by Jen Talty
“We’ll see ourselves out,” Kara said.
Shane held her arm as they descended the steps, heading toward the car. “They most definitely were having sex.”
“Why did you bring up us writing notes?” Kara asked as she slipped into the passenger seat. “That seemed a little weird and out of the blue.”
Shane laughed. “I thought it might win me some points with the kid. Get him to open up, seeing as I still actually have some of the notes you wrote me.” He slammed the car into gear and pulled away from the curb.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Sadly, no. My mother had them all in a box when she cleaned out my room. She gave them to me when I bought my current house, along with my first tooth, hair from my first haircut, and a shit load of other nostalgic items. My mother never got rid of much.” Shane had taken all those boxes and put them over the garage, never opening them. Now he wanted to go through all of them.
He glanced toward Kara at the stop sign at the corner of Main Street in Pittsford and Monroe Avenue, heading toward Brighton. She stared out the window, not looking his way at all. He could drop her off at her hotel as they drove right past it, but for some reason this personal trip down memory lane was exactly what he felt like he needed.
Or maybe he was just a glutton for punishment.
Chapter 8
IT WAS WELL INTO the midnight hour. Shane’s eyes burned from hours of sitting at his dining room table, staring at files. He closed his laptop. It was rare he’d bring his work home, but that was before Janet had died. Now that he was a single dad, that rule might need some adjustment. “We’re getting nowhere. The second team couldn’t find any connection to the previous owners of the house Emily was found in. The few prints we have are from the kids who found her. We still need to talk to the local distributors of Yankee Candle and I have a list of all trinket stores in the area that sell candles, along with BrightLite Consultants.”
“You can buy candles online, too. What about the rope and tape?”
“Rope can be bought just about anywhere. I suppose Amazon as well. The tape, however, is a cheap brand. Not carried at Home Depot or Lowe’s, but carried at places like Kmart, Target, and small local hardware stores.” He paused for a moment. “And I guess online, too.”
“CSI says whoever tied the rope around Emily’s hands and feet was left-handed. Did you notice if Doug was left-handed?”
“He is,” Shane said.
Kara looked up over her computer screen. “I’ve got fifteen cases nationwide that have fingers or toes or other body parts missing, but nothing with candles. I’ve got another dozen cases where the crime scenes lacked blood from the victims. But no candles. I’ve got a few religious whack jobs who were into human sacrifice and all sorts of weird practices. But I don’t have one single case that has anything to do with candles...and butterflies.”
“I can’t find any connection between Gregory and Emily. Nothing about the designs on Emily’s body either, except for the butterflies that she drew.”
“Got our technical analyst working on that. She’s amazing and can dig up anything on anyone, match any pattern. The things she finds often amazes me.”
“Good to know,” Shane said. “One thing I thought was, maybe Gregory knew Haughton’s daughter, but that seems to be a dead end. Gregory’s parents live in Florida. Foster said they were coming back tomorrow, so we can talk to them then. Maybe they knew the McCauley’s.”
“I’ll add that to our long list of things to ask them.”
“We both need some rest.” Shane put his hand on the top of her screen. “Shut it down for now. We’ll regroup in the morning.”
“I’ll call a cab.”
“Like hell,” Shane said.
“I’m not letting you drive me to the hotel at this hour, or in this weather.”
“Didn’t plan on it,” he said. “You can stay here. I’ve got my niece’s room all set up. You can sleep in there.” He pointed to the window. “At least another foot has fallen just in the last few hours. The roads are going to be a mess.”
“Shane, I—”
“I’ve got plenty of room. You can wear something of mine to sleep in. We can go to the hotel bright and early, so you can grab a change of clothes.”
“I don’t want to impose.”
“You’re not,” he said, closing her computer for her. “I’ll make you some hot cocoa.”
“You remember.”
“I remember a lot of things,” he said softly.
She looked up at him with her milk-chocolate-brown eyes, her long brown hair falling out of its ponytail. The last time he’d seen her they were twenty. It seemed like a lifetime ago, yet, looking at her now, it felt like just yesterday that she walked out of his life.
It was crazy she could still stir these emotions inside him. The love he once felt. The pain of her leaving. The confusion of silence.
“Perhaps we should discuss the past.” Kara had perched herself on the breakfast bar in his small u-shaped kitchen. “We’re working together, and who knows how long this case will last, and I feel tension between us that can’t be helping us solve these murders.”
He put two mugs into the microwave and hit the start button twice. “I have no problem working with you.”
“We do seem to work well together. We’ve been able to put aside our past for the most part, but it’s lurking and it will reach up and bite us in a negative way if we don’t address it.”
Shane let out a long sigh as he scooped the cocoa out of the can and plopped it into the hot water. “I don’t know what to do with all these memories,” he admitted. “It took a long time to get over you.”
“But you did. You got married. Had a family.”
