Shadow Ridge

by M. E. Browning

  “Bet they’d be even happier if we got it down for them,” Jo said.

  Squint nodded in solemn agreement. “The goal of securing a crime scene is to ensure the integrity of any evidence contained therein.”

  “What if a squirrel decided to use it as a storage container?”

  “It’s our duty to make sure that doesn’t happen. But for the report, I’d suggest you use the deteriorating weather for your justification.”

  “You always did know best.”

  Jo jogged back to her car and retrieved her camera case from the trunk. She was poaching, but she wouldn’t cut any corners. It also meant she’d be on the subpoena list if the case ever went to court. If her suspicion about this being one interconnected case was correct, she’d be at the top of the list anyway.

  When she was through taking ground photographs, she held the camera out to Squint. “You’re taller.”

  “I’ve also got seniority.”

  Jo blinked first. “Fine.” She slung the camera strap around her neck and tucked a paper evidence bag under her jacket. Scrutinizing the snow and the tree, she chose her path. “I’m going to need a boost.”

  Squint followed in her footsteps, then squatted with his back against the pine. “Watch the hat.”

  Jo grabbed his shoulder, stepped on his thigh, and then wrapped her hand around the lowest branch. The camera swung forward and narrowly missed his face. “For the record, that wouldn’t have happened if you’d been climbing.” Stepping onto his shoulder for stability, she readjusted her grip, then walked her feet up the trunk until she could hook her leg over the branch. From there, it was a matter of reach and pull until she was on the proper branch.

  “This used to be a lot easier,” she called down.

  “I can call the fire department if you’d like. Get a ladder.”

  She brushed a dusting of snow from the needles over her partner. “I’d rather fall, thank you.”

  Belly first, she inched along the branch, weaving through the snow-laden clusters of smaller branches all around her and brushing springy needles out of her face. Closer, she saw the metal wasn’t a tin cup but rather a measuring cup—the type a baker used when working with dry ingredients. A couple of shutter snaps later and she tucked the camera back under her arm. Balancing herself, she pulled on a pair of gloves. She pinched the silver cup by the bottom and rim, careful not to smudge the most likely areas for prints, and plucked it from its perch. The narrow handle was engraved with 1/3 C near the end.

  Her thighs clamped tight against the branch, she sat up. Wet snow seeped through the denim and numbed her legs as she caterpillared backward until her butt hit the trunk.

  “It smells fishy,” she said.

  “That’s brake fluid.”

  “Good to know this wasn’t just an opportunity to demonstrate my tree-climbing prowess.”

  Squint slapped his hat against his thigh to knock off the snowflakes Jo had dislodged. “I’m not convinced you’ve demonstrated that.”

  Braced, she shook out the evidence bag and deposited the cup inside. She’d label and seal it later. For now, she pressed it against her chest and zipped her jacket over the bag. It took twice as long to get down as it had to climb up the pine.

  Finally, she landed next to Squint. “My caseload just got a whole lot more complicated.”

  29

  El Tecolote sold the best homemade tamales north of the border, and every year at Christmas, Jo bought a few dozen to throw in her freezer. She was lucky if they lasted until New Year’s. The only remaining evidence of the two she’d brought back to the station was the corn husk wrappers and a bit of string.

  Squint pushed aside his enchiladas and lowered his fork.

  “You going to finish that?” she asked.

  “I’m pacing myself.”

  She eyed the grease-spotted bag beside his plate. “What about your sopapilla?”

  He tossed her the bag. She split the fried pastry in half, opened the condiment packet of honey with her teeth, and slathered the golden goo inside the two halves. A couple of indelicate bites later, she leaned back in her chair with a contented sigh.

  Squint watched her eat with bemusement. “I swear you have a reticulated jaw.”

  Jo licked the last of the honey from her fingers. “I can think now.”

  They’d left the resort as the sunlight dimmed and the temperature plunged. She’d always felt more confident with a plan, and the ride back from the resort had given her time to think.

