by Cassia Leo
Due to the hemorrhaging, Laurel would be put under general anesthesia instead of the usual spinal block used for C-sections. Maisie made it clear this meant I would be the first person to hold our baby, not Laurel. I knew this would make Laurel sad, when she woke and I had to tell her what happened. But I wasn’t prepared for how I would feel about it.
I held Laurel’s hand through the entire surgery, stroking and kissing the back of her hand and murmuring words of encouragement as if she were awake. When our son was pulled from her womb, his blue skin covered in blood, I stopped breathing. Mere seconds passed before he took his first wailing breath of life, but it felt like an eternity.
As the nurses cleaned him up, I kept a firm grasp on Laurel’s hand while I whispered in her ear, narrating what was happening. I hoped somewhere in her subconscious mind, she was listening, and maybe someday she could piece together this moment.
Maisie smiled as she approached me with the bundle wrapped in a striped baby blanket. As I took my son in my arms for the first time, I was overwhelmed by a wave of emotion so powerful, it should have knocked me out of my chair.
Tears streamed down my cheeks as I looked down at his puffy, pink face. “This is my boy,” I said with a chuckle. His tiny body moved in my arms and my chest filled with sheer wonder and joy. I shook my head, unable to believe I’d made something so pure and so real. “This is our son.” I put my finger next to his tiny hand and my heart nearly burst when he grabbed on. I kissed his fingers the way I’d kissed Laurel’s hand earlier and his eyelids fluttered. “Laurel, baby, I wish you could see this.” I looked up at Maisie. “Doesn’t he need to be breastfed or something?” I asked.
She smiled. “They will bring her out of anesthesia in a few minutes, once she’s stitched up. For now, he needs to be held by his papa.”
The words echoed in my mind. His papa.
My face screwed up as I was overcome with emotion. The fear and doubt I’d felt about becoming a father seemed like a distant memory. I’d never been so filled with absolute joy in all my life.
I was a father. I was papa.
Present day
I had let my jealousy and rage distract me from what was truly important. I’d driven Laurel away twice, at times when my pixie needed me most. I knew Laurel didn’t owe me a third chance, which was why I was going to earn my way back into her arms. And there were only two ways to do that.
One way was to catch the bastard who stole our happiness. The other way might prove more difficult. It would involve closing my case files and admitting my need for justice was tearing my marriage apart. But I couldn’t do that, not until I gave my quest for justice one final effort. If I couldn’t get justice for my boy by the time Laurel turned thirty next month, I would pack away my case files and do whatever it took to get her back.
I handed my suitcase to the guy wearing the fluorescent safety vest, then I climbed the steps of the private charter plane at exactly eleven a.m. Immediately, I slid my cell phone out of the interior pocket of my sport coat and called my assistant, Jade Insley.
“Good morning,” she answered cheerily.
“Jade, I need you to forward all my calls, even the ones to my cell, to your desk phone. I’m out of town and I don’t know when I’ll be back.”
“Absolutely,” she replied. “What should I tell the partners?”
“Tell them I’m visiting family. I’ll check in occasionally for messages.”
I ended the call and immediately removed the SIM card from my phone, tossing the tiny chip over the side of the staircase before I stepped inside the plane. I gave the attendant my drink order — club soda with lime — then I tucked my cell into my coat. Sliding the burner phone out of the front pocket of my slacks, I sat down in the plush leather seat. I turned the phone on and shot off a text.
Me:
Plane taking off. Should land in less than two hours. We still on for three p.m.?
Sean:
I’ll be there with bells on.
I pulled my rental car into a space in front of a two-story office building clad in weathered cedar shingles. The dark tinted windows and lack of signage made it look like a place one would go to get illegal plastic surgery. Other than my rented Chevy Tahoe, the only other cars in the lot were a beat-up Cadillac Eldorado and a pristine ’80s-era cherry-red Porsche.
