A Tracers Trilogy

by Laura Griffin

  “I have not.” She bent over Sophie’s hand and painted perfect white crescents at the ends of each nail. She actually did have a knack for this. Something to think about if she found herself out of a job someday soon.

  “Come on, Mia.”

  “What?”

  “You haven’t scratched the surface of everything that happened to you this weekend. But you know what? It’s okay, because I know you can’t talk about it.”

  Mia felt guilty. “I would if I could, but there’s this investigation—”

  “I understand. Which is one of the reasons I’m glad you’ve got Ric.”

  “I don’t have Ric. Not like that.”

  Sophie gave her a baleful look.

  “This isn’t going anywhere,” Mia said. “It’s just something that happened.”

  “Trust me, I know men. I mean, come on. Cliff diving? If it was half as good for him as it was for you, it’ll happen again.”

  Mia didn’t pick up until the fourth ring.

  “Are you home yet?” Ric asked her.

  “Almost. Why?”

  “Who’s driving you?”

  “Scott.”

  Ric gritted his teeth as he let that sink in. He had nothing on the guy, but he didn’t like his arrangement with Mia, even now that it was limited to carpooling.

  “Ric, what’s wrong?”

  “I’m running late. I’ll be there in a few hours, probably around nine.”

  “You don’t need to come. They’ve got plenty of people—”

  “I’m coming.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Where are you, anyway? It sounds like a carnival.”

  “I’m at a bowling alley.”

  She waited, no doubt wondering what he was doing at a bowling alley on a Tuesday night when he’d been so busy the last two weeks he’d hardly had time to sleep.

  “I’m with Ava,” he said. “I missed last weekend, so I’m trying to make it up to her.”

  “Oh.”

  Ric watched his daughter approach the line, her brow furrowed with concentration. The ball sailed off her hand, and she waited, waited, waited.

  “Strike!” She yelped and pumped her fist. Then she strutted up to him and poked a finger at him. “Take that!”

  “I’ve got to go,” he told Mia.

  “You don’t have to come.”

  “I’ll see you later.”

  He stuffed his phone into his pocket as a waitress stopped by their lane to drop off a tray of food.

  Ava sat down at the table and picked up a soda. “Oh my God, I’m starving.” She glanced up at him. “Who was on the phone?”

  Ric sat down across from her. “Nobody.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Just a friend.”

  One of her brows arched, and for a second, she was sixteen instead of twelve. “Male or female?”

  “What?”

  “Your friend. I’m guessing female, because you’ve got that look on your face.”

  “What look?”

  “The look you get when you don’t want to talk about something. It was a girl, wasn’t it? Dad, it’s so obvious. You might as well say it.”

  Ric chomped into his burger, stalling for time. He took a sip of soda. “Yes, it was a woman.”

  “I knew it.”

  He watched her, trying to read her reaction. She picked the bacon bits out of her chef salad and made a pile on the lid of the plastic bowl it had come in.

  He frowned. “I thought you said you were starving?”

  “These have, like, five grams of fat per serving.”

  “Why are you worried about fat grams? You’re too young to be dieting.” He shoved his basket of fries at her and got another eye roll.

  “Dad. You sound like Grandma.” She pushed the basket away. “She’s always forcing food on me. I’m going to end up like Tía María. And we were talking about you.”

  Ric sighed. “What about me?”

  Her brown eyes got serious now. “Are you, like, dating her?”

  “No.”

  She watched him closely as she slurped her Coke. Diet Coke, he remembered now. He needed to talk to Sandra.

  “Are you … you know?”

  A little warning sounded in his head. “What?”

  “You know. Does she spend the night with you and stuff?”

  “None of your business. Eat your dinner.”

  “I’m just asking. God. You never tell me anything.”

  “Gosh, not God. And we’re not having this conversation.”

  He picked up his soda and put it down again as Ava scowled at her food. The sparkling girl from five minutes ago had been replaced by a sullen teenager.

  Shit. He was doing this wrong. Again. He could never seem to get it right with her.

  He took a deep breath. “She’s someone I like. We’ve spent some time together. It’s nothing serious.”

  The scowl faded a little. She looked up at him from underneath long black eyelashes that had mascara on them. He still wasn’t used to her with makeup.

  “Is she the one from the summer?” Ava asked.

  “What?”

  “The woman. From the summer. You were going out with someone, and she called one night when you were taking me back to Mom’s, and you told me it was no one. Is it her?”

  He stared at her across the table. “How do you remember that?”

  She shrugged. “I pay attention. It’s not like you ever tell me stuff.”

  Ric leaned back in his chair and watched her pick at her salad. She looked so grown-up, and it seemed like a week ago, he was walking a loop through a tiny one-bedroom apartment, trying to get her to stop crying. She’d been a colicky baby, and Sandra had been getting by on practically no sleep—just an hour or two at a time—and whenever he was home, he tried to take the baby off her hands so she could rest.

