A waiter who introduces himself as Martin greets Ainsley and Davis and kneels beside me. “Careful. These glasses throw shards everywhere.” He hands me a cloth napkin while I fumble with apologies, and together we collect as many of the glass fragments as we can find. He asks about the case. Like everyone else, he’s been following it.
“Ow!” My finger shoots up to my mouth and I suck the weak line of blood. A sliver of glass has lodged deep beneath my fingertip.
“I told them to get rid of these cheap glasses.” Martin takes my hand and squeezes my injured finger, holding my hand almost up to his eyes in order to see. All that emerges from my fingertip is a quick bloom of blood. “Let me get you a bandage.” I sit next to Ainsley and watch Martin walk off, his blond hair all one length below his ears.
“You gonna live?” Ainsley says but doesn’t wait for my reply.
Davis hands me a fresh napkin and grabs the bill from the corner of the table on his way out to the cash register. “Finish up, you two. Check in regularly.”
“Partner,” Ainsley finally says, “do you recognize that waiter?”
“Who, Martin?” I suck my fingertip. “Should I?”
“It’s Martin Tucker. Marci’s older brother.”
Martin? I hadn’t thought of him since the funeral. Marci always talked about him, but he was a few years older than us, off at college and far away from Willow’s Ridge, out of his parents’ reach. We’d met only briefly at the funeral, a parting handshake to say I was sorry. I couldn’t remember three-fourths of the people I spoke to that day, all those empty condolences swimming about while Marci eavesdropped from the heavy casket at the foot of the room. But I remember Martin and his glare that said, You killed my sister! He held on to my hand a moment too long and a lot too hard while his eyes, so bloodshot from all his tears, drilled into me. I’d felt as though I was shrinking before him—smaller and smaller—until I was able to finally scuttle away to the safety of my father’s side.
Martin walks toward me, weaving between tables, and now that I know who he is, I take in every curve, every movement. The hidden shadows of Marci hide in his face. Martin looks up, his eyes catch mine, and it’s like a knee to the stomach. Martin has almost the same shade of navy eyes as his sister.
“I forgot he worked here,” Ainsley says, almost an afterthought. We both watch as Martin gets stopped by a table near ours for a coffee refill. I realize, with a start, I’ve been holding my breath.
“Marci’s family has had a hard time of it. Especially the parents.” Ainsley pauses a moment, but when I don’t respond, he continues. “They’ve passed on now, but Martin’s married with a little girl. He’s tried to keep his sister’s case open. He gets one of the reporters from the Tribune to do an anniversary story on her death. Every year, Willow’s Ridge gets a reminder that we still have a killer on the loose.”
I am familiar with those articles, but they never show a current picture of Martin. My heartbeat quickens and I don’t take my eyes off his back. What if he recognizes me? Has he only grown to blame me more over the years?
“We haven’t had any new suspects until these recent murders. Our number one suspect back then was Marci’s father. We could never get anything on him, and he never slipped up—not once. I used to be convinced it was him. Not anymore.” Ainsley finishes his last bite of eggs and throws his napkin next to his plate.
I struggle to regulate my breathing: in and hold for two counts, release and hold for two counts. Marci’s father had always been a mystery to me, and to Marci as well. She never connected with her dad and his rock-hard exterior. He’d been a factory worker at a car plant and spent his hours outside of the job racing boats. Sometimes it seemed like Marci would have done just about anything to get her dad to notice she was even alive.
Martin hands me a bandage. “You okay?”
My breath catches. Is he looking at me a little more closely this time? “Sorry about the glass.”
Inside the car, my breath settles back into its rhythm as I wind the Band-Aid around my fingertip, stopping the trickle of blood. My hands have a slight tremor to them. Questions return and I can’t help but wonder why Ainsley would bring me to a public place where one of Marci’s close family members works. Ainsley couldn’t have possibly forgotten Martin works here. Was he hoping to get some sort of rise out of me?
