Ashlyn started to walk around the side of the house. The paint was peeling off the wood in some places, and below the eaves a hornet’s nest hung among the tattered cobwebs. Gravel crunched beneath her feet, and by a basement window a faucet dripped.
She thought about the small truck she’d seen pulled over on the road. If it was Mrs. Wilson’s vehicle, why wouldn’t she just park in her driveway?
Behind the house there was a small shed beside a garage, which looked like it had been painted recently. It stood out in stark contrast to the dingy appearance of the house, but she realized structurally the house was solid. Most of the repairs it needed were cosmetic.
The backyard stretched out from the house with a gentle downward slope to the point where it overlooked a hill. Ashlyn was getting used to the deception of the mountains. They’d look like they went straight up, without a break in the trees, but once you started driving up them you’d find they had hills and cliffs in different places, that you could be heading up a mountain and actually driving down for periods of time.
On the far side of the house was a separate area that contained an overgrown garden. The grass was creeping in under the fence and had infiltrated some rows, and in other places there were weeds almost as tall as the plants that had been ignored.
“She’d sneak into the garden and steal the strawberries.”
Ashlyn spun around at the sound of the voice she recognized as the one from the phone earlier. Mrs. Wilson wasn’t a tall woman, and she couldn’t have been accused of being slim either, but she wasn’t chubby. She was solid, with stocky legs and arms that matched her body, short white curls that framed a round, weathered face.
“Mrs. Wilson, I’m Ash—”
“I know who you are. You called your name at the front door. Ain’t nothing wrong with my eyes, my ears, or my head, and I may be old but that doesn’t make me forgetful or confused.” Mrs. Wilson nodded toward the garden. “She was a little thief and on track to be a good-for-nothin’ two-bit whore like her mother, but she was murdered all the same.”
“Mrs. Wilson, I have to ask how you know that.”
The woman’s face looked like it was twisted in a scowl most of the time, but she found a way to make the creases deepen. “Problem with you young folk these days is you don’t sit still long enough to know anybody. Move from one place to another and think we’re all just the same, just swap out the names. You want to know this town, you have to be in this town. Then you wouldn’t have to ask.”
“Then why not call one of the other officers, the ones who’ve worked locally for a long time? Why not talk to them?”
Mrs. Wilson’s dark eyes narrowed. “They’re why I’m talking to you. I hear you got problems down at the station.”
“You hear a lot. Especially considering nobody’s identified the body from the inn. I’m trying to work out how you’d know who it was…” Ashlyn let her voice trail off at the end.
The old woman cackled. “What? You think I put her there? Missy, if you aren’t gonna take this seriously, you’re wasting my time, and that of the taxpayers, come to think of it.” Her face hardened. “Jenny Johnson’s mother lives about a mile down the road, that way.” She nodded again, out past the garden. “You’ll find she’s got one sorry man after another goin’ in and out of the house. Been that way since before the girl was born. Everybody ’round here knows it and ignores it. ’Bout half a mile back toward town there’s a dirt road. First turn off’s for the house, the driveway. The road narrows up some then, but snakes its way out to this hut where Jenny stayed. You can see the shack from the road, easy. The road dead-ends not far past it. By the time she was a teenager, she’d all but moved into that little shack. It’s right near the property line. My fences run right up to the road.”
“Did she still live there?” Ashlyn was trying to remember the last known address listed in Jenny Johnson’s file. She couldn’t remember the specifics, but she knew it wasn’t her mother’s address.
Was it possible Jenny had just run off from problems and been mistakenly reported as missing? Jenny was the last girl who’d had a file opened, and her disappearance had ultimately prompted the creation of the task force.
“She lived there most of the time for a few years. And then she was gone, into all sorts of trouble, and would only show up out here from time to time.”
“You know a lot about her.”
“When you got a neighbor kid who steals things off your property, you pay attention. Wouldn’t be surprised if it was her mother who put her up to it. Stealing carrots and potatoes and tomatoes. And strawberries. Mostly, she liked her strawberries. I always thought she’d start comin’ after the TV and the stereo someday, maybe try for the truck. Never did, though.”
Mrs. Wilson started walking past Ashlyn, toward the garden. Ashlyn turned, but didn’t follow her. “You have to give me more than that if you want me to take you seriously.”
The old woman stopped walking. “I had the greenhouse built two years back. Let the garden go a bit in time. Too hard on the back at my age.” She was silent for a moment and still didn’t turn back to face Ashlyn. “Your bunch is sayin’ she hasn’t been seen in a few months now, but I saw her not three weeks ago at the little shack. I’d only gone for a short walk, to check on the signs I got posted at the far end of the property. You think it’s bad to have a kid stealin’ from your garden, but what’s worse is havin’ them damn hunters turn up on your property, shootin’ at deer.”
Ashlyn paused. “Mrs. Wilson, if you saw Jenny three weeks ago, why didn’t you report it?”
The old woman turned. “She was out there with one of the men you work with. They were arguing.” Mrs. Wilson held up her hand. “All I know is it was something about a delivery truck and Blind Creek Inn.”
“I don’t understand.”
