Lullaby for the Nameless (Nolan, Hart & Tain Thrillers)

by Ruttan, Sandra

  They already were.

  Anyone with half a brain could have figured out the old woman, known as Lulu, was two parts crazy to one part hungover and one part starved. Their witness mashed as much sandwich as possible into her mouth and tried to chew it fast, as though afraid the desk might swallow it before she had a chance to eat it herself.

  “We were called out of an autopsy for this?” Ashlyn said as they looked through the glass into the room where their witness sat.

  “She’s halfway through her second sandwich,” Sims said as he handed Ashlyn a plate. “She already asked for more.”

  Tain watched Ashlyn arch an eyebrow as she glanced down at the tuna sandwich she’d been handed. When she looked up, all she did was shake her head.

  He opened the door and stepped inside the room.

  “How mech?” Mumbled through a mouthful of tuna salad so thick that the overflow was spilling down her chin. The woman hadn’t even waited for them to sit down.

  Ashlyn had given him one of those you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me looks as Lulu jumped up and grabbed the sandwich from the plate Ash was carrying and started cramming it in her mouth. Ashlyn pulled out a chair, forced the irritation from her expression and said, “Excuse me?”

  Wide, unblinking eyes stared back as Lulu shoveled another mouthful of sandwich in and chewed. She had a narrow nose that was more like a beak, her skin a dim yellow color, clothes that only a bag lady would wear. “Ye know. Fer witnessin’ for ya.”

  “What did you see?” Ashlyn asked. The grip she had on her pen had tightened. Another day and time and the scenario might have been amusing. As it was, Tain sympathized with his partner’s lack of patience.

  “Well, the cop. Saw him. I did,” Lula said between bites. “ ’Course he said he’d tell yas himself, no need for me to talk, but he had that diff’rent uniform.” The woman worked on the last bite of the sandwich and after a big gulp, wiped her mouth with her shirtsleeve. “Why’d it take so long fer ya to git out there when dat other one was there so quick?”

  “First officers on the scene will assess the situation and call for backup if needed, or hand the case over to a different department. If we’re already out working a case, it can take a while to get there,” Ashlyn said. “Did you see anything or anyone before the first cop arrived?”

  “I saw whatever else ya needed me to see, love.” The scrawny, wrinkled face nodded solemnly, as though she believed her offer to help make a case was of the utmost importance instead of a complete waste of their time.

  Ashlyn stood so abruptly the chair behind her clattered to the floor. “I’ve heard enough.”

  She was halfway out the door by the time Tain stood. Lulu continued prattling away as he turned and followed Ashlyn in the hall, but he didn’t hear any of it.

  “You know, I’ve heard stories about Loopy Lulu ever since I transferred here. I almost can’t believe it took this long to have the pleasure.”

  The color in Ashlyn’s cheeks deepened, then started to fade. “Nice you can have such a good sense of humor about it. To think we got called out of an autopsy for this—”

  He held up his hand. “It’s not worth it. What’s done is done. Let’s just get back to the coroner’s office.” Tain turned toward her as they started walking down the hall. “When the time is right, we’ll kick Carter’s ass for this.”

  Ashlyn blew out a breath. “Good. I’d do it myself, but I think he’d enjoy it too much.”

  Tain had managed to suppress the smile before she glanced at him. Little moments like that gave him hope that his partner was truly back.

  She’d been through hell, and the loss she’d suffered had taken its toll.

  As Ashlyn started the car, Tain’s phone rang. He held up his hand to gesture for her to stop and then closed his phone.

  “They’re pretty much finished. Burke’s sending over a transcript of the process.”

  Ashlyn smacked her hand against the steering wheel. “What a waste of time.” They sat in silence for a moment, keeping their thoughts to themselves until Ashlyn asked, “What’s next?”

  As he opened his mouth to respond, Tain’s phone rang again. He flipped it open, listened to the response, then hung up.

  “Back inside. We’ve been summoned.”

