the US and has been offered a position at the prestigious Johns Hopkins.

  “Anna,” Naomi said. “Becker. Beck. This must be Arlene and her mother, which would mean the painting is her mother, not Arlene.”

  “That would be my assessment, as well.” Casey moved through the articles. The newest one was from 1975. “Ursula Becker was murdered in 1975.”

  Naomi took the article from him and read it. “The police believed her to be a victim of a so-called Nazi hunter for crimes against humanity during the Holocaust.” She moved her head slowly side to side. “What in the world is all this?”

  Dread thickened in Casey’s gut. Were they looking at mob murders or something else altogether?

  Honea Farm, 2:00 p.m.

  NAOMI ENTERED DIFFERENT words into the search box. There had to be more about Ursula Becker. Naomi had come back to the farm an hour or so ago. A deputy had driven her home. Casey was still at Mr. Cotton’s shack—the latest crime scene. She shuddered.

  For her sanity’s sake, she had stayed away from the news and social media. Reporters were all over town. She’d seen all sorts of different news vans on the drive back through town. They had descended on the Cotton property right behind the forensics team. Naomi had hunkered down in the rear floorboard of the county cruiser to escape without the reporters seeing her.

  To occupy herself, she had been searching for information since she got back to the farm. If Arlene was Anna Becker, Naomi had never once heard her use a German accent or a German word, much less a phrase. But she’d been in the United States since she was five years old. It was possible she didn’t remember living anywhere but the US. Her mother may have worked hard to avoid the use of her native tongue—even going so far as to erase her accent. Had her mother changed her name to Beck, as well? No, no. The article from 1975 had used the name Ursula Becker.

  Ursula Becker came to this country as a renowned geneticist. The accusations against her as cited by the words scrawled on the wall above her dead body all those years ago were for her crimes against humans at Auschwitz alongside Josef Mengele. A handful of survivors from Auschwitz insisted she had served as Mengele’s closest assistant.

  Naomi reminded herself to breathe. Had her parents known who Arlene really was? About her family history? If any of this was true—and Naomi was so blown away by the idea that she couldn’t quite make the leap—how could they not have known? This was beyond the scope of anything she could have imagined when this nightmare began.

  The portrait in Mr. Cotton’s house and the photo in the newspaper article of the woman, Ursula Becker, certainly resembled Arlene. The likeness was uncanny. At this point there was no confirmation, but it couldn’t be anything else.

  Had Mr. Cotton discovered Arlene’s true identity?

  Naomi gave herself a mental shake. She had read about these horrors in history class. Watched the occasional documentary. A movie with her dad once. But this wasn’t something that happened in small-town Tennessee. This was truly stranger than fiction.

  Unquestionably more horrific than fiction.

  If it was true that Ursula Becker was guilty, that didn’t mean Arlene—her daughter—was guilty just because of the family connection. She left Germany when she was five. How could she have known or even remembered?

  How on earth had Mr. Cotton gotten involved with this? How had he figured it out? She thought of all the political articles she’d seen posted at his place. Maybe she should have read them instead of assuming what they were. No doubt Casey’s people were combing each one thoroughly.

  Mr. Cotton had asked her what she knew about him, then he’d said there were things about him that were dangerous.

  Is this what he’d meant?

  At least now she had some inkling as to why Arlene appeared not to have existed before coming to work on the farm nearly forty years ago.

  Where had she been between 1975 and when she showed up here? In hiding? After her mother’s murder, maybe she had been on the run. But why? At five years old when she fled Germany it was doubtful she had harmed anyone or knew things that could be helpful to anyone. Why would she have no choice but to hide? Why would anyone want to harm her?

  Unless she’d followed in her mother’s footsteps and had done some inhumane work here. On the farm. The remains she’d found...the body parts in the boxes—all of it made Naomi’s chest constrict.

  This was all too over the top. Like a bad movie. And if there was one thing Naomi knew it was bad movies.

  She stared out the kitchen window toward the lab Arlene had loved so much. What kind of person kept human remains in their freezer? Had recently decapitated victims delivered on dry ice to their secret address? Terror, black and inky, slithered through Naomi.

  Good grief, what had her parents gotten themselves into? Her mom and dad had been very intelligent people—her mother was a physician, for God’s sake. Surely they weren’t fooled for all those years.

  Naomi hoped they had been.

  She really, really did.

