by RJ Scott
“Hurry up,” he called to me. “Dad makes mean chili.”
Chili? I hadn’t had chili in years. Why had I not had chili in years? I liked chili. Work. That was it, getting in the way of everything else. Then any spare time was spent with Grandpa Toby, listening to his reminiscing and wondering what was real and what wasn’t in his rambling mess of stories.
The shower was bliss. I left it warm but not too much, and it invigorated at the same time as allowing me to lather up the gel and get clean. I didn’t bother with my hair, leaving it to do its thing for now, pulling on shorts and a T-shirt, the only off-duty clothes in my suitcase, and padded downstairs, heading for the kitchen and the large table set for three. Me, and it seemed Josh and Harry. I interrupted a whispered conversation and caught the end of it.
“It doesn’t matter.” Harry was underlining whatever he’d just said.
“It does matter. You can’t tell you have something to ask me and then not ask me. Hell, should I be worried? Is it you? Marco? What is it?”
I waited quietly by the door, not wanting to interrupt what looked like a serious conversation.
“No, it’s not about me or Marco, I promise.”
Josh stopped what he was doing and rested his hands on Harry’s shoulders. “You can tell me anything.”
“I know, Dad.”
“But not this?”
“Not now, I need to talk to… I love you, Dad.”
“Love you too, Hazmat.”
The conversation was done, and I shuffled my feet to let them know I’d arrived. Josh turned around to me, and his expression still held a flicker of worry, but he covered it by smiling in welcome.
“You look better,” he commented, and I swore I went bright red.
“You’re here!” Harry said, clutching his belly dramatically. “I’m starving to death.”
Josh scuffed his son’s hair and then tapped the back of his head. “Tell me again where the entire pack of graham crackers went?”
Harry ducked his dad’s touch, and I’d never seen such an innocent expression on a kid’s face before. “I’m a growing boy,” he deadpanned and patted his tummy. He had the look of a boy who was fast becoming a man, tall and skinny, his voice wavering on breaking, and he had a rangy kind of energy that I wished I could reclaim.
“Cornbread?” Josh asked me, and I stopped my appraisal of Harry.
“Thank you.”
He dished up generous, heaping spoons of chili for me, then Harry, and then himself. “Beer, wine?”
“Water is fine.” I poured myself a glass, and he followed suit, huffing and pouring an extra one for Harry.
“Drink more,” he demanded, and Harry rolled his eyes, ducking another head rub. This was a familiar dance they played out, it seemed, and I couldn’t help smiling, but when the two of them faced me and I was still smiling like an idiot, I felt raw and exposed. Here it comes, the teasing about my lack of social skills, the comment about my watching. Instead, Josh smiled back.
“Kid is an idiot,” Josh said with a ton of affection in his voice.
“Says you,” Harry snarked.
We ate in silence for all of a few moments before Harry started talking about everything and nothing. I listened to most of it because I was used to grabbing food on the go or sitting at my desk, not eating anywhere like the cozy of a kitchen hearing Harry’s theory about a Netflix show that I’d never heard of.
“Anyway, that’s what I think,” he finished and scooped up a huge mouthful of chili. My mom used to say I had hollow legs. Eating was an Olympic sport for me back when I was Harry’s age, but now I balanced a fairly healthy diet with exercise just to keep myself in check. Well, I called Snickers healthy. Sue me, but a Snickers bar with a coffee and I was in heaven.
“What do you think?” Harry asked.
I looked up when Josh didn’t answer, and I assumed Harry was talking to me. I’d been considering the connection between the dog collar and the murder of Casey McGuire and how the hell it fitted in with Adam Gray. “I’m sorry?”
Harry repeated patiently, “Did the fingerprint software show that the hand belonged to Old Man Gray?”
Wait, how had we morphed from a show about superheroes to talking about the case? I chewed slowly, swallowed, arranged my silverware, and then after giving myself that vital thinking time, I was ready for a politically correct answer.
