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

by Ruttan, Sandra

  “Someone burned down Blind Creek Inn.”

  Kurdy Jeffers’s jaw dropped, but his eyes betrayed the shock as false. “You don’t say. Guess that means I won’t be workin’ tonight.”

  He hadn’t eased up on the sarcasm. Kurdy worked odd jobs at the hotel. In a town like Nighthawk Crossing, it was a safe bet everyone but the recluses who lived on the outskirts and only ventured into town once a month had already heard about the fire, but the attitude still pissed Tain off.

  Kurdy lifted the shot glass to his lips, but Tain knocked it from his hand just as his mouth opened. Alcohol spilled onto his skin and the table as the glass crashed against the floor.

  There was a split-second lull in the hum around what locals considered a town bar. It was the kind of place that served what was supposed to pass for food, but the cook spent more time smoking on the back step than burning anything on the grill. This place paid rent selling booze, with no rule you had to eat to take a table. Tain glared at a couple of the closest patrons, big guys he knew were most likely to cause trouble just for the hell of it. He guessed they figured he was in no mood to screw around with. They turned back to their drinks, and he fixed his gaze on the man still seated in front of him.

  Kurdy’s brow was creased, his top lip curled up into a snarl as he wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

  “Places you work at have a bad habit of burning down.”

  The man, whom Tain thought of as half weasel, half slimeball, showed off his freshly cracked tooth again as he lifted a hand in a half shrug and then set it back on the table. “Wish I had dem odds playin’ 649.”

  “You don’t strike me as the type to buy lottery tickets, Kurdy.”

  “Man’s gotta have his dreams.”

  Tain leaned down closer. “Yeah? What’s yours? A big boat? Cottage on the coast, someplace without long winters and months of snow? No, wait. You used to be a bit of a hunter, a good tracker, from what I heard. You’d like a cabin in the woods with a fair bit of land? Or are your tastes a bit simpler? Say, some high-priced stimulation? Oh, no, wait. I remember now. You like something younger. Maybe with no price tag at all.”

  Kurdy jumped to his feet. “You get the hell outta my face.”

  “Strike a nerve, Kurdy?”

  The man shoved Tain hard. If it wasn’t for the fact that he was of a slim build, no more than five-seven with pencil-thin arms, Tain might have had to step back to regain his balance.

  As it was, he didn’t even flinch.

  He grabbed Kurdy by the shirt and pinned him against the wall, the bar again going quiet. Kurdy looked over Tain’s shoulder, then pressed back against the wall. “You got no fuckin’ right.”

  “You seem awfully nervous for someone who’s innocent.”

  “Maybe ’cos you got me backed in a corner an’ shoved up against a wall.”

  Skittish eyes darted to and fro as though he was hoping someone would morph out of the floorboards and come to his rescue.

  He tightened his hold and pushed Kurdy harder. “You better watch yourself, ’cos I’m keeping an eye on you. Next girl that goes missing…”

  “What? You gonna drag me out back and scalp me, Red?”

  Tain pushed Kurdy up until he felt the full weight of him lifted in the air. “I find out you’ve been up to your old tricks, I’ll see to it your cell mate’ll do things to you that’ll make you cry for your mommy.”

  “Guess they haff ta pull in losers like you on somethin’ like this. Nobody else gives two shits about your kind.”

  “Is that what you count on, Kurdy? Think nobody’ll mind if you snatch a couple Native girls off the streets?”

  Kurdy snorted. “Yer only pissed ’cos it’s a coupl’a red niggers. You’d never get this worked up ’bout a white girl.” A sly smile spread across his face. “But den agin, I heard somethin’ about you. Maybe you would.”

  “Maybe I should ask your wife about your hobbies.”

  The man in his grasp tried to swing with both arms, and Tain struggled to keep his hold.

  “You stay the hell away from her,” Kurdy hissed, eyes wide.

  “Tain.” The voice came from beside him, not the man pinned against the wall in front of him. “Let him go.”

  Slip his hand to the left and he could wrap it around Kurdy’s throat.

  “I said let him go!” He knew that voice.

  Kurdy’s gaze flickered from Tain’s face to the person to Tain’s right, and he showed off his broken tooth again.

  The drop against the floor wasn’t enough to hurt him, but it shook the smirk off his face for a second. Tain stepped back.

  Kurdy lifted his hand and looked like he might shake a fist, then pointed at the person beside Tain. “You keep him the hell away from me or I’ll make a complaint.”

  Nolan stepped forward and grabbed Kurdy by the shirt. “You want to go running to our boss, say you don’t like the way you’ve been treated? That you think we should be nicer to guys who rape kids?”

  Kurdy swallowed. “I didn’t know she was fourteen.”

  “So you say.” Nolan let go of the shirt as he gave him a small shove. “Thing is, I don’t believe you, and I don’t think your wife will either.”

  Kurdy seemed to have decided arguing was pointless. He marched toward the door, stopping only when the bartender got in his way and demanded he pay his tab.

  “So help me, Tain, next time he threatens to make a complaint about you, I should offer to drive him to the station myself.”

