by Aimee Hix
“Sounds like motherhood mellowed her quite a bit.” That was usually the way it went. That it took my mother more than two decades to act at all mom-ish was down to her stubbornness. I came by it honestly and double-barreled. It was never any surprise to me that my parents hadn’t worked out—both too stubborn with too strong of personalities. Courtney would have run right over Kevin.
“No. It was Amanda’s death that did it. She changed when my sister died. It was like someone deflated her. I always thought she was paying homage to Mandy by trying to turn into her.”
Interesting. People reacted to grief in so many ways. With the one-year anniversary of Michael’s death looming, I was painfully aware of that fact.
He twisted his coffee cup back and forth on the table, looking down into the cup like it had some answer he needed.
“You’re never going to catch the person that killed my sister, are you?”
I felt Jan stiffen beside me. She was determined to close this case, but I was beginning to feel like Kevin was right. I wasn’t at all confident we were going to be able to find Amanda Veitch’s killer and that thought, along with the look on his face, made my heart hurt.
“We’re not stopping until we do, Kevin. That’s my promise to you.” I flipped open my notebook and picked up my pen. “Are you ready?”
Chapter
12
I pulled the car door shut. “Nothing except DNA is going to convince me that he killed anyone, let alone his sister. Did you hear how he talked about her? How he described her?”
“Yeah, I did. And they’d also had a violent fight two nights before her death which he refuses to discuss.”
“He said he doesn’t remember what it was about. If you asked me what Ben and I fought about two days ago, I could not tell you. The TV remote, the dog eating a shoe, my phone suddenly having a cartoon superhero case on it.”
All real fights and all from some point within the last month or two.
“The mother said they never fought. You and Ben never stop fighting.”
Okay, that was hurtful. We didn’t always fight. We were just very different.
“You know how fights escalate. One minute it’s about the laundry and the next you’re yelling about how just because he’s the baby he gets away with everything including hacking the school system’s grades database.”
Jan’s eyes saucered.
“As a hypothetical example.” I really needed to remember not to incriminate my brother for any felonies he’s committed.
“And those arguments can escalate to murder if the person has kept it all bottled up for years.”
“But that would make it premeditated. I can’t see that. The way he talks about his sister—”
Jan shook her head. “It’s not what he’s saying, Willa, it’s what he’s not saying. If he’d tell us what the fight was about …”
Skyping with Kyle Warnicky was a bust as well. It took barely more time than we’d had to wait while the techs set up the system in the conference room. His story hadn’t changed. He couldn’t remember anything more and I could hardly expect him to, considering it had been the better part of twenty years. His relationship with Mandy had been more than casual and less than serious, both focusing more on school and family than each other. A high school romance that had been running on first-semester-of-college fumes. It likely would have ended over winter break and they would have stayed friends, was my conclusion.
He seemed like a nice kid who had turned into a nice man. I hadn’t picked up signs he was lying or hiding anything. He wasn’t overly devastated still or uncaring—his friend had been murdered a long time ago and he was sad. It all rang true and could have been utter bullshit.
It wasn’t long before I was back at home in the basement family room with the Amanda Veitch crime scene photos spread out on the floor, cataloging them in the manner I’d noted the night before. I reasoned that a photo could be in two piles considering the angles but I just wanted to see if anything popped for me taking each piece of evidence singularly instead of as part of the whole. A trees for the forest method, if you will.
I kept shuffling piles and started to get confused about which item of evidence I was looking at. I took the log up to the office to make copies.
My father was in there, feet up on the desk, hands folded on his soft but not fat belly, head leaned against the high back of the leather chair, snoring. I inserted the papers into the scanner and set the output count for the total number of items listed and punched the button. The scanner/copier came to life with a beep just loud enough to rouse my father. He yawned, stretching.
Good to see one of us was earning money for the company, she said sarcastically.
“Whatcha doin’?”
I gave him a basic rundown of my morning, the interviews, and the case. I snuck in a quick dig about it being real work and not a fake case, but he sloughed it off.
We chatted about Fargo and Ben while I waited for the machine to spit out the requisite copies. Then he turned the conversation to Aja in a particularly rough segue.
“The kid doing okay?”
I shrugged, pulling out the stack of paper that was already done to let the small tray fill up again. “She seems okay to me but what the heck do I know about teenage girls acting normal.”
“Your mom says she’s upset but functioning.”
I kept my eye on the machine. More often than not, it would crap out and start chewing up paper after a few dozen pages. It seemed to be behaving but, like all office machinery, it was evil and waiting for the chance to destroy us. When Skynet became sentient, we weren’t going to be fighting off robots; it was going to be warfare with fax machines and copiers, I was convinced.
“She’s been functioning for a while now on her own. I imagine with Mom and Ben by her side, functioning takes on a different meaning. She’s a smart kid. She can, for the most part, recognize when she’s in over her head and ask for help. So clearly, she’s nothing like me.”
