Hidden Deception: A Shelby Nichols Adventure

by Colleen Helme

  We entered the interrogation room where a big, hard-eyed man sat at a table with his hair cut close to his head and his face covered in stubble. Diamond studs flashed in his ears. His thick, muscled arms were folded in front of him and covered with all kinds of tattoos.

  His stony face held defiance, but I caught the blast of unease that he tried to hide behind a façade of indifference. He looked me over and came to the conclusion that I wasn’t a cop. I had too much innocence in my eyes, and the cowboy boots were a dead give-away. No cop worth their salt would ever wear those to work. So why was I there?

  I almost glanced at my boots to see what was so wrong with them, and instead, sent him a stare of disapproval. It took him by surprise, since most people were intimidated by him, especially little girls like me. My breath hitched at the insult, but Dimples began his questioning, saving me from saying something foolish.

  “So, Dalton,” Dimples began. “Do you know why you’re here?”

  “I heard about Lincoln, so yeah, I guess I do. But I didn’t do it. I was with my girlfriend all night. You can ask her.”

  “How long did you work for him?” he asked.

  “About three months. Then a couple of days before he was killed, he pulled the plug on our jobs and let us go.”

  “Did he tell you why?”

  “No, but I got the idea that something was bothering him. I have no idea what that could be, but I guess he just changed his mind and told us we were done.”

  “Is that what the other employees said?” I asked Dimples.

  “Yes… they were all let go the day before he was killed.” Dimples turned to Dalton. “Do you know what happened to the list?”

  “No. Last I saw it, Lincoln had it.” He glanced at me, then looked away, and I picked up the lie pretty quick. He had the list and had taken it from Lincoln’s office that night.

  “Did you kill Lincoln for the list?” I asked.

  “No! I told you I was with my girlfriend.” I picked up that part was true, but it wasn’t until after he’d found the body and grabbed the list that he met up with her.

  “Look,” I said, leveling him with a hard stare. “I know you have the list. You went to the office later that afternoon and found Lincoln dead. It may have freaked you out, but not enough to not take advantage of the situation and grab the list as you left. You know there’s a small fortune in it. For all we know, you may have gone over there to steal it in the first place.” From his thoughts, I knew it was true.

  “You met up with your girlfriend after that, and I’m sure if we talk to her about being an accessory to murder, she’ll be more specific about the time. Now… do you want to cooperate, or do we charge you with murder?”

  He shook his head and pursed his lips. How did I know? He hadn’t done a thing to give himself away. But he couldn’t risk going back to prison, so he had to cooperate, even if that list was a goldmine. “If I cooperate, you have to promise to work out a deal with me. I can’t go back to prison.”

  “We might be able to do that,” Dimples agreed. “Taking the list is a felony and a parole violation, but as long as you give us the list, and tell the truth about what you saw, I’m sure we can work something out.”

  “All right. I have the list, but he was already dead when I got there. I swear it. I didn’t kill him. I don’t know who would have killed him, either. But I’ll give you the list and whatever else you need.”

  Dimples glanced at me and motioned with his head to move into the hall where we could talk. Outside, he leaned against the wall. “Are you sure he didn’t do it?”

  I twisted my lips and nodded. “He didn’t do it. The list is stashed in his closet if you want to get it from his apartment.”

  “Okay. I’ll have some officers take him back to his place for it.” Dimples moved toward the room, but I stopped him.

  “If Lincoln was killed for the list, why didn’t the killer take it? He left it there for someone else to find. Why would he do that?”

  “I don’t know.” Dimples shrugged. “Unless he knew if he was caught with the list, it would implicate him as the murderer.”

  “Or he could have made a copy,” I added.

  “That’s a possibility.” Dimples turned back into the interrogation room, while I walked out to his desk. Soon, two police officers escorted Dalton out, and Dimples came to sit beside me. “I wish it would have been him.”

  “Yeah, I hoped so too. So what do we do now?”

