Deep Dark

by Laura Griffin

  “Two boxes?”

  “Four.”

  Reed nudged the top off a box and found it filled with manila folders. The second box contained more of the same. “Looks like this may take a while.”

  “Don’t be messing things up, now.” Krueller gave him a stern look. “The deputy on this one, he’s very particular with the files.”

  “I understand.”

  “Anything you look at, put it back where you found it.”

  “Will do.”

  Krueller stood for a moment, watching him. He seemed reluctant to go.

  “Thanks for your help,” Reed said. “Thank the sheriff for me, too, when you see him.”

  “There’s a worktable up front. You can set up there.” Krueller gave a stiff nod and lumbered off.

  Reed read the labels again and moved all four boxes to the worktable. He parked himself in a chair and rolled up his sleeves.

  The first carton contained personal items. He found a phone and a set of car keys and also a brown leather wallet-purse thing that was big enough to hold a cell phone. Fingerprint powder clung to some of the items, and they’d been zipped into plastic freezer bags. Reed shook his head. Everything should have been put in paper evidence envelopes where any biological material would be less likely to degrade over time. But maybe Clarke County wasn’t up to date on evidence procedures. Reed thumbed through the bags, looking at everything through the plastic. Olivia’s driver’s license and credit cards had been collected in a clear sandwich bag with the case number scrawled across the front in black Sharpie. Reed studied the driver’s license photo. Olivia had pale skin and soft brown eyes. Her tentative smile reminded Reed of April Abrams.

  He moved on to the file box, searching for a case summary, which he located in a black three-ring binder that included key documents. He settled back in his chair. Amid the stale marijuana scent, he started to read.

  Twenty-five-year-old Olivia Jane Hollis had been a teacher at Clarkesville Elementary School. Police were called to her apartment the second week in June after a friend stopped by to visit and discovered Olivia’s back door ajar and blood smears on the floor.

  Olivia’s car was parked in the carport behind her unit. Her purse was on the kitchen counter, along with her keys and her cell phone.

  Local police immediately shifted into high gear. But because the police department included a grand total of three full-time officers, the sheriff’s department was quickly called in to assist. They combed the town and the surrounding area on foot and horseback. They brought in canine teams. Olivia’s family mobilized hundreds of people to help search and blanketed the area with flyers. They held a press conference that attracted statewide media and even set up a tip line. But the tips went nowhere, and searchers turned up nothing for months. Finally, in October, a young couple hiking in northern Clarke County came across some bones in a ravine.

  Reed flipped through the binder until he found the autopsy report. Given the advanced state of decomp, the county coroner had turned everything over to a forensic anthropologist. Reed checked the signature on the report: Dr. Kelsey Quinn at the Delphi Center Crime Lab. The private forensics lab sat in the middle of a body-decomposition research center, better known as a body farm. Reed had heard of Dr. Quinn but had never met her in person.

  He flipped through the pages, skimming over the diagrams. Manner of death: homicide. Cause of death: blunt-force trauma. The victim had sustained two skull fractures. The likely instrument was listed as a hammer, circular face, 1.5-inch diameter.

  Reed paused. It was the hammer. That was the detail that had been lurking at the back of his mind since he’d talked to Jay. He must have heard it somewhere, maybe from a cop or a crime-scene tech. A detail like that wouldn’t have been in the news, but Reed had known it somehow.

  Both Olivia Hollis and April Abrams had been killed with a hammer. Both had been twenty-five. Both had been attacked at home.

  I think he found her and stalked her, maybe without her even knowing about it.

  Laney’s words came back to him, along with the imploring look she’d had in her eyes. She was convinced of her theory, convinced enough to elbow her way into his investigation. She simply wouldn’t let it go, and Reed knew how that felt because he’d been there.

  He reached into the banker’s box and pulled out another binder. This one was packed with interview notes, all neatly typed by someone with a fondness for all caps. He flipped through the pages, skimming names and dates. The sheriff’s guys had interviewed quite a few friends of the victim, most of them male. Reed counted eight different names, some interviewed multiple times. They had addresses in Clarkesville, San Marcos, Austin. Reed skimmed the pages but didn’t see any mention of Mix or any other dating site. He didn’t see anything computer-related mentioned anywhere at all, in fact. The closest thing was a phone dump, which showed a long list of cell-phone calls during the sixty days preceding Olivia’s disappearance. Someone had marked up the report, highlighting numbers and scrawling notes in the margin: mom, sister, fmr. roommate.

  Reed heard shuffling in the hallway. The vending machine groaned, and a soda can clunked down. Reed leaned his head out of the cage as Krueller hiked up the stairs.

  “Hey, you guys have any chargers around here?”

  Krueller stopped and turned around. “What’s that?”

  “Phone chargers? You have any plugged in up there? I’m looking for an iPhone charger, older model, probably a four.”

  Krueller stared at him.

  “It’s probably white. Maybe plugged into the wall or someone’s power bar?”

  “I’ll look around,” he said.

