“Great. Thanks.” Tain was already on his feet but stopped himself. “Good work, Sims. We really appreciate it.”
He hung up the phone. It took only a matter of seconds to walk down the hall and raise his hand to knock on Sergeant Daly’s door, but it felt longer.
The door opened before he touched the wood.
Steve nodded and gestured for Tain to come in. “I was expecting you.” He closed the door as Tain sat down.
“Because of this?” Tain held out the slip of paper. Steve took it and skimmed it before he passed it back, walked around his desk and sat down.
“I can talk to her.”
“Too formal.”
“I mentored her, Tain.”
“And now you’re her commanding officer and the father of her ex-boyfriend. I think it should be me.”
Steve leaned back, scratched his head, then nodded. “Fine. Just let me know if you change your mind.” He looked at the piles of paperwork on his desk as the ticktick of the clock marked off the seconds. “How’s the case going?”
“We haven’t made much progress.”
Steve nodded again, but it was automatic, coupled with a vacuous gaze that suggested he’d expected that answer. Then he looked up at Tain and stared him straight in the eye. “You know there are some obvious avenues of investigation you might have to go down.”
“I know.”
“You’re ready for that?”
“We have to go to the Interior.”
Steve didn’t blink. “You found a connection?”
“No. Nine weeks ago Millie was admitted to the hospital in Kelowna, but she was receiving government benefit checks at a post office in Nighthawk Crossing.”
Steve was silent for a moment before asking, “How’s Ashlyn taking it?”
Tain shook his head as he stood and put the slip of paper in his pocket. “She doesn’t know yet.”
For a moment there was no sound other than the constant ticktick of the clock. Tain had found it annoying at first, but it didn’t seem to bother him as much now.
“It’s a reminder, you know. No second is faster or slower than any other. I was reading about how we make arbitrary conclusions about time, about how it’s been spent, about how it’s treated us and how we’ve used it, but it’s a constant.”
“It’s also a judge.”
A shadow settled over Steve’s face. “I made my mistakes, Tain, but I own them. You can blame me for not being here for Craig after what happened—”
Tain held up his hands, then turned and opened the door. “Whatever’s going on with you and him is your problem. Just don’t take it out on Ash.”
“I’ve known Ashlyn longer than Craig has, longer than you. You think I’d take sides?”
The wood of the frame was smooth, and Tain gripped it for a moment instead of walking through the open doorway. So much that wouldn’t have happened if Steve had been there…
No. That wasn’t fair. There was no way to know how things would have unfolded if Steve had stood his ground and not taken temporary reassignment.
Steve’s way of owning one of his mistakes. No wonder Craig had left. Apples and trees.
He wasn’t much better himself. Staying in the TriCities and partnering with Ashlyn was as much consistency as he’d had in his life since he’d lost Noelle, and he could feel it now, the itch, the part of him that feared his past catching up with his present and forcing him to confront his pain and process it. The Reimer case had brought it all back, and he’d tried hard in its wake to push it away but couldn’t. His worry about his partner was his necessary distraction, the thing he could focus on outside himself to ease the hurt he carried, but it wasn’t enough anymore.
Tain shook his head. “No. But we’ve got to trust she’s strong enough to face this and get through it.” He thought about the note, the one he’d shown Steve when he arrived at his office. “We can’t protect her forever, and we shouldn’t. If what happened to Lori taught me anything, it’s that.”
He let go of the doorframe and turned to look over his shoulder. All the color had drained from Steve’s face, and the lines around his eyes made him look as though he’d aged ten years in the past ten seconds.
Steve closed his eyes for a second and let out a breath. “Sh-she’s like family. No matter what.” He looked at Tain. “With your kids you’d do anything to take their pain away. You’d carry it for them if you could,” Steve said as he leaned back in his chair, his hands covering his face.
“You think I don’t know that? This is…There is…I’ve carried this for years.” Tain shook his head. “She isn’t struggling with her past; she’s mourning the loss of the future she won’t have. Not just Craig but the baby.”
“What are you talking about?”
Tain turned. “You didn’t know?”
“Know what? What aren’t you telling me?”
“I—” Tain held up his hand. “It’s not my place to say.” He turned and walked away. Time was compounding Steve’s guilt, every tick of the clock one more second of alienation from his son, making it harder to bridge the gulf between them. He knew the guilt could eat Steve alive from the inside and that what he’d just let slip could serve as fuel to the fire, hastening an inevitable confrontation with the pain Ashlyn carried, but Steve could still find a way to mend fences with Craig if he could swallow his pride. Steve and Craig had time to make things right.
Tain thought of Noelle. He’d give anything to have that second chance.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
When Craig was called to come back to the coroner’s office, he’d hoped for more concrete evidence. Instead, Dr. Winters greeted him with a question.
“We never located dental records for Kacey Young?”
“No. There’d been water damage. The most recent records had been destroyed.”
Dr. Winters arched an eyebrow.
“Something about the heat being out, causing the pipes to burst overnight. By the time they found the mess the next morning, a number of files being stored in the basement during renovations to part of the building were destroyed.”