  “Study the list. The key to the murder has got to be tied up in it somehow. And there’s something else we need to consider.” Dimples took a deep breath, considering every angle. “If that list is as valuable as we think, Lincoln probably had a partner. If he quit, it might have made the partner angry enough to kill him.” He was thinking the partner could easily be tied to organized crime, since this sort of thing seemed right up their alley.

  He glanced at me, realizing I’d picked up every word. “Uh… it’s just a thought, but it might be worth checking out.” He didn’t want to ask me to spy on Uncle Joey, but he’d certainly let me volunteer to snoop around. “You still work for him?”

  “Occasionally. But I try to stay away. Let’s see what we can figure out from the list first, and save that as a last resort. Okay?”

  “Sure, sure,” he agreed. “That’s fine.” He didn’t want to put me in danger, so he’d wait. His phone rang, and he picked it up. Hearing both sides of the conversation, I knew what it was all about before he hung up. “That was the medical examiner about the bodies under your house.”

  “Hey… it’s not my house yet. I’m not even sure I want it anymore.”

  He sent me a teasing grin. “Yeah. I can understand that. Anyway, he’s identified how old the bodies are so we can start looking through the missing person’s cases. They are roughly a five-to-seven-year-old girl, and about a thirteen-to-fifteen-year-old boy, and they both would have gone missing about the same time ten years ago. Want to go to the cold case room with me? That’s where the missing person’s files are.”

  “Are you serious? I hate that place.”

  “I know, but we’ve got to start somewhere.” He was thinking that if I was serious about helping, I’d go with him. Besides, if we were both down there, it wouldn’t be so bad.

  “Oh… so you want me to come so you won’t be scared… now I get it.”

  Dimples just grinned and walked toward the staircase, expecting me to follow. Letting out a deep breath, I did just that, hoping I didn’t hear a child’s cries. Since it had stopped once we found the bodies, I had to believe it wouldn’t start up again.

  Dimples opened the door and flipped on the light before heading inside. I shivered in the cold air and hunched my shoulders together to keep warm.

  “The missing person’s files are different from the cold cases, and they’re kept in these drawers in alphabetical order. They date back to the seventies, but I think there’s less than a hundred all together. Still, we’ll have to look through all of them. It shouldn’t be too hard to go back ten years and look for those who went missing around that time, especially once we whittle it down to their birth years to match a five-to-seven-year-old girl and a thirteen-to-fifteen-year-old boy.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “The birth years should narrow it down.”

  Dimples grabbed an armful and handed them to me, then took an armful for himself. “Let’s stay in this room to look through them. There’s a table and chairs over there.” He motioned with his head, and I staggered to the table, setting my burden down with a sigh.

  Keeping everything in order, I began a methodical search, checking for the years we’d decided on, and doing my best to keep my shields up tight so I wouldn’t hear any ghostly whisperings. I also studiously avoided the pictures, not wanting those sweet faces to come back and haunt me. Of course, not all were children. There was a fair amount of adults here, too.

  I made it to the Gs before I found her, and my breath caught with surprise. Riley Garrett, age six.
It had to be her. As I studied the photo, a chill ran up my spine, leaving goosebumps all over my arms and down my neck. The shirt in the photo was the same pink print I’d seen under the house this morning. All at once, my mouth went dry, and I got a little light-headed. Seeing the bare bones was one thing, but seeing her beautiful, little face was quite another.

  “I found something,” I managed to croak, and took the folder to Dimples. “I think this is her.”

  He studied the paperwork and his brows drew together. “Yeah, I think you’re right. Look at this. Her home address isn’t too far from the house where you found her remains. The last place she was seen was around five o’clock at the elementary school only a couple of blocks away. It says she was playing on the playground.”

  “Oh my gosh! I remember that! It was all over the news. It scared me to death since it was in my neighborhood. My kids were just toddlers then, but I remember thinking how horrible it was for the poor parents, and how everyone wouldn’t let their kids out of sight after that.”