“We haven’t had official results yet,” I answered and was quite pleased with myself. I hadn’t rambled to encourage Harry to ask more questions.
“Is it because it was cut off? Could you freeze it or dip it in acid or something?” Harry asked, just before he chewed down on a hunk of cornbread.
“The labs take some time to get results. It’s only been a couple of days, and I’m not entirely sure why they would freeze the limb or put it in acid.”
Harry was confused. I could see that. “The FBI has computers, right? With a fingerprint database, the one I’ve seen them use to solve crimes.”
“The Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System,” I confirmed. “I-AFIS,” I added because it was a hell of a mouthful otherwise. “But it doesn’t—”
“Then as soon as you do the things with freezing it or using acid, like on these crime shows”—he waved his hand in front of his face—“you can match the result to the YAFISS thing.”
Don’t get me started on crime shows.
“Everything the labs deal with is a significant drain on resources, but they are probably weighed down with the enormity of this case and others that are currently running.”
Harry blinked at me, and I glanced at Josh for help. I wasn’t experienced at talking to a young teenager and not entirely sure what level I should be pitching this at.
“They’re backlogged, and it will take time,” Josh explained for me, and I was pathetically grateful.
“But on television, they get the results super quick, like this one time on Criminal Minds, they froze skin they’d peeled—”
“Harry, eat your dinner, and since when do you watch Criminal Minds?”
Harry couldn’t have tried harder for innocent, but I knew him well and he was thinking on his feet.
“Uncle Luca lets me and Marco watch it,” he defended, and I saw the telltale twitch of a small lie.
“Hmmm,” Josh murmured. “No more Criminal Minds.”
“But it’s the last season, Dad—”
“No more.”
Silence. Josh stared at Harry, and Harry was giving his dad the stink-eye. This was going to fall apart very quickly, and I didn’t want to be witness to an argument. I wanted to find the right thing to say that would diffuse the situation.
“The shows get a lot of things wrong,” I blurted, and the two of them turned to stare at me. “Like CSI and other shows, they get results within hours, sometimes find clues that shouldn’t even be there. It’s television, not real life.”
Harry went from disbelieving to questioning in an instant, but Josh stopped him. “Homework, wash up, no television, read, paint, bed.”
“Daad—”
“You want to argue and add stacking the dishwasher and cleaning the kitchen to the list?”
Harry picked up his plate and placed it carefully into the sink, before he vanished quicker than his dad could pass him the dishcloth. Then it was just me and Josh, and I could feel a familiar discomfort beginning to curl in the pit of my stomach. What would I say to him? Ask him a question, make things easy for him so he doesn’t have to be the one to find things to ask me when he knows how awkward I can be.
“So, Harry’s mom?” I left the question open-ended. Mom had explained to me at a young age that I didn’t need to give people all the options for their answers, and Grandpa Toby had said that open-ended questions were another one of an investigator’s best tools in the box.
“Sadie, she lives in New York with her wife, Lucy. We were very young when we had Harry, and between us, we decided I was best placed to have Harry. She visits when she can, but she’s h
appy with Lucy, and Harry talks to her all the time.” There was a defensiveness in his voice, and I hadn’t meant to put that there at all. “It works,” he added, this time with pride.
“I’m sorry I asked like that. It’s just my dad was a cop, and I was young when he died. I never really knew him, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think that it’s cool to see you with Harry and that you have such a close relationship.”
Josh rested his chin on his hands and leaned forward. “I’m sorry for your loss, even after all this time.”
“It is what it is. My mom married a guy called Doug, a dentist, fifteen years ago, and I have two sisters, aged fourteen and eleven. I’m not close to Doug, but he’s good for my mom.” God knows where that had all come from. I didn’t think I’d ever told anyone all that before. Those who needed to know could read it in my personnel file.
