Tainted Evidence (Evidence Series Book 10)

by Rachel Grant

  “Why are you crying?” Ava asked.

  “I’m having a Sally Field moment.”

  “What does that mean? Who is Sally Field?”

  “She’s an actress who, when she won her second Oscar, gave a really sweet and heartfelt speech about what it meant to be liked by all her peers. And she was mocked for it, but really, her genuine emotion was kind of wonderful.”

  “Oh. She’s the ‘you really like me’ woman.”

  “Yes. She’s also a brilliant actress.”

  “And why are you having a Sally Field moment?”

  Maddie patted the bed beside her. “Come see. Your uncle is part of it too.”

  Ava settled on the bed and leaned close to read the post, then she scrolled through all the comments. She’d scrolled through only about a third of them—with more being added every minute—when she put her arm around Maddie in a surprising, spontaneous hug and said, “Oh, wow. This is really cool. You deserve it, Maddie.”

  Maddie hugged Ava back, fully crying now. This was their first hug, and Ava had offered it to comfort her, not the other way around. “Thanks, Ava.”

  “I’m glad you and Uncle Josh are back together,” she whispered. “He deserves to be happy too.”

  She squeezed the girl, out of words for the moment. She was under no illusion that the road wouldn’t get bumpy again, but right now, she believed she and Ava could forge their own relationship in which Maddie existed in a space somewhere between uncle’s girlfriend and maternal stand-in.

  Ava loosened her grip and idly scrolled down the comments. “This one’s from Cressida. I’ve never met her, but Uncle Josh has talked about her. She married another guy from Raptor last year.”

  Maddie clicked the heart reaction on Cressida’s comment. “I met her a year and a half ago, when I was in DC and visited Trina.”

  “Is…everything okay with the Trina thing? With Uncle Josh, I mean?”

  Maddie nodded. “We’re fine. I was never worried about his feelings for Trina. After all, I know what it’s like to have an unbearable crush on her too.”

  “You’re not jealous?”

  “No.” Maddie smiled at seeing another familiar name in the list of comments. She’d never met the woman, but she’d heard a lot about her from Trina. She pointed to the name on the screen. “Have you ever watched any of Stefan Gray’s marine biology documentaries?”

  “I think so.”

  “That’s his daughter, Undine. She used to work with Trina and the others in DC.”

  Maddie hearted Undine’s comment too and kept scrolling. She would email Cressida and Undine a personal note later. Which reminded her, she needed to send all her real-life friends a note telling them what they meant to her.

  Josh and Keith had shared their emotions in the wake of nearly losing their friend Tricia. Maddie had been abducted, and, except for Trina, she hadn’t reached out to anyone.

  She’d sent a quick note to her parents, of course, but hadn’t even checked email for a response, and she hadn’t given her mother her new cell phone number. Hadn’t called her brother at all.

  She reached the end of the comments and scrolled down to the next post. She hadn’t checked this group in days—maybe weeks? Life had been something of a blur for the last three weeks.

  There was a funny archaeology comic posted, followed by a post about global warming and the melting of permafrost in Alaska resulting in the erosion of archaeological sites on the northwestern coast, complete with a sad video taken by an archaeologist on survey for a military project.

  The next post was a link to a news article about a twenty-five-hundred-year-old skeleton that had been stolen from a museum in Norway. All that remained of the early Iron Age remains in the museum’s storage facility were the smaller bones. The theft had been discovered a week before, and the post had gone up in the group Friday morning. From the comments, it appeared it had been posted, then disappeared, then reposted multiple times. Either Facebook was wonky, or someone in the group was screwing with posts. But it wasn’t the technical issues that caught her attention, it was the photo that accompanied the report. Familiar. But of course, she spent her days looking at skeletons and, on a basic level, all skeletons looked alike.

  She clicked through to view the larger, higher-resolution image on the news website and couldn’t stifle her gasp. Not only was the right ulna broken in two and the femur broken in three, but there was distinctive red staining on the clavicles and scapulae, identical to the remains she’d found in a closet in the Kocher Mansion.

