The Truth About Comfort Cove

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  The tunnel wasn’t a place for big-time dealers, clearly. But it was obviously a popular home for small-time users.

  He walked west two miles to the end of the tunnel and came up blank. The holding tank that the water emptied into was huge, with a metal grate between the tank itself and the tunnel. Ramsey yanked on the grate. It didn’t give, not even a little bit. The only way anyone would have been able to stash a body, of any size, in that tank would have been to cut through that grate. If it had been cut twenty-five years before, it had been repaired. There was no sign of repair, but he’d check back at the office to see if there’d ever been a repair logged. Or maybe the grate had been replaced altogether.

  And he wanted to know if the bottom of the tank was ever checked. If the water was tested. If there’d ever been reports of a bad smell in the area. A decomposing body, no matter how small, would emit a noticeable stench. Cataloging the questions in his mind, like a list he could visualize, Ramsey turned and made his way back to where he’d started.

  The eastern mile of the tunnel was curiously untouched by graffiti and drug paraphernalia. Instead, he found some toy army men and lawn debris. The end of the tunnel opened out to a little park area between two homes. A somewhat secluded park area.

  He might just have found out how someone got Claire Sanderson away from her home, out of the area, without being seen. Had anyone searched the neighborhoods, the areas, a mile from the little girl’s home that day? He hadn’t read anything about the area in particular. But he would.

  Hurrying back to his car, he was already thinking about the files he would start with, the records he would search, including the names of all of the homeowners in the new vicinity. He’d check those records against the city’s database of criminal offenders and then move on to the national database.

  He might have just found out how Jack Colton only lost four minutes when he took Claire from Frank around the corner from their street, or took her from Frank’s car while it was still parked in his driveway after the man had put Claire there and left the car purposely unlocked. There’d been someone else involved. Someone who took Claire from Jack—or Frank—and transported her through the tunnel into a park where he or she disappeared from view before anyone noticed anything amiss.

  But even if he’d found his answer, even if he was completely right, he still had no idea what had ultimately happened to Claire Sanderson. He still had no closure for her family.

  But if he could prove who took her, he’d be one step closer.

  A sixtyish woman was outside the Sanderson home, with paper spread on the driveway, spray painting something white.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  L ucy’s phone rang again, shortly after she’d hung up from Emma. She’d gotten out of her car and was sitting on a picnic table looking out at the river, reliving her past. The good times and the bad.

  She was trying to find herself. Her deep-down heart. The thing that she’d told Emma to listen to. And all she could seem to find was the constant awareness of Sandy. Everything came back to her mother.

  To the point that Lucy couldn’t seem to get a grasp on where she was. Not physically, but in every other way.

  In no mood to be good for anyone, she almost didn’t answer the phone. Out of habit she looked at the number on the screen, in case it was Marie.

  Ramsey.

  “Hello?”

  “I wanted to call earlier but hoped you’d be sleeping.”

  She smiled but didn’t feel much. “I did take a nap this morning.”

  “How are you?”

  “Fine. My chin feels like it’s got dried glue on it and my tongue’s still a bit swollen, but otherwise I’m good to go.”

  “How about your fingers?”

  “I’ve had blisters before.” She’d done yard work for a couple of summers until she was old enough to get a real job. Then she’d worked as a dishwasher for a while during high school. In her effort to get the work done as quickly and efficiently as possible, she’d used the hottest water she could stand and had grabbed knives from the bottom of the sink by the blade a time or two, as well.

  No one would have asked Lucy to be a hand model, even before her trek into craziness the night before.

  “Emma called,” she said before he could ask another question. She didn’t consider herself a good topic of conversation at the moment. She told him about Frank Whittier’s expected presence at the wedding they’d both be attending that next weekend.

  “A gift to us,” Ramsey said, echoing her first reaction to the news.

  “I just want to make sure that nothing mars Emma’s wedding day. If we hear anything or notice anything or even know anything, we don’t move until after Emma’s wedding and reception are complete.”

  Her adamancy sat kind of odd on her shoulders. She’d only ever protected the job, or Sandy, in such a way.

  She wasn’t herself.

  And she didn’t like that.

  “I completely agree,” Ramsey said easily. “Claire Sanderson has been gone for twenty-five years. Frank Whittier has been a suspect almost all of that time. There’s nothing that can’t wait another twelve hours to move on, no matter what it is. However, it does mean that I’m going to be working during the wedding and reception.”

  “Me, too. How could we not?”

  “Technically it’s not your case.”

  “I’m not being paid to solve it, that’s true. But then, neither are you. It just happens to be in your jurisdiction so you’re official.” She was half teasing. And completely serious, too. Finding Claire Sanderson was as important to her as it was to Ramsey.

  And having Frank Whittier in their immediate vicinity for several hours was a godsend. One that she couldn’t let pass if she wanted to.

  “I walked the storm sewer this afternoon,” Ramsey said, and a shard of fear went through her when she realized that she’d forgotten that he had a sewer to check out that day. One that could lead them to Claire.

  “And?”