The sliver of glass moves under my skin; even though I can’t see it, I can feel it. I pick at the wound, determined to win, over the sliver’s stubborn refusal.
*
I push through the heavy glass doors of the hotel on my way back from meeting with the president of the local PFLAG chapter. He printed me a list—all of four brave teenage members. There is no formal high school group for LGBTQ kids in Willow’s Ridge and a local nondenominational church allows the group to meet, free of charge. With such a lack of social support, it’s no wonder some of the LGBTQ youth and adults in this area turn to the One True Path ministries for help. Others find another option: they find one another and disappear into the quarry the way Marci and I did.
I rush past the reporters who mill around the entrance of the hotel, where there is a coffee machine. They’ve got nothing but time on their hands. I’ve only got a minute to run upstairs and change my shirt from this morning’s spill before I join Davis and Ainsley to look into tips. Orange juice on a white blouse is difficult to hide. One reporter asks the hotel manager, Alison, if she knows the home addresses of local cops. She looks at me with relief when I enter, happy for the interruption.
“Someone here to see you.” Alison points to the lounge. “She’s not a reporter.”
There, in the corner chair, sits Rowan with her backpack and easel beside her. Neither one of us moves, each only watching the other, the wounds of last night’s argument still fresh. Panic rises in my throat, a thick bloom of acid along my tongue. Would the argument really have brought her to Willow’s Ridge without warning?
“Is everything okay? Is it the dogs? The house?” Rowan shakes her head, the mass of curls tumbling around her shoulders. I reach out for her arm but my hands find only the shell of her heavy coat instead.
Once inside my hotel room, Rowan drops her backpack and easel by the door and crosses her arms over her chest. Her cheeks are still pink with cold, her lips glossed and shiny. When she doesn’t speak, my frustration explodes.
“Come on, Rowan! I’m working.” I turn away from her and try to close my bursting suitcase that spills out sweatshirts, flannel lounge pants, balled-up socks.
“This can’t go on,” Rowan finally says. “I can’t take it. My heart can’t take it.” She rests her hand on my arm and turns me so we stand face-to-face. She waits stone quiet until I lift my eyes to meet hers. “You’re asking too much of me, Luce. I love you, but I cannot compete with your past.”
I yank away from her grip. “You show up here in the middle of the biggest case of my career. For what? A fight?” I toss the clothes I’ve been folding onto the floor in the corner.
True to form, Rowan does not argue. She only sits on the corner of the bed while I throw clothes into my suitcase and the used towels into the bathroom. My weak temper tantrum. When I finally turn around, quiet tears stream down her cheeks. She looks as though she’s been swallowed inside her winter gear, her tall frame engulfed in padding. In the harsh light, her cheeks appear sunken with no traces of the Hawaii sun and a deep groove has settled between her eyes. It takes me a moment to realize Rowan isn’t watching me, but taking in the crime-scene photos I’ve tacked up above the desk with all the information we have on each suspect.
I slowly sit down on the edge of the bed beside Rowan. I’ve tried to shield her from crime-scene photos of my cases before, but it’s too late. There is no way to take back what she’s seeing. Closing my open palms together between my knees as though I’m praying, I look out at the gruesome collection of a serial case with her. She’s focused on the autopsy photographs and those of the genital mutilation.
“My
God, Luce.” Tears stream down her cheeks. “What kind of animal would do this to another person?”
Rowan’s question sounds so innocent, her words so heartfelt. When she turns to look at me, I see in her eyes that she finally understands what’s at stake, what my job actually entails. There’s a shift, like a breath of fresh air in the dingy hotel room, a breath that pulls us closer. I reach for her hand and wind my fingers through hers.
After a few minutes, Rowan stands and walks closer to the photographs and clues. “I’m here to stay.” Her hand lands on Marci’s case folder. She opens it, then takes out each crime-scene photo one at a time.
“These pictures…it’s Marci?”
