The Girl and the Hunt (Emma Griffin FBI Mystery Book 6)

by A J Rivers

  “No,” I sigh, tossing my clothes into my bag and rearranging them just so I don't have to look at him. “I saw the stretcher, but there was a sheet over her. I never even saw the room where she died.”

  “So, your mind wants to fill in that memory. What if what you think is a nightmare is a memory of finding someone else. Maybe someone who looks like this.”

  He takes out his phone, hits a few buttons, then turns the phone toward me. The image on the screen is a beautiful blonde woman with sparkling eyes and a wide smile. She looks so much like my mother; it makes my head spin, and I have to sit down on the edge of the bed. Dean comes toward me.

  “Who is that?” I ask.

  “This is my mother,” he says. “She was found murdered, in an apartment registered to what turned out to be a fake name. An empty envelope was found underneath her, and there were two footprints made from her blood on the floor. They were made by a woman's athletic shoe. The complex wasn't outfitted with a security system, so there's no footage.”

  "When did this happen?" I ask.

  "2008. I was sixteen."

  Our eyes meet. His look so much like mine.

  "In my nightmare, I walk into an apartment my father and I were staying in temporarily. There was a gym in the complex, and I’d just worked out. I expect him to be there when I go in, but he's not, so I go into the kitchen for a snack. My mother is lying there, blood everywhere. I look down, and my foot is in the puddle. The first time I had that nightmare, I woke up on the couch still in my gym clothes. My father was there, shaking me awake because he said I was screaming."

  "No one ever identified the footprints in the apartment. There were only those two, none outside."

  "I didn't have my shoes on when I woke up. When I found them in my room, they were clean." I let out a slow breath. "What happened to you after your mother died? Where was your father?"

  "I never knew him."

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “You never knew him?” I ask.

  “No,” Dean shakes his head. “I never met him. It was always just my mother and me. But the way she talked about him, I knew there was something to the story she just didn't want to tell me. There are a lot of questions about my mother's past. I know you understand how that feels.”

  “I do,” I tell him. “What kind of questions?”

  “I don't know anything about her past. We have no family. No grandparents or aunts and uncles. No cousins. I haven't seen any pictures of her before maybe two years before I was born. Anytime I ever asked about her growing up, or our family, she found ways to talk around it. She said there wasn't much to tell, or she just didn't want to talk about it. It seemed like she was trying to hide something.”

  “And you could never let it go,” I say.

  “No,” he says. “After she died, no one could tell me anything. The detectives did their best to be comforting and reassuring. They told me they would find out what happened and get the bastard who did that to my mother. All those things you hear on every police procedural TV show that's ever been made. The only difference is it actually means something when the characters say it. By the end of the forty-nine minutes, they’ve figured it out and tied everything up in a nice neat bow. The person who did it is either sitting behind bars or shot dead by a cop, and everybody goes on. But that's not how it worked out for me. They were never able to get any evidence that led them anywhere. There were footsteps in the blood and the envelope, and that was it.”

  “And there wasn't anything on the envelope?” I ask. “No DNA or handwriting?”

  “Nothing,” he tells me. “It was just an envelope. They don't even know if it came from the murderer, or if my mother had it for some reason. But they just kept telling me they would figure it out. They would find a break in the case and solve it. They wanted to put me in foster care, but I wasn’t going to let that happen. I was sixteen and had been all but taking care of my mother for most of my life. Fortunately, friends of my mother's stepped up and said they would keep an eye out for me. The police accepted that, and for a while, they kept up with me almost every day. Then that turned to a couple of times a week, then a couple of times a month. Then, nothing. They couldn't figure anything out, so they just didn't want to talk to me. It's been that way since. And I decided I wasn't going to just let things like that happen anymore.”

  “That's why you became a private investigator,” I say. He nods, and I mirror the gesture. “My parents are what inspired me to join the FBI.”

  “I know,” he says. “I heard about you for the first time when your mother died. It was on the news, and it hit my mother really hard. I can still remember her sitting on the sofa, watching the TV, and just sobbing. When I asked her what was wrong, she just said the world is such a terrible place. That it was so unfair for a beautiful woman so young to have her life ended like that. And for her little girl to have to grow up without a mother. She was always sensitive, so it wasn't completely out of the realm of normalcy for her to cry over the news, but this was a lot. It was really tearing at her. I was only ten, and I was still able to recognize she was having a really strong reaction. A couple days later, I walked in on her on the phone. She didn't know I was there, and I distinctly heard her tell someone named Ian how sorry she was.”

  “Ian?” I ask. “My father?”

  “I didn't necessarily put it all together at the time. It wasn't until I saw another news story and they mentioned his name. I asked my mother about it, and she said I must have misheard. But I know I didn't. Then years later, my mother was murdered. Like that horror she felt watching the news had manifested itself in her life. There were only a few tips about her murder. A few were just about where she was earlier that day, which didn't come up with anything useful. Then one said she was involved with drugs. And there was one anonymous tip that said to look into her past and gave a name,” he tells me.

