Dark Horse (Aspen Falls Novel)

by Melissa Pearl

  But then reality would kick his ass.

  Why would she come back? According to her, there was no point in them being together.

  Trying to live and breathe when he thought about that was basically impossible, so every time the ugly nightmare tried to steal his attention, he’d bat it away and focus back on the case, or any other damn work that Cam or Kellan could provide him with.

  It was making him a tired, miserable bastard, and people at the station were avoiding him whenever possible.

  He was still pissed off with Blaine for making him move in with Dad, and every time his younger brother approached, he warned him off with a glare or a sharp “fuck off.”

  Each time, Blaine would raise his hands and walk away, only to try again the next morning.

  Nate could be stubborn when he wanted to be, but his ability to keep pushing Blaine away was waning and he could feel himself getting ready to break. Next time Blaine brought him a coffee, he’d probably take it, but that was all. He wasn’t about to open up and talk feelings.

  He just needed to focus on work. That’d get him through.

  Waiting for results on the unidentified skeleton had felt like an eternity and only further darkened his mood. He’d spent hours up at the house, looking in every nook and cranny with Kelly to see if they could discover any hidden clues. But the old house had no stories to tell. The place had foreclosed years before and had been sitting empty, just waiting for someone like Alaina to see its potential and take a calculated risk.

  The shed where the remains had been found didn’t offer up much in the way of clues either. The only evidence they had to work with was the skeleton and the blanket it had been wrapped in.

  Forensic testing proved that the blanket was 100 percent polyester, which probably meant it was the soft kind of blanket used on a bed or thrown over the back of a couch. Being an unnatural fiber, polyester took decades to decompose, so that didn’t help much with establishing a timeline. It was a newer material, most likely post—World War II, but that didn’t help too much. Nate hoped they could get more from the remains.

  He gazed down at the dry bones, neatly laid out on the table. The victim had been respectfully examined, every inch of its skeleton scrutinized by both Aspen Fall’s chief medical examiner, Chad Hickman, and the forensic anthropologist, Professor Nigel Renshaw, from Hamline University.

  Chad had called that morning to say he was ready to report, and Nate had leaped out the door as fast as he could.

  It meant going to the hospital, which Nate didn’t love, but he made sure to avoid any entrances where he might bump into Sally. His method of survival was to cut her out completely. Once the pain had died down, he’d find the courage to check in and see how she was doing.

  The way his heart hurt, he was guessing it would take some time. Sally had plenty of family support and three of the world’s best friends to keep her busy and take her mind off things—if she was even thinking about him.

  His jaw tensed. Part of him wanted her to be miserable, to be filled with regret, to ache the way he was aching. But when the anger subsided, however brief the respite might be, he knew he didn’t really wish those things upon her. Yeah, she’d dumped him, and losing her was killing him, but his feelings for her were slow to die. He wondered if they ever would.

  “Morning, Detective.” Chad smiled as he walked out from his office.

  Deep dimples scored the man’s dark round face. He always had such a jolly look about him, like the guy didn’t realize he worked with dead people for a living.

  “Hey, Chad. What’ve you got for me?”

  Chad stood over the remains and opened his file with an air of reverence. Pulling a pair of small reading glasses from his pocket, he scanned the contents before saying anything. That was always his way—slow and methodical.

  Nate gritted his teeth and resisted the urge to hurry him along.

  “Okay.” Chad took off his glasses and looked at Nate. “So we’ve established that the victim was female, most likely of European ancestry, and her bone growth suggests she was a teenager.”

  Nate’s eyebrows rose as he jotted down the notes. “Can you be more specific on the age?”

  “Judging on the fusing of bones and dental development, we can place her in her late teens.”

  “Have you cross-referenced dental records?”

  “Where would we start? There have been a lot of teenage girls in Aspen Falls over the years, Detective Hartford.”

  Nate hitched his shoulder to hide his embarrassment. Of course going through dental records would be like wading through an ocean. They needed to narrow things down much further before going there.

