by Carsen Taite
Seeing him up close after all this time was stunning, like looking into one of those aging apps she’d seen on social media. His hair was cut close, but instead of being dark brown like hers, his was gray. He was lean with muscle, including his chiseled jaw, but his sunken cheeks signaled he hadn’t been eating well, which she imagined was true on a steady diet of prison food. After a few moments of close observation, Riley grew uncomfortable with their mutual stare and glanced away while she struggled to find something to say.
“I know you’ve been away from civilization for a while, but when someone doesn’t answer their door after the first ten rings, normal people give up and go away.”
He shrugged. “Giving up isn’t my style. I’d think you know that by now.”
She ignored the overture. “What do you want?”
“I was hoping we could talk. I feel like there’s a lot of murky air between us.”
He wasn’t wrong about the murkiness, but she didn’t want to talk about it. Not now, and maybe not for a long time. “I don’t have anything to say.”
“Then I’ll talk.” He shifted from one foot to the other. “Maybe you could invite me in.”
He said it like it was a small thing, but it was huge to her. Her apartment was small and simple, but it was her refuge from the real world. She’d holed up here for three days after she’d last seen him, a week ago, and she hadn’t even spoken with him then just stood in the back of the courtroom while a judge declared he should be released pending a decision from the DA’s office about whether they planned to proceed with a new trial.
For the first time in her adult life, her father was a free man, and she hadn’t had adequate time to process how she felt about his new status. She had no idea how much time she would need, but him showing up, uninvited, at her home only set the clock back on her healing. Every cell in her body was urging her to throw him out, tell him not to come around until she decided she was ready, but the teenage girl who’d held her mother’s hand while she watched her father being led away in handcuffs still craved the attention she’d lost along the way. Would she ever be able to balance her desire for the father she’d lost with her need to be sure she wouldn’t grow up to be like him? Distance was the only way she could keep from being hurt.
But as much as she didn’t want to usher him back into her life, she didn’t want to air her personal business for the world to see. “Come in but make it quick. I have somewhere to be.” She held the door open while he walked through as surprised as he seemed to be that she’d invited him in.
“Should we sit down?” he asked.
“No,” she replied, not wanting to give the impression he was truly welcome. “I’m not much of a sitter.”
“You get that from me.”
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Playact the whole father thing.” She took a deep breath and braced for whatever it was he had to say. “You said you wanted to tell me something?”
His shoulders sagged a bit and he met her eyes with an imploring gaze. Her mother always told her she had his eyes, but she prayed she’d never look this haunted and lonely. She didn’t know this man any more than she’d known him when they’d lived under the same roof. The few years before he’d gone to prison, he’d been absent, a fact her mother had explained away by his demanding job, but during his very public trial, Riley learned his distance had more to do with drug addiction than anything else. Aside from a few vague memories of him helping her learn to ride a bike and teaching her to catch a fly ball, Frank Flynn was a complete stranger, and she didn’t know him any better than the people who’d been watching the news of his exoneration.
“A lot’s been going on. The DA’s office is getting ready to release a statement saying they aren’t going to retry my case. My lawyer says if they make good on it, I have a good chance of getting the judge to declare me actually innocent. Then maybe I can get a settlement to help me put my life back together until I can find a job.”
She could feel the unasked question hanging in the air—the ask for help, sympathy, something, anything to bind them beyond the bloodline they shared. It wasn’t that she didn’t feel sorry for him. If the news stories were right, he’d spent years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. The court had overturned his conviction after a series of egregious law enforcement and prosecutorial missteps came to light, but no judge had gone as far as to say he’d been exonerated. The press had been touting the story as a man framed for a murder, but her careful reading of every document she could get her hands on told her it wasn’t that simple. Sure, it was hard to believe her own flesh and blood would be capable of a heinous crime, but a knee-jerk reaction seemed out of place as well. If the DA’s office had really decided not to move forward with a new trial, his innocence would be determined by a judge’s pronouncement followed by the smack of a gavel.
“Congratulations. That’s great news.” She injected as much sincerity as she could muster, but she could tell by the dejected look in his eyes, it wasn’t enough. “What are you going to do now?”
“I’m staying with some friends while I look for an apartment.”
She wondered what kind of friends a man who’d just been released from prison would have and decided she didn’t want to know. “Okay.”
He stared at his worn boots for a moment before meeting her eyes. “I was hoping we could start over.”
Her gut twisted. “Start over from when? The day you were arrested? Or should we start from the first day of your trial? Anything before that doesn’t seem real in comparison.”
“I’m sorry. I know I wasn’t always there for you, but I did the best I could. I’m not the same man I was.”
“And I’m doing the best I can now.” She closed her eyes for a moment, seeking to center. “I need some time to adjust to…all of this.”
He raised his hands. “I get it. I know this can’t be easy. Believe me, I know.”
