One Little Secret

by Eliza Lentzski

  I followed the boy’s slumped figure via the front picture window. He’d obviously been drinking, and I worried he might try to get behind the wheel of a car, but he only shuffled to the adjacent yard and let himself into the neighboring house.

  “Who wants cake?” A woman whom I didn’t know cut through the discomfort that lingered despite the young man’s removal. The living room’s occupants seemed to collectively exhale and everyone returned to their previous activities.

  I didn’t have to wonder long about how the intoxicated man fit into the picture. Kennedy’s aunt remained by my side like an omnipresent narrator: “That was Landon Tauer. He grew up in the house next door. After graduation, he played Junior hockey in Canada, but he got injured, so now he’s back. I heard he’s been working at the shoe factory over in Red Wing.”

  “And the other boy?” I asked.

  I trained my eyes on the clean-shaven blond man who’d pushed Landon Tauer. A collection of admirers had gathered around him after the confrontation. I hadn’t noticed him before, but now I observed his movements and mannerisms. His suit was too tailored and his posture was too perfect to belong to that of a college-aged boy. One look at him, and I could tell he came from money.

  “Chase Trask,” Aunt Jo supplied. “He and Kennedy dated in high school. They split after graduation though. His dad got him into a college on the East Coast, and I’m sure he didn’t want to be tied down to a girl from back home.”

  “Who’s his dad?” I wondered.

  “State Senator Robert Trask,” Stanley supplied. I hadn’t realized he’d been listening to our conversation. “Rumor has it, he’s considering running for governor next election cycle.”

  I hadn’t been back in the States long enough to be interested in politics. We had absentee voting on our military bases, but I had never really cared enough to cast my ballot. As far as I was concerned, both political parties had sent us to war and neither seemed too eager to bring us back.

  “How much longer do you want to stick around?” I asked.

  Stanley looked around the room. “We can go now,” he decided.

  “We can stay as long as you want to,” I insisted. “I was only asking.”

  “No, I’m good. I need to go home and feed Einstein and Sabin anyways.”

  “Are those your cats?” I guessed.

  “Parakeets.”

  “A bird man, huh,” I mused. “I’m learning all kinds of new things about you, Stanley.”

  I waited near the front door while Stanley said his goodbyes to Kennedy’s parents. My attention drifted from their farewells and mutual well wishes to the house next door. Only a few feet of grass separated the driveways between houses.

  Landon Tauer was standing on the concrete stoop of his parents’ neighboring house. He still wore the too-baggy dress pants, but he’d abandoned the black jacket and white button-up shirt and stood outside in only a white undershirt. His head was tilted towards the grey-blue sky; a cigarette dangled from his lips. He looked once in the direction of the Petersik’s house before tossing his half-finished cigarette into the lawn and disappearing inside.

  + + +

  The muffled sounds of the city outside filtered into the bedroom. It was a warm night—one of the last of the season, perhaps—and the windows were cracked open. A light rain struck against the window panes, and a few stories on the streets below, tires rolled across damp pavement.

  I exhaled.

  Julia’s graveled voice cut through the night: “Problems sleeping, dear?”

  I grimaced; I hadn’t meant to wake her up.

  “Not for the usual reasons,” I promised.

  My journal in the end table beside my side of the bed was filled with re-imagined results of my time in Afghanistan. My therapist, Dr. Susan Warren, had me write out my trauma from my time abroad, but create alternative—and better—endings. Each night before I went to sleep I tried to come up with a new way to save the lives of every man in my unit. Pensacola didn’t lose his legs to a dirty bomb, and I never had to kill an insurgent at point-blank range.

  It was a simple assignment, but it worked. My nights weren’t entirely terror free, but I no longer dreaded sleep like I had just a year ago. But I also accredited the woman who slept beside me as a major reason why the nightmares had lessened in frequency and intensity.

  Julia rolled over to face me. “What’s wrong?”

  I continued to stare at the ceiling. “I can’t shut off my brain,” I told her. “I keep thinking about this new potential case.”