  Chad put his glasses back on and nudged them up his nose with his knuckle. “Height is five-six and the bone structure is fine, which suggests she was probably not a large person, although I have no substantial proof of this. She may have been carrying excess weight. There’s really no way to tell, although Professor Renshaw did note that there looked to be no strain on the bones or wearing down of the joints, which indicates that she was most likely not obese and that she had never been subjected to hard labor.”

  Nate nodded, trying to build a mental picture as he wrote. “Cause of death?”

  Chad slapped his file closed and held up his finger. “Now this was interesting. Almost makes me want to check out forensic anthropology. Who knew studying bones could tell you so much?” He chuckled.

  Nate pressed his lips together and looked down as Chad leaned over the bones and pointed at the rib cage. “You see this tiny nick on the bottom of her fourth right rib?”

  Nate cautiously leaned over the body and squinted at the bone.

  “Renshaw’s confident that was caused by a bullet. If his calculated trajectory is correct, the bullet entered the right atrium of her heart and exited out the back. There’s a very fine abrasion on the T5, which suggests the bullet grazed her spine before exiting the body.” Chad looked up. “You and Kelly didn’t find any shell casings or damaged bullets around?”

  Nate shook his head, frustrated by the lack of evidence on the property.

  “I guess she could’ve been shot somewhere else and moved to the property.”

  “It’s a possibility.” Nate clicked his pen and stared down at the bones. “Would she have died instantly?”

  “That depends on a few factors.” Chad stood tall and picked up his file again. “Caliber of the weapon, distance she was from the gun.”

  “Can you tell any of that from the skeleton?”

  Chad shook his head.

  “Okay.” Nate nodded. “But we’re pretty sure the cause of death is a gunshot wound to the chest?”

  “Yes.”

  “Time since death?”

  Chad puffed out his cheeks. “That’s the tricky part. Our Jane Doe was wrapped in a polyester blanket, which alters the rate of decomposition. However, it is clear that the bones have been there for some time. The blanket she was wrapped in could help figure out the timeframe. If we can find the manufacturer, we can work out when that type of blanket was first made and narrow it down from there. Although that’s most likely a very big window.”

  Nate frowned in thought, then muttered, “We’ll probably have more luck working through the history of the house. I’ve already started going through the list of previous owners.”

  “You assuming the victim lived there?”

  “It’s one theory.” Nate shrugged.

  Chad nodded. “It’s a good place to start, but there’s every chance that the body was wrapped in the blanket and moved there to be buried.”

  “It seems an odd place to bury someone, unless you already lived in the house.”

  “Fair point,” Chad admitted. “Or maybe someone was trying to set up the owner. Or maybe after the house was abandoned, they figured it was a safe place to hide a body.”

  “Also fair points.” Nate clicked his pen off and on again. “Touché.”

  Flipping his notebook shut, he slippe
d it back into his pocket, clicked off his pen and tucked it away. “Thanks for your good work, Chad.”

  “No problem. Call me if you have any other questions. I’ll type up my report today and send it over when it’s done.”

  “Thanks,” Nate called over his shoulder, exiting the hospital and getting back to the precinct as fast as he could.

  Bustling through the door, he hurried to Jessica’s desk. “How are we doing with the previous homeowners?”

  “Getting there.” She smiled. “I’ve emailed you an initial report with all the information I have so far. I can definitely compile more, but I thought it’d be more time efficient to let you narrow it down further, and then I can go in-depth on whichever homeowners you think are likely possibilities.” She swiveled her chair to face him. “What did Chad say about the body?”

  Nate gave her a grim look. “We’re dealing with a murder victim. Teenage girl.”

  Jessica’s expression buckled with sadness, but she pulled it into line quickly. “Timeframe?”

  “Not yet. That’s what we need to work on. Did any of the previous homeowners have children?”

  “Yeah, a few of them.”