I smiled up at him and then dropped my eyes to the printout tray immediately. I was not about to let this machine force me out to the library to make copies or, worse, the office supply store. First, I was home and comfortable in my sweats, and second, I didn’t have clearance to be running all over the county with the file. I was sure the police department brass would frown on some kid doing a project on Gandhi ending up with an evidence report from a murder because I got distracted like I usually did at the library.
“You two have a lot in common. I’m surprised you don’t see it.”
I chuckled. “What do you find most alike about us? Our brains?”
“Damn, kid, I know growing up with a little brother who is an actual genius is hard, but you’re smart.”
I was smart and I did know it. I’d never felt insecure about my brains even with Ben next to me talking about crap none of us understood even as a little kid. Both of them in the house, though, with Aja also sporting a brain that seemed larger than most teens should have been a little intimidating. Considering I was on the trail of a murderer, I was doing okay self-esteem-wise.
“I’m street smart. Which in the suburbs means knowing which Starbucks gives the most whipped cream on a Frappuccino.”
I cut off his protest as I gathered the last pile of the evidence report and combined it with the ones I was holding. “I’m not in need of a pep talk about how everyone is different and special in their own way. I promise I’m good.”
I waved the pages at him and went back to the lair I had appropriated more and more of as the months went by. Fargo was sitting at the slider when I got back and I let her out, keeping one eye on her as I leaned on the door and highlighted each individual piece of evidence, one sheet at a time, going down the list.
Fargo began to bark frantically and took off around the side of the house, startling me into dropping the pile and lightin
g out after her, yelling her name and the command to stop. I made it around the side of the house in half the time it would have taken me a year ago when I still wore a uniform and supposedly had strict fitness requirements. Fargo was sitting at the edge of the lawn as the high school bus pulled up and Ben and Aja got off. Ben instantly began chastising me about being responsible and diligent about Fargo’s training while Aja got down on the ground and pulled the puppy into her lap.
“Dude, you better take it down several decibels or I will drop you to the ground and pants you in front of that bus.”
Aja laughed at the look on Ben’s face.
“You wouldn’t,” he said.
“You know I would.”
He looked at me to see if I was serious and must have concluded that I was. When he spoke again it was a normal conversational level.
“She can’t be running loose, Will.”
And I agreed with him. I had no idea why she’d run off unless it was part of the quirk that made her unsuitable for law enforcement work.
“I’m not disagreeing, Ben, but whether you like it or not, I’m an adult and you’re not so you don’t get to yell at me. I was in the back with her and she just took off.”
He considered my words then looked at Fargo exuberantly licking Aja’s face. It was free of the layers and layers of eye makeup she’d worn the first few times I’d seen her. It should have seemed incongruous and callous that she was happier now, after she’d been told someone she’d known and cared about had died, but that was the human brain for you. Aja was relieved she wasn’t going to have to take care of herself or be scared anymore. She’d dip in and out of the five stages of grief at her own pace.
“It’s you,” Ben said in an accusatory tone. “You broke my dog.”
Aja looked confused. “I’ve been here two days.”
“She never did this before you came to stay.” But he wasn’t angry. He was thrilled. “We need to get you involved with her training. She clearly has a very strong bond with you.”
Okay, that was going to make me insecure. They could have their big brains and a working knowledge of calculus, but I got the dog.
“We can expand her skill set to take her to hospitals or rehabilitation centers.”
Who was this we? He was leaving for college in six months, as was Aja. That left me. Who hadn’t wanted the dog trained to be anything other than a well-mannered dog. Ben was still prattling on about how exciting it would be if he could cross-train for both activities when I interrupted.
“No. Just no. She’s a dog. She shouldn’t be doing any of the crap you want her to do. Plus, you just got done whining about her training being broken by Aja being around two days.”
I was more annoyed than I thought because I sounded really harsh. Nancy’s timing was stellar as she pulled her minivan into the driveway.
“Why don’t you two go inside and get a snack? Mom’s going to be after you to start your homework the second she gets in the house so get the food while you can.”
Ben picked up his backpack and slung it over his shoulder, a pout on his face. He might have been more than half a foot taller than me but he still had the pout down from when he was half my size. Aja and Fargo followed him.
“Why are you barefoot, Willa Elaine?”
Crap! One of her biggest rules: no shoes inside, shoes outside. There were many dangerous things that could be stepped on since people weren’t at all careful—cigarettes (Want to see Nancy go nuclear? Discard a cigarette on the ground), metal, broken glass, etc. Wear shoes outside. So simple a child could understand it—as we’d been informed many, many times.
Plus, I’d totally forgotten the back slider was open with papers all over the floor. I hoped Fargo wouldn’t get into them when she got back inside.
“Fargo’s potty break turned into a prison break when her superior hearing picked up the bus.”
She eyed me as if deciding the veracity of my excuse. Which was all posturing. We both knew I’d dance around the truth but I’d never outright lie to her.