  Ask anyone how long a cop had to solve a murder, and the common answer was forty-eight hours. But the clock didn’t stop. It never stopped. It just meant investigators transitioned from a lengthy list of in-progress tasks to a more measured review of what they’d already done. From there they devised a new game plan.

  Meanwhile, life went on. New cases piled up; old cases didn’t go away. Priorities shifted.

  Crime hadn’t stopped in Echo Valley during the past week. Normally, new cases were split between the two detectives, but Squint had been shouldering the majority of the incoming cases while she worked her current cluster.

  Ronny’s death restarted the clock.

  “Someone went to a great deal of trouble to make Ronny’s death look like an accident,” she said.

  “Quinn?”

  Most people lived their whole life without calling the police to report a dead person. Quinn had reported two deaths in the last week. “Maybe. She was at the resort. She didn’t like Ronny. He didn’t like her. She’d even popped off about him to Alice Walsenberg.”

  “Not normally the thing you’d do if you were plotting to kill the guy.” He polished off the last of his enchiladas and pulled another sopapilla from the to-go bag.

  “You were holding out on me.”

  “Not my first rodeo.” The honey package looked tiny in his oversized paws. “How do you think it ties in with Horton?”

  “I think the game is somehow the epicenter. Think about it. First Derek Walsenberg kills himself. Then a year to the day later, Tye does the same thing. Quinn is getting death threats, and someone tampers with Ronny’s brakes.”

  “Did they mean to kill him or scare him?”

  She shook her head. “Who knows. The point is, the game’s been trouble from the get-go. Professor Lucas stole a copy and tried to profit from it without Tye’s knowledge. There’s big money in gaming. Maybe Lucas wants another run at selling it and thinks he’s got to knock off anyone who knows who really designed it.”

  “You think I missed something on the Walsenberg suicide?”

  Squint was the most conscientious officer she knew. “No.” She cradled her head in her hands and looked out through her fingers. “I don’t know. Maybe?”

  He placed his plate in the trash can and wiped his hands with a napkin. “There was no sign of forced entry. Nothing suspicious.”

  “Why’d he kill himself?”

  “The stress of not being able to live up to the Walsenberg name? His grades had dropped. His mother worried he’d spent too much time playing video games and not enough time studying until she found out he’d decided to pursue the digital arts program up on the hill. Then she considered it research.”

  “Quinn said Derek was in love with Tye.”

  He crumpled the napkin. “Did his parents know?”

  “Quinn wasn’t sure, but she said Tye broke it off.”

  “Maybe that’s why he suicided.”

  God, she was tired. Every time she thought she had something, it circled back to supporting the suicide theory. “I’m going to call it a night. I can’t think straight anymore.” She stared at the window. The light in the office bounced against the night, and all she saw was a washed-out reflection of herself.

  Squint shut down his computer. “It was a good call on Ronny’s truck.”

  “Do you ever wonder if it would be easier to look the other way? I mean, it’s bad enough that the Bucks lost their son. Would it have been kinder to let them think it really
was an accident instead of turning it into a murder investigation?”

  He slung his coat over his arm. “You’ve got good instincts, Jo.”

  “Sounds like there’s a but coming my way.”

  “Get some sleep.”

  She lifted the phone receiver. “I’m just going to make a quick call.”

  He gathered his hat. “If you find yourself needing more sustenance, there’s one more sopapilla in the bag.”

  She smiled. “I know where your licorice stash is too.”

  He left and she replaced the phone. Only the whir of her computer tower and the sound of the wind buffeting the building intruded on the silence. She continued to stare at her reflection. Occasionally a gust would hit the window and make the reflection shiver. Squint was right. She really should get some sleep. Her day had started too early and she’d been working ever since.

  A ping on her computer alerted her to an email, and she opened it. The resort had sent her the surveillance footage of Walsenberg in front of Quinn’s room. She hit play. From the moment he entered the hallway, the encounter lasted a whopping minute and forty-seven seconds.

