What Burns Within

by Sandra Ruttan

  Even when she doubted herself.

  She’d walked away counting the chance to work with Tain as one of the good things about that case. There had been other good things too.

  Something she’d thought about the other day, when she’d seen the card in Carl Parks’s house, feeling like her heart had just bounced up to the top of her throat. A lot of memories had come flooding back in that moment. Possibilities that had never been explored. But she’d bottled it up and refused to stagger under the force of the recall.

  “Are you going to get that?” Tain’s voice cut through her thoughts.

  “What?”

  “Your cell phone. Are you going to answer it?”

  Ashlyn blinked, then grabbed her phone, not taking time to look at the caller ID.

  “Constable Hart.”

  “Ashlyn, this is Alison. Alison Daly.”

  Ashlyn’s brow had barely begun to wrinkle when she recognized the caller. Even the split-second hesitation didn’t go unnoticed.

  “Did I call at a bad time?”

  “No, no. I was just…I just wasn’t expecting it to be you. What can I do for you?”

  “I was wondering if you might be free tomorrow night.”

  “Um,” Ashlyn tried to scan her memory for reminders of any pressing engagements and glanced at Tain, who gave her a quizzical glance. “I think I’m free. Providing something doesn’t come up at work. I’m working on this case right now….”

  The laugh from the other end of the line interrupted her explanation. “Ashlyn, after all these years, you think I don’t know a cop’s life is never really their own?”

  Ashlyn’s cheeks burned, despite the fact that Alison couldn’t see her. “Sorry. I guess I’m just used to explaining myself.”

  “That’s okay. I understand. I’m planning a little dinner, nothing fancy, for six thirty. Do you have a pen and paper handy? I’ll give you the address.”

  “Is this at a restaurant?” Ashlyn asked, retrieving her notebook as she balanced the phone between her cheek and her shoulder.

  The cell cut out, and when the line cleared Ashlyn repeated her question.

  “No.”

  “Oh.” Ashlyn swallowed. She hoped this wasn’t a setup.

  “It’s nothing formal. We’re having a little house-warming party for…”

  Ashlyn frowned as the phone crackled in her ear. “Alison?” she asked into the static. Damn pockets. She’d had enough of dead zones when she lived in the mountains.

  That thought brought back memories too, but she didn’t have time to indulge. The phone cleared, and Alison’s voice came back through.

  Ashlyn confirmed the address and cut the call.

  “Dinner plans, huh?”

  “Shit. The cell cut out right when she was telling me who this little get-together’s for.”

  “Does it matter?”

  Ashlyn glared at him. “What would you think if you were the single person invited by a married friend to some stranger’s house for a dinner party?”

  “That I don’t have to cook.”

  She wrinkled her nose at him. “Very funny.”

  “Why do women obsess about stuff like that? So you got invited to dinner. So some single guy is probably going to be following you around panting all night. It’s not like you said you’d marry him.”

  “Following me around panting?”

  “Oh, you know how it is. Single guy meets a cute girl and mutual friends have thrust them together…” Tain shrugged.

  “Cute?”

  He glanced at her. “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Beautiful, stunning, vivacious, pretty. All the words in the dictionary and you come out with cute.” She shook her head as she looked out the window. “Makes me feel like I’m twelve.”

  “Hey, it could have been worse. These days, you have to be careful what you say to anyone if you’re a single man. Heck, forget single. Guys are better off keeping their mouths shut, their eyes averted and not even referring to women cops as, well, women.”

  She groaned. “You know I’m not going to get bent out of shape over being called—”

  “Cute?”

  Ashlyn smiled and shrugged. “Yeah, not even that will get you into any real trouble.”

  “At least, not a formal complaint that will go in my file.”

  “I won’t hold it against you.”

  Tain’s face sobered. “So what’s next?”

  “I’d like to talk to FIS and to Daly.”

  “Any thoughts you’d like to share?”

  “Well, I want to know if we got any prints from the recreation center. After all, that could be a big lead if we get a hit.”

  “You think that’s likely?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, I think this guy had planned this. He was organized. He came prepared.”

  “You think he wore gloves.”

  Ashlyn nodded. “Likely. But if he didn’t, then I bet money he’s in the system somewhere, or should be.”

  “That’s something that’s been bothering me. He’s so efficient. No evidence trail, no tip-offs to the media to taunt us in our investigation, no witnesses.”

  “It makes me think we should be looking at every open child abduction, see if there is anything that might connect to this case and give us a clue.”

  Tain shook his head. “God, you know what happens when you start looking at past cases.”

  The face of Michael Dunahee plastered on bulletin boards and milk cartons from one coast of Canada to the other flashed across her mind. The image struck her as being a close likeness to a much younger Craig.