Again, she wavered. What must it have been like all those years, thinking no one would ever believe you when you said you were innocent? And then suddenly the locks came open and they released you out into the world like the whole thing had never happened, leaving you to navigate a world where not everyone believed that just because the cops dicked around with your case that you still weren’t guilty. Hell, she was one of the ones who still reserved judgment. If the police had been correct, he’d brutally beaten a twenty-four-year-old woman named Linda Bradshaw to death, but DNA evidence from the scene that had been shoved away for years, now pointed to a felon who’d been executed a year ago for a host of other crimes as the actual guilty party. The whole thing made Riley’s head spin. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Say we can try. Say you won’t give up on me yet,” he pleaded. “I talked to your mom and she and I are having lunch next week. Maybe you can join us?”
Lunch seemed like such a simple request. Low-key, low commitment, but the prospect of spending even an hour in the company of her estranged father and the woman whose life he’d wrecked turned her stomach sour. “I don’t know.”
“Just tell me you’ll think about it.” He ducked his head and tried to catch her eyes. “Please?”
She wished she’d never opened the door. She was on the verge of getting a real break with her work and now her creative process was about to be disrupted by a swirl of emotions sure to throw her off track. She wanted him and his problems to go away, so she said the one thing that would get him off her back until she could think of a more permanent solution. “I’ll do my best.”
After he left, she returned to her workout, added more weights, determined to turn her focus inward—away from her father and his needs and back to her own. With each lift, she vowed to get stronger, until nothing could derail her the way his visit had. She didn’t have time or patience for daddy issues.
* * *
“Are you sure they’re open?” Claire asked as Nick pulled into the spot behind Henry’s Thrift Shop where they�
��d parked before. It was now Monday morning and they were no closer to finding the killer than they had been when they’d shown up at the scene on Saturday night.
“Yes,” Nick said. “I even called her like you asked and she assured me they’d be open at ten on Monday like they had been for the last twenty years.”
“She sounds like a pistol.”
“Truth.”
They walked through the doors of the aging store, and Claire narrowly avoided tripping over a pile of old typewriters. An elderly woman wearing a smock and glasses perched on the back of her head approached, and Claire stood to the side and watched Nick charm the woman who owned the thrift shop before he made introductions. “Lila Henry, this is my partner and friend, Claire Hanlon.”
“Pleased to meet you, Detective.”
“Oh please, call me Claire.” She forced a big smile and tried to ignore Nick’s look of surprise. She never invited people to drop the “detective.” “We appreciate you helping us out.”
“I’m not sure how much help I can be. I closed up around about six Saturday night and didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.”
Claire asked her a few questions about where she parked, which door she exited, etc. “Was there anyone else around when you left?”
She shook her head. “Oh wait, one of the artists from that group was still here.”
Claire’s attention perked up at the word “artists.” “Tell me more about that.”
“There’s this group—they have a name, but I can’t remember what it is. They meet up around town and draw parts of the city, and they’ve been setting up around here the past few weeks. They were all gone last night when I closed up shop except for one. She was finishing up when the sun went down. Nice girl. Helped me load my pickup.”
“She?” Nick asked
Claire heard the disbelief in his voice that signaled he didn’t think a woman could be responsible for the strangulation, and barely resisted kicking him in the shins. “Do you know her name?”
Lila shook her head. “I know she told it to me once, but you know how you hear someone’s name and then forget and then you’re too embarrassed to admit you forgot? That’s me.”
“Can you describe her for me?”
Lila seemed to pull back a bit at the question, her expression now leery. “Surely you don’t think she had anything to do with this?”
“Absolutely not,” said Nick.
Claire put a hand on his arm to stop him from saying more. “We would like to try and locate this group to warn them about being out here after dark. Any information you could provide us might help with that.”
Lila nodded slowly like that was a perfectly good explanation. “She’s tall, with short, dark hair. Lean, but strong. She lifted boxes of metal like they were full of feathers. As for the group, I think they have a page on social media, but I’m not entirely sure. This neighborhood’s one of their favorite spots, but they meet up on Saturdays, all over the city. They hang out at the Ginger Man sometimes—someone there might know how to get in touch with them.”
“Thank you. That’s very helpful,” Claire said. A few minutes later when she was back in the car with Nick, she started scrolling through the internet on her phone. “Not a lot of info. An email address and details about their next meet-up. Looks like the location changes every week.”
“Any pictures?”
“Lots of art, hardly any people,” she said. “I’ll check to see if they have an Instagram account.”
“Want to swing by the bar and see if anyone is around?”
Claire checked the time. “It’s a little early still. Let’s go by Optima Vending and see if anyone there knows anything about who might have it in for Jill Shasta.” She and Nick had met with the dead woman’s parents the day before and they had confirmed her identity. They’d also professed not to know anyone who would want to kill their daughter, but they confessed they only spoke about once a month, if that, just to check in.
“Are you thinking the drawing in her pocket was just a coincidence?”
“Not at all, but I don’t want some slick defense attorney trying to make it look like we didn’t explore every avenue before we settled on a perp. Besides, maybe Jill knew the artist. If she did, one of her co-workers might know about it.”