  In the beginning, it looked as if the DA had second thoughts about trying his key card, but then he moved forward. Ran the card. Once. Twice. A quick knock. He tried peeking through the peephole, then stumbled back as if startled. He said something at the door. A complete sentence. Another string of words. Then he mouthed what looked like Quinn’s name. More words. A final slump of defeat, and he left in the direction of the elevators.

  Jo played it again. Whispered the name Quinn in time with the DA. Her lips pursed and relaxed exactly like his. She scribbled some notes she could barely read.

  She should go home.

  Instead she picked up the phone and dialed the number she’d jotted onto a sticky note earlier. “Records, please.”

  * * *

  The San Francisco Police Department was a twenty-four-hour department. Echo Valley had police available around the clock, but an agency the size of San Francisco had twenty-four-hour clerical support as well. John Q. Citizen might not be able to walk into one of their ten stations on a Saturday night and get a police report, but an officer from another jurisdiction could call in and talk to a night-shift records clerk.

  But that didn’t mean it would be easy.

  “No such record exists.”

  Code for a juvenile record that’s either sealed or expunged.

  Jo decided to press her luck. “And if such a record did exist?”

  “Theoretically speaking, maybe a drug arrest or four. Maybe heroin.” The three states between them failed to blunt the surliness in the woman’s voice. “Are you looking at her as a suspect?”

  “Victim.”

  “Well, that’s too bad.”

  Which wasn’t at all the response Jo had expected. “You seem to have some personal knowledge of Quinn Kirkwood.”

  “Her mother was a sergeant with us. Killed in the line of duty.”

  A fuzzy news report snapped into focus. “Isabella Kirkwood was Quinn’s mother?” Maybe it was because there weren’t as many women in law enforcement, or maybe it was because she shared the same gender as the fallen officer, but when a female officer was killed in the line of duty, Jo remembered—even from four or five years back.

  “Was.” Background noise on the other end of the line made it sound as if Jo were talking to someone in a call center. “Quinn’s dealer shot Izzy when she tried to drag her daughter out of his flophouse. Even knowing her mom was on her deathbed, the ingrate wouldn’t give up the bastard. We all figured she’d be dead by now.”

  “No, but someone’s threatening her.”

  “I’m shocked.”

  “Did Sergeant Kirkwood have any other children?”

  “A daughter, Celia. She’s an officer assigned to the Tenderloin Station. Doing a good job filling her mom’s boots too.”

  Jo wasn’t sure what surprised her most: that Quinn’s sister was an officer, or that there was a station called Tenderloin.

  “Do you have the phone number for the station?”

  The records clerk rattled off a string of numbers. “Don’t think it’s going to do you any good. Last I heard, she’d washed her hands of her baby sister.”

  Jo asked for the woman’s name and ID number.

  “Remember what I told you,” she said.

  “No such records exist,” Jo replied.

  “That’s right, Detective. You stay safe out there, hear?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”

  Jo reached for Squint’s sopapilla. No sense letting it go to waste. It would be stale by the time he returned to the office. She sighed. If only it weren’t so easy to rationalize everything.

  She picked up the phone and punched the speed dial.

  “Hey, want some company?”

  30

  The gaming console felt like an extension of Quinn’s hands. It translated her every thought. Powerful. Nimble. She made her character dance. Fly. Do all the things she couldn’t do herself. A new landscape. Barren this time. Arid. Thank God it wasn’t snowy. She paused at the edge of the screen. She’d never entered this level before. There was no place to hide. Her woodland glamour did nothing to camouflage her against the dusty yellows and sun-bleached browns.

  Fuck it. “Ready or not, here I come.”

  Her cell phone buzzed. She glanced at the call screen. Unknown number. Local.

  “I’m busy.”

  A slavering beast bounded toward her on all fours. Teeth suggested predator. But looks could be deceiving. Attack or greet?