  "What happened with that?"

  "Nothing. The detectives told me they looked into it, but that the man named was dead and had been for some time. They wouldn't tell me his name, because I was still a minor and that man wasn't being accused of any crime, so they wouldn't release the information," he tells me. “It was all one big dead end. I tried to figure it out but nothing I did turned out anything. It wasn't long after that I heard the report that your father disappeared. I followed that story until it faded out of the news, too. Then I read that interview. I hadn't thought about your name in a long time. It only stood out to me because of your father's name. But as soon as I read it, it all hit me. I knew it was connected. I didn't know how or how to make anybody believe me, that I knew you had something to do with my mother's death,” he says.

  “Did you think I did it?” I ask incredulously.

  "Did you think I killed those people on the train? Or the woman here in town?" he asks.

  I stare back at him without answering, not knowing what to say.

  "Exactly. The point is, neither of us know. I started digging into your past and mine, trying to figure out any overlap that might have happened before my mother's murder or after. There was nothing. Not until you came here."

  "What do you mean?" I ask. "What did me coming here have to do with anything?"

  "The first night you were here, a man died on your porch," he points out.

  "I'm aware."

  "He was never identified or claimed and ended up in a potter's field."

  He's scrolling through his phone again, and I nod.

  "Yes. Unfortunately. Ron Murdock. At least…"

  Dean turns his phone around, and the breath escapes my lungs in a hard puff. The image on his screen is of a younger Ron Murdock standing beside a teenage Dean. His face is stern, but there's something almost affectionate about his posture. Dean's cap and gown are celebratory. His expression is sad and tired.

  "At least that's the only name you could find for him. This is my high school graduation. That's Murdock, the friend of my mother's, who agreed to keep an eye on me after her death. W
e stayed in touch until I was eighteen."

  "And then?"

  "And then he left me a note saying he had to go, and I never saw him again," he tells me.

  "Like a screwed-up Mary Poppins," I mutter, still locked into the picture.

  "Only instead of him returning on an umbrella, he returned with a bullet in his back."

  "And my name in his hand," I add.

  "What do you mean?" he asks.

  I look up at him, then cross the room to get my phone. Pulling it out of its case, I slip out the piece of paper I pressed there and bring it over to him.

  "This was in his hand the night he died, right on the porch of this cabin," I tell Dean, showing him my name written across the ragged piece of paper. "I took it before the police came."

  "He knew you," Dean says.

  I nod. "I don't remember ever meeting him, but I have memories of him from when I was younger. Up until my mother died. I didn't think about him again until I found him on the porch and went to the hotel to find out his name."

  "But we both know that's not his name. When it comes to that man, Ron Murdock doesn't exist," Dean says.

  "I know."

  His eyes drop to the broken chain and metal tag I didn't realize I am still holding.

  "But whoever he was, he used to wear a tag that looked a lot like that," he tells me.

  I look down at the tag on my palm, then flip it over, running my finger across the imprint near the bottom of the curve.

  CM4. And just beneath it, a tiny green stone embedded in the metal.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Anson

  One year ago…

  It took time and patience to get Travis to trust Anson enough to consider him a friend. From there, it was about connecting with Sarah. Travis shared her letters with him, and Anson raved over them, making the man feel important. More impactful than that, he made Sarah seem appealing. It didn't take a tremendous amount of intelligence or insight to see the way Travis looked at her. The adoration and attachment in her eyes weren't reflected back to her. Not that she noticed. All Sarah cared about was being close to Travis. He was everything to her, her complete devotion. Enough so that she didn't even think it was strange when he told her she couldn't come visit him at every visitation.

  It would look suspicious, he convinced her. Even after his conviction, nobody linked her to him prior to his wife's murder. They didn't know he had a girlfriend. He protected her. He kept her safe so no one would suspect her of having anything to do with the crime they accused him of. Because, of course, he didn't do it. It wasn't him. All the evidence they had was faked. They planted it and came up with it because there was no other way for them to close the case. It was taking so long it made the police department look bad. They’d already had to call in the FBI, and they couldn't bear the thought of not being able to solve the case. Especially not the new agent they assigned to it.

  It was all Emma Griffin, Travis told her. She had it out for him from the moment she met him. It didn't matter to her if it was true or not; this new agent was going to make sure he was convicted of murdering Mia and put him away for life. It wasn't supposed to be that way for the two of them. If only Mia hadn't disappeared and been murdered, he was going to divorce her and be with Sarah forever. So when his wife left him and so much suspicion fell on him, Travis had to do the only thing a good man would do and defend her.

  But it didn't work, and he still ended up behind bars. But that didn't mean Sarah had to get wrapped up in it. As long as they kept their distance just enough, at least for now, no one would notice their relationship. They could pretend they just met and were gradually getting to know each other better, then come forward with their love.

  Sarah believed him. Anson didn't.