  She’d always wondered why Craig didn’t change his name.

  “Imagine all those years, never knowing,” Ashlyn murmured.

  “Sometimes I wonder if the parents, the ones we dealt with last year, would have preferred to not know the truth.”

  A sea of faces flashed through Ashlyn’s mind, mothers crying, their husbands’ reactions ranging from anguish to rage. “They might say that now, but until they knew, they wanted answers.”

  “Then they still had hope.”

  Ashlyn swallowed. It always got to her when Tain spoke softly. She was used to an assertive tough-guy front, the hard-ass reputation he’d earned for himself. Although he was far more relaxed and open with her than anyone else when he showed weakness, it cut deep. “There’s still hope for Taylor Brennen and Lindsay Eckert. The one thing we know is that he doesn’t kill them right away. But this guy, he’s either really good or really lucky.”

  “And you’re betting on good.” Tain parked the car and switched off the ignition. “Me too. I wish we could find some way to tie these girls together so we could figure out his pattern.”

  “Burnaby’s looking into that, right? For now, we can follow up with FIS.”

  “What does that have to do with Daly?”

  “Maybe nothing,” Ashlyn said evasively. “Let’s see what FIS says first.”

  It was a scene that had become familiar to Craig in the past few months. Too familiar. A grief-stricken couple, the woman huddled on the couch, usually, like she was trying to keep people at a distance, like she had some kind of flu virus that a warm blanket, a cup of hot tea, a bit of time and lethargy could mend.

  He just wasn’t used to knowing the person masking the pain. Craig swallowed, thinking for a moment about Ashlyn, how she’d seemed to know exactly how he felt when they worked together, how everything in him had screamed to run away from that understanding, that feeling of having your soul ripped open and exposed. Every time he’d wanted to reach out to her he’d been held back by the realization that she could see into him, the feeling that there was nowhere inside himself that he could hide, and that honesty and openness had scared him. At times he’d felt as though his chest was constricting with such force that he couldn’t breathe.

  He glanced at Lori’s wooden form on the couch, her eyes vacuously aimed at some arbitrary point on the wall, not meeting the gaze of
anyone who’d walked into the room.

  Vishal Dhaval was a different story altogether. He’d jumped to his feet, his body bristling with energy, and then stopped cold as he set eyes on Inspector Hawkins. Hawkins stared back at him, and for a moment the whole room seemed to be holding its breath. Then Hawkins moved to the far wall, and Craig stepped into the center of the room, Daly beside him.

  “Craig Nolan,” he said.

  Vishal blinked at him for a second and then shook his hand, muttering a quick introduction. “Call me Vish.”

  “And this is Sergeant Steve Daly.” Craig paused as they nodded at each other. “Every member of our evidence recovery team is outside your door, waiting for the word, and I will personally ensure that they don’t miss anything.”

  Craig crouched down, watching Lori as she stared just to the right of him, still not making eye contact, her head resting against her hand, her elbow on the arm of the couch, her whole body wrapped in a wool blanket with her long legs tucked underneath her.

  The mug of tea in her other hand apparently had been forgotten.

  The cup started to shake, and Craig reached out tentatively, gently taking the porcelain into his hands and steadying it. Her fingers slipped away.

  “We’re going to get him.”

  Lori turned to face Craig then, the despondent look giving way to a sullen stare. Her gaze jumped up to a spot behind Craig and slightly above him, and her eyes widened before she turned away.

  He stood and shifted his body at an angle as he reached to set the mug down on the small table beside the couch so he could see what Lori had looked at.

  Hawkins’s cheeks turned a shade darker, and he cleared his throat, looking down at his toes.

  Anyone who couldn’t handle this shouldn’t be in the house. They’d only make things worse. Craig wished he could say it, but Hawkins outranked everyone present.

  “Perhaps you could take Mr. Dhaval to another room and take his statement, and Inspector Hawkins can instruct the FIS people waiting outside,” Craig said to Daly.

  “I’ll take Lori’s statement,” Hawkins said.

  Craig felt his neck tense. “Respectfully, sir, I’ve taken all the statements on the previous cases, and I know what we’re looking for. Frankly, so does Lori. It would be best if we can go over this and keep this as uncomplicated as possible.”

  “Yes, I agree,” Vish said, gesturing for the other men to leave. Craig noticed Lori’s boyfriend’s face pinched when he looked at Hawkins, who paused for a second before complying.

  “He’s just being protective,” Lori muttered once the room was empty.

  “How long have you and Vish been together?” Craig asked as he pulled up a small chair, sitting across from her.

  “Oh, not Vish. I meant, you know.” She waved her hand. “Hawkins.”

  She was still staring off, at some spot on the floor now.

