When It Rains: Accidental Roots 8

by Elle Keaton

  “It’s a bad idea. I’ve told you that; I’m not changing my mind.”

  Carsten flipped the covers back, sitting on the edge of the bed for a minute before standing. In the short hallway, he guessed the bathroom was the door between him and the living room. The house was small enough that it would either be the right room or a coat closet.

  It was the right choice. He also squeezed a little toothpaste onto a finger and used it to brush his teeth. When he finished, Carsten pulled the blanket back around himself and decided to see what was happening in the living room. Now that the migraine-flu had receded, he felt the pangs of hunger and weakness that came after an episode.

  Hernández had his back to Carsten, leaning on his elbows against the tiny breakfast counter, cell phone to his ear. The man had a great ass. Carsten didn’t need a vivid imagination; the slacks Hernández wore were cut to perfection, and to top it off, his dress shirt was also fitted, accentuating his narrow waist and well-proportioned shoulders. Too bad Carsten didn’t date cops and felt like death.

  He must have made some sort of noise (he hoped to god it wasn’t “Mmm”), because Hernández turned around. Carsten averted his eyes but felt color rise in his cheeks anyway.

  “I gotta go. Adiós.” Hernández set the phone down on the counter. “I was just going to come see if you wanted some soup.”

  Carsten wondered who he’d been talking to and what was a bad idea.

  His stomach rumbled. “Soup sounds good.”

  Hernández smiled, and Carsten lost whatever part of himself he’d managed, until that very moment, to hold back from developing a serious crush on the man. Hernández had a face that was stern and unforgiving … when he smiled it was like a sunbreak. Carsten had been attracted to it at the bar, and he was now. He shook his head at himself. Crush aside, Hernández was a cop. A Skagit cop, the worst kind.

  “Take a seat.” Beto motioned toward the couch. Carsten shuffled over and sat. Just those few minutes being upright tired him out. He took a moment to take in Hernández’s living space. The kitchen was tiny, and at some point the wall between the two rooms had been removed, opening up an area that otherwise would have been claustrophobic.

  The living room had a large picture window that looked out onto an unremarkable backyard, but the dog seemed to be enjoying it. He watched her romp and sniff around the shrubbery.

  “I’d tell you this was homemade, but my mamá taught me not to tell lies. It’s Campbell’s.” Hernández poured soup from a saucepan into a large mug before coming over to the couch and pressing it into his hands. “Got it? I think it’s easier to sip when you’ve been sick.”

  Carsten let his grip tighten on the mug, their fingers briefly touching before Hernández let go. “Thanks.”

  Leaning back against the couch cushions, Carsten sipped the hot soup to distract himself from the cop. He had to keep reminding himself Hernández was not a friend, couldn’t be a friend. And yet, Hernández had gone out of his way to check on Carsten and then brought him to his apartment to keep an eye on him.

  “What time is it? How long was I out?” Hernández didn’t have a clock Carsten could see.

  Hernández perched against one of two barstools. “It’s Friday.”

  “Friday?” He’d lost two days?

  “When did you think it was?”

  “Not Friday.”

  “Are your migraines always like that?”

  “No. I haven’t had one for a while actually.”

  “What brings them on?”

  “All the things: being too busy, stress … If I had the flu, maybe that added to it.”

  “You had something. You still look like shit.”

  “Thanks.” He’d avoided looking at himself in the bathroom mirror. He didn’t like to look at himself in general; looking like he’d only barely survived the flu wouldn’t make his appearance any more tolerable. He knew he needed a shower too—the whiff he’d gotten of himself made his nose wrinkle.

  “You passed out again after I got you here yesterday. I managed to get you to drink a little water and take some aspirin. Freya kept her eye on you when I had to leave in the afternoon and again this morning.”

  Carsten remembered the dog jumping up on the bed with him. He frowned. “Where’d you sleep?”

  “The couch. I sleep there plenty.” He pointed at himself. “Bachelor. I can sleep where I want.”