  “We’ll start there. Work out which families would’ve had teenage daughters at the time they lived in the house. Start looking into school records for me. Let’s build profiles for these families and see if we can’t find a Jane Doe candidate among them. We have to narrow down this field.” He spun and headed for his office, forgetting to thank Jessica for her work.

  His mind was humming with notions as he relived his meeting with Chad.

  Was it a suicide? An accidental death? A crime of passion?

  Had the victim tried to dump her unstable boyfriend?

  Was she cheating on him?

  Or was it something else entirely?

  Nate’s brain buzzed with questions as he scrambled to turn on his computer and start digging through the history of the old farm on Fraser Road.

  “Are you blind yet?” Camila dumped a paper takeout bag on her desk and slumped into her seat.

  Nate rubbed his eyes and groaned.

  “Seriously, move away from the screen. Go have lunch already. Or breakfast, knowing you. You haven’t eaten properly today, have you?”

  He responded with a grunt that screamed, “Shut up, Mom!”

  Cam snickered and pulled a paper-wrapped burger from the crumpled bag. She threw it at Nate and he caught it one-handed. The idea of eating wasn’t very appealing, but his grumbling stomach told him he was full of it.

  Unwrapping the burger, he bit into the juicy beef and mumbled a quick thank you.

  “You’re welcome.” She grinned, popping a French fry into her mouth and licking the salt off her finger. “So, how many homeowners with teenage daughters did the farm have?”

  “Five,” Nate grumbled. “The place is a hundred years old and has had a steady stream of owners from about 1935 onward.”

  “You shouldn’t be looking at anything earlier than when the blankets were made.”

  “I know that,” he snapped, dropping his half-eaten burger on the wrapper and looking back at the screen. “But we still haven’t found the manufacturer, and polyester was introduced to America in 1951. I’m just being thorough.”

  Cam raised her hands and backed off. “So, you got anything of interest, then?”

  “The Millers owned the property from 1963 until 1978. According to town and school records, they had two sons and a daughter. Jess is looking into where the family is now. After that, the property went to the Bormans, who owned it until ’91. They had a daughter, but she left home only a year after they moved in.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I found a picture of them in the Aspen Falls Daily. She was some genius kid who won a scholarship to Harvard.”

  “So where’s she at now?” Cam propped her legs on the corner of the desk and crossed her ankles.

  “I lost track of her after she graduated from Harvard. She’s probably gotten married and changed her name. I’m looking into it,” Nate gritted out.

  “Okay. So if you can’t find her, then it’s a possibility.”

  Nate glanced over his shoulder. “She graduated from Harvard, which meant she would’ve been in her twenties. I’m ruling her out.”

  “Good point.” Cam’s lips smacked as she licked more salt off her fingertips, then reached for another fry. “Anyone else you’re looking into?”

  Nate sighed and scrubbed a hand down his face. “Another option is the Schnyders. They took over the property in ’93. It’d sat empty for two years, and they bought it for a song and operated the farm until 2007 when the bank foreclosed on them after they failed to make mortgage repayments. From there, the house was bought one other time by a single guy in his forties, Melvin Sims, but after only two years of owning the place, he declared bankruptcy. It’s been sitting empty ever since.”

  “Where’s this Sims guy now?”

  Nate flicked through the myriad of open files on his computer desktop. “According to Jessica’s report, the trail runs dry in 2012. He left Aspen Falls and hasn’t been back since.”

  “He could be the killer.”

  “I’m aware of that,” Nate huffed. “But we have to identify the body before we start jumping to conclusions.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know.” Cam’s feet thumped on the floor as she swung her legs down. “Let’s go back to the Schnyder family for a second. Any daughters?”

  “Yeah, Jess thinks so. According to her report, there was a Mila Schnyder who attended Aspen Falls High from 2003 to 2006. I need to cross-reference the address, but it could be another possibility, although any teenage girl who has lived in Aspen Falls since 1958 would’ve attended Aspen Falls High. It’s the only school to go to.”