Mrs. Wilson shook her head. “That fool of a girl had been running with Bobby Hobbs from the time she was a child. Him and that friend of his, Eddie, they’re no good. Bobby was always the leader, but there was something in Eddie’s eyes, ’specially since his mother died. Something was wrong with that boy. No surprise to me that they got her into some trouble. That cop, he was beggin’ her to keep her distance, to stay at the shack. Just a few more weeks, maybe a month, he said.”
“What did Jenny say?”
“That if they found her, they’d kill her.”
“Who? Bobby and Eddie?”
“Well, that cop, he should know, shouldn’t he? Talk to him.” Mrs. Wilson shook her head. “You go out there, see the shack yourself. Then you’ll understand.”
“Mrs. Wilson, I—”
“I got nothin’ more to say to ya.”
For a moment Ashlyn stood and watched the old woman walk away. She’d taken a gamble coming out there alone, and now she wasn’t sure if Mrs. Wilson was credible. The wizened old woman certainly seemed lucid, but she’d given Ashlyn nothing to back up her claims about the identity of the body recovered from the arson scene.
Ashlyn returned to her car and drove back the way she’d came, watching the odometer closely until she found the dirt road Mrs. Wilson had mentioned. She turned.
It wasn’t long before she passed the entrance of the driveway, which curved to the right shortly after the turnoff. Ashlyn couldn’t see the house from the road, but the driveway was marked by a faded sign with nothing but the Johnson name.
The road narrowed, and some of the branches hung low enough to brush the roof of her vehicle. When the trees thinned a bit, she could see the small shack, which seemed to be made of tin and wood and sat on a small hill nestled between three trees that seemed to serve as support beams.
How could anyone live there?
Ashlyn parked her car and slowly approached the shack. A quick survey of the woods revealed nothing out of the ordinary, and behind her she could see the gap in the brush that revealed the fence marking Mrs. Wilson’s property.
Instead of approaching the makeshift door, which appeared to be made
from a sheet of tin somehow secured over an opening in the wood behind it, Ashlyn walked around behind the structure. Near the ground there were some holes that had been dug out by small animals but no evidence of pipes or plumbing. Around the back there appeared to be an outhouse. Beyond that, there was the start of a path heading through the forest, back toward the house where Jenny’s mother lived.
The only other thing of note from the back was the dingy window covered by plastic. As she circled around, she also saw a metal vent that looked like it might be for a wood stove.
Ashlyn paused in front of the shack. There was no doubt that she was trespassing. Did Mrs. Wilson’s statement give her probable cause to enter and search the building?
A quick glance at her watch told her that she’d been gone from the station for long enough now that somebody must have noticed. If she returned empty-handed, it would cost her.
Still, she felt uneasy as she stepped toward the door. All the lectures about calling for backup, following procedure, not overstepping your boundaries…Everything her mentor had drilled into her for months ran through her head. It was all good in theory, but what could you do when you had an uncooperative partner and were stuck on a dysfunctional team?
She took a deep breath, reached forward and pulled at the door. The hinges groaned as light spilled into the small space. A rat scurried across the makeshift floor as she coughed, and it disappeared in the dark corner behind the wood stove. On the far side of the room was a small stove, but Ashlyn could tell it hadn’t been used in days. A layer of dust had settled on the scattered furnishings, including the hammock strung between two of the trees the shack had been built around.
In a gap between one of the trees and the back wall of the hut a small patch of sky was visible.
Ashlyn surveyed the small space. There wasn’t much of anything inside worth noting. A sleeping bag was slung over the hammock. A metal cart sat near a pile of wood stacked loosely by the far wall. A small backpack was on top of the cart, one shoulder strap dangling in front of the door.
She looked at the tin roof and noted no light fixtures of any kind. Along the near wall, to her left between the door and one end of the hammock, a lantern, a poker, some metal barbecuing utensils and a couple of dirty dishcloths hung on large nails protruding from the wood.
Ashlyn had seen children’s forts that had better construction.
The door clanked and quivered as it struck the wood planks that made up the wall as Ashlyn turned back to the car. Nothing in the shack was going to tell her that Jenny Johnson had been killed in the fire.
She got into the car, turned around and began driving. How had Mrs. Wilson known Jenny was arguing with an RCMP officer? She should have pressed the old woman, made her back up her claims, threatened to charge her for impeding an investigation unless she talked. Was that what Nolan would have done?
More importantly, why did she even care?
As she rounded a bend in the road she saw a familiar vehicle turning down the driveway, to the Johnson residence.
Nolan’s Rodeo.
She held her breath as she pushed the brake down. Had he seen her? What was he doing out there anyway? It wouldn’t take long to cross-reference the processed messages from the call records at the station, but that would lead to Mrs. Wilson’s, and she hadn’t passed any vehicles before turning off to go to the shack.
Even if Nolan had enough time to go to Mrs. Wilson’s and had talked to her before heading to the Johnson property, why talk to Jenny’s mother first, instead of heading out to the shack? Had he somehow identified Jenny’s body and gone to notify her mother?
What if Nolan had been the officer Mrs. Wilson had heard arguing with Jenny?