  A white-hot rage settled in Ashlyn’s face, and then she yanked the keys out of the ignition and shoved the door open. He hurried out of the car and stepped in front of her, blocking the sidewalk.

  “Get out of my way.”

  “Not until you calm down.”

  “This is bullshit, Tain. We’re nothing but puppets. Called out from an autopsy for…for a hoax? A complete joke? We aren’t even running the case. If we don’t close this—”

  “I know.”

  Ashlyn folded her arms across her chest and looked him in the eye. “I’m sick of them manipulating investigations, playing politics instead of just letting us do our jobs.”

  “Just…” He looked at her reddened cheeks, her clenched jaw. “Just don’t let your anger get the better of you. Don’t let it cloud your judgment.”

  Her eyes widened. “You’re lecturing me about controlling my temper?”

  “Ash—”

  She clenched her fists, then closed her eyes and lifted her hands to cover her face. When she took her hands away, he could see that some of the color had faded a touch. She breathed in and out before she spoke again, the edge gone from her tone, her voice calm. “I don’t want this case, Tain.”

  He took a step closer, reached out, squeezed her arm and lowered his voice. “I need you with me on this.”

  She opened her eyes and looked at him. “We’ve been set up.”

  A drop of his hand and quick turn put him on the sidewalk, walking toward the front door.

  Ashlyn followed. “We’re being set up to fail.”

  He opened the door to the building, voice lowered again by necessity. “Do you really think Steve would do that to us?”

  His way of avoiding her assessment, sidestepping the question. He couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d sifted through the events of the day, the facts they had, and put her finger on the same conclusion he kept coming back to.

  One he refused to believe. Why set them up? Why set them up to fail?

  The problem was, he couldn’t come up with another solution that fit the facts. When he put together all the information they had, it looked like they’d been handed the case for show, that the investigation was being handled by whoever had called Johnson’s team in, and that Johnson knew it.

  They’d be getting evidence secondhand until the case was solved or shelved. There might be evidence they wouldn’t get at all.

  The door to Sergeant Steve Daly’s office was open and he must have been watching for them because as soon as Tain could see inside the room he saw Steve stand up and gesture for them to come inside.

  “It’s a bit premature for an update, sir,” Ashlyn said. “The—”

  “I didn’t call you in for an update.” Steve pointed at the chairs on the other side of his desk across from his own. “Please have a seat.”

  From the corner of his eye, Tain could see Ashlyn’s quick glance and hesitation. He forced himself to sit down and was relieved when she also complied without comment.

  Steve had gotten a new clock, one that had an audible tick that marked off the seconds. Tain hadn’t noticed it before and he didn’t see it on the shelf closest to Steve’s desk or on the wall. Best guess: it was on the new shelf behind the chairs he and Ashlyn sat in.

  The monotony of the clock was finally broken by Steve’s words. “I know the past few months have been hard.” Steve glanced at Ashlyn, who stared back steadily. “You caught a couple of tough cases, and with the interdepartmental politics…What happened wasn’t your fault.”

  Steve paused and shifted his gaze to Tain. For a second Steve looked at him, mouth open, as though hoping for a response. When Tain remained silent, Steve drew a breath, looked at his desk a moment, then
lifted his head and cleared his throat.

  “I wanted to talk to you about this case. About reassigning it.”

  “What?”

  Steve raised his hand calmly and gestured for Ashlyn to let him speak. “Under the circumstances, I think it would be best to—”

  “And what circumstances would those be, exactly?” Ashlyn asked.

  Tain touched his partner lightly on the arm. Her face had reddened, but she kept her gaze lowered instead of looking at him directly. Once he was sure she’d stay silent, he turned to look at Steve. “Respectfully, this is bullshit. You guys called us out there. You asked for us.”

  “I know.” Steve looked down at his desk, gaze on the open folder in front of him. A photo of Millie Harper’s body after it had been turned was sitting on top, staring back up at him.