  But of course, he wasn’t home much in those days, and his clumsy attempts to help weren’t nearly enough. They weren’t enough now, either. A weekend here. A holiday there. Dinner and bowling once in a while. Everything he’d read or heard about parenting said that consistency was important in a child’s life, and he’d tried to be there for Ava consistently, ever since the divorce. But no matter what he did, the job always got in the way. He had probably been a better father before he’d made detective, when he’d had regular hours. It was a depressing thought, because he hadn’t been much of a father then, either. He’d been twenty-four, practically a kid himself, struggling to support a wife and a baby and to keep his chief and every other uniform from finding out that he didn’t know his ass from first base. He’d been overwhelmed. And yet he’d gotten up and gone in each day, with the crazy idea in his head that it was all temporary, that if he’d hang in there and push through, he’d somehow, someday, know what the fuck he was doing.

  But here he was, eleven years later, feeling just as overwhelmed and just as clueless as he sat across from this girl who was beautiful and bright and moody and— strangest of all—his own flesh and blood.

  He pushed his food away and leaned forward on his elbows. He looked her in the eye. “You think I don’t tell you stuff?”

  “You don’t.”

  “Does that hurt your feelings?”

  She shrugged and looked away. For an instant, she was a kid again, not the almost-teen who terrified him.

  “I’m sorry, honey. I don’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

  “It’s okay. I’m used to it.”

  Well, shit. Was there a master list somewhere of crappy things kids could say to their parents?

  “I didn’t know you were curious about it.”

  She gave him one of her patented get-real looks. “Dad, of course I want to know if you’ve got a girlfriend or something. When Mom was dating Brian, she actually asked for my opinion before they got engaged. She wanted to make sure I was okay with it.”

  “No one’s getting engaged,” he said.

  “I’m just saying. If you did get engaged, could I at l
east meet her first?”

  “Of course,” he said, and the second the words were out, he wondered how in the hell they’d gotten onto this. He needed a new topic.

  But then Ava jumped up from the table, ending the conversation as abruptly as she’d begun it. “Come on, it’s your turn.” She grinned at him. “I’m not done beating you yet.”

  Ric pulled onto Sugarberry Lane and immediately spotted the surveillance vehicle. It was better than last night’s but not by much. Last night’s had been a cable-installation truck—inconspicuously parked on a residential street at eleven p.m. Tonight’s was a late-model RV parked in a driveway three doors down from Mia’s. The cover would have been slightly better if it hadn’t been so obvious that the driveway in question belonged to a vacant house.

  Ric circled the block, hoping he was generating at least a glimmer of interest from the agents who were supposed to be watching and taking down license plates. According to Rey, the feds felt confident that whoever was after Mia would likely case her house first before going after her. And because Ric’s pickup truck might have the effect of spooking their subject, he’d been instructed to park away from the house if he planned to visit.

  Ric pulled over at a park two blocks away. It was quiet, dark. No vagrants sleeping on benches or hookers selling it in cars parked around the soccer fields. Mia had bought into a nice neighborhood, and the yuppies and young families who paid taxes around there didn’t put up with any crap.

  Ric pulled out his cell phone and called Rey. After last night, he suspected someone might have an eye out for him.

  “How’s it going tonight?”

  “All quiet,” Rey reported. “I talked to Singh about half an hour ago.”

  “She in the vehicle?”

  “Yep. She’s making a point to Delmonico. Those two are competitive. She thinks he dropped the ball last night.”

  “He did.”

  “Which door are you going to?”

  “Back.”

  “I’ll give them the heads up. Is Mia expecting you? She’s got a twelve-gauge in there, just so you know.”

  “I know.”

  Ric ended the call and shoved his phone into his pocket before walking up the driveway of the house behind Mia’s. He’d scoped out the dog situation yesterday. There weren’t any, which made his life easier but also meant less warning if someone should decide to take a tour of her property. He jumped the fence, careful not to snag his jacket, and for a moment, he was back in high school, sneaking over to his girlfriend’s house after her parents had gone to sleep. He smiled at the memory.

  Mia’s bedroom light was on. Ric used a lock pick to let himself in through the back door, disabled the alarm, and then locked everything up again. He made plenty of noise in her kitchen so she wouldn’t be caught off guard.

  But then he remembered her in the bath last night, her full, pink-tipped breasts rising out of the water. He thought of all that glistening skin and decided that catching her by surprise again might be a good thing.

  The music coming from the bedroom lowered. “Ric?” she called.

  “In the kitchen. You need anything?”

  A pause.

  “A beer or anything?”

  “No. Thank you.”

  She was in polite mode again. That would make it easier to keep his head in the game but wouldn’t be nearly as entertaining. She was much more fun when she let herself flirt.

  He grabbed a beer from her fridge and checked the bag of tamales he’d left yesterday. She’d had a few for dinner, from the looks of it. Next time he saw his mom, he could honestly tell her that he’d shared them with a friend, which would make her happy.

  He walked through the living room and checked the blinds on the windows. No gaps. He noticed the card-board file box parked beside her front door. Jonah had dropped off the case files earlier on his way home from the station, and Ric planned to spend his night poring through everything. Somewhere in all of that paper-work, he was determined to find probable cause for a search warrant of Jeff Lane’s lake house.

  Jonah had told him he was wasting his time, but Ric wanted to look anyway. Deep down, he was an optimist. If he hadn’t been, he would have quit the job ages ago.