  Reed set the phone aside and continued with the binder. It was packed with interview notes. For a small department, they’d covered a lot of ground, and he knew they’d been under intense pressure. Not unlike the pressure his department was under, which was mounting by the day.

  Damn it, he owed his lieutenant a phone call.

  His cell buzzed in his pocket. He set the binder aside and checked the number. Jay.

  “How’d the funeral go?” Reed asked.

  “How you’d expect.”

  “Anything interesting?”

  A heavy sigh on the other end. “No. Good turnout, though. Lot of people from her work were there. Ian Phelps, Greg Sloan. Mindy What’s-her-name.”

  “Stephens.”

  “Right. And your friend was there, too. Delaney Knox.”

  Reed stopped what he was doing.

  “I tried to approach her, but she lit out right after the service ended,” Jay said. “So how’d it go at the yoga place?”

  “They never heard of April Abrams. Looks like maybe she was just calling to inquire about class schedules or something.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “Clarke County.”

  Reed went back to the autopsy report and flipped to the diagram drawn by the forensic anthropologist. It was one of those fill-in-the-blank pictures, only instead of a human body, as Reed had seen in April’s case, the diagram showed a skeleton with various injuries marked.

  “And?” Jay sounded eager. “You turn up anything?”

  “Still working on it, and I’ve got another stop to make. I’ll let you know when I’m back.”

  “Shit, you found something, didn’t you?”

  Reed studied the drawing and read Dr. Quinn’s notes in the margin: Depressed fracture, left parietal.

  “Reed?”

  “I don’t know yet. Maybe.”

  The Delphi Center was on the outskirts of a college town between Clarkesville and Austin. It was on Reed’s way home.

  He checked his watch. It was almost six o’clock on a Saturday, which meant lots of cops stopping by the crime lab to drop off evidence from weekend incidents. Reed figured he had a fifty-fifty chance of catching her.

&nbs
p; “Well, what’s the other stop?” Jay asked.

  “I need to swing by the Delphi Center.”

  CHAPTER 6

  The sun was getting low by the time Laney logged off her computer and packed it in for the day.

  Alex Deveraux breezed into the lab. She had a cup of coffee in hand and looked ready for action.

  “Graveyard shift?” Laney asked.

  “I’m on the Homeland Security project with Tarek. He here yet?”

  Laney stood up and grabbed her bag. “Haven’t seen him.”

  “We’re running a DDoS attack against ICE tonight.”

  They typically did simulated attacks at night or on weekends, when it would be less disruptive to normal operations.

  Alex set her coffee beside her keyboard. “By the way, there’s a cop downstairs asking about you.”

  Laney froze. “What, now?”

  “He was at the reception desk when I came in.”

  “What’s he want?”

  “Don’t know. I didn’t talk to him.”

  “How do you know he’s a cop?”

  Alex shot her a “get real” look as she pulled out her chair. Alex was married to a cop, so she could probably spot them a mile away.

  Laney’s desk phone buzzed, and Alex nodded at it. “See?”

  She picked it up. “Knox.”

  “Hey, it’s Reed.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Reed Novak.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Looking for someone.”

  “Who?”

  “Doesn’t matter, I missed her.”

  Laney slung her bag over her shoulder and waited. She could feel Alex’s eyes on her.

  “I saw your car out front,” he said. “I need to talk to you about something. You have time to meet up?”

  Laney felt a rush of warmth. It wasn’t just the invitation but the low timbre of his voice.

  “I’ll buy you a cup of coffee,” he added.

  Laney glanced at Alex, who was watching her with blatant curiosity now.

  “Laney?”

  “There’s a place in town called the Cedar Door. You know it?”

  “No.”

  “Corner of Main and River Road,” she said. “I’ll meet you over there.”

  She got off the phone, and Alex was smiling at her. “Hot date?” she asked.

  “I wish.”

  • • •

  The Cedar Door was a hangout for college students as well as tourists who’d spent the day tubing on the river and drinking copious amounts of beer. On Saturdays especially, the place was a meat market, which was exactly why Laney picked it.

  She pulled into the gravel parking lot and created a space for her car at the end of a row of pickups. She tossed her hoodie into the backseat and looked around. The outdoor deck overlooking the river was already filled to capacity.

  She spotted Reed waiting by the door. He still wore his usual detective attire, but his sleeves were rolled up and his hair was mussed as though he’d raked his hand through it a few too many times. His blue eyes pinned her as she walked over, and she got a warm tingle in the pit of her stomach. For a moment, she just gazed up at him.

  “Any trouble finding it?” she asked.

  “No.”

  He pulled open the heavy wooden door, and she stepped inside. The place was filled with sunburned men and lots of women in cutoff shorts and halter tops.

  Perfect.

  Maybe it was the funeral getting to her. Or maybe the fact that Reed had caught her off guard last night. Or maybe she just had a mean streak. Whatever the reason, she was determined to screw with his head tonight.

  She turned around to see him skimming his gaze over the crowd. He glanced down at her. “What do you want to drink?”

  “Shiner Bock.”