  31

  So much for White Patriots being scared off by the large number of counterprotesters. Josh supposed it had been a narrow hope, but still, he’d clung to it. Instead, the white supremacist crowd was triple what it had been three weeks ago—so perhaps they’d been galvanized by knowing they were opposed.

  It didn’t matter, because they were still outnumbered by counterprotesters. Josh’s group couldn’t be contained by the original barricade placement, and so they’d been moved to the north side of the bridge encroaching on the south side of the platform set up for speakers. Counterprotesters lined the roadway, claiming the sidewalk on the far side of the grassy strip of park. These were the most vulnerable positions, and Josh and Arthur made sure there were protectors every twenty feet along that line.

  Josh’s gaze went to the corner room of the hotel, where Maddie and Ava watched from above. He and Chase had given the women their binoculars, and they’d set up one of Raptor’s cameras with a high-powered zoom on a tripod. If they desired, they’d be able to count the freckles on the white supremacist speaker’s face, with the added benefit of not having to listen to the speeches.

  The men—and all the speakers were men—who took the podium gave speeches that aligned with the beliefs of the activists who took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge a few years ago and the ones who staged protests in front of the capitol to regularly shut down state government. Those groups had been emboldened by their successes and acquittals, and Josh hoped the demonstration today would set them back a notch.

  He scanned the line and saw a counterprotester step forward, pressing against the hastily strung-up police tape, shouting something at a White Patriot who was jeering from the crowd. Javonte nudged the counterprotester back, and the woman complied. Josh tapped his headset and said, “Well done, Javonte.”

  The young man gave a thumbs-up without saying a word.

  “I’ve got some WPs encroaching on the north end,” another volunteer said.

  “Chase, how close are you?” Josh asked.

  “On it,” the operative said.

  The last hour had seen tiny skirmishes and encroachments just like that, but nothing too alarming. Josh kept his eyes on the walkway to the bridge, as at rallies in the past, attendees had tried to seize the bridge and shut down traffic.

  A familiar head in the crowd caught his eye, and his stomach dropped.

  Ava was at the window with her eye to the camera’s viewfinder, giving Maddie a play-by-play of the movement of the crowd. “It looks like things are getting pretty tense down there.”

  Maddie hit Send on the email she’d composed for the museum and police in Norway. It had taken a while to write the emails as she’d had to look up her correspondence with Shields, but sure enough, he’d been in Oslo around the time the remains went missing and, most importantly, the day Josh had pried open the empty vault, the curator had been on his flight home. Two days later, she’d found the bag of bones in the closet. The bag contained one of Kocher’s note cards with the vault number and had been made to look like it had been misplaced after being put on display months or even years before, but had probably been placed there the previous day.

  She understood their entire plan now: Shields stole the remains but wasn’t able to return to the US in time to fold them into the collection, so Kocher had probably glued several vaults shut, ensuring she would remember the sealed, empty repository, and even offering a reason why the bone
s weren’t put back. After she found the random bag of bones in the museum office—which she was bound to do at any point in the days she was working in the mansion—it was logical for her to return the remains to the empty vault. She’d done the work of folding it into the collection, essentially authenticating it, for Shields and Kocher. Once she’d served her purpose, Shields had taken a bone and sent it off for DNA testing, determined to prove Caucasians had been in North America for thousands of years in an attempt to undermine treaty rights and steal yet more reservation land.

  Given that the remains would likely be returned to the tribes—because the original remains in that vault had definitely been stolen from government land—and reburied in a secret location before the DNA analysis came back, it was a perfect, untraceable way to get the DNA results on record without further testing. Plus, the skeletal remains’ original origins—Norway—meant the DNA test would come back white as white could be.

  But Maddie had seen staining that looked more like iron than copper, which was odd for a Native American burial, and she’d taken a pollen sample from the bones. What story would the pollen tell?

