by Elle Gray
The guy has short dark hair shot through with gray that’s stylishly cut, a perfect smile, and a fit, lean body. The well-tailored suit, thousand-dollar shoes on his feet, and Rolex he’s not taking care to hide on his wrist tell me he’s got money. Or at least, is putting in a lot of effort to make it look like he does. He is still trawling at Barnaby’s, after all.
He’s the kind of guy Astra would have gone home with back in the day. Not because he has money－she’s always been fiercely independent－but because he’s a good-looking older man. Suffice it to say, the woman has a type.
“Ladies,” he croons, his voice as greasy as his smile. “And how are we tonight?”
“We were doing well until you slimed your way over to our table,” Astra says.
He laughs, trying to play it off. “That’s cute,” he says, undeterred. “How about I buy you a drink?”
“Let me just save you the trouble,” Astra says. “I’m not going home with you. You’re not going home with me. And I have zero interest in a quickie in the bathroom, a car, or the hotel room you’ve probably already secured. Ain’t gonna happen. I would rather give myself a battery acid enema.”
She gives him a wide faux smile and the guy clears his throat, then walks away without another word. I can’t stop the laughter that bursts from my throat. Astra gives me a real smile and takes a sip of her drink.
“I never thought I’d live to see the day when you settled down,” I say when I finally stop laughing.
“That makes two of us. But Benjamin is great,” she replies. “He’s one of those one in a billion guys.”
“He must be to have captured your heart.”
“Speaking of love and relationships－”
“Pretty sure we weren’t talking about that.”
She shrugs. “Kind of. Anyway, what about you? Now that you’re back and plan on being here a while, it’s time to find you a man.”
I laugh. “I ran into Dr. Mark, actually. Had coffee with him a few nights back.”
“Shut up!” she gasps, immediately slamming her hand on the table. “Oh my God, I can’t believe – what – you’ve been off gallivanting with Dr. Mark? Behind my back? Blake! Why didn’t you tell me?”
I shrug. “It was a cup of coffee, not a declaration of love.”
“Maybe not, but you have history with this man,” she says. “And if I remember correctly, it was a very hot, sordid history.”
“It wasn’t that hot, and it wasn’t that sordid,” I counter.
It’s something of a lie, but I’m not like Astra. I don’t feel compelled to divulge all of the most intimate details of my personal life.
“Hot and sordid enough,” she protests, waving me off. “So? Was that old spark still there? Will those fires be rekindled?”
“I told him my job comes first, but I’d still see him from time to time. So I guess we’ll have to see what happens.”
“Blake, the guy is gorgeous. I mean, gorgeous,” she says. “He’s smart. Nice. Funny. He’s the whole package. And he’s totally into you.”
I have to admit that the day we met him in that hospital bay, it felt kind of nice that he seemed to notice me, rather than her. It’s petty, yeah, but it’s such a rare thing, I can’t help but enjoy it.
“What’s holding you back, babe?” she asks.
I shrug. “I just… I’m more focused on my career than anything right now,” I tell her. “I don’t want anything to distract me from that.”
She looks at me, her expression earnest. “Blake, the job will always be there. There will always be a killer who needs to be caught. We’re never going to catch them all,” she says. “What’s rare is finding somebody we connect with. What’s rare is finding somebody worth giving our heart to. And when we do, we need to have the strength and the courage to grab onto them. To hold them tight and not let them go. Because I’ll tell you one thing I’ve learned. You can have all of the professional accolades. You can have a bookcase full of awards and medals. But if you don’t have somebody to share those things with, to celebrate your victories with, your life is going to be empty. What’s going to fill your heart more? Coming home to plaques on the wall? Or coming home to somebody who understands you? Somebody who cares about you and will hold you after a long, tough day? And you know, better than most, just how many long, tough days this job has.”
I sit back in my seat and stare at her, completely stunned. In all the time I’ve known her, I’ve never heard Astra give such a heartfelt, emotional speech.
“I have to be honest here,” I start, “this new emotionally squishy Astra is kind of freaking me out.”
She laughs like it’s the funniest thing she’s ever heard as I continue trying to wrap my mind around her speech. It’s about the last thing I ever expected to fall out of her mouth. Despite that, I can’t help but hear the wisdom in her words. They really resonate within me.
For as much as I push any notion of a relationship away, wanting to focus on my career, I’d be lying if I said there isn’t some small part of me that craves it. Yearns for it. Some small part of me does long to come home to somebody after a long, tough day and just have them hold me. Tell me things would be all right.
But I keep anybody interested in me at an arm’s distance. Dr. Reinhart thinks it goes back to the murder of my parents. That somehow, the wires in my brain got crossed, and now I see love as a source of pain. She says I see love as a fragile, delicate thing that can be ripped away from you in a heartbeat. That much is true, obviously. But the idea that it’s the murder of my folks that shaped my view of relationships is something I’m still uncertain of.
For whatever reason, the thought of getting close to somebody and really opening my heart to them scares me to death. Maybe Dr. Reinhart is right and it is because I’m afraid that if I do, I’ll lose them. That they’ll be taken from me. I don’t know for certain. But that’s been a constant throughout my life.