  The phone rang again. A different number. Another unknown.

  “Still busy.”

  She held out her hand in greeting but readied her staff. A gal could never be too safe. An ebony raven croaked from the uppermost branch of a lone skeletal tree, and a disturbance by the trunk shimmered like heat waves, growing in intensity. A portal? She’d need a port-key. Could it be the hellhound bearing down on her, or was the creature the portal guardian sent to prevent her from crossing through?

  Lightning sparked with its every footfall. Magic sparked from the portal. Her laptop throbbed with color. Excitement.

  An email notification banner slid across the top corner of her laptop and then disappeared. Someone knocked on her door.

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

  The gaming console hit the worn couch cushion with enough force that it bounced. Ignoring caution, she kicked the dinette chair from under the knob and yanked open the door.

  Stu/Stan had his hand up as if to knock again. He took a half step back. “Whoa.”

  “What do you want?”

  He held up his open laptop. “I knew if I waited long enough, you’d go out with me. I just didn’t figure I’d have to pay. Well, I mean, I knew I’d have to buy beers or something. Anyway, here I am.”

  “You have five seconds to tell me what the hell you’re talking about.”

  He turned the screen toward her.

  A lingerie-clad Quinn stared back at her. She snatched the laptop from his hands. “Where did you find this?”

  “Colorado Party Girls.”

  She scrolled through the photo gallery. A picture of her rocking a Catholic schoolgirl outfit. Her in a thong and stockings biting her lip. One wearing only a fur cap, snow boots, and a smile. The profile details listed her name, phone, address, and school. “What the hell is Colorado Party Girls?”

  “What do you mean? It’s a hookup site.” He laughed, an ugly sound that fell somewhere between don’t be stupid and I’ve seen you naked. “Oh, damn. Don’t tell me this is revenge porn. Who’d you piss off? Oh wait. That could be anybody.”

  “It’s not revenge porn. These photos aren’t me.”

  His eyes traveled down her body, stopping at her crotch as if he could already picture himself between her legs. “Keep scrolling. I especially like the one with you and the redhead. She’s almost as hot as you.”

  Since being in E
cho Valley, she’d done her best to keep a low profile, but it might be worth getting arrested just to smack the smug look off his face. “They’re photoshopped.” Although it bothered her that she didn’t recognize what photos had been used as the source of her face.

  “The rape fantasy surprised me.”

  Her eyes flicked to the section titled Fetishes & Fantasies.

  “I had you pegged as more the dominatrix type,” he continued. “All bitchy and hot. I gotta tell you, the thought of you in a Catwoman suit with a whip makes for an instant boner.” He glanced down. “See?”

  The outline of his erection strained his pants.

  “Go away.”

  “So how about it?” He pulled a fabric wad from his pocket and let it unspool like a yo-yo until the necktie dangled from his hands. “Honest-to-God silk. Or at least high-quality polyester.”

  “Why are you still here?”

  He dipped his head at her hands. “Dude, you have my laptop.”

  She had an overwhelming urge to sling the laptop over the railing. Watch it go end over end until it hit the parking lot pavement and smash into a thousand pieces. But she risked the chance it would land in a snowdrift. Then she’d have to chuck him over the rail to make up for it.

  “By the way, the link is cross-posted on the college student forum, so I’d expect company if I were you.”

  “How did it get cross-posted?”

  He bumped his shoulders. “Maybe you shouldn’t park people’s cars in the gimp spot.”

  She shoved the laptop into his belly. “You’re such a dick.”

  He clutched the laptop across his chest as if using it as a shield. “Be nice to me and I’ll delete the post.”

  She slammed the door and leaned her forehead against the peeling paint. His laughter trailed behind him as he clomped down the stairs. The karma gods seriously needed to put some ice in his path.

  His words sunk in. Oh God. The student forum. The air in the room evaporated. She opened her mouth, unable to draw a breath. She placed her hands on either side of her face and pushed away from the door.