  There was somebody else. Travis hadn't told him who yet, but he would. There was another woman in the picture who knew what he’d done. Because she was there to help him. The letters she wrote to him, Travis never let anyone else see. The woman who put money in his books and sent him every perk and comfort allowed to him. The woman who came on days when he told Sarah not to visit.

  So, gradually Anson moved in. He took his time and built up a rapport with her. They talked while they waited for visitation, then sometimes during it. Eventually, they ended up meeting up outside the prison to keep talking after the visitation was over. That's when he started to tell her more about Emma Griffin. The kernel of suspicion and hatred was already there inside Sarah. All it took was a bit of a nudge from Anson and it grew.

  Travis couldn't have committed that murder, he told her. That's not the type of man he is. She knew him. She knew how gentle and loving he was. How kind and compassionate. He wouldn't do something like that to the woman he had married. No matter what type of person she was. No matter how miserable she made him or how badly she treated him. No matter how many times she cheated on him and withheld any sort of affection from him. Travis would never be capable of something so horrible. The only explanation is that he was framed.

  But Sarah could fix it. She could get Travis out and grant him a new trial. He would be able to defend himself and prove those who falsified evidence against him had been constructs of a twisted and unreliable mind. All she had to do was prove it. And Anson would help her. He could get her all the information and everything she needed to make this all better. It would only be a little while longer. She just needed to be patient a little while longer.

  Every time, she would ask: “How can I repay you?”

  Every time, he would simply offer a smile and soothing words.

  “No worries, Sarah. It's what friends are for.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Now

  The next hour is a feverish flurry of phone calls and emails. I fill Dean in on the paper roses, and he immediately goes to work trying to track down the medical center to request records while I get in touch first with Clancy, then with Eric. Using the few details the aging handyman can remember about the man called Doc, I ask Eric to run a search for cold cases starting in May two years ago. I want him to look for any reports or cases involving a slim blond man in his mid-to-late forties who may be using the name Murray or Doc. I'm not surprised he immediately catches on.

  "Another anonymous man using a version of the same fake name got near that cabin and left mysteriously?" he asks. "Feathered Nest needs to burn that place to the ground."

  "That won't help this man," I say.

  "At this point, we're only assuming that isn't his real name. Yes, it would be a coincidence on a massive scale for somebody named Doc Murray to stay in the same cabin where a man named Murdock dies six months later, but it's possible. If you don't know that, how are you sure he's actually missing?" Eric asks. "Maybe he just wasn't pleased with the amenities and wanted to write a scathing Yelp review."

  "Find me the review and I'll believe it. Until then, I’ll be more concerned that this man checked in and then was suddenly gone. No notice, didn't say anything. Didn't even turn the lights off or lock the door. And he left behind a broken necklace that links him to Murdock, to me, and to everything else. I don't know how or why, but that's what we have to figure out. And that starts with finding out what happened to him," I say.

  "Is there anything else about him? Did he show an ID? Use a credit card? Give an email address? Maybe he visited a store in town and bought something," Eric says.

  "This is Feathered Nest, Eric. They don't check ID for someone renting a cabin. It would never occur to them someone would lie about who they are, and it would seem offensive to try to verify it. He paid for everything with cash. No contact information."

  "I'll do my best," he sighs.

  "Thank you." I start to end the call, then push the phone back to my ear. "Eric?"

  "Yeah."

  "Check in Florida, too."

  I get off the phone just as Dean comes back into the room. He's holding a piece of paper, and I see notes jotted on it.

  “So, I searched around, and it turns ou
t the hospital in Rolling View closed a few years ago,” he explains. “And the doctor listed on her records retired at the same time.”

  “Perfect,” I sigh. “So, there's nobody to request records from is what you're telling me.”

  “Well, there's no official person to request records from,” he clarifies.

  “What's that supposed to mean?”

  “The hospital closed. But it was never demolished. It's still standing. Which means its record room could be intact,” he tells me.

  “Aren't medical records all on computers now?” I ask.

  “Now,” he says. “But these records are from thirty years ago. For a woman who died twelve years after that.”

  “So, her records probably wouldn't have been merged onto a computer,” I say.

  “Exactly. Just like the paper you found in the book, your mother's medical records are most likely pages in a manila envelope. And as unfortunate as it may seem for some people, decommissioned hospitals tend to not put a lot of emphasis on transferring hundreds of pounds of paper patient files. Especially ones for patients who aren't going to need them anymore,” he says.

  “They wouldn't shred them?” I asked.

  “They might have,” he says. “And they might not have. I've seen my fair share of abandoned hospitals, treatment centers, nursing homes. More of them than you would think look like people just walked out of them and forgot they were there. They still have beds with the linens on them, hospital gowns, and blankets stacked up in the cabinets. There's a point when the time and financial investment it would take to actually move the things isn't worth it. They would rather just close up shop and head to their sparkly new facility, leaving the past behind. And that includes patient files.”

  “But how would we know that? If the hospital has been abandoned for years, who's going to know if the record room is still intact? And who would we request the files from?” I ask.