  She glanced at the dresser drawer where the sample was stored. She’d mail it today if she could, but it would have to wait for tomorrow. It would be weeks before the pollen analysis would come back, but when it did, it would be further proof of what Kocher and Shields had conspired to do.

  “I can’t believe how many White Patriots there are,” Ava said, pulling Maggie’s attention away from her computer.

  She rubbed a hand over her face. Reporting Oliver Shields’s crime to Norwegian authorities was just about the only thing that could have distracted her from the rally in the street below the hotel.

  “I can’t either,” she replied as she closed the laptop and rose from the bed. “Or at least, I don’t want to believe it.” At the window, she scanned the thick crowd that filled the park and spilled out onto the street. “Where’s Josh?” She searched for his green shirt. It was easy to pick out the volunteers. The color was a distinctive Yale blue, and there were dozens of them along the perimeter of the rally, separating WPs from counterprotesters. With only a dozen green shirts, they were less easy to spot in the large, surging crowd.

  “Last I looked, he was near the bridge—by the pedestrian stairs.”

  Maddie scanned the ramp first, then spotted the stairs Ava mentioned. She picked up a pair of binoculars and zoomed in on that area, easily picking out Josh, whose muscles were on full display in the tight T-shirt.

  Hot damn. That body is all mine.

  She still couldn’t quite believe it.

  She dialed in on his profile. She could see anger on his handsome features as he faced off with another man, who wore a surprisingly bulky coat considering it was a warm summer day. “Who’s he talking to?”

  “Just a sec, I need to find him.”

  The girl was probably watching Desmond. Maddie had learned today that the two had been texting each other for the last few days. Or maybe they were chatting on Discord. Whatever it was, they’d somehow found each other online, and a friendship—or something more—was blooming.

  Ava tilted the camera toward the stairway, and Maddie watched as her delicate long blue fingernails adjusted the zoom. She let out a sharp gasp and jumped back from the tripod. “Oh my God, oh my God. Ohmygod!”

  Her face showed stark, raw fear.

  “Who is it?” But the moment Maddie said the words, she figured it out, and her heart squeezed for the girl.

  “My dad,” Ava said in a bleak voice. “I guess he’s out of jail.”

  32

  Josh stared at Ari. The older brother he’d once worshiped, although that feeling hadn’t survived childhood. By the time he’d left Portland for the Navy, he’d only tolerated the man because of Lori and Ava.

  Now they were strangers. Josh hadn’t been face-to-face with his brother since the day he joined the military. The intervening years hadn’t been kind to him. But then, he’d spent the last five months in jail. Now Ari stood before him with new ink on his neck. The long sleeves of his bulky coat probably hid more tattoos, and Josh’s gut clenched to realize they were probably of the neo-Nazi variety.

  Their dad had been anti-Semitic. It had been part and parcel of the abuse their mom had tried to shield them from. She’d done the best she could, but it had been impossible to avoid hearing the slurs Dad had hurled and the other subtle and not so subtle ways he’d made it clear her religion made her lesser. Sometime in their teen years, Josh had realized Ari was following in Dad’s footsteps. Now his transformation was complete.

  This betrayal hurt even more than the others, because Josh wasn’t the only victim of Ari’s cruelty.

  Mom. Lori. Ava.

  Ava.

  He would not turn and glance at the hotel. Bad enough to know she was probably watching this from above. He wouldn’t give Ari a hint that his daughter was witnessing this moment.

  And dammit all, no matter how much he wanted to, he couldn’t throw the first punch.

  “How’d you get out early?” he asked.

  “I’ve got connections, baby bro.”

  “When did they release you?”

  “This morning.”

  “And the first thing you do is go to a white supremacist rally?”

  “My boys helped me in the joint. Figured I should show up and support them.”

  “That’s all you have to say?”

  Ari gave an indifferent shrug. “Yep.”