  “I think I know how they might have gotten Claire out of the area.” He told her about the east end of the tunnel. About a park he’d discovered at the opening.

  “Do you know if the park was there twenty-five years ago?”

  “No, I don’t, but I suspect it was. The trees are mature. And the houses surrounding it look to be as old, or older, than the ones in Claire’s neighborhood. Just better kept. I’m going to check on the park as soon as I’m back at the office. I’m also planning to hire a forensic team, out of my own pocket if the department won’t spring for it, to go over that tunnel inch by inch.”

  A detective didn’t make enough money to spend his own funds on an investigation. She’d never heard of such a thing.

  “If you do have to pay for it, let me know and I’ll help fund the effort,” she said. She had savings. And no better way she wanted to spend it.

  “I’ll know tomorrow when I present my request to the captain.”

  “Tomorrow’s the day Wakerby meets with his lawyer, too.”

  Another barge inched slowly up the river. She wondered where it was going. Where it had come from. And if the man who was captain of the boat, out on the water on a Sunday afternoon, had family.

  “How are you doing with that?” Ramsey’s question was softly spoken. Personal.

  “Honestly, I’m not sure.”

  “Elaborate.”

  “I wish I could.” She didn’t want to speak—and knew she had to. Her behavior the night before had thrown her completely off-kilter. And if she talked to anyone local, she could end up with a problem she didn’t want to have.

  She could end up in counseling and off the detective squad.

  This wasn’t about her professional life.

  “Talk.” Ramsey’s one-word comments hit her where she could feel them. Or maybe it was the fact that he was in her thoughts constantly. And tangled in her emotions, too.

  “I can’t connect with me.” She sounded asinine. Like the drama queen she’d tr
usted she’d never be. “I don’t know who I am, Ramsey. I mean, I’m a cop. I want to be a cop. I’m a good cop. I know I can do my job.” She had to make all of that very clear. There were no doubts in her mind when it came to her job.

  And yet, last night, she’d done cop’s work without acting or feeling like a cop. Which made no sense.

  “And I’m Sandy’s daughter. I’ve got that one down. Completely. I don’t doubt my ability to be a good daughter to her, to know what has to be done and to do it, no matter what.”

  “Has anyone cast aspersions on your daughtering skills?”

  “No. It’s not that.” She shook her head. Which made her neck hurt. “I just… I’ve been sitting here thinking.” Lucy chuckled. “I know that’s bad… .” Because she hadn’t been thinking about a case. The given. The known.

  “Soul searching.”

  “Yeah. Lame, huh?”

  “No. Uncomfortable, to be sure. And maybe or maybe not productive, but not lame. You had a traumatic experience last night, Lucy. It’s human to question everything about it.”

  “Do I exist, Ramsey? As a person? Me? Lucy Hayes? Or have I become, or only ever been, Sandy’s daughter, and now Aurora’s cop? Where does the woman fit in?”

  “You know I can’t answer that for you. But what I can tell you is that your questions, the seeking that you’re doing, is perfectly normal. It happens to most of us during or immediately following trauma. It’s also exacerbated by medication. You aren’t yourself today so nothing feels normal. Give yourself a few days, a good night’s rest. Wait until you’re back at work and back into your normal routine, and then ask the questions again. If you need to.”

  “If I need to. You think they might just go away?”

  “I’m saying you might already know the answers, but right now they aren’t feeling familiar to you because nothing is.”

  “You think I’m being hormonal or something? Because I’m female and therefore unable to deal with trauma as well as a male cop would?”

  She held her breath, trusting Ramsey to be truthful with her, although the fact that his answer mattered so much didn’t sit well with her, either.

  “No, I’ve seen male cops in far worse shape than you’re in,” he said. “You’re acknowledging your doubts, facing them. Guys have a tendency to pretend they don’t exist so they just hang around and fester.”

  Was he talking about himself? Her interest was piqued. And already she felt a tad better.

  “You’re human, Hayes. And there’s nothing anyone can do about that.”

  She laughed. “I’m okay with being human. That’s not new to me, I swear. I figured out the fallible part when I was about six months old.” She was talking nonsense. And it felt good. “I’m just not used to… I’ve just always felt comfortable with myself, you know?” she asked, her voice dropping as shame swept through her. She should be better than this. “Today, I don’t feel comfortable.”

  “If I tell you something, do you swear to me that you won’t run scared?”

  “I don’t run when I’m scared. I figured you knew that by now.”

  “You’re right. I do. And the truth is, I’m not feeling all that comfortable in my own skin right now.” He didn’t sound like himself, either. “And it has nothing to do with the job.” “Maybe we’re both just overtired.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking.”

  “Okay, then let’s promise each other that we’re going to put the work aside long enough to get a good night’s sleep tonight and reconnect tomorrow.”

  “Good plan. I concur.”

  “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  “You can count on it.”

  The phone went dead and Lucy looked out at the water with a smile on her face.

  R amsey had agreed to put work aside for one night, to get some rest. He intended to keep his word. But by one in the morning, when sleep still eluded him, he knew that he was going to have to come up with another plan. He got more rest when he worked on and off through the night than he was getting lying there in the dark with nothing to distract his mind.