“Impressive memory.”
“I reviewed my notes,” Craig said as he consciously avoided taking another look at the image he was holding. “Just in case.”
Dr. Winters nodded. “Well, as you can see, she’d started to decompose. The deterioration was compounded by freezer burn. I’m willing to say that this was an aboriginal female. Teenager. Based on the wear and tear of the joints, I’d guess early teens, maybe fourteen or fifteen. Five feet, eight inches.”
“That helps. What else can you tell me?”
Dr. Winters hesitated. “I wish I had more concrete evidence.”
“What about the wrappings?”
“They were misleading.”
“How so?”
“The date? It was partially concealed. All I could see was the end. Turns out it was a tagline for the business, which had been founded in 1992. What it actually says is, ‘1992-2007: Celebrating fifteen years of serving our community.’ The strips had been cut apart, stitched together in a different order. I’m still trying to piece them all together. We’ll need more time to analyze dyes and the fabric to try to narrow down when the canvas was produced, but—”
“But it doesn’t make sense that they’d produce the bags a year or more before their business anniversary.” Maybe the body wasn’t connected. “What about a company name?”
“Blind Creek Shipping Co. Based in—”
Craig fought the urge to close his eyes. “Nighthawk Crossing.”
Dr. Winters was silent as she stared at him, her dark eyes filled with a sympathy that suggested she understood the significance of this fact, that she could know the questions he was wrestling with and the conclusions he had to fight to keep his mind from jumping to.
“You weren’t surprised,” he said slowly, “when I said I’d reviewed my notes.”
“And you haven’t exactly been straight with me.” She looked
away. “I was pursuing a career in medicine when my father was injured on the job. I came back to look after him, eventually started doing this.” Dr. Winters turned to face him. “I believe you know what happened to my dad.”
“I…” All the tired expressions, the common apologies and standard sentiments went through his mind. None seemed appropriate. He shook his head. “I didn’t know Tim was your dad.”
“No reason you would.”
For a moment he stared at her. It seemed too trite, too conventional, to say he was sorry, but what else could he say?
She didn’t look away. “I don’t blame you,” she said.
The feeling wasn’t mutual.
“Sometimes,” she said softly, “a bag is just a bag. And sometimes a knife is just a knife. If I looked at this body and just tried to find all the things that were similar, I’d miss the other things that might be just as important.”
“Such as?”
“Newspaper clippings in the layers of bags she’d been wrapped in.”
“What kind of clippings?”
Dr. Winters reached for a folder on the counter behind her but didn’t pass it to him right away. The lines on her face and dark smudges beneath her eyes betrayed how tired she was, but the way her brow wrinkled emphasized her concern. “These are copies you can take with you.” She handed him the folder.
He took it, but didn’t open it. Whatever was inside, it was personal, and Dr. Winters had offered him copies prior to making her report available so that he could digest the contents alone.
Craig looked at the body. She’d been wearing an old-fashioned white nightgown. Cause of death appeared to be blood loss from a wound in her chest, caused by the knife they’d removed.
And the similarities didn’t end there.
“We, uh…” He cleared his throat. “We still need an approximate time of death,” he said.
“I’ll keep working on it. Whoever did this had no idea what they were doing, and there’s been extensive cellular damage.”
“I don’t think they were concerned about preserving her appearance.”
“Probably not. She was stored until she could be disposed of.”
Craig paused. He thought back over what Dr. Winters had told him. “You said you wished you had more concrete evidence to give me. What about circumstantial evidence? A hunch? Is it just what’s in here?” He held up the unopened folder. “Or is there something else you aren’t telling me?”
She sighed and closed her eyes as she rubbed her forehead, the corners of her mouth weighed down as though he’d just dropped a heavy burden on her. “I was hoping you wouldn’t ask.”
“Damn it, Nolan, I thought I told you to keep this quiet.” Sergeant Yeager slammed the door to her office and spun around. “Did I not make it crystal clear? Two days ago when you were in this office didn’t I tell you that you were to keep the fact that only you and your partner were working the body in the woods under wraps?”
“Yes…Sergeant.”
Her nostrils flared, and then she let out a breath. “Where the hell is your partner?”
A good question, and he could guess the answer, but he doubted that was what Yeager wanted to hear.
“Nolan, I asked you a question.”
“I…I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
She straightened up and folded her arms across her chest. “You’ve had a bit of trouble with partners, Nolan. Not much of a team player.”
As he thought back over the past year of his career, he realized he couldn’t argue. “I haven’t spoken to Mac since you reassigned us to this case. He wasn’t here when I came in yesterday morning. I asked around. Nobody had seen him.”
“You mean to tell me that your partner was MIA for a whole day and you didn’t report him?” Yeager’s nostrils flared. “Have you tried calling him?”
Nolan felt the heat spreading up his neck and into his face. “Yes. Once. I got called to the coroner’s office—”
Yeager stomped around to her side of the desk, busying herself with the task of looking through notes and riffling folders before she gave up and put her hands on the work space. For a moment she stood still, resting her weight against her arms, before she looked up at him. “I would expect you, of all people, to understand how important it is that we don’t screw this up.”