  It kind of creeped me out that she’d been so close after all these years. “Maybe you should see who owned the house back then. Maybe they killed her?”

  “Yeah, but I want to find the boy before I do anything else. They have to be related. Can you keep looking?” His thoughts surprised me with a small hope that the boy might have lived in that house, and that was the connection. Could it be that simple?

  I hurried back to my place at the table. I only had a few more files to go through, but I secretly hoped Dimples would find him first. A few minutes later, Dimples let out an exclamation, and I sighed with relief.

  “I think this is him.” This time he came around to me with the open folder. A smiling fifteen-year-old boy with longish dark hair and a striped, red shirt looked back at me. “His name is Grant Johnson, and he was reported missing the same day as the girl. But he was classified as a run-away.”

  He was thinking that would be the perfect way to disguise his murder, since being a run-away didn’t quite fit the mold of an abduction.

  “Oh, damn…” he said, then glanced at me. “I mean darn… he didn’t live there.” Dimples found the boy’s home address, which was only a few blocks away from where his remains were found. “At least they both lived in the same neighborhood. I guess that connects them, I just wish there was more to go on.”

  He shuffled through both files until he found what he was looking for. “Here’s their dental records. I’ll take them to the medical examiner and see if we get a positive match. Then we’ll have to tell the parents.”

  We put the other files away, and I followed Dimples out of that chilly room, relieved to feel some warmth on my cold arms. But instead of going up the stairs, Dimples took another turn deeper into the building.

  “Wait, where are you going?”

  “The morgue,” he answered.

  I jerked to a stop and shook my head. “Uh… do you really need me to go?”

  “I thought you wanted to help.” Dimples raised his brows, thinking he’d never seen me back away from anything so far. What was the matter with me?

  “Uh… well… sure,” I said, swallowing. I didn’t like morgues much, but maybe since these bodies were mostly bones, I could handle it. Still, thoughts of seeing them kind of turned my stomach.

  “Come on, then.” Just like that, he started off, expecting me to follow. I swore under my breath and moved quickly to catch up, following him down a long hallway and through a connecting door into another building, and down a staircase to the double doors with “Morgue” written on them. I realized I’d never been in this morgue before. Remembering the ones in Orlando and Paris, I braced myself for the antiseptic smell.

  Dimples held the door open for me, but I hesitated. “Uh… I’ll follow you in.” He took in my dubious frown and nodded, thinking that after all the escapades I’d been through, this should be a piece of cake. Besides, hadn’t I already seen these remains once today?

  “Yeah, but that was from a distance and it was dark underneath there, so I didn’t get a good look.” I wanted to add that I’d also heard the little girl crying in my mind, just to make him more sympathetic to my plight, but I refrained, knowing that was just too freaky, even for him.

  Following him into the room shielded me from having to look too hard at the bones until we stood right beside them. I inhaled through my mouth and stayed a little behind him while he spoke to the medical examiner and handed him the files with the dental records.

  “Do you have a cause of death?” Dimples asked.

  “So far, it looks like the girl was strangled. See the second cervical bone here,” he pointed it out with his gloved finger. “Then along the hyoid here?” He gently raised the skull at the jaw to show the bones below. “Her neck was broken. I’d say she probably died the same day she was taken.”

  I swallowed and glanced away. The flesh on her bones was completely gone, but I could still see the pink flowered material that matched the picture.

  “What about the boy?” Dimples asked.

  The M.E. turned to the remains on the other steel gurney and gently turned the skull. “If you look at the skull, you can see the broken depression here. From the bone fragments, you can see that he was hit over the head with a heavy object, most likely a stone or rock of some kind. And more important, you can see that he was hit from behind.” He was thinking, like he was trying to get away from his killer.

  With that awful thought sinking in, the smell got to me, and I knew I had to get out of there. “I’ll wait in the hall.” I told Dimples, not giving him time to object before I left. Yikes! What had I gotten into this time? A double-murder? Of children?