  “Why are you being so nice to me?” It was a reckless question to ask.

  Hernández cocked his head, obviously wondering why Carsten asked and considering his answer. “To be honest, I don’t know why. You haven’t been honest with me about who you are or what you’re up to. I shouldn’t be helping you at all. I should have taken you in for questioning.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “No. I want you to tell me on your own. I’d like to hear your story. What are you hiding, and what are you and Troy Bakker doing? He didn’t put himself in the hospital. Who did?”

  Dangerous ground. Carsten felt it shifting beneath his feet. To trust Hernández or not? His gut told him that Hernández was a good guy. Surely a creep wouldn’t sit at a bar talking with a stranger about places around the world he’d dreamed of visiting? He was taking care of Troy’s dog, for Christ’s sake. Of course, Carsten hadn’t known Troy had a dog, but that was beside the point.

  “Tell me why a guy like you is here in Skagit.”

  Hernández raised a dark eyebrow, skeptical. It was a long minute before he answered Carsten. “I needed a change.” His expression was … complicated. “Some personal stuff went down, and this position came available. I knew Chief Nguyen back in LA; she contacted me about it. I turned her down at first, but—” he shrugged “—I changed my mind. What about you?”

  Carsten felt his eyes widen. “What do you mean?”

  “Why are you in Skagit? It’s not exactly the hip locale for a talented photographer. Why not somewhere else with more opportunity?”

  Carsten’s brain stumbled on the part where Hernández said he was talented. He didn’t think of himself that way. Photography was one of the few things he was good at that didn’t need a sentence worth of acronyms to be paid for. His clients liked his work and told him so often enough, but he usually shrugged it off; compliments were hard to accept. But somehow Hernández saying it … god, he was getting lost in the weeds. For Troy’s sake, he had to pull himself together. He searched for the right words to keep Hernández talking while he thought about how to answer.

  Hernández’s cell phone chimed, saving Carsten from trying to think of a reply. He snatched it from the counter to check the screen. “Damn.” He grabbed his suit jacket from where it was hanging over the back of a chair. “I’ve got to go in, not sure how long I’ll be. Make yourself comfortable—there should be plenty to eat.”

  He opened a small closet and got out a raincoat and waterproof boots, putting on the coat before he opened the front door. The door had hardly been shut for a second when it opened again and Hernández stuck his head back in.

  “If I’m not back by seven, would you feed the dog? And don’t think about leaving. I have questions, and it’ll piss me off if I have to go looking for you. Besides, you’re probably still too sick to be on your own.”

  The front door shut, and the house settled into silence. Freya stood at one of the windows, her nose pushing the curtain aside so she could watch Hernández get in his car and drive off. Carsten knew how she felt.

  12

  Beto

  * * *

  Another day, another body. The Skagit River was revealing unpleasant secrets. Not the river’s secrets, somebody else’s.

  The fourth body in two weeks, if he included the toddler who’d fallen in and been swept away. With only a small coroner’s office in the county, SkPD contracted with medical doctors when they had to determine cause of death. Available doctors were in short supply. The bodies, apart from the toddler’s, were being considered suspicious deaths. No kidding, Beto thought, u
nless the people of Skagit were used to bodies floating downstream. Two of the bodies remained unidentified; the third turned out to be a fifteen-year-old runaway, Charity Mills, who’d been reported missing last summer by her aunt.

  She’d grown up in one of the smaller towns in the county. Her aunt described her life as difficult. When asked how Charity’s life had been difficult, the aunt only answered that she and her parents didn’t see eye to eye, so she’d come to live with her and disappeared not long after.

  There had to be more women out there somewhere, maybe—hopefully—alive. It wasn’t chance that had bodies floating down the river like so much trash. Fury burned in his veins; his hands actually shook—

  “I think we should take another drive up 20.” Soren’s voice broke into Beto’s grim thoughts. He took a deep breath and refocused on what they could do now.