When I stepped into the lobby, I was not surprised to find a directory missing a third of its letters. But I was still able to determine that “SEA D GHE TY PI 2 1” meant Sean Dougherty, Private Investigator was in suite 201 or 211. That narrowed my options down significantly.
I opted not to take my chances on the wood-paneled elevator and took the stairs up to the second floor. The smell of body odor and desperation engulfed me as I walked down the hallway. The first door I saw was 201 and I quickly reached for the doorknob, eager to escape the smell in the corridor, but the knob didn’t turn. I rapped on the steel door a few times, certain no one would hear me. I was surprised when my knocking was met with a loud grunt from within.
I immediately lifted the right side of my sport coat, my hand hovering over the gun holstered on my hip as I waited for the door to open.
“Who is it?” a gruff voice called from the other side.
“Jack Stratton. We have an appointment.”
The door opened slowly and we both smiled when we realized we both had our hands poised over our sidearms.
I slowly moved my hand away from my weapon and held it up in front of me. “All good.”
The man lowered his hand and pushed the door wide open. “Good to meet you, Jack,” he said, holding out his hand. “I’m Sean.”
We shook, and I was not at all surprised to find his calloused hand had a killer grip. “It’s really good to meet you,” I replied as I stepped inside suite 201.
My shoulders relaxed instantly when I realized Sean’s office was actually quite clean and modern and smelled like coffee. Not a hint of despair. Sean was a sturdy man in his early fifties, with thick salt-and-pepper hair and muscled limbs clothed in a crisp button-up and slacks. Not at all what I expected from a gritty private investigator who worked in the ninth circle of office park hell.
“The exterior throws people off. Only the people who are serious make it past the front door,” he said as if he were reading my thoughts. “Have a seat.” He continued speaking as I took a seat across the glass desk. “Hood River PD approved my request to see the file this morning, and I was able to go through most of it before you got here. We’re both obviously most interested in this memo they received from Boise PD. Have you spoken with Detective Robinson yet?”
I shook my head. “She couldn’t say much over the phone. I have a meeting scheduled with her tomorrow. She didn’t seem very optimistic this would lead anywhere. She hasn’t had a whole lot of luck with sealed adoption records. But I’m working on a piece of software to cross-reference birth records and the NCIC persons files for individuals in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. I should have the code finalized and ready to run in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, I wanted to get you on the case to see if we can track down that adoption decree. I mean, I don’t even have the guy’s name. I’m flying blind.”
NCIC stood for National Crime Information Center, the database shared between the FBI and federal, state, local, and tribal criminal justice users to cooperate on investigations and policies.
Sean leaned back in his desk chair and cocked an eyebrow. “So, what put you onto this lead anyway? This is a pretty serious accusation.”
I shook my head as I stared at the manila folder on his desk. “Just a hunch, I guess. I always felt like there was more to Beth than any of us knew.”
“And Beth is your wife’s mother, right?”
I nodded. “Don’t get me wrong, Beth was a great mom and I couldn’t have asked for a better grandmother for my son. She… She gave her life trying to protect my boy. I hold no ill will toward her. But there was always something about her I couldn’t quite put my finger on.<
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“I used to chalk it up to the same mysterious quality Laurel has. A strange, otherworldly kind of beauty and wit. But with Laurel’s mom, there were other signs I didn’t know the real Beth.”
“Like what?”
“Just general secretiveness when it came to what caused her divorce from Laurel’s father and stuff like that. It wasn’t until someone in our Facebook group passed on the tip to Boise PD about Mike O’Toole that Detective Robinson decided to do a little digging into Beth’s past.”
“So, who’s Mike O’Toole?”
I waved off the question. “A dead lead, but it did get Robinson asking questions and that’s why I’m here. The PI I spoke to in Portland told me it could take years to win a battle to unseal adoption records. She said my best bet, if the suspect is living here in Idaho, would be to try to find someone who could track him down here. So here I am, hoping like hell you can help me find the piece of shit who killed my son, because… I’m on the verge of losing everything.”