He nodded. “I met Janet the semester I went back to SUNY Albany, alone. She’d transferred in from a local community college. We were on-again-off-again in the beginning, mostly because she got tired of competing with the ghost of Kara, but about a year after you left I finally accepted you weren’t coming back and I moved on. With Janet.” He sipped the cocoa, collecting his thoughts. The anger he felt when he realized Kara was never returning bubbled to the surface. “You really hurt me. I mean crushed me. If it wasn’t for Janet and her patience, I don’t think I could have gone on. I really did love her. She accepted you were a part of my past and that on some level the memory of you would always be with me.” He paused for a moment, glancing at Kara, who sat tall on the counter, eyes on him. “Why?”
“Why what?” she asked.
“I showed up at your dorm, so we could follow each other home for the summer, both our cars packed full. I hadn’t even gotten out of the car when you approached and said you didn’t have a home and wouldn’t be returning to Rochester.”
“You know my parents’ house had closed a few months before that.”
“And I thought you were rash in selling it after your parents died.”
“They were murdered,” she said softly. “I couldn’t live in that house anymore.”
“My parents offered to let you to live with us for as long as you needed.”
“I couldn’t go back,” she said in a voice filled with conviction. “Everything in Rochester reminded me of my parents and, at the time, their murderer hadn’t been brought to justice. The mere thought of going back made me sick.”
“So, why not talk to me? All you did for most of our sophomore year was push me away. You were constantly fighting with me.” Shane had tried to be patient and understanding. He certainly understood she was going through a difficult time. But she didn’t have to do it alone.
“I could list a dozen reasons,” she said. “I couldn’t…I’m not sure I can explain it in a way that you can understand.”
“Try. You owe me that.”
“I followed you off to college when my parents wanted me to go locally. Their only child. I left them. And they died.”
“That wasn’t your fault.”
“I know that,” she sa
id. “But I was barely twenty when they were murdered. All of a sudden, I was responsible for my family home. My parents’ belongings. Money. I felt trapped in this weird universe. You were always there for me, but at the time I didn’t want anyone. I was in a world of pity and I couldn’t stand being a burden to anyone.”
“You were never a burden.” Shane swallowed.
“But I felt that way,” she said. “It was like I was all alone.”
“But that’s not true. You had me.” He slammed his mug onto the counter, hot cocoa splashing out of the mug. “But that wasn’t enough, was it?”
“It wasn’t like that,” she said in a calm voice as she took a napkin and wiped up his mess “It was too much. The kindness of your family. The way you stood by me through it all. It was overwhelming. I loved you so much.”
“You had a funny way of showing it.”
“You and my parents were my world. I lost them and then I lost myself. I hated what I did to you, but I couldn’t face you. I didn’t feel like I deserved you. I worried you’d up and die on me, too.”
“That’s just fucking stupid.”
“I know. But it doesn’t change how I felt,” she said. “I have a question for you.”
“What?”
“Why didn’t you ever chase me to Georgetown?”
“I did,” he said. “I found your address and showed up, only to find you with some guy.”
“What guy?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “It was September and you were walking together as you came out of your dorm. I figured you had moved on already. It was devastating.”
“In September? It took me years to get over you as well,” she said. “I don’t know who you saw me with, but I wasn’t able to date anyone until after I graduated, and even then, most of my relationships didn’t turn out well.”
“Would you have talked to me if I had approached you back then?”
“I have no idea.”
He appreciated her honesty. “So, this is the first time back since your parents died?”
She shook her head. “I came back to Rochester the Christmas after I transferred to Georgetown. I came to see you.”
“What?”
“I pulled into your parents’ neighborhood on Christmas Eve. I didn’t know if I was going to go to the door or not, but then I saw you with who must have been your wife, walking hand in hand. I’d be a bitch if I had showed up then. Then I read you got married.”
“I guess we both gave up,” Shane said. “What about you? Ever get married? Boyfriend?”
She shook her head. “I married my job. It’s all that I am. I really am sorry for what happened. What I did to you.”
“I’m sorry, too.” He reached across the counter and touched her hand. Her eyes met his. No denying there was still a spark, but Shane couldn’t even think about that right now. “I’m glad we talked.”
She smiled. It wasn’t a big smile, but it was something, and it made him feel better. He had his answers; her life hadn’t been a walk in the park either. “We both need sleep. Come on. I’ll show you to your room.”
Chapter 9
SHANE STRETCHED HIS LEGS, lifting them and resting them on his desk at the precinct, leaning back in his chair. He never liked working Sundays, but during an active homicide it was necessary. The bullpen was quiet. Of the ten desks in the room only a couple detectives were in the office; they were heads-down, working on something. Shane crumpled a piece of paper and tossed it into the air, catching it as it came barreling down toward his face.
“I can’t believe you still do that,” Kara said.
He hadn’t heard her approach. She’d always been good at sneaking up behind him. “Old habits die hard.”
“You keep saying that.” She sat on the edge of his desk. “What did you come up with?”
“Spent hours interviewing people from different candle companies.” He’d just finished filing the last of his paperwork and was now reading everyone else’s reports. He quickly glanced at his watch. It was pushing five o’clock. “Didn’t uncover much.”
“That doesn’t sound like fun,” she said. “Douglas McCauley’s alibi checks out.”