Ashlyn released the brake and hit the gas, accelerating faster than she’d planned. Gravel sprayed into the air behind her as the tires found purchase. A quick glance down the driveway as she passed told her Nolan wasn’t waiting there, so he must have gone to the house.
But why?
That was the secondary question. As soon as she hit the main road, she turned back toward Mrs. Wilson’s house.
Ashlyn hadn’t processed how dark it was getting until she saw the oncoming headlights of another vehicle. She switched her own lights on, then flashed the high beams, but the other driver didn’t turn their high beams off. Ashlyn raised her left hand to partially block the intense lights shining at her, lowering it only after the truck had flown by.
She hadn’t caught a glimpse of the other driver, only a blur of darkness against the growing night sky, but there was something familiar about the vehicle. As she glanced into the rearview mirror, she saw a flash out of the corner of her right eye, followed by a loud thwack.
The rear passenger side window cracked, and a burning line was drawn across her right arm. As she hit the brake hard and swerved to the left, she thought she saw the glow of brake lights in the rearview mirror. The tires squealed and then a thud shook the car. Ashlyn raised her arms in front of her face instinctively as the windshield smashed. She was aware that somehow, her body was turning upside down while being pulled back against the seat and then jerked forward until she hit the steering wheel. Pain shot down her spine and into her shoulders. She could feel a warm dampness on her forehead and hear the sound of a horn, but it seemed distant, and the sound faded, as though it was coming from a car that was moving away, as though it was coming from something that had been muffled by the darkness that swallowed her.
PART THREE
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
When Tain arrived at the station Ashlyn was already there, poring over papers at her desk.
“Did you sleep?” he asked her.
She shook her head as she glanced up at him. “Doesn’t look like you did either.”
For a moment he stood still, staring down at her while she processed the information on the pages in front of her. Only twenty-four hours earlier he would have expected her to be offended by the question, to resent the idea of him checking up on her.
The early hours of an intense murder investigation had allowed them to shift back to normal.
When she glanced up at him again, he realized he hadn’t sat down, and quickly pulled out his chair and skimmed his desk.
No messages.
He looked across the desk, at his partner.
“Not a single call,” she said.
“Nothing?”
She shook her head and looked back down at the open folder.
“What are you working on?”
Ashlyn didn’t lift her gaze and didn’t answer right away. Then she picked up the folder and passed it to Tain.
He started to skim the contents, realizing he was reading over a transcription of the full autopsy. Burke had made good on his promise. Tain set the report down on his desk as he read. He felt Ashlyn watching him as he turned the pages. Burke was a talker, which was a blessing because it provided them with a blow by blow of the entire procedure. It wasn’t uncommon for official autopsy reports to take a month or more to be completed, a truth shows like CSI made it hard to convince the public of. They pressured for immediate answers and expected quick results, unaware of the time it took to have all the tests done. Short of a gunshot wound or something equally obvious, it could be days before a cause of death was conclusively determined.
Especially if drugs had been involved. They could be kept waiting for the toxicology report while they worked with a partially educated hunch.
There was something in the report that had caught Ashlyn’s attention, and he didn’t doubt what it was when he found it.
Millie had given birth.
Had this stood out because it seemed significant to the case, or was it personal? Tain resisted the urge to pinch his eyes shut. This case was tough enough already, but this…
Could she handle this? Steve might have been right. Staying on this case could be a mistake.
When he looked up, her face was blank, as though she hadn’t seen the truth hit home, the subtle change in his
expression that had exposed his thoughts.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
Putting it back on her. Not making an accusation or jumping to conclusions.
“Maybe she was involved with someone.”
“It’s been quite a while since we saw her. It’s possible she had relationships during that time.”
Ashlyn shook her head. “I mean, what if she was currently involved with someone, or just had a recent breakup?”
“I’m not sure I follow, given the cause of death…”
“I think that if anyone would know about Millie’s past, if there was anyone she might have told about what happened to those other girls, it would have been someone she was involved with. I know it’s just a theory, but it explains the similarities.”
Tain thought about what it would mean if Millie’s death wasn’t connected to the case they’d worked before. They could leave those skeletons in the closet, possibly wrap up this investigation without asking the one question nobody wanted to consider.
Especially after what had happened months before between Craig and Steve over one of Steve’s old cases that was now fresh in everyone’s mind. The questions of whether the investigation had been thorough, whether an innocent man had gone to jail…Mistakes had been made that had been outside Steve’s control, and though his name had been cleared, Craig hadn’t been able to let it go.
It seemed to Tain that Craig was the only one unable to accept that he had his own mistakes to account for, that he held his father to a higher standard than he expected to be held to himself, but that was incidental. What he couldn’t forgive Craig for was what he’d done to Ashlyn.
He pushed that from his mind and nodded. “Good thinking. The question now is, how do we start piecing together Millie’s life?”
Ashlyn tapped a pile of papers stacked to her right. “Missingpersons reports. Nothing matches the description.”
“Provincewide?”
“National for the last four days.”
Lullaby for the Nameless (Nolan, Hart & Tain Thrillers) Page 14