  Ric followed the soft tribal music down the hall to Mia’s bedroom. She was probably the only person he knew who listened to NPR at night.

  She sat cross-legged on her bed amid a sea of files and papers. Her hair was twisted in a knot at the top of her head, and it was damp. He’d just missed bathtime.

  He sighed and leaned against the doorframe. “Hi.”

  “Hi.” She glanced up. She had that distracted look he’d seen on her face in the lab before.

  “Work?”

  “Catching up on reports.” She dropped her pencil onto whatever she was reading and looked at him. “Sorry to pull you away from Ava.”

  “You didn’t. I don’t keep her out late on school nights.”

  She looked down. Cleared her throat. “On the phone earlier, you said you missed her last weekend.” There was something wary in her eyes. “It was your weekend to have her then?”

  “We trade off.”

  “I never realized.” She shook her head. “I feel bad for taking you away from that. You could have just told me.”

  Ric stepped into the room and looked around. He’d been in here before, briefly, just last night. But it seemed different with Mia in it. She had on one of those T-shirts she liked to wear with pajama pants. Thick woolen socks covered her feet. She’d known he was coming over, and he doubted it was an accident that she’d picked something completely unseductive to wear.

  “She spent Saturday at my mom’s,” he said. “They’re close, so it worked out all right.” Ric had picked up his daughter and returned her to Sandra’s place Sunday evening, right after dropping Mia off. Maybe if he’d told her where he was going, she wouldn’t have rushed over to Black’s place in such a hurry.

  He walked over to her dresser and rested his beer on a glossy magazine. Cottage Living. On the wall nearby were several patches of paint, all different shades of red.

  “Redecorating in here?”

  “Thinking about it.” She watched him from her bed. It was covered in a purple down comforter with lots of matching pillows. He’d never understood the thing with women and pillows.

  On the wall above the dresser, where most women would have a mirror, she’d hung a series of photographs—six different shots, all bright colors and patterns. He leaned closer for a better look. Several were closeups of butterflies. Others were too abstract to tell. There were some bright green netlooking things that could have been insect wings.

  “You take these?” He turned around, and she was reading her papers again.

  She glanced up. “It’s a hobby.”

  “Insect photography?” This surprised him. He’d always thought of her as a scientist, cool and clinical all the time. He hadn’t realized she had an artistic streak.

  She looked up again and seemed to realize that he was waiting for an answer.

  “When I was a kid, I wanted to be an entomologist. I didn’t know the word, but I knew I wanted to study bugs.”

  He leaned back against the dresser. “When’d you change your mind?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Middle school, I guess.”

  “Hit about twelve, suddenly took an interest in forensic science?”

  Her gaze narrowed.

  “I know about Amy,” he said, and she looked down at her papers. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  She wouldn’t look at him, wouldn’t answer.

  “Mia?”

  “Why would I tell you?” she asked, and for some reason, that ticked him off.

  “I don’t know, maybe because we’ve worked on about a dozen murder cases together? Maybe because I’m a homicide detective, and I’ve dealt with families like yours? Maybe because we’re friends?”

  Her eyes flashed up at him. “You don’t know anything about my family.
”

  “Actually, I do. Did some interesting reading while I was up in Fort Worth. One of the detectives on the Laura Thorne case had your sister’s picture in the file, as a matter of fact. He’d saved a news story because the case reminded him of Laura Thorne.”

  She was glaring now. He’d touched a nerve with this topic.

  “You were the one who pointed me to that case, Mia. And it wasn’t because of some ‘feeling’ you got. You remembered that girl because she reminded you of your sister.”

  “So what?”

  “So I’m just asking for some honesty, that’s all. Shit. I haul my ass all the way to Fort Worth to look at a cold case based on your supposedly objective professional opinion, come to find out you’re not objective at all. This is personal.”

  “Fine. It’s personal. My entire career choice is personal. Every time I set foot in the lab, it’s personal. What’s wrong with that?”

  “I just want you to admit it.”

  “Why? So you can accuse me of being emotional? Oh, wait, you already did that. So you could tell me I didn’t know what I was talking about, that I was just worked up about my sister? There is a link between Ashley and Laura. I didn’t imagine it.”

  Ric folded his arms over his chest as she got up from the bed.

  “And anyway, why is it always my job to tell you things? To open up to you? When have you ever told me anything?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like anything.” She stepped closer and swiped a curl out of her face. “You don’t ever share anything personal. You’re an island. We knew each other almost six months before I even knew you had a daughter and an ex-wife. You think I might have wanted to know that?”

  “Why would you want to know that?”

  “Because I want to know you! God, why do I have to spell it out?” She sank onto the bed and looked down at her feet, as if she was trying to collect herself.

  Ric stood watching her, wondering what he was supposed to say now. She wanted to know him, but he didn’t want a relationship. Or at least, he hadn’t. He didn’t know anymore. He didn’t know shit.

  He stepped closer and reached out to lift her chin so that he could see her face. Her blue eyes were filled with a mix of anger and hurt, and he remembered Ava looking at him much the same way. He was 0-for-2 tonight.