  “Save it. You chase your leads, and I’ll chase mine.” Tain started to walk away, but Nolan stepped in front of him.

  “I’m warning you, Tain, the sergeant will only put up with so much of this.”

  “Go run and tell on me if you need to, Nolan. Just get out of my way.”

  Tain brushed past him, but Nolan wasn’t about to be left behind. When they’d exited the bar, Nolan continued, “Don’t think the color of your skin and local politics are going to save your ass if you’re harassing people. I’ll go to Sullivan myself if I have to.”

  “I expect as much from a sorry excuse of an officer like you,” Tain said as he spun around. “You stay the hell away from me.”

  “Don’t you even care about those missing girls?”

  “More than you do.”

  “Yeah? Prove it! Stop jeopardizing this investigation. You keep running off, doing your own thing, not checking in with anyone, threatening people for no reason.”

  “I have my reasons.”

  “Yeah? How about filling the rest of us in? Sharing your alleged leads? If you’ve got something on Kurdy, put it on the table so we can get surveillance, bring him in for questioning. You running off trying to save the day on your own is holding us back.”

  “Yeah?” Tain shifted his gaze deliberately to Craig Nolan’s left, then right. “And where’s the little chick the sergeant told you to partner with?” He looked Nolan in the eye. “Waiting in the car? Or did you ditch her at the office first chance you got? Don’t you lecture me about playin’ it solo. Not after what happened to Winters. I’m under no delusions about who isn’t watching my back, Nolan. Not unless you think you can put a knife in it, that is.”

  He spun on his heel and walked away. Somehow, Nolan had known where he was going, what he was doing. Tain knew Nolan had been keeping an eye on him, but he also knew he’d left the station well ahead of the ambitious officer. There was no way Nolan could have followed him.

  And that left a few possibilities. Nolan’s instincts could have been better than Tain wanted to give him credit for, or he might have gotten lucky.

  Or he had a source.

  Tain yanked the car door open and slammed the key into the ignition as he formed a mental list of everyone he’d seen in the bar, anyone who’d noticed him when he went in. It had been the usual crowd of underemployed or hired by the job, off-the-books types who practically lined up outside waiting for the doors to open.

  Luck wasn’t something he believed in, but th
e idea that Nolan could read him or had someone tipping him off made his gut twist.

  He was going to have to watch his back, more than he already was.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Eighteen months ago

  It was 2:45 p.m. when Ashlyn pushed what was left of her sandwich aside and tossed the latest message on Craig’s desk.

  Complete with follow-up details attached. She’d done the legwork on every call that had come in since her partner had left, as well as the messages he’d tossed in front of her. Some of the callers had been identified as cranks, people who tried to be helpful by calling the police with what turned out to be useless information. Sue Sanders claimed she’d seen Mary Donard at the local diner when she was on her way to a ten a.m. appointment with Dr. Daniels on the fifteenth. Sue couldn’t remember which month, but she knew for a fact that it was the fifteenth, and if Ashlyn would stop being so lazy and call the doctor’s office, they’d tell her themselves.

  It turned out the only appointment she’d had with the doctor in recent years was on the seventeenth of December 2002, but between Ashlyn and the receptionist, Sue Sanders wasn’t playing with a full deck.

  Ashlyn didn’t call Mrs. Sanders back to let her know what conclusion she’d reached about her tip.

  Doubt was cast on another potential lead when she’d called the helpful citizen, only to discover he had no memory of calling the police at all. A third had called from a long-term nursing facility. Staff confirmed the patient in question had been a resident for two years and hadn’t been off the property in more than four months and therefore couldn’t possibly have seen a missing girl at a church dance two weeks ago.

  For the very few she couldn’t refute or substantiate, Ashlyn had outlined a course of action for further investigation. In most cases it involved reassigning personnel to conduct interviews.

  Part of her was tempted to reassign herself and get out of the building. The lack of windows in the room where the desks were located was starting to bother her. As important as chasing leads was, she wanted to see the town and get a sense of the local area. The one night she’d spent in a motel on the outskirts of Nighthawk Crossing hadn’t offered her much of an introduction; after all the miles she’d driven, she’d been too tired to do more than order room service and fall asleep early.

  Instead, Ashlyn got up and stretched toward the ceiling, then braced her hands on the edge of the desk and extended her right leg, then left. When she straightened up again, she reached up from the side, first from one side, then the other. Her attempt to loosen the kink that had developed in her back during the long drive failed, but it still felt good to stand.

  As she glanced at Tain’s desk, she thought back to the files she’d been reading that morning. That was the meat of the investigation. Although she hadn’t read it all, she’d skimmed through enough to know that the files on each of the missing girls whose disappearances were believed to be connected had been included, as well as all the leads that they’d followed up on, tips that had been eliminated, avenues of investigation that had been exhausted.

  She wanted to see those files again.

  Ashlyn replayed the scene from the morning and was fairly certain Tain had taken the key with him. Short of picking the lock, there was no way she was going to get a chance to see the copied documents.

  The palm of her hand smacked against her forehead. Of course. They were copies. The originals had to be around somewhere, and as a member of the team, she had access. She didn’t need someone’s permission to review information pertinent to the case she’d been assigned.

