Cruel Fate

by Kelley Armstrong

  Olivia said Willow Creek Road. It branched off the secondary highway that led to Cainsville. The road was gravel, and he could imagine Olivia wincing with every stone that hit the undercarriage. That lifted his mood, and he relaxed. When he finally spotted the cars, one still had its lights flashing, which would make his story more plausible.

  Two state police cars. Dr. Webster’s little convertible. One additional unmarked car—detectives, most likely. Another unmarked SUV that he knew would belong to the crime scene techs. A lone officer stood by the cars, doing something on his cell phone.

  Gabriel pulled over well behind the last vehicle. The officer’s head snapped up at the sound of gravel crunching under the Jaguar’s tires. When Gabriel got out, the young man strode over.

  “This is a crime scene. If you’re with the media, I need to ask you to leave.”

  Gabriel lifted one brow and looked from his vehicle to the officer, that brow rising again, suggesting that such a car could hardly be purchased on a journalist’s salary.

  “My name is Gabriel Walsh,” he said.

  Potential recognition flashed over the officer’s face, only to disappear, as if he’d heard the name but couldn’t place it.

  “I live in Cainsville,” Gabriel said, gesturing in the direction of the town. “I was passing when I saw the flashing lights.”

  The officer didn’t pause to consider the possibility of seeing those lights from two miles away. He just said, “All right, sir. I understand that as a local homeowner you are concerned, but I can assure you, we have this under control. Now, I’ll need to ask you to leave—”

  “Yes, I am a local homeowner, but I am also the attorney of the landowner whose property you have apparently discovered a crime on. Have you contacted her?”

  The man stopped. Blinked. “Lawyer? Gabriel… You’re…”

  “Yes, I said that. Now, the landowner. Has she been contacted?”

  The officer kept blinking, clearly in shock at meeting the famous Gabriel Walsh and fighting the urge to shake Gabriel’s hand and commend him on his fine work…

  Gabriel smiled inwardly at that. No, “famous” wasn’t quite the word he’d use. More like infamous. And officers of the law never lauded his contributions to their field. It was terribly disappointing.

  “Walsh.” The young man straightened, and his voice dropped two octaves. “I need you out of here. If you’ve come ambulance chasing—”

  “Do you see an ambulance? I have no need to chase clients in any manner. I am here representing one, and so I’ll return to the question I have now asked twice. Have you contacted the landowner?”

  The young man looked at the forest.

  “Yes, that is private property,” Gabriel said. “You will note the lack of signs indicating this is a public recreation area.”

  “There aren’t any signs. If it was private property—”

  “You grew up in Chicago, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “You are a member of the state police. Judging by your youth, you have not been one long. You may even still live in the city.” With your parents, Gabriel thought, though he did not add it. “But it behooves you to acquire a better understanding of your rural working environment. Most land here is privately owned, even if it is not currently in use. Landowners rarely post signs. People are free to walk through these woods. You’ll find paths for that purpose. But it is owned by a family in Cainsville, who has owned most of this land for nearly two centuries. I represent the current matriarch of that family, Grace Clark.”

  “No one told me it was private land.”

  “Understandably. A crime has been committed, as you said, and I would not want the police to stand on this road trying to find the landowner while a victim suffers or a suspect escapes.”

  The officer snorted. “Your job is letting them escape.”

  “My job is defending them, which I cannot do if they aren’t arrested. Now, the law, rightfully, says that you may enter this property in pursuit of justice. I am not disputing that. However, the law also says that my client has the right to know what is happening on her land.”

  Not entirely true, but if this young man had a law degree, he wouldn’t be guarding a crime scene.

  “Would you like to speak to my client?” Gabriel asked. “I can call her. I can even bring her out here. However, I’ll warn you she’s elderly, and she will not appreciate being forced to come out when she has given permission for me, as her representative—”

  The officer didn’t let Gabriel finish. He was already on his radio, telling another officer that he had the landowner’s legal representative here. He did not, Gabriel noted, say who that representative was. That wasn’t an oversight, Gabriel suspected. The young officer had had enough of Gabriel and wished to foist him onto someone else, quickly.