  Tain got up, yanked the folder off the desk and held up the photo, tapping it with his index finger. “She’s the reason we were called out, without details, and before we even have a chance to get started, you’re pulling us off.” He tossed the file down in front of Steve and leaned down, hands clenching the edge of the desk. “I feel like I spend more time being jerked around than working.”

  “Look, I can appreciate you’re frustrated, and that’s the only reason I’m tolerating your behavior,” Steve said as he glared back at Tain. “I am your senior officer. You may not like my orders, but you do have to follow them.”

  “Then I’d like to speak to your commanding officer.” Ashlyn’s voice cut through the tension on Steve’s face, and he flinched as he turned to look at her.

  “Listen to me, Ash—”

  “No, Steve, you listen. We spent months being jerked around after your temporary transfer. When you came back, we thought that was over. You guys picked up the phone today, you assigned us a case without giving us any details, and you started handling it before we even got to the scene.”

  Steve’s brow furrowed. “We didn’t handle anything.”

  “Then explain why we were called out to investigate something ‘suspicious.’ Explain why a team had already been called out to process the evidence. I mean, all you had to do was take one look at what was in the Dumpster—”

  There was the tiniest gasp as Ashlyn’s breath caught in her throat. Tain was familiar with her way of stopping the tremor of emotion that sometimes crept into her words, but so was Steve.

  He pointed at her. “That’s why I want you off this case.”

  “You want us off the case? You, or your superiors?”

  “Ash.” Tain kept his voice low as he turned to look at his partner. There was a tension in her body he hadn’t seen in months, evident in the stiffness of her neck, the clenched hands, the color in her cheeks that hadn’t dissipated.

  “I want you off the case.”

  Tain watched as his partner’s face darkened. The first wave to hit was anger.

  “Ashlyn—”

  She held up her hand to silence Steve and opened her mouth to speak, but stopped before Tain could make sense of what she was going to say. The anger was followed by what he interpreted as disbelief and shock as her skin turned white, and she seemed to shrink half an inch. It took only a second for her to pull the door open, and she stomped out of the room before Tain had a chance to keep her from leaving.

  Silence followed, and it was a moment before Steve spoke. “That’s why I don’t want you on this case.”

  “Then that’s a pretty lousy excuse, Steve. You pushed her. You pushed us. You called us out there, and all we were told was that something suspicious had been found in a Dumpster. I think it would be pretty obvious even to some high-ranking bureaucrat who didn’t want to get his hands dirty that it was a body.”

  “Look—”

  “You were at the crime scene. You asked for us. You think we don’t know why? You knew.”

  Steve leaned back in his chair and covered his face with his hands for a moment. “But I didn’t know it was her.”

  Spoken so softly that for a second Tain wasn’t sure if he’d imagined Steve’s words.

  “What?”

  When Steve looked up, Tain saw a muddled mix of sadness and frustration in Steve’s eyes and what he interpreted as a measure of desperation. The way Steve’s eyebrows rose made Tain feel as though his senior officer was pleading with him to understand, and the way the corners of Steve’s eyes sagged made Steve look as though he’d aged years.

  Steve looked Tain straight in the eye as he spoke. “I didn’t know it was Millie Harper.”

  “Then…why? Why call us out there? And why take us off now?”

  A half smile flickered across Steve’s face as he leaned back and gave his head one small shake. “I wasn’t going to take you off.”

  “But you said—”

  “I said I wanted you off.”

  “You implied—”

  “Tain, it was…I was playing a hunch. Call it my way of toying with you if you want to. Hell, maybe I’ve felt like a mouse being dangled by its tail in front of a starved cat for so long I can’t help myself anymore. You guys got called out there because of the superficial similarities to that old case. It wasn’t my decision, and I’m not going to defend it.”

  “Good, because I’m getting pretty sick of feeling like I spend more time fighting with people in this office than I spend doing my job. We’re both fed up with it. You think we need therapy, you send us to a shrink and stop playing bullshit mind games with us.”

  Steve’s hands were folded in front of his face and for a half second Tain almost wondered if he was praying with his eyes open, but then Steve nodded. “You’re right. And you’re right about the fact that I pushed Ashlyn, and I shouldn’t have.”