  Julia shifted on the bed and scooted her body closer. She wiggled her hands between my back and the mattress. My shirt had ridden up in the night, and a high-pitched yelp pushed past my lips when her skin made contact with mine. Her hands were like blocks of ice.

  “Jesus, you’re freezing!” I exclaimed.

  “Mmm, so warm,” she purred. Her speech was slightly slurred from sleep.

  Her feet rustled under the sheets and came to rest against the side of my leg. I could feel her frozen toes through the material of my sweatpants.

  “Are you trying to kill me, woman?” I declared.

  “No, just steal your body heat.”

  “How are you this cold?” I wondered aloud.

  Her body continued to wiggle against me in a futile attempt to get warm. “Go back to telling me about your case. It’ll take your mind off of it.”

  “It’s not my case yet,” I corrected. “And it won’t be mine unless the bullets from both deaths are from the same gun.”

  “When will you know that?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. The crime lab confirmed they received them, so it’s just a matter of them processing the bullets and doing the comparison.”

  I was growing agitated with nothing else to occupy my time. I hoped the wait from the crime lab wouldn’t be much longer. Even if the bullets didn’t turn out to be a match, at least then I could move on to something else.

  “And to make matters worse, the homicide detective who’s actually assigned to the case is a total asshole,” I cursed. “Dude had the balls to show up at the girl’s memorial service and started interrogating everybody there. It’s like, Jesus, give the family some space.”

  “Talk to his boss,” Julia suggested. “His supervising officer or whatever. I’m sure they’d appreciate knowing how he’s been representing the department in the community.”

  “You don’t go over people’s heads,” I rejected. “That’s not how things work in cop world.”

  “So you’ll just steal his clothes in the locker room and spray him down with a fire hose instead?” Despite the darkness in the room, I could tell she was smiling.

  “We’re not that bad,” I defended.

  In truth, she wasn’t that far off. There was definitely a juvenile hazing component to my sphere. And I had enough buddies upstairs in the Fourth Precinct who could make Detective Ryan’s life hell.

  I remained silent while I waited for Julia’s response; she didn’t have an immediate opinion. Eventually, I heard her quiet, even breaths in the darkness. She’d fallen back asleep.

  I gingerly moved her hands, which she had pinned beneath my lower back. I brushed the hair away from her unlined forehead and pressed my lips against her brow. My heart seized with how much I loved this woman—ice feet and all.

  “Sweet dreams,” I whispered.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I arrived to work the next day overly tired and overly annoyed. Stanley was babysitting the Freezer and Sarah was about to beat her top score on Minesweeper, but I had nothing so tedious to occupy my time. Instead of spending the day bouncing off the walls, I grabbed the keys to my second-hand patrol car and drove to the opposite side of town. I didn’t need to look up the address for Kennedy Petersik’s home. I’d already been there once.

  A woman answered the front door, and I lifted my badge to eye level. “Detective Cassidy Miller, ma’am.”

  Mrs. Petersik’s eyes widened. “Has there been a bre
ak in the case? I called this morning, but the Detective I talked to said they didn’t have anything new.”

  “No, ma’am. I can’t speak to that. But I was wondering if I could talk to you and your husband about Michael Bloom.”

  I wasn’t technically assigned to the Petersik case, so I had no authority to go poking around for information regarding the young woman’s death. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t speak to Kennedy’s parents about Michael Bloom’s death. And if I discovered a connection between the two deaths along the way, so be it. All I knew is I couldn’t continue to sit passively in our basement office.

  Mrs. Petersik seemed to take a step backwards into the protection of her home. “Bloom? You mean that boy who was shot a few years back?”

  I nodded. I didn’t explain the possible connection since it was such a long shot. I was sure Mrs. Petersik had enough on her plate.

  “I don’t, well, I don’t know how I could be any help,” she floundered. “It was so long ago and I really don’t know much about the details.”

  “Just a few minutes of your time, ma’am,” I promised.

