Dead End

by Mariah Stewart

  “Like the others, but different. Same difference as the last one.”

  “She’s Hispanic. No ID. And no one reported her missing.”

  “Right. ’Course, maybe by morning, we’ll have gotten a call. Someone might be looking for her by now, or maybe someone thinks she’s at a friend’s house… there could be a hundred maybes when you’re dealing with a kid, you know?”

  “I know. I saw your chief on TV yesterday.”

  “The press has been all over this. It’s national news. The grandfather of one of the victims is an ambassador.”

  “I saw him on CNN.”

  “So did I. He had some harsh words for the D.A.”

  “Yeah.”

  The awkward pause he’d been avoiding settled in. It was now or never.

  “Look, Annie, I… I had this idea. I’m thinking that, well, I’m thinking maybe we should take one more look at Dylan’s death. I’m thinking you’re right, to want to clear this thing for him. And I have to be honest with you, looking at this from a strictly selfish point of view, I’m thinking it’s going to be that much harder for you and me to move forward with our own relationship while there’s still this long, dangling thread in your life.”

  He hesitated, expecting her to break in, but she remained silent, so he went on.

  “So, maybe just one look, to see if, I don’t know, maybe something will jump out at us. Then, maybe, you and I… well, then maybe we can see where we are… where we both want this thing to go…”

  Evan was pacing along a berm at the edge of the clearing where the latest body had been found. “I know the Bureau’s best has been on this, so I guess it sounds presumptuous for me to even suggest it-”

  “I don’t think it’s presumptuous at all,” Annie said softly.

  “You don’t?”

  “No. You’re a great investigator. And there’s always the chance that a fresh eye might see something everyone else has missed. But are you sure you want to spend your time on this?”

  “I’m sure that I want this to work between us. I’m sure that the only way that’s going to happen is for you to feel that you’ve done everything you can to do right by Dylan’s memory. The way I see it, as long as Dylan’s murderer is out there, you’re always going to be looking for him. Not that I blame you. I understand why it’s important. But it just seems to me that in order for you to move on with your life, you need to know that everything that could be done has been done.”

  “That’s very insightful.”

  “And you thought you were the only one in this relationship with a little psychology know-how,” he joked, knowing there was a vast difference between his three undergrad psych courses and her doctorate. “There’s no guarantee that this case will ever be solved. But I think it’s worth one more look.”

  “Thank you.” Her voice caught. “Dylan deserves to have his killer brought to justice. I know Aidan and Connor and a bunch of his cousins have looked at the case, but not one of them was able to uncover anything new. So chances are, nothing will change. But one more look-sure, it’s worth the time. I’ll be in the office tomorrow. I’ll see what I can get my hands on.”

  “Can you send me a copy of whatever you find?”

  “I’d rather bring it up this weekend.”

  “Even better.”

  “But you’re swamped with your case. I’d better send copies of the reports overnight. That way, when we finally do get together, you’ll have had time to read them through. Maybe something will pop out at you.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  “Evan, I can’t thank you enough. For understanding. For putting your own feelings aside-I know this has to be hard for you.”

  “Not nearly as hard as the thought of losing you.”

  “You wouldn’t have lost me over this. My loving you is separate from wanting what’s right for Dylan.”

  “I know that, but I also understand that you’ll never be completely happy as long as you feel he’s not at rest, Annie. I know your Irish soul.”

  “It’s his Irish soul that worries me. I just need to know it’s found peace.”

  “We’re going to do our best.”

  “One thing you need to know…”

  “What’s that?”

  “I am happy with you, I’ve been happy with you. And I do love you. Without reservation. Regardless of the outcome, I will never forget that you offered to do this, with the case you’re already working on. I don’t know any other man who would be as sensitive as you are to this whole thing with Dylan.”

  The crime-scene technicians had finished processing the scene and signaled that they were waiting for him.