  Gabriel didn’t know the young woman who came out. Truly, sometimes he felt so much older than his thirty years, faced with the continual influx of young officers, recognizing none, and knowing that by the time he did, they’d have moved on. Which was, of course, a fine excuse for never bothering to ask names in the first place.

  The young woman treated him with the same indifference. He was a lawyer, and that’s all she needed to know. She waved for him to follow her, and he did.

  The woods did indeed belong to Grace. They’d originally belonged to Ida, but on her death, they’d passed to her “cousin.” Capricious didn’t describe all fae, and those who settled Cainsville had chosen their refuge with all the care he expected the Cwˆn Annwn had used in finding a final resting place for Gregory Kirkman. At the time, Cainsville would have seemed an impossibly long distance from Chicago, but they’d had the foresight to imagine a future when that might change. These days, Cainsville should have been a bedroom community for the big city. It was not. The land surrounding the town—a river on one side, swampy land on others—forbade expansion. When the highway was built, they’d made sure no exit would lead directly to the town, instead forcing drivers to backtrack along the secondary highway. They’d also bought land, thousands of acres, purchased when it’d sold for laughably little. Over the years, Ida had allowed Cainsville families to purchase rural building lots, but those holdings were small, and the remainder had been hers.

  This forest represented the border of Ida’s—now Grace’s—holdings. Beyond it lay a village and roads dotted with homes belonging to people with no connection to Cainsville. Kirkman himself had owned one of those houses, which was why he had used this forest to hide at least one victim.

  As they approached, Gabriel could hear voices, and he slowed to listen. They weren’t saying anything useful, though. Quite the contrary. They were discussing what they’d done on the weekend.

  A couple of detectives were watching Dr. Webster, who bent over something out of his view, presumably the body. It was the detectives chatting. Dr. Webster was busy, as were the crime scene techs, one taking pictures while another worked deeper in the forest.

  The officer leading Gabriel said, “The lawyer.”

  One of the detectives turned. When she saw Gabriel, she let out a sharp laugh. “The lawyer indeed. You don’t know who that is, Tina?”

  The young woman’s face screwed up as she looked at Gabriel. “He’s not a lawyer?”

  “Oh, hell, yeah,” Detective Parsons said. “He’s definitely a lawyer. May I present Gabriel Walsh, scourge of the Chicago PD.”

  “Scourge?” Gabriel said. “That’s rather harsh, don’t you think?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Also, one might say, incorrect,” Gabriel said. “If I am the scourge of anyone, it would be the state attorney’s office. It’s their cases I overturn. My actions have no effect on the clearance rates of the detectives involved, which is really all that matters to the police.”

  “Ouch. And touché.”

  There was no rancor in Detective Parsons’s voice. Gabriel had worked with her before, and she was one of the rare officers who seemed to under
stand the necessity of his job. It helped that her brother had, according to Gabriel’s research, spent two years incarcerated in the eighties for a crime he did not commit. A defense lawyer set him free.

  Parsons was, in fact, the “contact” Gabriel would have called on this case. He had two classes of police contacts. One, he bought. They gave him information in return for “monetary consideration for their time and effort.” The second group were the cultivated contacts, the ones he traded with on a professional—and completely legal—basis. He could ask Detective Parsons for information, and if she could share it, she would. In return, if she had legal questions—points of law she needed clarified for a case—she called him.

  When she said his name, the other detective snorted and walked off with the young officer.

  Dr. Webster had also heard Gabriel’s name, and her head had popped up. Gabriel wouldn’t say she smiled, but her grim expression relaxed, and she nodded, friendly enough. She was indeed crouched beside a body, blocking it.

  “Do you really represent the landowner, or did you just say that to get back here?” Parsons asked.

  “I am one of the town’s legal representatives,” Gabriel said. “As Dr. Webster can attest.”