  Mrs. Petersik nodded tightly and opened the door wider for me.

  The Petersik home was empty and quiet, with the exception of a television program playing quietly in the background. The crowds of mourners were gone, along with their many casserole dishes and crockpots. Mrs. Petersik’s black dress and shawl had been replaced with a sweatshirt and jeans.

  “My husband, Frank, is at work,” she seemed to apologize as she shut the front door. “Can I get you something to drink? Coffee? Tea?”

  I waved off her hospitality. “No thank you, ma’am. I don’t want to be a burden.”

  “Oh, it’s no trouble at all,” she insisted.

  She hustled off in another direction before I could double down on my refusal. She disappeared behind a swinging half door, like something straight out of an Old West movie.

  I remained on my own in the living room while Mrs. Petersik clanked around in the kitchen. I took a step toward the swinging doors, but I stopped when a flash of movement caught my eye. A little girl sat on a blanket in the middle of the living room, surrounded by wooden blocks and plastic toys. She wore tiny blue jeans and a tiny pink t-shirt. Her wispy blonde hair was just long enough for a tiny ponytail that plumed up from the top of her head.

  I crouched down to the little girl’s level. “Hey there. What’s your name?”

  Clear blue orbs stared back at me. She didn’t respond, but I wasn’t surprised. She was a toddler, only one or two years old, if I had had to guess.

  “Oh, I see you’ve met.”

  I turned away from the little girl to see that Mrs. Petersik had returned. Her hands were empty.

  “Just barely,” I said, standing up. “She’s not very chatty though.”

  Mrs. Petersik scooped up the little girl and hoisted her onto her hip. The little girl shoved one hand into her mouth and the other into her mom’s hair.

  “This is Kayla,” Mrs. Petersik introduced. She gently pried her hair out of the little girl’s chubby fist. “Frank and I call her our miracle baby.”

  ‘Miracle.’ It seemed like the polite alternative to an ‘accident’ or ‘mistake.’

  “Let me just put her down for her nap, and then we can talk.”

  Mrs. Petersik began to walk down the short hallway that led to bedrooms and a bathroom. I couldn’t explain, but I felt compelled to follow her.

  Mrs. Petersik talked while she walked. “Do you have any children, Detective …”

  “Miller,” I reminded her. “And, no. I don’t have kids.”

  Mrs. Petersik clucked her tongue. “You’re young. There’s still time.”

  “Now you sound like my mom,” I chuckled.

  She entered the first door on the right, which turned out to be a nursery. A giant white crib took up most of the room. A wooden rocking chair sat in one corner, and a changing table and clothing bureau rounded out the remainder of the furniture.

  I stayed in the doorway while Mrs. Petersik gingerly lifted Kayla into the crib. Her eyes remained locked on the child as she tucked her under a light blanket. “You should listen to your mom; you’ll never know love until you’ve had a child of your own, Detective.”

  I could barely take care of myself most days without adding a kid to the equation.

  We left Kayla in the nursery and Mrs. Petersik quietly closed the door behind us. “She was always smiling. Always happy.”

  “Kayla?” I questioned. Her verb tense confused me.

  “Kennedy,” she corrected. “Would you like to see her room?”

  I didn’t want to admit that I’d already seen it, so I nodded.

  Kennedy Petersik’s bedroom looked like she could walk back into the room at any time. I’d only given the room a cursory glance the first time around, but now—surrounded by all of her personal belongings—I could appreciate all the details. The open closet, spilling over with clothes. The photographs of friends and family wedged into the corners of a vanity mirror. Bottles of nail polish lined up on the top of her bureau. Random chargers, but no electronics sticking out from every outlet. A tall stack of spiral notebooks on top of a wooden desk.

  Mrs. Petersik noticed where my attention lingered. “She loved to write. She kept a diary since the fourth grade. Didn’t miss a day, even when she got older.”

  “Did the police take any of them?” I couldn’t recall seeing any journals in the evidence boxes when I’d gone to retrieve the bullet to send to the crime lab, but I hadn’t been looking specifically for a diary then.