  “Annie, I have to go. You get those reports and send them up; I’ll find the time to look them over. Then we’ll talk…”

  Dan Crimmons, the Prattsville chief of police, was walking up the hill toward him. Evan knew he’d have a million questions about the crime scenes in Lyndon and the other parts of the county where bodies had been found. In the distance, he could see the lights from the cars parked along the road. Newspaper, magazine, and TV reporters and their cameramen were gathering again.

  Evan switched off his phone and walked down the hill to meet Crimmons, thinking that his instincts had served him well. Annie wouldn’t be completely at peace until Dylan was. He would give it his best effort.

  It hadn’t been false modesty on his part to say that he felt a bit presumptuous, taking on something that the Bureau’s finest had already looked into. Dylan’s brothers and cousins were all known to be top-notch agents. What were the chances he’d succeed where they had all failed? If it helped Annie to know that they’d done their best, and that helped her to move on, what did they have to lose?

  Nothing at all, he reassured himself as he walked down the hill, his hand extended in greeting to the chief.

  “Chief Crimmons, I see the sharks are right on the scent. How many officers do you think you can spare to keep the press from getting anywhere near the crime scene…?”

  Annie scooped the folder into her arms and strolled casually back to her office. It wasn’t that she was doing anything wrong-she did sign out the file-but she was just a little reluctant to advertise the fact that she was looking over the records relative to Dylan’s death yet again. People might think she was obsessed.

  She read through the now-familiar reports, looking for something, anything, that might catch her eye. But there was nothing out of the ordinary. She’d read through the accounts of the agents who were present that night, including Aidan, who had been badly wounded and at one point, early on, wasn’t expected to make it. Thank God he did, Annie thought. Losing Dylan had been hard enough. Aidan had been her friend long before he’d become her brother-in-law.

  The alarm on her watch reminded her that she had a lecture to deliver to a group of agents-in-training at two. She closed the file and pushed it to one side of her desk, then grabbed her purse from the back of her chair.

  “Hey, Annie, how’s it going?” Brendan Shields poked his head in through the doorway.

  “Great, Brendan, thanks. I was just on my way to-”

  “Was that a great wedding or what? And Mara was just the most beautiful bride. Dylan would have been pleased to see his little brother married to your little sister. Funny, isn’t it, the way that worked out?”

  “I guess it worked out the way it was supposed to.”

  “Nice guy, that detective you were with, by the way. A couple of the guys said they’d worked a few cases with him up in Pennsylvania, said he was top-notch.”

  “Evan Crosby. He’s good, yes. I’ve worked with him, too.”

  “Well, good luck with him, if that’s the way it’s going for you and him. God knows you’re due for something good, Annie.”

  “Thank you, Brendan. That’s really very nice of you.”

  “Hey, is that the file on the McNamara case?” He looked beyond her to her desk. “I just stopped down at the records room and Angie told me she’d signed i
t out to you yesterday.”

  “The McNamara file is in the trunk of my car. That”-she nodded toward her desk-“is Dylan’s file.”

  Brendan raised an eyebrow.

  “Evan and I were talking the other day, and we thought we’d give it one more look-see.” She shrugged as if the idea had little merit. “We just thought maybe…”

  “Maybe this time something might jump out at you?”

  “I guess. I know it’s a long shot.”

  “You know we’ve all looked at that file so many times it’s a miracle we haven’t worn the ink right off the pages.”

  “I know. I guess we just thought maybe fresh eyes…”

  “Hey, sure, why not? Can’t hurt. God knows we weren’t able to come up with anything. Good luck with it.”

  “I’ve got to run,” she told him, “but if you walk out with me, I can give you the McNamara file right now.”

  “Great. You have everything you need here?” He turned off the light, then followed her into the hall. “By the way, you don’t happen to know where my cousin Connor is, do you?”