  “You can tell her that yourself.”

  Tain turned and started walking toward the door when he heard the creak of the chair. From the corner of his eye, he saw Steve stand up.

  “But look at how she responded.” There was silence, and Steve didn’t continue speaking until Tain turned to look at him. “We didn’t know it was Millie. All we knew was that it was superficially similar.”

  A test for both of them. Steve could claim he was concerned about Ashlyn, but Tain knew better. He was under as much scrutiny as his partner over this call.

  “We didn’t want the press catching wind of it. Not since they found a body in the woods near Kelowna earlier.”

  “Isn’t that where the manhunt is? The multiple murderer?”

  “That’s what the press is saying.”

  “And what about the RCMP?”

  “Details are thin. It’s just, first a body in the woods, and now a body in a Dumpster…I was worried about Ashlyn before I knew it was Millie.”

  Tain was beginning to see where Steve was going and what was really bothering them. The reason they’d been given limited details when they were called out. “There may have been some loose ends, but we closed the file. Campbell’s dead. Hobbs is in prison.”

  “And I want him to stay there.” Steve reached up with both hands and scratched his head before he gave up on the pretense and dropped his arms to his sides.

  This was about more than the connection Tain and Ashlyn had to Millie Harper and what he hoped were the coincidental similarities between her death and others they’d investigated before. For Steve, it was personal in a different way. Old cases and old wounds. The implications of Millie’s death had brought back painful memories for Sergeant Daly, and he was projecting his own fears onto Tain and Ashlyn.

  “Then you should keep us on this case. Millie didn’t die like the others. There’s no reason to think it’s the same killer.”

  “But the nightgown, the dumping of the body…the fact that she’d been tied up?”

  “Circumstantial at best.” Tain knew they’d have to look at the other cases. It was standard procedure. But he had no doubt about Hobbs’s guilt and the role Campbell had played. “We know the history inside and out. We both knew Millie. We don’t have to be brought up to speed. The only per
son who knows this case as well as we do…” Tain paused as he considered what to say about Craig and his prolonged absence. “He’s not here. We are. You’ll be behind from the beginning if you take us off the case now.”

  Steve stared at Tain for a moment, then nodded. “I know. But are you sure she can handle it?”

  A question Tain wasn’t prepared to ask himself, never mind answer to Steve.

  “Either you have confidence in us to do our jobs, or you don’t. You can’t have a list of conditions over what kinds of cases your officers handle. You either trust them with everything, or you trust them with nothing.”

  With that he turned and walked away.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The woman who stood behind the desk barely glanced up as Craig and Mac entered. She continued riffling through stacks of papers as she spoke.

  “I hear you have a habit of finding bodies in the woods, Nolan.”

  He could feel the burn creeping up the back of his neck as his mouth opened, but he pulled back the words.

  Sergeant Linda Yeager looked up then. “From what I’ve been told, you nearly lost your head while you were out there. Did someone leave out the part about you actually losing your tongue?”

  “No, Sergeant.” Craig never could figure out if ranking female officers wanted to be called ma’am. Past experience had taught him that no matter what protocol was, using the label was more likely to offend than not.

  She stared at him for a moment, sharp green eyes set on a weathered face, blonde hair that was giving way to gray tightly pulled back into a bun. Give her a meter stick and she could pass for Craig’s high school calculus teacher, a conclusion that didn’t make him more comfortable.

  The heat was spreading to his cheeks.

  Yeager’s sly smile was making him uneasy. Something about the cynical twist of her mouth, the way her eyes pinched just a touch…It was like Yeager could see his discomfort, the desire to squirm, and she enjoyed twisting the screws just a bit.

  Then the moment passed, and she went back to sifting through papers. After she worked her way through part of a small stack, she extracted a pink slip, skimmed the message, pulled open a drawer and placed the paper inside. She set her hands on her desk and looked up again, first scrutinizing Mac before she glanced at Craig as she nodded.