  Parsons looked around pointedly. “The nearest town is two miles away, counselor.”

  “No, that is a village. I am referring to Cainsville. This land is held in trust by the town and owned by Grace Clark.”

  Dr. Webster looked up. “The town owns this far out?” She whistled and shook her head. Then she looked up at the detective. “Not that I’m questioning. Trust me, if Gabriel says they do, then they do. That’s what you get when your family has been here forever, and they had the forethought not to sell at the first good offer. I can’t even imagine what it’s all worth now.”

  “Enough for the town to employ me in addition to their civil legal team.”

  Dr. Webster chuckled. “True.” She sat back on her haunches. “You can let Grace know about this.” She waved at the body.

  Gabriel walked around it, examining from all angles. It was, as Olivia suggested, a very old corpse. She’d mentioned signs of trauma. Those might exist, but if they did, they wouldn’t be evident without a forensic exam. This was not the decayed body he’d expected. It was a skeleton. The skeleton of a person not much more than five feet tall, with long dark hair. A skeleton wearing a dress.

  “A woman,” he said.

  This time, it was both the doctor and the detective who chuckled.

  “Very astute, Gabriel,” Dr. Webster said. “Though, perhaps I shouldn’t laugh. The body’s size and the hair—and even the dress—don’t confirm gender. From the pubic bone, though, I can say with near certainty that we’re looking at a young woman, likely pubescent.”

  “A teenager,” Gabriel murmured.

  This made sense. Perfect sense, and relief fluttered through him. They were in the forest behind where Kirkman had lived. The forest where Todd had seen the body of Kirkman’s last victim hidden under a tree fall. The body of a teenage girl.

  The officer in the diner had probably heard that a twenty-year-old corpse had been uncovered and leapt to the dual false conclusion it’d been buried and male.

  “Signs of trauma?” Gabriel asked.

  Dr. Webster nodded. “Cut marks on the bones. Lots of them. Some are scavenging, but there’s nothing bigger than a fox out here. I suspect blade marks.”

  “Young woman murdered and dumped in a forest.”

  “Were there any serial killers active in the area during that time period?” Dr. Webster asked.

  Parsons looked at Gabriel, and her mouth opened. Then she stopped.

  “Yes, Detective?” Gabriel said.

  “You know who I was going to suggest, Walsh. I stopped because I was about to make a joke, and then I remembered that Todd Larsen’s also your girlfriend’s father, and you would not appreciate my humor. Not that you would at the best of times, but it would be disrespectful now, under the circumstances.”

  “I realize the time period fits the crimes for which my clients were accused. However, this”—he pointed to the body—“does not.”

  Parsons nodded. “The Valentine Killer targeted couples in their twenties. They were strangled, not stabbed. I never thought Todd was guilty anyway. I met him—him and Pamela—during the initial investigation.”

  Gabriel glanced at her.

  “No, I never mentioned that, Walsh. I knew better. I was just a rookie then anyway. I doubt my name is in the files. If I told you I thought Todd was innocent, you’d have hauled me onto the stand as a damned character witness. No thank you. Especially since Pamela was your original client. I didn’t get the same vibe from her. Todd was a sweetheart. Easy on the eyes, too, I’ll admit, but just a nice guy. He lacked the edge. She had it. Not that I think she did it. I’m just saying I could imagine her killing someone, but not Todd. So I’m glad he’s free. I’ll even wish you good luck getting Pamela out, for your girlfriend’s sake.” Parsons paused. “Does she still go by Olivia?”

  Gabriel and Dr. Webster both nodded.

  “I knew her as Eden,” Parsons said. “Todd talked about her. A doting daddy, that one. I always wondered what became of her. I remember hoping she had a good life wherever she was.”

  “She did.”

  “And yet she ended up with you. Poor kid. Did she dig past the rough exterior and find your deeply hidden heart of gold?”

  “No, she’s decided I’m an acceptable partner despite my lack of it.”