  “Über-agent Shields? No.” She laughed. “No one ever knows where Connor is, Brendan. You know that. He comes in, gets his secret assignment, and leaves before anyone even knows he’s been in the building.”

  “Yeah. The ultimate secret-agent man. No one was happier than Connor when the Bureau expanded its operations after 9/11. I think he was the first from the Bureau to apply. He just eats up that covert stuff. My sister, Mia, made the comment the other night at the wedding that maybe he should have joined the CIA.”

  “Very funny. Did you try his cell phone?”

  “No. Grady was looking for him this morning; I was just wondering if you knew if he was still in town.”

  “Sorry. I haven’t seen or heard from him since Friday night. But if by some chance I do, I’ll let him know to call Grady.”

  “Good enough. Well, you’re going to have to push the speed limit to get down to Quantico on time as it is, so let’s hope this is one of the days when the elevator actually works.” He poked the down arrow.

  “I’ll be fine, as long as the traffic doesn’t back up somewhere along the way.” She watched the elevator lights descend slowly from the upper floors. “Or the elevator doesn’t pass us by.”

  The elevator pinged as the doors slid open, then pinged again as they closed. It took less than forty-five seconds to reach the lobby. Annie, who detested elevators, counted off every one.

  They passed through the lobby to the parking garage, where Annie had parked three cars in from the stairwell.

  “You were here early,” Brendan noted.

  “I had to be. I’d left the notes for my lecture in my office. Don’t ask me where my head was.”

  She unlocked the trunk of her car and reached in for the file she’d been studying in the hopes of coming up with a profile for the killer who’d been terrorizing a small town in Idaho.

  “Any thoughts on this one?” Brendan asked as he tucked the file under his arm.

  “He’s young and he’s angry. Probably was in the service, my guess, right out of high school. I’d put my money on an early discharge, not necessarily honorable. He has definite issues with women.” She slammed the trunk lid. “I can send you an e-mail with a copy of my full evaluation when I get home tonight. My notes are all there.”

  “Great. Appreciate it.” Brendan kissed her on the cheek. “You take care, Annie. And listen, if it’s what you want, I hope that all works out with…”

  “Evan.”

  “Sorry. His name slipped my mind, honest to God. That wasn’t intended as an insult.”

  She smiled as she got into the car. Brendan and his sister, Mia, were probably the only members of the Shields family for whom that might be true. Andrew and Grady had made no effort to disguise their disapproval of Annie showing up at a Shields wedding with another man.

  “Call me if you have any questions after you get my memo,” she told him as she started her car.

  “Will do.” He stepped back from the car as she pulled from the parking spot. Annie waved as she headed toward the exit.

  The highway ahead was clogged as a result of an unfortunate combination of volume and a three-car accident. Annie debated taking an alternate route, one that would take her through several small towns and would cost her at least forty minutes in time. She weighed the known delay against the uncertainty of the tie-up on the highway, and opted for back roads.

  It was turning out to be a wonderful, sunny day. At times like this, she wished she’d chosen the convertible over the sedan she’d recently bought, but she opened the sunroof, rolled down the windows, and slipped Enya into the CD player. The sun on the top of her head soothed, as did the music. She felt herself relaxing for the first time in days.

  Well, it had been an unusual week.

  First, there’d been the wedding, and all that it entailed. It wasn’t every day your sister got married.

  Annie thought back to Mara’s first wedding, to Jules Douglas.

  “I never did like that pompous ass,” Annie muttered, recalling how her first reaction to Jules had been right on the money. “Slick little bastard.”

  But Mara had fallen for him, and nothing Annie could say had opened her sister’s eyes. In the end, Annie recognized as fact, when someone is hell-bent on making a mistake, sometimes you just have to stand back and let them.

  And what a mistake it had been. From early on in their marriage, Jules had betrayed his wife with an endless string of his college students who’d fallen for him in the same way Mara had. By the time Mara had discovered his affair with a fellow faculty member, their daughter was five years old. Mara asked for and was granted a divorce. The day after it was finalized, Jules took Julianne and disappeared for seven long, agonizing years.