  “No. Kennedy was very protective when it came to her journals. She never let anyone read them—not even me. I wasn’t going to let the police just take them.”

  I pursed my lips in thought. If there was a chance this was suicide and not homicide, those diaries could tell us what we needed to know about Kennedy Petersik’s mindset in the days before her death. And if she’d been killed, she might have shared a rivalry or bad feelings with her diary.

  “Ma’am, I know it must feel like a violation of your daughter’s trust to have a stranger look through her private thoughts, but every little lead counts. Kennedy may have left important clues as to what happened in these notebooks.”

  Mrs. Petersik was understandably hesitant, but at the same time I couldn’t understand her reluctance. If she wanted us to find out what had happened to her daughter, why put up any road blocks?

  “I’ll read through them and let you know if I find anything,” she decided.

  I nodded grimly. I could have produced a search warrant that gave me open access to Kennedy’s diaries, but I didn’t want the Petersiks to withdraw themselves or see me as an adversary. We were on the same side. I would have to trust that Mrs. Petersik would let me know if she found anything.

  A shrill sound like screaming pierced the awkward silence that had fallen between us. I worried that something had happened to Kayla, but Mrs. Petersik looked unaffected.

  “That’ll be the water for tea.”

  I had visited under the guise of investigating Michael Bloom’s death, so I stayed for a cup of tea and asked a series of questions regarding his death for which Mrs. Peterson didn’t have any answers. She’d been right about not being able to help me.

  Before I left, I thanked Mrs. Petersik for her time and reminded her to let the police know if she found anything in her daughter’s journals. I had serious misgivings about leaving the notebooks behind and trusting Kennedy’s mom to report anything unusual, but I wasn’t technically assigned to the girl’s case. We still didn’t have anything concrete to connect Michael Bloom’s murder with Kennedy’s death. If Mrs. Petersik complained to my superiors, I would probably get suspended for nosing around an active investigation that wasn’t mine.

  I started to walk down the Petersik’s paved driveway towards where I’d parked my patrol car on the street, but I stopped when I saw movement from the neighboring home. Someone had been watching me, but h
ad hastily closed the front window curtains.

  I changed directions and hopped up the concrete steps to the home where Landon Tauer lived. I didn’t see a doorbell, so I knocked briskly on the screen door. A short moment after, a small middle-aged woman, whom I assumed was Landon’s mother, answered the door.

  “Hi,” I greeted. “Is Landon home?”

  I didn’t introduce myself as police since I suspected it had been she who’d been the peeping tom.

  “No. It’s Tuesday. He’s at the ice rink.”

  I flashed her what I hoped was my winningest smile, but it probably looked a little manic. “Do you happen to know which one?”

  In Minnesota, ice rinks were like Starbucks—one on every corner.

  She gave me the name of a local public high school, which must have been Landon’s alma mater. It hadn’t occurred to me until then that even though they’d lived next door to each other, Landon Tauer and Kennedy Petersik had attended different high schools—hers private and exclusive, and Landon’s just around the corner.

  I thanked the woman for the information, and, after consulting the directions on my phone, I steered my old Crown Vic to the area high school.

  + + +

  The ice rink was a stand-alone structure, not physically attached to the high school. Normally I would have felt obligated to sign in with the high school’s front office, but I entered through the hockey arena’s separate entrance instead. I inhaled upon entry and a small shiver of remembrance tickled down my spine. Nothing else smelled like a hockey rink. The scent of ice, buttery popcorn, and rubber brought me back to my own high school days. I’d been a pool rat, not a rink rat, but I’d gone to my share of high school hockey games.

  The hockey rink was brightly lit. The names of local businesses tattooed the boards, and state championship banners hung from the rafters high above the ice surface. The concession stand was closed, no one was out on the ice, the bleachers were empty, and yet classic rock piped through the P.A. system.

  “Hello?” I called out. “Anybody here?”