  A rap on the front door drew her to the living room. She peeked beyond the curtain and spotted Casey. She unlocked the door and welcomed him in. Her mind needed a break from this new level of her ongoing nightmare. Not that he likely had any good news but at least she would stop coming up with more terrifying theories if she were distracted.

  She didn’t even want to consider the rumors likely going around the community. Honea Horror Farm. She shuddered inwardly.

  “Were you able to get the articles translated?” What was she saying? Of course he had. He was the FBI. They could make anything happen.

  “Is that coffee I smell?”

  “Yes. You want a cup?”

  “I would love a cup.”

  Naomi hurried to the kitchen and filled a mug, then joined him in record time.

  “Tell me,” she urged. She lowered into her chair and waited.

  He sat down on the sofa. Sipped his coffee and smiled. “That hits the spot.”

  Her nerves were jangling. She forced a smile. Silently she urged him to get on with it.

  “The articles were lauding the brilliance of a young scholar, Ursula Becker. She was mentored by the top research scientists in Germany. There is no mention in her history about being at Auschwitz or any of the other places used by the Nazis. The trouble comes later, after the war, when her name showed up on a list put together by a group of survivors. Her murder was never solved, and no one openly took credit. Her daughter, who was a senior at Harvard no less, vanished. They kept their lives very private, so we haven’t found a lot of background yet, but we’ve got people on it.”

  “How did Mr. Cotton play into this insanity?”

  “We don’t know. He was a research scientist at NASA. About twenty-five years ago he had what was referred to as a breakdown. No one has heard from him since. I guess that’s when he went off the grid here.”

  “So, Arlene shows up here. Then Cotton. They had to know each other before. It’s the only logical conclusion.”

  “We’re leaning toward that scenario, but we have no proof just yet.”

  Naomi took a breath. “I need to know what conclusions your team has reached regarding the farm and all that’s happened here.” Right under her nose, she didn’t add. Under her parents’ noses!

  “I can share with you what we have so far.” He savored another slug of coffee. “The remains found in the freezer were filleted from the bones. There are no parts of organs present.”

  Her heart thumped harder with his every word. “The red market,” she said, her words hardly more than a whisper.

  His gaze narrowed. “What do you know about the red market?”

  “Only what I found on my internet searches since finding what I did in that freezer. Sometimes the organs and bones are sold separately from the rest.”

  “We believe,” he went on, “that is likely the case. The organs were obviously harvested before the rest ended up here. We’re investigating the possibility that Beck was using the rest of the tissue in her work on your farm. The part we haven’t been able to work into the scenario is the absence of the bones. Like you said, they were likely sold. Separately obviously. It just seems strange not to find a single one. Did she sell those first? Who knows? But we have some measure of evidence on the rest but nothing on the bones beyond the probability that they arrived here like the intact remains we found on her High Street porch. From there, we don’t know yet.”

  The shaking started deep inside Naomi. This nightmare had reached new, unfathomable levels. “You have to believe me when I say my parents would never have gone along with something like this. She had to be doing this on her own. Maybe after my mom’s death, during my father’s grief.”

  His steady brown eyes held on to hers for a long moment. “You have my word that we are exploring every possibility, including that one.”

  Naomi wanted to feel relieved but honestly it was impossible. To ask this man—his team—to assume all of this happened right here on the farm where her parents lived and worked without their knowledge was a stretch. She was aware.

  “I’ve worked with Arlene for over a year and I had no clue.”

  He nodded. “It’s possible. Some people are very good at hiding the bad things they do.”

  Was that an agreement with what she’d just said or a warning to brace herself for learning what her parents may have been doing?

  “What happens now?” she asked, her voice sounding hollow. She was so tired. More tired than she had ever been before.

  “I’d like you to help me with the search. You grew up here. If I know you as well as I think I do, you probably explored every square inch of this farm.”

  A real smiled touched her lips then. “I did. I’d roam the woods and the fields daydreaming about my escape.”

  He chuckled. “I think we all did some daydreaming about escaping as kids.”

  An escape would really be nice about now. Except reality was not going to allow that to happen anytime soon.

  “Let me grab my hiking boots and we’ll get started.”

  “The temperature is dropping, and the wind is up, so you might need a hat of some sort.”

  “Good idea.”

  She hurried upstairs, used the bathroom, then located her most comfortable boots, a scarf and a beanie. As she passed her parents’ room, she hesitated. “I hope you weren’t keeping secrets from me.”

  Not these kinds of secrets, anyway.