“Harry is a good kid. He’s the best of me, and I worry about him every day.” Josh smiled, but there was concern in his tone. I wondered what it was that Harry had been talking to his dad about that made Josh admit his worries to me.
“It’s a hard world out there,” I offered, hoping this was the right thing to say.
“It is. Do you have children?”
I pushed my empty bowl to one side and picked at the remaining cornbread on the side plate, tearing off a small amount.
“No.”
“You want them?”
“I’m gay.”
He extended his hand to shake, which I took, even though I had crumbs on my fingers because what the hell? “I’m bi. Pleased to meet you,” he deadpanned and then snorted a laugh.
“Very funny.” I smiled along with him, but the thought of this man being here, being possibly interested in a too verbose FBI agent who dealt with death all day was causing butterflies in my belly.
“On a more serious note, there’s always surrogacy or adoption with your partner. Do you have a partner? A significant other?”
I see what he did there. Clever man. Several thoughts ran through my head at once, not helped by the fact that he still held my hand and had tugged me toward him. What was this? What was he doing? There was a new expression on his face, a light in his eyes that I couldn’t understand, and I thought he could see into my soul, where my desire for a partner and children resided.
“No, I did have someone, but he… it was a long time ago, and now my work—”
He stole a kiss, a gentle touch of his lips to mine, and he kept his eyes open, as did I, and I got my first real up close and personal look at the intriguing color of them, that deep velvet brown.
“Okay?” he asked.
“Huh?”
“Is it okay to kiss you?”
“Yes, but uhmmm—”
He didn’t wait for any more, cradled my cheek with his other hand, and tilted my head to deepen the kiss. What was I doing? I shouldn’t have been kissing this man. He shouldn’t have been interested in someone passing through town.
God, there were so many reasons why we shouldn’t have been kissing.
But hell, it was good.
I gripped something, his shirt, deepened the kiss even more, and he growled low in his throat; I could feel the vibration in the kiss, but then I released the hold and sat back in the chair.
“Wow,” he said with wonder in his voice. Wow, indeed. Overwhelming. Stupefying. Hot. I was going to do something really stupid if I didn’t move soon.
“I really need to… uhm…” I tugged my hand free and took my bowl to the sink, copying what Harry had done before me. Should I offer to help clean up? Dinner certainly wasn’t on the list of things the hotel offered, but this escalation was something that needed nipping in the bud. “Thank you for dinner,” I said, and even though he stared at me with that damn sexy smile, I went straight to the big room that held the boards and information re-locking the door after I closed it behind me.
Work.
Sawyer arrived a little after ten the next day, knocking on the door and waiting until I said he could come in even though the door was unlocked and ajar. Why he waited, I didn’t know, because the boards here were no different to his, aside from the fact that the photos were more graphic. He very deliberately stood with his back to those graphic filled boards.
“I spoke to Drew and his mom, and they identified that the collar and disc belonged to their dog.” He was shaken, and I wondered what to say that might make it better. He beat me to it by carrying on talking. “Every little thing we discover is another nail in the coffin. I remember Casey loved that little dog, a terrier or something like that. He was the one responsible for walking it, and they were buddies.”
“How did Drew take the news about the name potentially being at Adam’s place scratched into the wood?”
Sawyer shook his head, and I got the message that it hadn’t gone down well.
“Wait until you see what I have for you,” Avery announced as she slammed her way in, carrying a box full of god knows what. Probably the textbooks she took everywhere with her. She was officially superior to me, but I was the one who could mouth off rules as if they were second nature; she still referred to books. She wasn’t the odd one out. I was.
“Ms. Kerridge,” Sawyer murmured respectfully.
“None of that. It’s Avery.”
“I’ll be at the PD. I’m expecting a call,” Sawyer excused himself, and only when he’d gone did I turned to Avery.
“What?”
“What, what?”
“You said you had something for me.”
She took a quick look at the folder I was pulling together, and the anticipation of what she was going to tell me made me want to shake her, but I refrained and instead counted down from ten. Slowly.