  “Have you managed to find this Mila chick? Does she still live in Aspen Falls?”

  Nate shook his head and scribbled another note on the chaotic sheet of paper beside him. “Don’t think so. I’ll follow it up, though.”

  “Where are the parents now?”

  “I’m not that far along yet. I’ve only just started looking into them.”

  “You said they foreclosed?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And so did that Sims guy?”

  “Uh-huh.” Nate squinted at the screen, adding more scribbled notes to his list of things to do as he skimmed Jessica’s report on the Schnyders.

  “Geez, it’s like the property was cursed or something,” Cam muttered. “Is there anything there on why the Schnyders couldn’t meet payments? Had they been struggling for a while, or did they get stung by the recession?”

  “I need to call the bank and find out, but I doubt they’ll tell us that kind of stuff. We’d need a warrant to get personal banking details.”

  Cam made a face. It frustrated Nate too, but people had a right to privacy.

  A short knock at the door made them both look up.

  “Hey, guys,” said Mick, holding up a slip of paper. “A Mrs. Turner just called in asking about the Fraser Road place. She saw the article in the paper and was curious.”

  Nate rolled his eyes and Cam snickered at his expression before asking, “So, what’d you tell her?”

  “That I couldn’t disclose information about an ongoing case. She then went on to tell me that she was friends with one of the previous owners.” Mick glanced at the slip of paper. “Darlene Schnyder, and she wouldn’t drop the call until I promised to pass the information along to you.”

  Nate and Cam shared a quick look. She wiggled her eyebrows and shot out of her seat. “Leave it with me. I’ll take that one. You follow the Mila thread and see if the school can tell us anything.” She grabbed the paper out of Mick’s hands. “Thank you, Micky Boy.”

  “Don’t…” He winced. “Micky Boy.” His pained expression made Cam laugh as he slumped out of the room.

  Nate grinned and turned back to his computer.

  Thirty minutes later, he and Cam reconven
ed to share notes.

  “What’ve you got?” Nate pointed his pen at Cam.

  “Okay.” She took a swig of Coke, then placed the can down on the corner of her desk. “Jean Turner knew Darlene Schnyder, but wasn’t close friends with her or anything. She was good friends with Darlene’s cousin, who—before you ask—no longer lives in the area.”

  Nate let out a frustrated grunt.

  “So, according to Jean, who used to gossip with Darlene’s cousin all the time, the Schnyders were doing just fine until the middle of 2006 when Vern Schnyder just up and left. Darlene couldn’t run the farm on her own and in the end, the bank had to foreclose.”

  “I wonder why the husband took off.”

  “Jean’s theory was that Darlene kicked him out after everything that went down with the daughter.”

  Nate sat forward. “Which was?”

  Cam frowned. “Jean clammed up when I tried to press her, like she was suddenly realizing that she was crossing some kind of line. I told her it was important, and asked if she knew where Darlene Schnyder was so I could speak to her personally about it.” Cam sighed. “Unfortunately, she’s gone. Died of cancer about five years ago.”

  “Shit,” Nate muttered.

  “I know.” Cam dropped her pad on the desk.

  “So she didn’t say anything else? No clues?”

  “All I got was that Vern Schnyder left and Darlene was all alone. There’s obviously some kind of rumor circulating about the daughter, but I don’t know what.”

  “Darlene was all alone,” Nate murmured. “Do you think the daughter went with him? Or he took the daughter or something?”

  “That doesn’t exactly go along with her kicking her husband out.” Cam gave a thoughtful pout. “I might go visit Mrs. Turner in person tomorrow, see if I can’t get more out of the woman.” Grabbing her Coke can, she took another large gulp and wiped her glistening lips with the back of her hand. “So what’d you find out?”

  “According to her track coach, Mila Schnyder dropped out less than two months before graduation.”