  When she’d looked around the desks earlier, she’d limited her survey to things clearly out in plain sight.

  She’d almost forgotten the filing cabinets in the corner.

  No matter how hard she’d tried to prepare herself for this transfer, Ashlyn realized she’d expected it to be different. In the past, a colleague had always shown her around, at least pointed out where things were kept. Other than the one prolonged assignment in plainclothes—a technicality, really, an exception made to help the locals feel more at ease with the police because of a history of problems in an area primarily populated by Aboriginals—she’d spent most of her time in smaller communities, where she’d worn a uniform and driven a patrol car.

  The job had required her to get out and make contact with people.

  This assignment was different. A long-term investigation that involved different tactics than the ones community policing emphasized. When she’d been reassigned, she’d been told she’d be working plainclothes for this assignment and that part of the reason they were sending in outsiders was to get a fresh perspective, as well as to show the community how seriously they were taking the investigation.

  It was hard to know what to think about the team and what they were dealing with. So far, they had eleven cases that seemed to be connected, and the trail was already cold. They didn’t know if this was a murder investigation or if the girls had been lured into prostitution and were living on the streets in Vancouver, a fact that compounded their problems. Every possible sighting from Victoria to Halifax, from Edmonton to Vegas had to be considered.

  This wasn’t meant to be a short-term investigation, where they got in and got out fast. Despite that, she’d been told this was a temporary transfer.

  It didn’t make sense.

  She thought about her fleeting introductions to the other half of the team. Two of the men were at least ten to fifteen years older than she was, with more experience, but she’d read about those members of the team from old newspaper articles before she’d packed her bags. There hadn’t been any photographs, but the article had mentioned the three officers and Winters, who had been the oldest member listed, in his midforties. She hadn’t met him yet. She looked at the nameplate on the desk that was now hers and realized she didn’t even know if he was still working the case, but the fact that she’d been given his desk made that doubtful.

  What she remembered from the articles was that all had worked in the Interior of the province or in the north, for the bulk of their careers. They’d all worked for local detachments for several months prior to being reassigned officially. Only Winters had worked in larger urban areas, including Vancouver.

  The youngest of the three older officers—Ashlyn guessed Campbell had at least half a dozen years on her, although his age hadn’t been stated—was a hometown boy, who’d grown up in Nighthawk Crossing and spent his entire career in the Similkameen Valley, and if what he’d said that morning was any indication, he didn’t like outsiders meddling in local affairs. He’d been defensive and hostile, and she never had gotten an answer to her question.

  There was no indication any had worked in a city that had a population of 100,000. That fact alone didn’t mean that they were unskilled or incapable of being effective on this task force, but she thought back to her own training, to the common philosophies about the differences between small-town policing and city casework.

  The differences between community men and career men. Not that officers who focused on community policing didn’t have careers, but major advancement often came through high-profile cases, and that meant working in urban areas where the job was divided by the nature of the crimes instead of the town boundary lines.

  Nolan and Tain hadn’t been mentioned, although the article had concluded with the fact that other officers were being reassigned. Ashlyn wondered about the date and whether their transfers had been withheld from the article or really happened after.

  Considering the pressure the RCMP had been under to demonstrate they took the investigations seriously, wouldn’t they want to emphasize the number of officers assigned? She hadn’t found any articles about additional staff once they’d been named.

  She thought about Campbell’s attitude that morning. Perhaps the truth was in the extreme reaction, that there was concern about how the local people would feel if the investigation was being run by outsiders.

  Did that somehow sugg
est the local officers weren’t capable of serving their communities? Was that why they’d picked a rookie, along with a handful of officers who’d focused on community policing?

  She had expected to work with the tribal police, especially considering the number of missing Aboriginal girls and the high number of Native Peoples residing in the area.

  Now that she considered the situation, she realized she’d expected more Native officers to be assigned.

  One other thing she hadn’t expected: to be the only woman.

  Three officers who’d built careers on community policing shared one shift, and they were the three who had the most experience. By comparison, the combination of herself, Tain and Nolan on one shift was even more baffling. There was no doubt she was the youngest of the three, but not by much, and she’d pursued her career in law enforcement as soon as she’d completed her degree. Tain and Nolan had both only been with the RCMP for a few years, and there was nothing in the newspaper reports that indicated experience with a case like this one because they hadn’t even been mentioned.

  For a moment, she wondered if she would ever get a chance to sneak a look at their personnel files, then dismissed that thought with a mental note to do a little digging on Nolan and Tain later. Her job was to focus on the investigation, and everything she was looking for was in the filing cabinets. She started to pull out the details of the casework to date, but changed her mind and took out the information that had been collected on each of the missing girls instead.

  The files contained the usual information: last known address, next of kin, age, height, eye color. Each had a photo attached to the upper left corner of the folder and a report of the girl’s disappearance.

  From there, the files varied dramatically.

  Some reports had been filed by mothers. In one case, a sibling had called the police, and another girl’s absence had been noted by her aunt.

  Another investigation had been initiated by a statement from a volunteer in a soup kitchen who’d eventually wondered what had happened to one of the regulars.