  He started toward the bar, but she caught his arm.

  “No, I’ll go—it’ll be faster. What would you like?”

  “Shiner’s good,” he said.

  She wove her way through the crowd. At the bar, she leaned forward and waited to be noticed by one of the bartenders. A few minutes later, she rejoined Reed with the drinks.

  “There’s a spot,” she said, moving toward some empty stools beside a life-size cardboard cutout of a bikini-clad woman holding a tray of tequila shooters. But Reed took her elbow and steered her toward a corner table instead, and just the touch of his fingers gave her a warm shiver.

  Laney sat down, glancing around to see if she knew anyone.

  “Looks like you come here a lot,” Reed said, taking a seat.

  “Sometimes after work. It’s a popular hangout.” She sipped her beer, watching him. He seemed uneasy. Mission accomplished.

  Laney was good at reading people, and she could tell Reed thought she was young. Much too young to be taken seriously as an investigator. And definitely too young for whatever thoughts put that smoldering look in his eyes.

  She placed her bottle beside his. “So what did you want to talk about?”

  He didn’t answer. He turned his Shiner on the table, and his attention veered to the trio of blondes who’d stepped up to the dartboard. They barely looked old enough to drink.

  He looked at her. “You always work Saturdays?”

  “Sometimes. A lot of the tests we do go better on nights and weekends. We usually don’t want to crash our clients’ systems during peak hours.” She tipped her head to the side. “What about you? You work a lot of weekends?”

  “Sometimes.”

  He held her gaze, and she waited.

  “You like working at Delphi?” he asked.

  “It’s interesting. Pays really well.”

  “I’d imagine it does. Especially for someone, what, two years out of college?”

  “Three.”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “You shotgunned it.”

  “I was in a hurry to finish.”

  “How come?”

  She debated how much to tell him. She didn’t usually talk about her family. “When I was twelve, my dad took off with my college fund,” she said. “He and his girlfriend needed it for a nest egg.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s—wow.” He shook his head. “That must have sucked.”

  “I don’t know.” She shrugged. “It wasn’t all bad. It forced me to motivate. I mean, nobody’s entitled to go to college, right?”

  “He betrayed you and your mom. That must’ve hurt.”

  It did. Still. Her mom’s whole life had imploded—both of theirs had. Laney didn’t like to dwell on it, and she wasn’t sure why she was talking about it now.

  “No wonder you’re a workaholic,” Reed said.

  “How would you know?”

  “It’s Saturday evening, and you’re just starting your weekend.”

  “So are you.”

  He swilled his beer and smiled. “Fair point.”

  “Is that why you’re divorced?”

  The smile disappeared. “What makes you think I’m divorced?”

  “Because,” she said, glad to shift the focus. “You’re obviously straight. Outwardly likable—”

  “ ‘Outwardly’?”

  “You seem like someone who’d get married. But I’m guessing your hours weren’t conducive to domestic bliss, right?”

  He watched her warily, and she got the feeling she’d hit on the truth. “That’s more or less accurate,” he said, and she could see he wanted to change the subject. He took another sip of beer and watched her. “So what’s interesting about working at the Delphi Center?”

  “A lot of things. I used to be a software developer. This is much better. For one thing, there’s a point.”

  “You’re saying software’s
pointless?”

  “Well, I started out with ChatWare Solutions, which is a messaging platform. So it has a function, but I’m talking about a point point. Something meaningful.”

  He looked genuinely interested. “What’s meaningful at Delphi?”

  “I don’t know. Lot of things.”

  “Such as.”

  “Such as . . . we have one of the best cybercrime units in the country. We go after thieves and pimps and pedophiles.”

  He had to know all about their unit. They’d even teamed up with Austin PD a few times. “You’re an ­idealist.”

  She scoffed. “Right.”

  “No, it’s good.”

  She watched him silently. She wasn’t sure why the label made her uncomfortable, but it did. She never thought of herself as an idealist. It seemed to imply she was naive, and she wasn’t.

  “One of your coworkers over there at Delphi,” he said. “Dmitry Burkov?”

  “What about him?”

  “I remember his arrest four years ago at the University of Texas.”

  She didn’t respond.

  “You remember that?”

  “No,” she lied.

  “He wormed his way into the school computer and was selling grade adjustments on the black market.”

  She didn’t comment.

  “Too bad they didn’t get the charges to stick.” He watched her steadily. “Could have been ten years for hacking and online theft.”

  “Dmitry’s smart. He doesn’t leave footprints.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know how smart it was risking his freedom—not to mention his student visa—over a few bucks.” He gave her a long, cool look, and she wondered if he was trying to intimidate her again, maybe with the threat of charges. Where was he going with this?

  She turned her beer on the table. “Most people don’t do it for the money.”

  “Do what?”

  “Hack.”

  “Why do they do it?”

  “I don’t know. Boredom. Entertainment.” She ­shrug­ged. “Because they can. Nothing’s unhackable—the challenge is to figure out how.”

  “Why do you do it?”

  “Better than a life of suits and office plants.”