  “Okay. What are we looking for? It’s not as if we could see anything the first time.”

  Beto and Soren were back at the station after spending most of the day walking the riverbank in Skagit looking for evidence. They were tired and muddy. Damn if he wasn’t going to have to replace another pair of shoes. They’d been trying to figure out where the bodies could have come from, if there was an obvious ingress spot. There wasn’t, and the damn rain washed any evidence away.

  “Well,” Soren replied, “we can’t drive up tonight, because it’s going to be dark in a little while and it’s supposed to storm again, but I think we should drive as close to the river as we can. Visually document who has property damage, then come back and look at county records. These girls had to have been somewhere before the rains started—a house, a barn, somewhere.”

  Beto nodded. He’d been thinking along those lines too. Most properties out in the county had several outbuildings on them: sheds, barns, boathouses. Maybe the rising river waters had caused one of them to collapse; maybe the waters had uncovered a grave. He shuddered, but much of the low-lying land in the county was, if not under a few inches of water, at the very least waterlogged. They hadn’t heard back yet from the coroner’s office.

  “Tomorrow.” This case was already taking too long. Two weeks since the first body had been fished out of the river; whoever was responsible had had plenty of time to get rid of any evidence that might have survived the weather.

  Soren nodded and went back to his case notes. Beto had respect for the kid; he worked hard and hadn’t been afraid to ask questions. Going out into the county would be dangerous. Nobody liked cops out there: not if they were from LA, and not if they were local.

  * * *

  He heard the door to Nguyen’s office open and looked up. She cocked her head in a “Get in here now” motion.

  Beto took the chair opposite Nguyen’s desk. The chief looked like she hadn’t slept in days. The case, the rain, the bodies were taking their toll on everyone.

  “What’s with the vic at St. Joe’s? Have we confirmed his identity?”

  “Not exactly.” Beto was sure but was reluctant to even whisper his name in the station. “That is, I know who he is, we just need him to wake up so we can question him.”

  She let out an indelicate grunt. “I should have listened to my father. I should have gone to medical school. All my siblings went to medical school. I could have been a doctor or a dentist. No, I had to be different. I wanted to change the world in a different way. I should have gone into fashion design.” Nguyen did always dress well; much like Beto, she believed in appearances.

  “I wanted to be a ballet dancer, yet here I am.”

  “You wanted to be a dancer?”

  “Oh yeah, my elementary school got funding to take all the poor kids to see the ballet—this was way before City Ballet was founded—and I came home wanting to take lessons and dance. My mamá about had a breakdown, but she tried. She saved up enough for me to take a few classes, but I didn’t fit in with the other dancers. I still love it, but I’m happy where I am.”

  Nguyen took her feet off the desk and sat up straight. “I can give you a few more days, maybe a week. After that, I’ll need more information about this person and why you believe he’s so important. Oh, and—”

  “Yeah?”

  “I appreciate the help.”

  Beto stood. “Save the praise for when we’ve got these creeps behind bars.”

  As he left Nguyen’s office, he shot off a quick text and was rewarded by the buzz of an answer. He needed to meet up with Gómez, but they had to be careful. If the wrong people saw them talking, even innocently, all they’d worked toward would be for nothing. Having to start over again would probably take years and countless more lives. Lives quite possibly no one would miss because they were throwaways already. Beings society saw as a waste, useless, whatever. The fury he’d felt earlier surged back.

  Jorgensen was still sitting at his desk when Beto emerged from Nguyen’s office. He had his ancient desktop turned on—Beto could hear the fan wheezing—and was focused on something on the screen.

  “You hungry?” Beto grabbed the car keys from where he’d tossed them on his desk.

  The younger man raised his eyebrows, grinning. “I’m always hungry.”

  * * *

  “A taco truck? I would’ve thought you’d be all snobby about Mexican food up here.”

  Beto set the emergency brake and pulled the keys from the ignition. “Don’t knock it, kid. I’ve done my research, and this one is the best in town. Look around, you see any white guys here except you? No. That means this place is good.”