Sean is silent for a long while as he stares at the glass desktop, and when he finally looks up, his square face is fixed with a tight smile. “Well, you were honest with me, so I guess it’s my turn for a little show-and-tell.” He reaches behind him, opens the top drawer of a two-drawer file cabinet, and pulls out a silver picture frame. “This is my Rosie,” he says, placing the picture on top of his desk so I could see the photo of a teenage girl with wavy blonde hair and a beaming smile. “Rose hated when I called her Rosie,” he said, staring at the picture with a wistful look in his steel-gray eyes.
“She’s beautiful,” I said, stopping myself before I could say she reminded me a bit of Laurel.
“Rose was seventeen when she went to an ice skating rink with some friends. Same as she’d done every winter since she was eight years old. But this time, she went outside to have a smoke. A nasty habit. I kept grounding her to try to get her to stop, but she just wouldn’t listen. She was too pigheaded.” He finally looked up and met my gaze. “That was the last we saw of her until her body was discovered two months later, in a creek forty miles away.”
I clenched my jaw as I imagined how I would have felt if I’d had seventeen years with Junior before he was murdered. Or if, God forbid, it had been Laurel who had been taken away from me. I wouldn’t want to live in a world without Laurel.
“That was a knockout punch. I was down for the count. No coming back from that, I thought,” Sean continued. “So, I doubled down on how fast I could wreck my life. I was a financial crimes detective at the time, but I began sleeping in my office, poring over the case files day and night. I became obsessed.”
I lowered my gaze as his words shamed me. All the nights I’d spent sleeping on the couch in my home office instead of in the bedroom with Laurel were mirrored in Sean’s story. And somehow, I didn’t think his story had a happy ending.
“Did you find out who did it?”
Sean smiled as he shook his head. “Nope. I lost my job. Lost my marriage. Lost my house. That bastard took my daughter from me, but I willingly gave him everything else. You understand?”
I nodded in silence. For the first time in my life, I couldn’t think of a single cynical thing to say. I was only in this office because it was my last resort. I couldn’t come back to Laurel empty-handed. I’d given her every material thing she could ever want. I gave her shelter and security. I gave her my love. But I hadn’t given her my full attention.
Unfortunately, I knew myself too well to know I would not be able to focus on my marriage and work until I was certain I’d done everything I could for Junior. And, yes, even for Beth. She may have had her secrets, but I meant it when I said Junior could not have asked for a better grandmother. She deserved justice as much as my boy did.
Sean Dougherty and the software program I was working on, which I had dubbed PNW Checkmate, were my last hope. If the software helped us find Junior’s killer, I would expand the software to include all fifty states and territories. For now, I had to focus on this area, and specifically Boise. If Ava Robinson’s suspicions were correct that Beth and Junior’s murders were not random, this was surely the missing piece of the puzzle we needed to help us crack this case. Laurel and I might finally be able to turn the page on this gruesome chapter of our lives.
Sean and I chatted for more than two hours. I filled in any holes in the case file he’d received from the Hood River Police Department. I laid out my suspicions about Beth’s past, information I’d gleaned through conversations with Beth and Laurel over the years. The most interesting tidbit being the time Laurel told me her mother had left her father for a few months when she was about five years old. It wasn’t definitive evidence, but it was one brushstroke in a colorful picture of a woman who lived her life with as much verve as the flowers she so carefully nurtured.
“Whatever you do, do not—I repeat, do not attempt to approach any potential suspects or interviewees on your own. You hear me?” He glared at me with his thick eyebrows raised, awaiting my agreement.
“You have my word,” I replied, probably not as definitively as I should have.
“I’m serious, Jack. Don’t get yourself killed or arrested for this shit. It’s not worth it. Tell me you understand.”
I nodded. “I understand,” I said with a bit more vigor.
He eyed me warily. “I’ll handle all interviews. You’ve got too much at stake. Too many emotions that pose a threat here. And I’m the experienced interrogator. So this is not a request. This is an order. You hear me?”