  “If something happened to me, Daly would be a mess,” he told her.

  Lori looked him straight in the eyes then. “You’re shit to work with as a partner, Craig. You’ve got Daly’s stamp of approval on everything, and you’re so fucking competent you make it hard for anyone else to look like they’re pulling their weight.”

  She leaned forward, still staring right at him. “But now, now that it’s me, you know…” She glanced away and blinked, lip quivering. She took a breath and looked him in the eyes again. “I’m glad you’re on this.”

  Craig wasn’t. He hoped the truth didn’t show on his face, though he felt pretty certain that Lori knew he couldn’t stand her. She leaned back against the couch and gave him a wry smile.

  “I guess I’m in charge of this interview, aren’t I?”

  The hand that had been supporting her head earlier rubbed her forehead. Craig first noticed the shaking of her shoulders, and then the hand fell down over her eyes, her other hand clamped across her mouth as she started to cry.

  When Tain and Ashlyn arrived at the lab, Greg Galloway was leaning back in his chair, stretching and making no attempt to stifle a yawn.

  “Between this case and the rape cases, you guys are seeing me into a new apartment,” Greg said. “The overtime has almost doubled my salary.”

  “Good to see someone’s happy about all the crime,” Tain muttered.

  “Doing your best to spread happiness across the earth, eh, Tain?”

  “I reserve one week of the year for promoting joy. December eighteenth to the twenty-fifth, annually.”

  Greg grinned. “I’m surprised you don’t have a standing rental for a Grinch costume. Don’t let his dour demeanor taint you, Ashlyn.” He winked at her.

  “He’s not that bad,” Ashlyn said, feeling her back straigh ten and her shoulders stiffen. “Where is everybody?”

  “Another rape case. Second one today.”

  “Jesus.” Ashlyn glanced at Tain, then Greg. “Any leads on that?”

  “If there aren’t, there’d better be soon. This rapist graduated to murder, and you know what that means.”

  “SSBB,” Tain said.

  “Big time.”

  Ashlyn’s brow wrinkled as she looked at Greg, who didn’t offer an explanation. She glared at Tain.

  “Shit storm beyond belief.” Tain turned to Greg. “What have you got from the recreation center?”

  Greg leaned forward so his chair was level and pulled out a file. “Prints galore. You’d think half the people in Coquitlam had cozied up to that pop machine at one time or another. I had the prints run, and you got no hits. Your guy could be there—” he shrugged—“or not.

  “We didn’t get any tire treads from the back parking lot. As you already know, there was no security footage back there. I know that Daly had the officers ask everyone detained in the recreation center, and nobody remembered seeing a vehicle parked around back either.

  “However, there are two red-light cameras within close proximity to the Southside Recreation and Fitness Center. I have already made a call and asked Traffic to pull all records of tickets within a two-hour time frame, an hour on each side of the abduction.”

  “Good thinking,” Tain said.

  “What about—”

  “Patience, Ashlyn, I’m getting there. We did recover prints from the fire door, inside and out. Fewer prints than we got off the pop machine, and we ran them against each other. There were four sets of prints that were on both the fire door and the pop machine, but—”

  “None of them are in the system. Still—” Ashlyn glanced at Tain—“it’s better than nothing.”

  “And that’s just about all I’ve got for you. We checked the floor thoroughly. There was no evidence of any kind of chemical or a substance that might have been used to incapacitate Lindsay, no blood to suggest she’d been injured…” He looked at them. “But then, you have a tape, right? I’m just boring you with the details.”

  “Still, this is more than we have for Taylor Brennen,” Tain said, turning to leave.

  Ashlyn put up her hand to stop him.

  From the corner of her eye Ashlyn could see Tain frown, but she ignored him. “Before we go, I have a question.”

  Craig wasn’t sure how much time had passed, exactly. When you’re waiting time always seems to drag. Eventually Lori’s shoulders stopped shaking. “Are you sure you’re up to this?”

  She took a deep breath and nodded. “It was just like all the…all the others.”

  “What did you do when you got home?”

  “I, uh, made a plate of food, poured some wine, ran a bath and grabbed a book from the bedroom.” She rubbed the side of her face absently. “Sailing…Vish wants to take a holiday…sailing. Uh, you know. Up the Inside Passage.”

  “Sounds nice.”

  “So, I had a bath.” She stared off for a moment, as though she’d forgotten what she was talking about. Then she snapped back. “Read. Ate.”

  “What did you do next?”

  There was a long silence, but no change of expression on her face. Just the vacant stare. This t
ime when she spoke the words came fluidly. “I went into the bedroom. I felt him before I saw him, you know? The room was dark, so it must have been around ten by then. I’d just tossed the towel on the floor when there was this movement….”