Astra smiles at me and I simply cannot get my mind around this change in her. She’s not the same person I left behind when I went to New York. Not by a long shot. She’s grown and changed. Personally, I love to see it. I’ve always wanted her to find somebody who treated her like a princess. Somebody who could settle her down and give her a good life. That she’s found it makes me happier than I can say.
But I don’t know that it’s in the cards for me. As fond of Mark as I am, I don’t know that he’s the one I can give my heart to. I’d think that if he was, I’d know it by now. That I’d feel it down deep in my bones. And right now, I just don’t feel that. There’s a hesitance I still feel.
But then, I have to ask myself whether or not I’d really know what that felt like, even if he was the one.
Fourteen
Criminal Data Analysis Unit; Seattle Field Office
“Okay, so we have no idea where she is,” Astra says.
I shake my head. “None.”
Mo is looking at her computer, reading the report from the screen. “The techs found blood at the scene. It was cleaned up but showed up with the luminol.”
Astra shrugs. “Seems obvious to me that Cee Cee murdered Brad, then went off the grid. Pretty cut and dry.”
I pace the front of the room, looking at the photos the techs took of Brad Sunderland’s house on the monitors. Nothing seems out of place. There are no signs of a struggle. There’s nothing that indicates a murder took place here.
“Where was the blood found?” I ask.
“In the bed. The mattress had been flipped and the sheets changed, but the techs found a significant amount of blood soaked into it,” Mo reports.
“Enough blood to account for a severed carotid?” I ask.
She nods. “Apparently so.”
“See?” Astra says. “She cut his throat while he was sleeping, then got out of town. Like I said, cut and dry.”
“Seems that way,” I say slowly.
“You don’t seem convinced.”
I shake my head. “I’m not. It’s too ea
sy. Too simple.”
“Sometimes, things are easy,” she offers.
“Sometimes. I don’t think that’s the case with this, though.”
“Why not?” Mo asked.
“A few things. First, we’ve all seen pictures of Cassie Cooper. She’s a small woman,” I say. “Could a woman that small really beat a man’s face literally to a pulp the way Brad’s face was?”
I look around the room and nobody says anything. It’s the first crack in the wall. But wait, there’s more.
“There’s also the matter of her financials,” I say. “Mo, I’m assuming you didn’t find anything out of whack? Nothing to indicate she’s been siphoning off money and stashing it elsewhere?”
Mo shakes her head. “No. Nothing. Everything lines up with her paychecks and normal spending habits,” she says. “If she had a second bank account somewhere, she must have had a second job somewhere to fund it.”
“Rick, anything indicating she had a second job?”
He’s been quiet in the back, hunched over his computer, typing away furiously. He’s obviously onto something and it’s taking his entire focus since he apparently didn’t hear me and hasn’t answered. Astra notices and turns her mischievous smile on him as she throws a pen. It bounces off the top of his head and he looks up suddenly, pushing his glasses back up onto the bridge of his nose, looking like we just woke him up from a nap.
“You better not be looking at porn back there,” she cracks.
“Don’t worry, I’ll send you links for the good clips I find,” he fires back, then turns to me. “Sorry, what was it, boss?”
“I asked if there was any indication that Cassie had a second job,” I repeat.
He bends back over his computer and starts typing away again. We wait in silence for a couple of minutes while he works, the only sound in the room is him punching the keys. Finally, he looks up and shakes his head.
“I only did a cursory search, but I’ve only been able to find the one job,” he says. “I’ll do a deeper dive and see what else I can find.”
“Great, thanks,” I say. “What are you working on back there?”
“I’ve been looking through the missing persons reports for the last few weeks. You wouldn’t believe how many people are reported missing around here,” he says. “Anyway, I just found one for Cassie. She was reported missing by her sister a few days ago. There’s another report filed by her boss yesterday.”
“We’re probably going to want to speak to them,” I say.
“Maybe they can tell us if they knew she was a murderer,” Astra says.
I turn to her. “You are really married to that theory. Why is that?”
“Come on, you know the statistics,” she responds. “The significant other did it in an overwhelmingly large number of these cases.”
“True. But there are also a lot of murders committed by somebody other than the significant other as well.”
Astra shrugs. “I just think it’s too coincidental.”
“Okay, so what do you have to back up your theory?” I ask.
“No forced entry into the home. The vic was killed in bed. That’s intimate. That says to me that the killer was somebody known to them. Somebody close to them. If it had been a stranger killing, there would have been signs of a struggle,” she says. “Brad wasn’t a small guy and seems like he could have taken care of himself. I think he would have put up a fight. But he was caught unaware. Like while he was asleep.”
“Couldn’t a stranger have cut his throat while he slept?” Mo points out.
“Possible,” she replies. “But I think Cassie did it and had an accomplice. That’s why the back door was left open. She left it for her lover to sneak in and cut Brad’s throat.”
“Why?” I ask. “They weren’t married yet. Why go through the trouble of murdering him when she could have just left?”
“Maybe he was abusing her. Maybe she felt she had no other choice but to kill him to get away,” Astra postulates.