  Once in the hall, I took a couple of deep breaths to calm down. Regaining my composure, I had to admit how bad that had been, but I’d managed to get through it. The rest of the day had been pretty good… well maybe only the lunch part, but that totally made up for the morning. So, after this visit to the morgue, the rest of my day couldn’t be any worse, right?

  My cell phone rang. The caller ID said it was Uncle Joey, and my stomach tightened with dread. “Hello?”

  “Shelby,” Uncle Joey said, his voice clipped with urgency. “I need you to come to the office right away. How soon can you get here?”

  “Uh… I’m actually not too far from there.”

  He let out a relieved sigh. “Good. Come right over. And don’t dawdle.”

  He disconnected before I could say a word, and I knew it was bad. He only used the word dawdle when he was stressed out, so whatever awaited me at Thrasher Development couldn’t be good. Of course, after what had happened yesterday, how could I expect anything less?

  I glanced through the glass in the door to find Dimples still talking to the medical examiner, but I wasn’t about to go back in there, so I called him on my phone and started down the hall. “Hey… I just got an emergency phone call, so I have to go. But I promise I can help you later. All right?”

  “But what about the list? Dalton should be bringing it back soon.”

  “Oh, yeah, right. I’ll call you as soon as I’m free. Okay? I can go over it with you then.” I kept walking while Dimples thought that over, and hoped he’d answer sometime this year.

  “Fine. I’ll wait for your call.” He disconnected, leaving me to feel guilty that I’d bailed on him. But what else could I do? I didn’t want to see Uncle Joey any more than Dimples wanted me to leave him there. Although, deep down, I was grateful to have a good excuse to leave the morgue behind. But it wasn’t Dimples I was abandoning, it was the creepiness factor of the whole case that was getting to me.

  Emerging from the building into the fresh, spring air helped lighten my mood even more. The earlier gray clouds had given way to sunshine, and the sun warmed my face and arms. Finally, I could do something about the goosebumps. My car was even warmer. By the time I pulled into Thrasher Development, I was starting to sweat, but I didn’t think it was all because of the warm car.

  I hop
ped onto the elevator and glanced at the floor, watching where I put my feet, and hoping not to step on any blood. To my relief, the area looked like it had gone through a thorough cleaning, and I let out my breath.

  Upon further examination, I could even see my reflection in the elevator doors. Since I looked a little like death warmed over, I did my best to relax the worry lines on my forehead and tried to smooth out that pinched look in my eyes.

  Nothing seemed to work, so I opened my eyes and mouth real big and made a few silly faces. That seemed to do the trick. And once the doors opened, I felt more like my normal, easy-going and confident self.

  Inside Thrasher, my newly gained confidence fell just a bit to find Jackie nowhere in sight. Just then, a door opened, and Ramos came down the hall. I let out a breath, and my shoulders sagged with relief. He sent a knowing smile my way, and I picked up that he’d witnessed the silly faces I’d made in the elevator from the surveillance cameras.

  “You saw that?” A flush of embarrassment colored my cheeks. Why didn’t I remember there was a camera in the elevator? “Did you just put cameras in the elevators?”

  “After that unfortunate incident yesterday, yes, we had them installed.” His curiosity got the best of him, and he couldn’t help asking, “Why were you making faces?” He wondered if it was something I always did when I was alone in elevators.

  “No… I don’t always make faces. In fact, I never make faces. But when I saw my reflection in the doors, I looked a little pale, so I thought it would help.” He raised a skeptical brow, not quite buying it, so I continued. “You don’t know the kind of day I’ve had so far.”

  “Why don’t you tell me?” he asked, thinking that it never ceased to amaze him how much trouble I could get into. And what kind of trouble was I in now?

  I let out my breath and shrugged. “I’m not in trouble. It’s just that I found two dead bodies under the house I was hoping to buy, and now I don’t think I can live there unless I figure out who they are and all, so they can rest in peace. You know?”