I looked him dead in the eye. “Loud and clear.”
Chapter 6
Laurel
Our wedding album was probably the last thing I should have wanted to bring with me. Especially since I had to open one of the boxes in the spare bedroom to get it; the boxes that were mostly filled with Junior’s baby clothes and toys; the boxes that still erupted with the powdery scent of my beautiful boy every time they were opened. But the wedding album was the first thing I collected as I packed my suitcase last week.
Part of me feared Jack would destroy the wedding album in an impulsive fit of rage. A larger part of me knew I would need it over the coming weeks and months. I didn’t need it so I could spend my days looking through our wedding photos, reminiscing and wallowing in misery. I needed the wedding album to remind me what true happiness looked like.
Because the kind of happiness that came in a glass bottle was darkly alluring at times like these.
As the tinny speaker on my cellphone played “Saturn” by Sleeping At Last on repeat, I carried my glass of pinot grigio to the living room and plunked myself down on the sofa. Giggling as a splash of wine landed on the back of my hand, I quickly leaned forward and set my glass down on the coffee table. Then, I licked the sweetly crisp liquid off my skin.
Snatching the wedding album with the silver-plated cover off the table, I leaned back again, slouching drunkenly as I laid the album in my lap. I opened it to the first page and nearly vomited when I saw the first photo.
The picture was taken during the wedding reception. The sun was setting behind Mount Hood, which was off in the distance. The photographer had asked me to run toward the sunset, so he could get a shot of my wedding dress billowing out behind me as I looked back at the camera over my shoulder. But Jack got the idea that it would look much better if he were chasing me toward the sunset. Only problem was, he didn’t tell me he was going to chase me.
As I ran barefoot across the grass, which was warmed by the summer sun, I glanced back over my shoulder and screamed when I saw Jack racing toward me. He caught up to me easily and the photographer took about a hundred pictures of us laughing hysterically as he came up behind me, lifted me off the ground, and twirled me around like we were in a damn perfume commercial.
I turned to the next page in the album and now the photos started at the beginning of the day and went chronologically. The first picture was my mother crying as she watched my hairstylist doing my hair. I had asked the stylist to
create an updo that would come undone by simply tugging on a ribbon. I didn’t want a ton of hairspray and hair pins holding everything together. I had a very specific fantasy of my wedding night in mind, where I pulled the ribbon out of my hair and it tumbled seductively over my shoulders. The whole day, I worried that when the time came, the ribbon would get stuck and totally ruin the mood.
What I wouldn’t give to have those kinds of worries now.
I stared at my mother’s image in the photo and began mentally bargaining with the universe.
If I close my eyes for five seconds, when I open them my mom will be standing in front of me.
If I close the wedding album and don’t look at it for a week, my mom will walk through that front door.
If I tear this wedding album to shreds, then none of it will have happened, and my mother will still be alive.
I slammed the album shut and let it fall onto the wood floor as I buried my numb face in my hands. My sobs were guttural, wretched pleas to God and the universe for mercy.
Please, I begged, I’ll do anything. Just let my mom walk through that door. Please.
The sound of the latch clicking made my stomach clench as I held my breath. Every muscle in my body hummed with nervous energy as I watched the front door swing open. I let out a loud, miserable groan of disappointment as Dylan stepped over the threshold.
He appeared almost frightened by the mess he’d found. “What is going on in here?” he said, glancing at the two wine bottles on the coffee table, one empty and one half-empty. “Laurel, are you okay?”
I shook my head as I curled up in a ball in the corner of the sofa, trying to make myself as small on the outside as I felt inside.
“Sweet baby Jesus,” he said striding toward me and taking a seat on the cushion next to me. “You look like you’ve either had too much wine or not enough. But judging by those two bottles there, I’m guessing too much. Is that…?” He gasped as he reached for the wedding album I’d dropped on the floor, carefully closing it as he set it down on the table. “I told you to stop looking at this thing. Laurel, you need to stop torturing yourself. Have you eaten?”