“A possible lover. A possible abuser. A possible escape plot,” I say. “There are an awful lot of maybes in your theory,” I point out.
“No more than there are in yours,” she responds. “I’m simply relying on statistics and data. I mean, isn’t that what we do here?”
I open my mouth to reply but close it again because she’s right. Everything is still so uncertain, it really is just speculation and theory at this point. It’s time we start filling in some of the blanks.
“All right,” I say. “Let’s take a ride.”
Astra smiles. “Sounds good to me.”
“Mo, Rick, I need you guys to do a deep dive on Cassie. I want to know everything there is to know about her,” I tell them. “I want to know if she has some secret homicidal personality we don’t know of.”
“On it,” they reply in unison.
Fifteen
Residence of Millie Cooper Walsh; West Seattle, WA
The neighborhood of West Seattle is known for being a little slice of upper middle-class suburbia nestled on the edges of the urban chaos of downtown Seattle. There’s a long stretch of waterfront and the homes are all nice, though a bit uniform for my liking, and it’s a good place to raise a family.
Astra and I climb out of the car and look around the neighborhood. Trees line both sides of the street and all of the homes look like they’re one of four different models. Like I said, cookie cutter.
I turn to Astra. “No mention of her sister being some crazed murderer, all right?”
She grins. “What? I’m totally sensitive enough to not do something like that.”
“I’m serious, Astra. This is a woman worried about her sister.”
“All right, all right,” she says. “You take the lead.”
“Thank you.”
We head up the walk to the house and I notice some toys in the yard, telling me she’s got children. I can only hope they’re not at home. The last thing I want to do is question their mom with them in the room. We walk up the three steps to the porch and I knock on the front door. A moment later, a woman who looks like an older, shorter-haired version of Cassie Cooper opens the door.
“Millie Cooper Walsh?” I ask.
Her eyes are rimmed red, as is her nose, and her cheeks are flushed, telling me she’s been spending a lot of time crying.
“Yes?” she asks, her lower lips quivering.
Astra and I both flash our badges and the tears immediately start spilling down her face. She puts a hand up over her mouth, and I can see the fear in her wide green eyes. She swallows hard as she looks at me.
“Are you here about my sister?” she asks, her voice barely more than a whisper.
“We wanted to speak to you about her, yes,” I say.
“Did you find her?”
I clear my throat. “I’m afraid not. Not yet. But we’re looking,” I tell her. “It would help us a lot if you could answer some questions for us.”
There’s a flash of relief in her eyes, but it’s quickly clouded over again by her fear and worry. She opens the door to let us in. I lead Astra inside and we walk into the entryway and wait. Millie closes the door, then leads us into a spacious and comfortable living room. In the corner, I see a pile of toys, affirming the fact that she’s got children, but I don’t hear them.
The house is tastefully decorated and appointed. Everything is nice, but not too nice. It’s nothing extravagant or ostentatious but has a very comfortable, lived in feel about it. This is a family home. On the wall, I see a photograph of Millie and a man I take to be her husband, and two children－a boy and a girl. They look like the perfect, All-American nuclear family. The only thing missing is the white picket fence out front.
Astra and I sit down on the sofa and Millie perches on the loveseat that sits perpendicular to the couch. She sets her hands in her lap and immediately starts wringing them together. The tears continue spilling down her cheeks and she quickly wipes them away, then goes back to wringing her hands together.
The dark circles under her eyes tell me she hasn’t slept well for a while.
“Where is your family?” I ask, trying to start things off neutrally.
“My husband is at work,” she says, her voice quavering. “My kids are at school.”
I nod. “You have a beautiful family, Mrs. Walsh.”
“Thank you,” she says. “But can you tell me why you’re here if you haven’t found Cassie yet?”
I shift on my seat and let out a quiet breath. Talking to the families of victims is always a delicate thing. You need to get answers to your questions, but you don’t want to press them too hard or you’ll shut them down completely and end up with nothing. It’s definitely a fine line to walk.
“Well, we’re with the FBI, and you filed your report with Seattle PD, correct?” I ask, trying to be as gentle as I can be.
“Yes, that’s correct. But the police department hasn’t returned any of my calls. I don’t think they’re actually doing anything,” she says. “Did they just pass it on to you? Is that what’s happened?”
“No, no. Nothing like that. I’m sure the SPD is doing all they can to find her, Mrs. Walsh,” I say. “Your sister’s name came up in connection with a different investigation altogether.”
She cocks her head and looks at me. “A separate investigation? What are you talking about?”
“Your sister’s fiancé. Brad Sunderland?” I ask.
A sour look crosses her face. “Yes, what about him? He didn’t even call me to tell me she was missing. I had to hear it from her boss, of all people.”
Astra looks at me pointedly as a brick seems to lock into place in her theory. At least, she seems to think so.
“Do you not get along with Mr. Sunderland?” I ask.
She shrugs. “We aren’t the best of friends, no. We’re cordial,” she says. “I just think he’s arrogant. He thinks he’s better than other people. I always felt he looked down on me. Cassie says I’m crazy, but she’s hardly an impartial judge of it. She’s head over heels in love with him. But she could do better.”