“Never doubted that,” he said. “No word on the warrant for Doug’s phone.”
“Not sure that will go through now that he’s been ruled out,” she said. “Foster and Jones interviewed Gregory’s parents, and no connection to the McCauley’s.”
“Yeah, I got that report. Also, I reread some of the journal entries from Emily. Nearly made me blush, the language coming from a fourteen-year-old girl.”
“It was descriptive,” she said. “Cleary is angry we let Haughton go. Called me a few choice names. I hope he doesn’t have friends with the CIA. The last thing we need is more agents to get into pissing matches with.”
“I’m worried about Cleary.” Shane continued to toss the paper into the air and catch it, each time tossing it a little higher. He could keep this up for hours. It was how he thought things through. “He’s got a real hard-on for Haughton, but I can’t imagine what he’ll do when he reads his daughter’s journal. Even you and I didn’t know half that stuff at her age, and we knew some stuff.”
“That we did,” she said. “Foster and I interviewed a couple of her friends and their parents today. She was sexting other young boys, sending naked pictures, though we have no proof of this.”
Shane caught the crumpled paper and tossed it at Kara. It landed on her nose.
“Real mature,” she said.
“You used to have better reflexes.”
“You used to at least say, ‘Hey catch’, before tossing it at me.” She bent over, picking up the paper, then leaned against the desk again. Deep down, Shane was finding it more and more difficult to keep his emotions in check when it came to Kara. They’d always had a natural flirtatious nature between them and it was getting stronger. And he liked it. Perhaps a little too much.
“Remember in middle school when I first kissed you?” she asked.
“Oh yeah.” That was a memory he’d never forget. It was not only his first kiss, but he hadn’t seen it coming. “I was pissed.”
“Why was that? You seemed to like it well enough.”
“Because I had our first kiss all planned out. How I would do it. I’d been planning it for days. You kind of ruined the moment.”
“You wouldn’t speak to me at all in person after that for weeks.”
“I was embarrassed,” he said. “I was twelve. It was cool to have a girlfriend, but honestly, the guys all picked on me. They basically told me I was pussy-whipped.”
“You were.”
“Right.” He laughed. “We easily transitioned back to being friends.”
“Except for making out in the movies.”
“Yeah, those were the days,” Shane said. It wasn’t until the kissing became heaving petting right before the start of their freshman year that Kara decided, if she was going to let him feel her up, they were going to be exclusive. He nearly laughed at her since they’d been exclusive forever. “Why the trip down memory lane?”
“I was just thinking about Emily and Doug and what else they might not have told anyone. We always said we officially started dating our freshman year, but we had our own secret romance all through middle school. It was just easier for both of us to pretend we were friends... but as they say now, we were friends with benefits.”
“I would have liked more benefits than I got,” Shane said. “That whacko chick who was your best friend in middle school used to always tell me what a tease you were, and she’d do better. She was a class- A bitch.”
“She still is. I saw her a few years ago,” Kara said, laughing. “She had the biggest crush on you. That’s why she stopped being my friend. I told her if I ever saw her flirting with you again I’d put Nair in her shampoo.”
“I had that convo with a few of my friends, but it was more like I’d kick the shit out of them.”
“We’re getting side-tracked
,” she said. “We kept our relationship a secret, pretending to be friends, meanwhile we had make-out—.”
“We did a lot of kissing, but sadly I never got passed second base until our sophomore year, and we never talked or did the things Emily described until we were closer to seventeen, and even then, nothing like what she describes. That reads more like a script for a porno, not a romance.” Shane snagged the crumpled ball and started tossing it into the air.
“In some of her journals it says Doug, other entries it says he. I just wonder if he isn’t someone else. Some other older guy, like Gregory.”
“Okay. I’ll buy Emily could have been playing the field at fourteen. You girls are so aggressive.”
“Better than being passive-aggressive like you boys, but really. Think about it. What if she had a thing going with Gregory? I mean, the girl could pass for eighteen on any given day,” Kara said.
“Then why kill Emily? Makes more sense to kill the competition,” Shane said, but it wasn’t really a question.
“Let’s remember that Gregory was most likely killed before Emily. So, it is entirely possible that Doug did kill the competition, but then Emily finds out or is upset because she really liked Gregory better.”
“Gregory was ten years older than Emily,” Shane said.
“She wouldn’t care. She probably wanted an older man. Both Gregory and Doug were the shy, quiet type. Both into science.”
Shane dropped his feet to the floor and pushed a piece of paper in Kara’s direction. “But none of this uncovers any leads or even gives us much of a direction.”
“Yeah, we don’t have much of anything,” Kara said.
Shane looked across the bullpen as Pollock and Benster entered. “Got the report back on the fingerprints at the Gregory scene,” Pollack said as he tossed the report onto Shane’s desk. “There was one set we can’t match. Ran it through every database and came up short.”
“Send it to my analyst,” Kara said.
“Thanks for doing this on a Sunday,” Shane said. “Go home. We’ll regroup tomorrow.”