  They stood next to each other in line. Once a woman barely out of her teens took their order at the window, Beto wandered into the attached covered area. Inside there were three picnic tables set up for patrons to eat at or to sit while they waited. The tables all had diners at them; Natalia Gómez sat at one. She ignored Beto’s entrance, continuing to eat her tacos. He’d texted earlier to tell her he’d be there with his new partner.

  “Not the guy you pushed out of a moving car?” she’d texted back.

  The rumor mill in this town worked 24/7.

  “It wasn’t moving.”

  Somehow that didn’t make what he’d done sound that much better.

  Beto popped the top off his Coke before walking over. “Can we share your table?”

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  Following his cue, Jorgensen slid onto the bench across from Beto, while he sat on the same side as Gómez. For a while they were quiet, watching Gómez wolf down her tacos while they waited for their order, then eating together once it came. The woman was tiny; Beto had no idea where she put everything she ate. Every time they met here, she acted like she hadn’t eaten in weeks, and yet she still weighed about one hundred pounds.

  Gómez chewed and swallowed before asking, “What’re you looking at?”

  “Just wondering where it all goes.”

  “Don’t food-shame me, asshole. I’m hungry, and I work twice as hard as you do.”

  Beto ignored that comment; it was possibly the truth. Gómez was a machine, always working, always on.

  The eating area cleared out, the other tables emptying as the last of the lunch crowd headed back to their jobs or whatever they were doing. Jorgensen had remained silent during their exchange, watching them with wide eyes while he finished off his sope.

  “Soren, this is Natalia Gómez.”

  Jorgensen slowly nodded before sticking his hand out over the table to shake Gómez’s.

  “I know who you are,” he said. “You work with—”

  “Yep, I thought you recognized me,” Gómez cut him off. Soren took the cue for what it was and didn’t say anything else.

  “I need you to do some digging. Please,” Beto said. “The victim at St. Joe’s, his name is Troy Bakker, and his roommate is Carsten Quinn. Quinn’s hiding something; I don’t know what, but I’m pretty sure it’s about Bakker. Either that or they’re more than roommates. I need the guard to stay on Bakker—I haven’t had a chance to ask Quinn about the two guys he recogniz
ed the other day.”

  Gómez popped the last of her tacos in her mouth, chewed, swallowed, and quickly licked her fingers. “Okay, I’ll look around. We’ve got your back. Don’t do anything stupid like draw attention to yourself by pushing your partner out of a car.”

  Jorgensen choked back a laugh. Beto gave him the stink eye. He quit smiling and sat forward. “I knew Troy Bakker growing up. I don’t know the other name, Carsten Quinn?”

  He had their attention; Beto nodded for him to continue. How stupid of him not to ask Soren about Bakker.

  “Troy’s about my age, maybe a little younger, but we were in the same neighborhood. Somebody in his family was a pastor—his dad, actually, now that I think about it—at one of those superconservative megachurches we have up here. Like that guy we heard on the radio.”

  “Yeah? What else?” Gómez asked.

  “I remember Troy being pretty wild. I’d always see him places around town, out front of the Stop-and-Go, hanging with the skater kids in the park during the summer. He was never in class. Once his dad stormed in and dragged him off, shouting that he was sending Troy to military school.”

  “Anything more?”

  “No. I kind of forgot about him, to be honest. I think there was some kind of hush-hush story about his dad once. I don’t remember what it was about, or if I ever really knew, but the whispers died down and Troy disappeared.”

  Beto turned to Gómez. “Anything on the hospital surveillance tapes?”

  “Bureaucracy, Beto. It’s taking a bit to pry the tapes out of them, but we’ll get there.”

  “Can’t Weir—” Evan Weir was the team’s part-time go-to guy when it came to all things internet and supposedly secure.

  She cut him off with a fierce, “No.”

  He tried to stare her down, but there were battles he was never going to win, and this was one of them.