“Smart thinking. Which is why you outrank me.” Nick grinned to show no hard feelings and turned the car toward downtown. Optima Vending’s main office was located on the east side of downtown in a small building near the Farmer’s Market. Nick found a parking spot about a block away. As they walked, they talked about what they knew so far.
“What do you think she was doing in Deep Ellum Saturday night?” Claire asked.
“Date? Although she was dressed like she’d just come from work. I’ll admit I’ve been out of the dating scene for a while, but last time I checked, a business suit on a Saturday night in Deep Ellum wasn’t hip.”
“True, and why was she in that particular spot?” They’d found her car parked a couple of blocks away. “Chances are good, if she’d gone to happy hour, she’d be there with friends or co-workers. What made her wander away from the action to the side of the block where nothing was going on?”
“That’s assuming she wandered off and wasn’t dragged down there.”
“And no one saw anything?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” He pointed at a door. “This is Optima.”
The woman at the front desk barely looked up when they walked in, clearly intent on finishing what was obviously a personal call. Claire took the opportunity to take a mental inventory of the office. An older couch and a scuffed-up coffee table covered with last year’s magazines were the only furnishings. According to Jill’s parents, Jill had been working outside sales for Optima, which probably meant she wasn’t in the office very often except to file reports.
“Can I help you?”
Claire noticed the question was directed at Nick, not her, and Nick was the object of much flirtatious eyelash batting. Best to let him take the lead.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m Detective Redding and this is Detective Hanlon. What’s your name?”
“Alice,” she replied with a slight lilt in her voice. “How can I help you?”
“We’re here about Jill Shasta. We were hoping we could talk to some of her co-workers.”
“She didn’t have any.” Perhaps sensing how abrupt she sounded, Alice grimaced. “I mean, we have a few salespeople, but they all work from home. I doubt she’s even met most of them. Terrible thing, what happened to her.”
“How about you? Did you know her very well?”
“Not really. She came in every other week to pick up her commission check, but she filed all her reports by email. Not super talky either, but she seemed to do okay. Guess she saved all her nice for her accounts.”
Claire thought she heard a bit of an edge on that last part. “Would anyone here know if she’d scheduled a meeting with a particular client on Saturday night?”
Alice narrowed her eyes. “You think one of her clients killed her?”
Claire resisted an eye roll. Too much Dateline. Of course, Alice didn’t know about the drawing they’d found in Jill’s pocket, and Claire had no intention of disclosing it. “No, we’re just trying to get a timeline of where she was and when to try to narrow down the possibilities.”
Alice nodded knowingly. “Makes sense. But no, she was an independent contractor and we don’t have any records of her meetings. I wish I could help you,” she added wistfully, looking in Nick’s direction.
Or you wish you had more reason to talk to Nick. Claire scrunched her brow and Nick got the signal. He handed Alice a card and, in his best imitation of a flirt, told her to call his cell anytime if she thought of anything that might be helpful.
When they were back in the car, Nick moaned about the interaction. “I’ll let you explain to Cheryl when I get a booty call in the middle of the night from Ms. Helpful back there.”
“P
oor Alice. Who knows, maybe she’ll think of something helpful.”
“Doubt it.” Nick looked at his phone. “Reyes sent us a text. She’s got the autopsy scheduled for this afternoon. You want to run by the Ginger Man now, and see if we can get any info on this artist group? We could grab something to eat.”
“How about later tonight? I’ve got a lunch thing.”
“A lunch thing?”
She stopped at the light and turned to face him. “It’s with Bruce.”
“And you didn’t want to tell me because you’re up for another promotion and you thought I might cry at the prospect of losing you as a partner?”
His tone was joking, but the subject matter surprised her. “It’s just lunch.”
“Secret lunch.”
She’d always felt slightly uncomfortable about her friendship with Assistant Chief Bruce Kehler, but he was her mentor and nothing more. “Okay, when you say it out loud, it makes me seem kind of silly. But you will miss me when I get promoted someday, right?”
“Uh, yeah, but I know the deal. You’re the department golden child. Why you’d want to move up the ladder and drive a desk is beyond me, and frankly a waste of your skills, but your climb to the top is inevitable. I only hope you’ll remember me when you’re the new chief. I’m going to need you to make sure my new partner comes with plenty of snacks.”
“That’s all I am to you, a snack dispenser?” She was teasing and she knew he knew it, but there had always been a little awkwardness around her relationship with Bruce, mostly because Nick thought he was a Neanderthal. He wasn’t wrong. Bruce was definitely old school cop and had very definite opinions about the role of law enforcement and what they should be allowed to do, but he’d steadily risen in the ranks of the Dallas PD, and commanded the respect of the men and women in his command and the higher-ups who’d promoted him. He was like an uncle to her, having served with her father in the Marines, and he’d taken a special interest in her career from the moment she’d entered the academy.