A quick flash of anger burns the back of my throat. I take the file and pictures out of her hand. “This is my work,” I say, shoving the thick, worn file into my bag. “You shouldn’t see this stuff.” Before I can stop myself, I toss the bag against the far wall.
“I’m sorry.”
“Why would you choose now to make a stand?” When she doesn’t answer, I can’t stop myself from adding, “It’s about Hawaii, isn’t it?”
Rowan turns her back to me and her shoulders shake. Holy hell! The flood of guilt washes over me. Why is there always this constant battle within me, to love her or push her away? Torn, I wrap my arms around her waist from behind and drop my chin into the basket between her neck and shoulder. After some time, when I’m certain she will listen, I say, “I tried, Ro. I tried to look at Marci’s photos last night, but I couldn’t get past the first one.”
“Marci didn’t deserve to die, Luce.” She leans back into my chest. “You didn’t either.”
“I’m trying to make it all right.” My voice comes out garbled against her skin.
Rowan turns, hugging me long and hard. “Let me in, that’s all I’m asking.”
We hold each other this way for a few minutes, both of us saying a wordless sorry.
“What about your art show?” I ask. “It’s only a few weeks away. How will you work here?”
She pulls away and faces me. “I talked to Tony yesterday about postponing the show for a month or so. He’s willing to wait. I brought my sketching tools.” Rowan slips out of her coat. “Don’t worry. I left the dogs in good hands. Dan’s staying at the house.”
The clock on the nightstand catches my attention. I need to get back to the station.
“Luce, promise. Settle these ghosts once and for all.”
I turn away from her to collect my bag.
“For us, Luce,” Rowan pleads. “To save us.”
When I finally nod, Rowan leans in and we seal the deal with a kiss. I’m certainly relieved she is here, but not nearly as confident as Rowan. Do I really have the strength I’ll need to help solve the recent murders and face Marci’s?
Chapter Nine
Next to Ainsley’s, my desk looks absurdly vacant with only an old laptop and a slim folder of the tips I’ve been assigned. We’ve been given the only available office in the building, which happens to be nothing more than an oversized storage closet. We’re not even located on the same floor as the rest of the team, but at the edge of a cluster of offices that hold the mayor and city trustees. It seems those offices are rarely used more than a few days a week. Ainsley and I should generally have the floor to ourselves.
Ainsley’s spread is really quite impressive. I’m not sure where all that paperwork has come from, but he’s managed to cover every inch of his desk. Wrappers from beef jerky sticks litter the desk and around the trash can. He’s also a terrible shot.
I scrunch my nose in disgust. “How can you eat those things?”
“What? These?” He bites off a chunk of a stick and reaches out to share it with me. “It’s a staple, Hansen. You don’t know what you’re missing.” He shrugs when I don’t take it and continues eating. His annoying voice booms along the empty corridor with each call he makes to talk to tipsters.
Chad Eldridge gave Davis permission to search the hearse but requested that we hold off until after he used it for work this afternoon. We all realized we should have requested a warrant. Evidence or no evidence.
I scroll through the surveillance from the cemetery one more time. The techie determined that the recorder was tripped when an animal of some kind ran over Chandler Jones’s grave. The camera malfunctioned and didn’t stop recording for forty-two minutes. I’ve spent the last five hours going through all the recordings again and again. There was no animal. The camera didn’t even catch the edge of a squirrel’s tail or the ear of a rabbit. Nothing. Somehow the angle of the camera had been pushed to the left and the lens did not rotate the way it was programmed to work. Instead, it held steady in one obscure angle that gave us virtually no information. According to Ainsley, these are all chance mistakes. Too many, if you ask me, but it doesn’t answer the main question. If a person had been at the grave, why didn’t the camera record at least some glimmer of a human form? After all, a grave site isn’t that big.
“Forget it,” Ainsley says. “Probably a chipmunk. We got tons of those things around here.”