He did. All too well.
“So help me, Nolan, if I find out it was you who went to that damn reporter…”
Yeager didn’t need to finish the statement, and she knew it.
“The coroner hasn’t finished with the body,” he said. “We don’t have much to work with. More men won’t make much difference without an estimated time of death.”
“She hasn’t got anything for you to go on?”
Craig paused. “The victim was wrapped in strips cut from bags that have a date on them from 2007.”
Yeager’s eyes widened. “I’ve only had time to go over some of the newspaper reports, but from what I’ve read, there seem to be a few other differences from the Missing Killer’s signature. I was thinking about putting in a request to pull the other officers who worked that case, make sure we did a thorough review, but maybe that would be premature.”
Craig remained silent. Considering what had happened during the original investigation, he couldn’t imagine that any member of the team who was still alive would want to deal with revisiting the Missing Killer case.
There were some members of the team who wouldn’t be happy to hear from him either. And there were other members of the team he wasn’t ready to see.
People who’d know the one truth that had haunted him when he’d been reassigned to this manhunt. A truth he’d assumed had led to his transfer. It wasn’t until they’d found the body that he realized the one obvious connection nobody was mentioning, which meant they hadn’t connected the dots.
And he hadn’t drawn those lines for them either. A truth he was unable to share.
“Do you agree, Nolan? Is there enough to suggest there isn’t a connection?”
“I—” He paused. Craig didn’t want the case linked prematurely, but Yeager would learn the facts soon enough, and if she found out he’d held back, there’d be hell to pay. “There’s something protruding from the back of the victim.”
He watched the truth hit home as Yeager’s eyes sagged and her mouth curled into a frown. Yeager nodded, and Craig left the office before she could say another word.
As he marched down the hall, his hands balled into fists. Just outside the side door, in the parking lot, was his partner, laughing as he smacked another officer on the shoulder.
Craig barreled his way through the door.
“Nolan! Where ya been? Bill here’s got a hell of a story to—”
“You sonofabitch.” Craig grabbed him by the collar and pushed him back against the squad car. “Out here with your shit-eating grin while Yeager reads me the riot act.”
The smile was gone from Mac’s face in a heartbeat. “I did the best thing for you.”
“Bullshit. Yeager gave you an order.”
Mac pulled his arms up under Craig’s and shoved him hard. Craig loosened his grip as he stepped back.
His partner was off the car and bearing down on him. “I did you a favor.”
“Yeah? By showing up to work this case this morning, or by shooting off your mouth to the press?”
“Me?” Mac laughed, breath heavy with the smell of beer. “Who’s gonna believe that when the reporter’s a woman you’re known to be tight with, Nolan? Feisty little thing too.” The shit-eating grin was back. “I mean, from what I hear.”
Craig was aware of someone grabbing him from behind and pulling him back almost before he realized he’d raised his arm to take a swing at Mac.
His partner was staring at him, eyes smoldering, betraying the rage that had been building inside him. Mac took a step forward as Craig pulled against the arms that held him from behind.
H
e couldn’t loosen their hold.
“Just remember, Nolan, I’ve got friends here.” Mac looked past Craig and nodded. Whoever had grabbed Craig let him go. “We’ve all heard about you. It’s one thing to be at odds with assholes, but to go after your old man? You’re on your own.”
Mac walked around him and as he tried to catch his breath, Craig was aware of footsteps, a voice saying, “Later,” car doors slamming, the hum of the engine and sound of vehicles moving away and the door behind him opening and closing.
He squeezed his eyes shut, ran a hand across his face.
The door behind him creaked open again but didn’t close.
“Constable Nolan?”
Craig dropped his hand from his face and nodded.
“There’s someone here looking for you.”
He still didn’t turn around. “Okay.” No response or retreat from the voice behind him. “I’ll be right there.”
“She’s in the lobby.” The door fell shut as Craig counted to ten in his head. He turned and walked to the door, right hand shaking as he reached for the handle.
He’d been so focused on clearing his head he’d reached the lobby before he wondered who was looking for him. A quick scan of the area didn’t produce anyone who stood out or seemed to be interested in his arrival.
Craig glanced outside and saw the dark hair blowing in the soft breeze, the slim body wrapped in a long coat. Even with her back turned and with all the months that had passed, his breath caught in his throat.
He walked outside and took a few steps toward her, then stopped. What had happened during the Missing Killer investigation was buried so deep he hadn’t thought about all the people who’d be affected if the body in the woods did connect to that old case. Until Yeager had raised the possibility of assembling the remnants of the original team, he’d even been able to push Ash, Tain, Sullivan…He’d pushed everyone from his thoughts, to prevent his mind from posing questions he didn’t want to consider the answers to.
He realized now he hadn’t been able to let himself think about that because he hadn’t been able to face the possibility of this.
Lullaby for the Nameless (Nolan, Hart & Tain Thrillers) Page 17