  Rolling over, he lifted his laptop from the other side of the bed and sat up. It only took seconds to get on the secured connection he had that allowed him to access privileged databases and type in Haley Sanders’s name.

  He looked at driver’s licenses in the states of Indiana and Ohio. At marriage licenses, home purchases, birth and death records, divorce records, criminal records and civil citations. He looked for work permits, but didn’t find an online database dating back more than twenty years.

  He even searched bankruptcy files. Haley Sanders, if that had been her real name, was as much of an angel as Jack described. The woman didn’t appear to exist in flesh and blood.

  And he had his first real clue that Jack Colton was guilty. The man had lied.

  Unless Haley Sanders, who, according to Jack, had been

  unforthcoming about her life, had lied to Jack about her name. Either was possible.

  He had more questions than answers.

  Setting his computer on the pillow next to him, Ramsey

  lay down and went to sleep. L ucy woke up Monday morning determined to take back control of her life. Her mother’s rapist had been arrested. That was good news, not reason to fall apart.

  Lionel would deal with the bone she’d found. He’d told her at the hospital on Saturday night that he’d assigned the case to Todd Davis, letting her know that Todd had been ordered not to question her until Monday.

  It was a holiday week. And on Saturday morning she was heading to Comfort Cove for two days. She had work to do there—Frank Whittier to keep a firm eye on—and that was good.

  Dressing in her favorite, formfitting black suit and white silk blouse, she caked the makeup on a little heavier than usual, slipped into pumps with an inch-and-a-half heel on them, rather than the flatter shoes she normally wore to work, and even stopped for a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice at the little diner in town before going into the station.

  When she ordered, her words came out completely normal and that was good, too.

  Wakerby’s meeting was at nine. Lucy was at her desk by seven. Todd had cleaned up as usual, leaving no evidence of the bone investigation lying around.

  “Hey, Luce, I figured you’d be in early.” She turned and saw Todd, cup of coffee in hand, coming toward her. “I’m using Locken’s desk today,” he said, setting his coffee down on the desk across the aisle from Lucy. “She said to tell you she’s with the D.A. this morning. They’re on call, at some diner near the jail, waiting to speak with Wakerby’s attorney, and you’ll be the first to know as soon as she has something.”

  “Thanks.” Lucy smiled. She was fine. Focused. Ready to call Lori Givens, her friend at the private DNA lab in Cincinnati, with another request. Emma was getting married Saturday and she needed a wedding present.

  Todd sat down, unlocked the bottom drawer of Locken’s desk, dropped his loaded key ring on the desk and pulled out a file. With a flick of his wrist, he tossed it over in front of Lucy.

  “What’s this?” she asked. But she knew.

  Opening the folder, she read the gist of the report. “You recovered enough to know it’s a skeleton.”

  “An incomplete one.”

  Although he was fifteen years older than her, Todd hadn’t been a detective much longer than she had. He hadn’t wanted to give up the streets to sit behind a desk. His gruff exterior, a result of all those years in uniform, made him hard to read.

  “There’s no ID,” she said.

  “Don’t have it yet.”

  She looked at the report again.

  “It’s a child.” Not a newborn, but less than two, according to bone development.

  “Yes.”

  “Male or female?”

  “Don’t know that yet, either.” He was stoic. Impossible to read.

  “Time of death?”

  “At least fifteen years.”

  “Could it be twen
ty-five years, Todd? Do you think it’s Allie?”

  His gaze softened as he shook his head. “Honestly, Lucy, no, I don’t. I didn’t even want to tell you about the body until I knew for sure, but Lionel pointed out—and I agreed with him—that you’d draw your own conclusions if I didn’t have a report for you this morning.”

  “You’ve put it into missing persons, right?”

  “We will as soon as we get DNA back from the lab.”

  A recently discovered buried body made this a current case. “You expect that yet today?”

  “Possibly. Lionel pulled strings, and since this is a new find, it took precedence as a new case. Look, Lucy, there are several missing children from the Cincinnati and surrounding areas that date back fifteen or more years. You know that. You’ve pulled every single one of the records.”

  He shared a desk with her. He knew how many files she had yet to go through. Lucy nodded.

  “And there’s no guarantee that this missing child was even reported,” she said aloud. Things happened more often than they wanted to know—parents or babysitters or boyfriends and girlfriends of parents or babysitters who lost patience with a crying child, got a little too rough. No one meant to kill infants. It just happened sometimes. And the next step in that scenario was to get rid of the body, bury the evidence.

  “The bones are a little long for a six-month-old baby. And the decomposition reads closer to fifteen years than thirty.”

  She’d read that, too. “Thanks, Todd,” she said. He hadn’t said a word about the leave she’d taken of her senses, digging in the woods like a dog. Hadn’t mentioned the slight disfiguration of her chin, either. For all of his gruffness, he was a kind man. One she was proud to work beside.

  “For now we’ve got a J. Doe,” Todd replied. Not John. Not Jane. Just J.

  They made a deal.

  sitting at his desk, Ramsey swore as he read the text.