“Turns out…” She did this ridiculous drum roll on the desk with two pens. “We can add another detail to the names on the master list.”
She wasn’t talking about the list of identified women from the remains: Jessica, Angela, Melissa, and Amelia. This was another, much worse list of missing people within a three-hundred-mile radius that might fit the profile we had, and their families or pertinent information that might tie them together. The list haunted my waking thoughts, all those names, in alphabetical order, all vanished from the face of the earth.
Some on the list might have chosen to disappear, but others were out there, lying in unmarked graves, washed to sea, or who the hell knew what else. Right in the middle of the list was Carmen Kreuger’s name, the woman Grandpa Toby had spent so much time attempting to find.
“What name?”
“This is where it gets interesting. Jessica Bowyer had a friend called Olivia Matthews, who vanished about six years after Jessica.”
“Why didn’t we know about her before?”
“She moved to New Mexico after college, when she’d met her husband, and he reported her missing in 1980. Bryan was out in Buffalo informing Jessica’s parents that the coroner had matched the DNA, and the parents mentioned as an aside that it was the worst of things knowing that one of Jessica’s best friends had also disappeared.”
“I assume Bryan did preliminary checks—”
“You assume right. Olivia had visited Jessica’s parents late ’79, said she was still fighting to find out what had happened to Jessica, but after she announced she had ideas of where to look and why, she left and never made it back to New Mexico.”
“The suggestion being that Olivia actually discovered something about her friend and followed it up and became a victim herself.”
“The techs took DNA samples from Olivia’s mom and aunt, and those are now with the lab, so we add Olivia as a maybe victim, potentially one of the sets of remains, until we know otherwise.”
The last thing I wanted to do was add a name to an already burgeoning list of possible victims, but I scribbled the name in the right place and added a card for us to fill out with any pertinent information. Some of my fellow agents worked exclusively on computers, but for me and Avery, having everything available in f
ront of us gave us a better mental picture. I blamed Grandpa, who’d lived with a case board in his garage, the Carmen Kreuger case he’d never solved front and center. I guess if one day he had to go into assisted living, then I would inherit it. It was painful to think of my vital grandpa being so lost that he needed to leave his own home, but the time was near. We all knew it, I just hadn’t come to terms with it.
“We need to call in Peter Sandoval, former captain at the LFPD, to discuss money that might or might not be passing between him, the mayor, the owner of the bank, Joe Dwyer, and the deceased Pastor Kirkland.”
“I don’t like this town at all. There is way too much—”
A loud knock interrupted her conclusion, but I knew the direction of what she was going to say. Small towns, old boys’ clubs, secrets. We’d seen it all before in other cases. She opened the door to reveal Josh.
“Coffee?” he asked, holding out a tray of cups along with cookies and not actually stepping into the room.
My pulse quickened at seeing him, but I worked damned hard at not letting any of it show because if Avery had any idea that I was moved by his presence, then she wouldn’t let it lie. I was sure of it. I could still taste the damn kiss or at least the sense memory of how it had made me feel. What had it meant? What was he doing to me?
I reached for the tray.
“Hey,” Josh murmured.
“Thank you… for the coffee.”
He smiled broadly, then winked. “No problem. I also have keys for you both to the hotel because I’d like to think we can keep it locked while my son is here.”
“That’s cool. Fine, I mean. Keys, for both of us. Yes, okay.” Jeez, I was losing my shit. As soon as he left and shut the door behind him, Avery rounded on me and poked me in the chest.
“Oh my freaking god, spill.”
“What?”
“You and Mr. McSexy?”
“Who?” Shit. Why did I say that? Of course she meant the one person who’d been in the room with us. That would have been way too obvious, so I’d just fucked up.
“What have I missed? He stared at you looking for a reaction, then winked, and then the way you didn’t meet his eyes, the flush on your cheeks.”