  Well, he wouldn’t get that chance again. Even with his plea bargain to testify against Reverend Prescott, they were going to keep his sorry ass behind bars until he was so old he wouldn’t even remember his name.

  Any of them, she thought dryly, recalling that Jules had taken several aliases while on the run.

  She stopped at a red light and watched a young woman casually push a stroller across the street. Life in these small towns… Annie smiled to herself. Everyone takes their time.

  And why not? We spend too much time hurrying along, not noticing our surroundings, not—

  The light had turned green, and the driver of the pickup behind her apparently wasn’t of a small-town mind. This was a reality she understood. She pulled away from the light and wondered if the accident on the interstate had been cleared away yet. She turned on the radio and scanned for a news station.

  Her finger paused on the station where Bono sang about “one love.” Dylan had been a huge U2 fan and had loved that song. Hearing it never failed to bring back the memory of a drive they’d once made to the Outer Banks, when he’d played the CD over and over so many times she finally threatened to toss it out the window as they crossed the Wright Memorial Bridge.

  Thoughts of Dylan led inevitably to thoughts of Evan.

  Initially, Annie had been surprised at Evan’s reaction to Dylan’s seeming presence at the wedding. After all, it was Dylan’s brother who was getting married, and the first gathering of the clan after Dylan’s death-except for his funeral. It was bound to be emotional. But after looking back on the night, on the way events had unfolded, she had to admit that things might have gone a bit far. Not might, she told herself. Did. Thomas Shields simply could not move past his pain. When she’d realized that Evan had left, she had secretly suspected that the Shieldses’ focus on their fallen brother could possibly have had something to do with it.

  But she’d been genuinely surprised at Evan’s suggestion that they take one last look at Dylan’s death. While she refused to delude herself into thinking that they’d solve the case, the fact that Evan understood, that he made the gesture, endeared him to her even more. She hadn’t been exaggerating when
she’d told him that finding him, realizing that she could find love again, had stunned her. She’d not even considered looking, assuming that she’d spend the rest of her life alone. She had pretty much made her peace with that. No one, she’d figured, had the right to expect that kind of total love, total devotion, more than once in a lifetime. It had shocked her to learn it could happen-and that it had happened to her.

  She was so deep in thought that she missed the call on her cell phone. She picked it up and looked at the screen. Connor. Speak of the devil. She hit the automatic-dial number and he answered on the first ring.

  “Hey, sorry. I missed your call by about one ring,” she told him. “Where are you?”

  “Now, you know that if I told you, we’d have to kill you.”

  She smiled at the overused quip, which, in his case, could be true.

  “Did you talk to Grady? I saw Brendan this morning. He said Grady was trying to reach you.”

  “We spoke. He just wanted to know if I’d be around this week.”

  “Are you?”

  “No. I won’t be around for a while.”

  “Okay, I won’t even ask.”

  “Thank you.”

  “So what’s up?”

  “I just wanted to congratulate you and Mara on the wedding. You did a great job putting it together. Everything was just terrific, Annie.”

  “Thanks, Connor. I never realized how much work a simple wedding could be. But we did manage to pull it off. Everyone seemed to have a good time.”

  “Well, that’s another thing that I wanted to talk to you about. I think I need to apologize on behalf of all the Shieldses for having maybe misdirected some of the focus.”

  “Meaning?”

  “You’re sweet, Annie, but I know you know what I’m talking about. Too much Dylan, too little Aidan. We owe him an apology, too.”

  “I doubt he felt slighted.”

  “Knowing Aidan, no, I’m sure he didn’t. But looking back over the night, one thing seemed to lead to another…”

  “It’s okay, Connor.”

  “I just feel a little embarrassed about it.”

  “Connor Shields, international man of mystery, sheepish? Puh-leeze.”