“Maybe when you let her out in the future it would be best to have shoes on just in case she happens to bolt again. Also, I have to take Aja to review her statement for Detective Boyd so … .”
She sighed. Probably because she knew me well enough to know that while it was a perfectly reasonable request it was also likely one I wouldn’t accommodate most times. As long as she wasn’t watching.
I walked back around the house in the cold grass with more care than I’d took coming out.
The pages were just where I’d dropped them. I shuffled the few I’d already highlighted back into order and settled down to highlight the rest. A pack of sticky notes and I was ready to reorganize the photos by evidentiary display. It was the height of tedium but at least it sounded fancy. More non-glamour that was still yards better than driving around in a cramped cruiser waiting for something to happen.
I was surprised to see an hour had passed when I got up to stretch my tight back. I was spending too much time on my butt lately. I paced around giving my legs a good stretch when my phone blipped.
I’m an ass.
I replied with a terse agreement, no emojis. I wanted to stay mad. I just didn’t have the energy. I sent another text letting him know we’d work it out when he got home and to concentrate on his training. In reply, I got a flower emoji. Damn, he was charming.
One final text back to him with a smiley face and I put him on mute. I needed to concentrate on the pictures. Most of the photos showed the body and its immediate environs, but there were photos of the dresser, the nightstand, bookshelf, closet. They all showed a normal teen girl’s bedroom. Some of the angles could be considered arty if hung on a gallery’s walls … and weren’t showing a corpse. Who knew? That might make them even more arty.
I gathered the photos that showed the bottle of acetone on the dresser. It had been used to douse the carpet and bed clothes as an accelerant for the fire. The cap was found on the floor by the front of the dresser. No prints found on either, not even the victims, so they both had been wiped. No lighter or matches were found; the killer must have taken them with him. But left the acetone.
I suddenly wanted to see Aja’s room back at her house. She was only two years younger than this victim. Would they have similar items? Even if they didn’t, it would have the same feel. A smart young woman, college important to both. I could get into the victim’s headspace.
I picked my phone up and texted Jan to meet me at Aja’s house. I had gotten an email from the locksmith earlier in the day that the locks had been cleaned out. The attached bill had another set of digits on the left side of the decimal high enough to make Snoop Dogg vow to give up the chronic. I reminded myself that Aja’s negligent parents were paying the bill and that made me feel warm and cozy.
Jan replied to my text asking if I wanted Aja to come with us.
I pondered it for a minute and replied that I did. She could help me see things more clearly. I stuffed my feet into shoes, gathered up my file minus the photos, and grabbed a jacket. It was a quick drive to Aja’s house even taking a slight detour to wind my way through the streets closest to the route I assumed Damian took through the woods.
I was in the driveway a good ten minutes before Jan arrived with Aja, so I made notes on what I wanted to look for. It was more a feeling and less a cataloging. Just getting the lay of the land I hadn’t lived in or visited much.
Jan’s headlights lit up the rearview mirror as she pulled in behind me. It was much lighter out, still late afternoon, but the gray gloomy weather we’d been having in the late winter kept it feeling almost timeless all day long. I’d begun to rely on my stomach to tell me the time of day and it was not a reliable indicator. Especially when I ate disproportionate amounts of food at one meal and none at the others.
Jan and Aja seemed surprised I was sitting in the truck wai
ting for them. I handed Aja the keys.
“It’s your house.”
She gave me a tentative smile. I knew she was nervous about what she was going to find. I felt confident that the house was in the same condition we’d left it. The locks were high quality and damn near unpickable even by the experts. It was why I had splashed out the extra cash on them. That and it wasn’t my money. What did I care how much they cost? They were higher end than the ones we had at our place but we also had less expensive items to destroy or take and multiple reasons why a burglar would think twice about targeting our house.
Aja led us into the house, her shoulders tense. She swiveled her head to take in the foyer. Jan did the same thing, her hand hovering over her holster. Aw, she liked Aja too.
“Everything look cool?”
Aja nodded, her body posture relaxing. She smiled. “Yeah, it looks fine.”
I remembered that her car had fared about as well as mine had the last time we were here together.
“Listen, about your car—”
“He did that at school. That’s why I haven’t been driving it.”
“Oh.”
I really had no other response. It was a baller move. It’s not like the parking lots were ghost towns during the school day. They had a school resource officer and teachers that came and went. Buses flowed in and out of the lot at all hours for field trips and to make the circuits of the middle and elementary schools. Heck, kids came and went for appointments and I knew seniors could arrive late or leave early if their first or last class wasn’t needed for graduation credit.
“So, um, why did you want to come?” She stood fidgeting with the keys and rolling out her ankle like she had the first night I met her. Christ, it hadn’t even been a week.
“I was hoping you could help us with a case we’re working.” Jan frowned and I made the tiniest wait motion with my hands. “I need to see a teenage girl’s bedroom.”