“Is a chipmunk smart enough to turn the camera lens and lock it in place to keep out of range?” I scroll back the recording and set the timer to run even slower, frame by frame. Beside me, Ainsley rolls his eyes in a most exaggerated way and resumes his calls.
The ten tipsters haven’t panned out, so Davis asked us to start calling other names from the tip lines until he had something else for us to do. It’s been a very long afternoon and I’m nearly mind numb. Still, I can’t get this morning’s breakfast and so-called chance meeting with Marci’s brother out of my mind. Was it some sort of test, bringing me face-to-face with a person from my past? I’d felt so comfortable with Ainsley only last night, talking about Marci. I’d even chalked up his bullheaded behavior while questioning Sambino to his moody personality. I don’t want to believe he’d purposely try to throw me off. What did he have to gain from that? It doesn’t make sense.
“Ainsley—I got something.”
He rolls over on his chair and joins me. I back up the frames and play numbers thirty-two and thirty-three.
“What am I looking at?”
I play them again. “See the grass here in this frame?” I point to the corner where the blades are winter yellow, only centimeters from death. There is no movement. I flip to the next. “There! See the bend?” I roll it again.
“It’s the animal.” Ainsley rolls his chair even closer to get a better look at the screen.
“Maybe. Or it’s the edge of a shoe. What if the person knew the camera was there and shifted the lens away? That movement would start the recording.”
“Okay, so where is this person?” Ainsley dares me.
As we both can see, nothing else on the screen moves.
“The techie went out there this morning and said he saw nothing disturbed. The photographs he took show no footprints,” Ainsley says.
I pull up a local weather report. “According to this, Willow’s Ridge got almost an inch of snow between two thirty and four thirty this morning. Someone could have been there at midnight and the snow would hide the footprints.”
“An inch?” Ainsley scoffs. “We’d still be able to see the footprints under that.”
“Not with the frozen ground.”
Ainsley’s desk phone rings. He grunts into it, then hangs up.
“Who left the flowers?”
“What?” Ainsley turns to me, rubbing his bloodshot eyes.
“Who left the flowers that you say the chipmunk was going for?”
I can tell by the way he drops his head to his chest I’m getting nowhere. He takes a deep breath. “Looks like we got something going in our favor. Evidence from the Tucker case is headed to the lab for DNA testing.”
“Hasn’t the evidence been tested?”
Ainsley stands and gives his arms a good stretch over his head. “The tests we did back then didn’t give us anything, but the technology keeps improving. It costs an a
rm and a leg though”—he smacks my shoulder with this pathetic attempt at a joke—“and with no new breaks in the case there was no justification for the expense.”
I follow Ainsley to the stairwell. He talks to me over his shoulder as we descend. “This link with the Tucker case is giving us the juice we need.” He’s excited that his theory is gaining traction and he explains that Davis will meet us down in the evidence room. He wants us to get the samples over to the lab and wait to follow up with the tipsters until first thing in the morning.
Thank God. No more tipsters.
“I really want to know who brought those flowers,” I say to Ainsley’s back.
“What fucking flowers?”
“The grave!”
It’s almost eight p.m. and it feels like we’ve gotten nowhere today. I hate the dog days of an investigation where we simply wait: wait for the killer to make a move, to snatch another girl. My stomach growls and thoughts surface of a late dinner with Rowan. Collection of cloth swatches shouldn’t take long. That’s exactly how I tell myself to think about the job ahead of me: not Marci’s personal items left at the crime scene, but a victim’s items that need to be tested. No emotion. This is just like any other case I deal with on a daily basis.
Pull Marci out of it.
Due to cutbacks all over the state of Ohio, the Willow’s Ridge police station houses evidence for the three surrounding counties, which share CSIs, medical examiners, a morgue, and the storage of evidence. The basement feels like a vast land unto itself. The lack of windows underground leave the basement dark and near silent, the air tinged with the sour scent of mold.
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