  Was it his fault Ari had turned into this monster? Would this have happened if Josh had stayed in Portland instead of joining the Navy?

  He could hear Maddie in his mind, telling him that Ari’s decisions weren’t his fault. And yet, he’d known this was the path Ari was on. He’d seen him emulate their father until the two were indistinguishable.

  Josh had cut off all ties with their father after their mom died. There was no relationship left to salvage and, without Mom, no reason to try anyway.

  “Right after this here rally, I’ll be getting my daughter back from you. Your services are no longer needed.”

  “You signed over your parental rights. You have no legal claim.”

  “I’ve got myself a kick-ass lawyer who’s gonna take care of that.”

  Bile rose in Josh’s throat. His attorney had made it clear that family law could be dicey and parental claims were hard to sever permanently. But given that Ava really had turned Ari in on purpose, she was in more danger from the man than ever. That would help her case if they came before a judge. Add to that the abuse she’d suffered over the years—from being discarded in a dumpster to being imprisoned in her own home—and she had a solid case against being returned to her father’s care.

  But Ava didn’t tell her therapist about the abuse.

  Shit. This wasn’t the time. He was in the middle of a damn white supremacist rally.

  “You’ll be talking to my lawyer,” Josh said.

  “Don’t you wanna know who my attorney is?” Ari asked.

  “No.”

  “But you do. You really do. You see, his sister asked him to help me out. Get me outta jail, so I could take my girl off your hands.”

  Josh turned and walked away. He was done with his brother’s bullshit and lies.

  “Well, will you look at that. My lawyer is about to speak to the crowd. See, baby bro, you aren’t the only one who’s got political allies. Ravissant is weak compared to the next senator from Oregon.”

  Josh’s gaze landed on the speaker platform, where a new speaker was being introduced, and his stomach clenched as Maddie’s brother stepped up to the microphone.

  Shivers took over Maddie’s entire body as she glanced from the TV to the window, not quite able to believe her eyes.

  Her brother. Her fucking brother had aligned himself with White Patriots to get elected.

  It shouldn’t surprise her. He was far from the first in Oregon or Washington politics to go after that particular demographic
, and he’d already showed her he had no ethics when it came to collecting votes. But still, it was a blow.

  She’d underestimated his hunger for power by a huge margin. But then, no amount of votes was worth this. There was no justification in the world that could make this right.

  “That’s your brother, isn’t it?” Ava asked.

  Maddie nodded. “It appears Josh isn’t the only one to be surprised by a brother today.”

  “So your brother is…he’s one of them?”

  Maddie nodded. “Apparently so.”

  “I’m sorry, Maddie.”

  She took the girl’s hand and squeezed. “I’m sorry your dad is here too.”

  “Family can really suck sometimes,” Ava said, squeezing back.

  “Sure can.” What an understatement. But Maddie was shocked into numbness. This whole thing was surreal.

  She should have realized when her brother mentioned he’d spoken to the Kochers at the museum that night that he was involved with White Patriots. Hell, this whole rally could have been planned as a campaign event. His coming out, so to speak.

  Jesus. Josh had wondered at the purpose for the frequency of rallies. Was this it? Politics? Was it all a distorted get-out-the-vote campaign to put white supremacists in key government positions?

  Would her parents still support Alan after this? Or had her perfect brother finally gone too far?

  “Goddammit, Alan,” she whispered under her breath. Why hadn’t she seen this coming? Why hadn’t she realized the extent of his hunger for power?

  He would do or say anything for a vote.

  Her brother’s speech was being broadcast by every network covering the rally—free national coverage for a campaign speech—and the crowd cheered as Alan spoke about immigrants stealing the American dream from “real” Americans.

  Some might think this was political suicide, but not in the current political climate of Oregon. Several times in the last year, extremist groups had organized protests in Salem that gave elected officials an excuse to run off and not do their duty, effectively shutting down state government. The fires of racism were being stoked on every level. Her brother was just stepping in to reap the benefits of the uncontrolled burn.