  Parsons grinned. “I know her adoptive mother was a philanthropist. A tireless champion of lost causes. That must help.”

  “It does.”

  As Parsons and Dr. Webster laughed, Gabriel looked at the young woman’s corpse. No, the universe did not balance good deeds with bad. This girl had done nothing to deserve death, and certainly not the horrific one she’d endured. As for Gabriel’s own misdeeds, the universe apparently wasn’t punishing him for them just yet.

  He opened his mouth to exchange a few final words with the women because both deserved his civility. His mind, however, was already leaping twenty minutes ahead when he could call and tell Olivia all was well.

  I understood your distress. I wanted answers for you, faster than I could get them with a phone call. There is no need to worry. Your father is fine and—

  “Okay, doc,” the young female officer said, coming through the forest. “They’ve finished digging up the second body. You can take a look at him now.”

  Nine

  Olivia

  Before I left Ioan’s, I’d texted Gabriel to ask whether he could grab dinner on his way home. Turned out he was already home and cooking, which was kind of awesome. There’s that old saying that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, and I could understand at least part of that. It wasn’t the food that made me swoon. It was having someone cook for me.

  My adoptive parents didn’t cook. We had a cook. Yes, we were that kind of wealthy. I grew up with a succession of lovely ladies making me amazing meals, and I cannot complain about that. I could have learned from them, but in that world, cooking was something other people did, and I appreciated the hell out of them for it.

  Then the revelation of my birth parents came, and I walked away from that life, determined to make it on my own. Relishing the challenge, to be honest. I was like the suburban kid who thinks milking cows looks cool. I had no idea how tough life was without money. I learned, though. Got an apartment at Grace’s. Worked in the diner. Learned to cook. Eventually even learned to cook things that were edible.

  I’d never had someone who cared about me and made me food. Gabriel does, and I love doing the same for him. There’s a meaning in it, beyond simply “Well, we have to eat, and I’m less busy/tired, so I’ll do it.” Maybe it was just because I’d never had that before, but it felt special to me.

  Coming home to a ready meal wasn’t nearly as common, considering we worked together. The very thought had me cranking up the
tunes, hitting the gas, and singing along as I drove home, to the great amusement of my father. That wasn’t the wine. I’d had less than a glass—my recklessness didn’t extend to drinking and driving. From what Ioan said, we had nothing to worry about. Kirkman’s body wasn’t in those woods. Whoever they’d found had died in an unconnected event.

  I told Gabriel my news as soon as I got inside. He was busy with his stir-fry, and he didn’t turn from the stove when I broke the news. He just grunted and kept stirring. I smiled and shook my head at that. God forbid he seem surprised, let alone relieved.

  I chattered through the meal, still riding my high. Afterward, I shooed Gabriel away, and Todd and I cleared the dishes.

  “I’m going to go for a walk,” Todd said as we finished up.

  “Sure, we can…” I caught his expression. “Ah, you want to go for one.”

  “I thought I’d give you two some alone time,” he said, “without me retreating to my room like a sullen teenager. It’s a nice night, and I’d like to prowl about a bit. Explore the town.” He paused. “No one will have a problem with that, will they?”

  I shook my head. “You might be cornered for small talk, but you’re safe.”

  He made a face.

  “I mean you’re safe from anything like what happened at the restaurant. Only about five percent of Cainsville are full-blooded fae, but the elders work charms here. Wards against trouble and…well, other things. Compulsion magic that keeps people drinking the Kool-Aid. Keeps them from questioning. Keeps them accepting the town’s quirks. If the elders say you’re welcome here, then you’re welcome.”

  “I’ll need to get used to not being welcome,” he said. “But I’ll take this for now.”

  After he left, I refilled my wine and headed to the dining room where Gabriel worked. As I passed through the hall, I spotted Todd’s cell phone by the front door. I jogged over and threw open the door, but he was already down the road. Calling him back really would make him feel like a teenager, Mom freaking out at him leaving without his phone.