Traces of Guilt

by Dee Henderson

  “That would make more sense than staying away all this time over something they didn’t need to worry about,” Ann agreed. “If they’re still alive, they let a lot of people they love and who love them remain worried and, finally, devastated thinking they’re dead. That doesn’t seem like either Susan or Scott.”

  “We only have the word of family that they haven’t been in touch. Who knows who might be lying to us,” Caleb said, laying that fact on the table.

  “True.” Gabriel turned to his father. “But can you really see Scott letting cops do the level of search for the family that occurred here? He’d know what happens if he just disappears. He had options for how they could have left. He could have announced a sabbatical, that they were taking Joe traveling for a few months. Sounds sudden, but he could say ‘Susan and I have been talking about it, and we’ve decided after the recent miscarriage we need that break now.’ So they go rather abruptly, then over the following weeks and months give excuses about finding the perfect new place and decide not to come back here. If they wanted to leave town, they could do it in a way that wouldn’t leave their extended family in the dark and the cops searching for them. Think about it just in practical terms. If you want to disappear for some reason, the last thing you want is your photos all over the Midwest with overlapping law-enforcement agencies tracking you down. Instead, you’d come up with a reason to leave, as tenuous as it was, and slowly cut ties—a phone number changed, the address is old, that kind of thing.”

  Evie could see Gabriel’s point. “You don’t make it so everyone’s urgently searching for you if your hope is to slip away,” she said. “So . . . they didn’t disappear on their own. And they’re not out there alive somewhere.”

  “I’m willing to entertain both those ideas,” Gabriel said, “if you can figure out how we look for them. Their being alive certainly is a direction we haven’t pursued yet. But realistically, no. I think it’s a lot less likely than that the family was murdered.”

  “Which brings us back to the possibility someone needed the money they’d accumulated,” Caleb suggested. “It’s at least a new suspect pool to consider, since we didn’t know about the money before.”

  “That’s true,” Ann said.

  Evie got up to stretch. Susan had been close to her mom, had left when she was sick, and she hadn’t returned for the funeral. Gabriel was right. It would take an awfully good reason for them to cut those ties so completely. “Maybe there’s a way we can prove they didn’t leave of their own choice,” Evie offered. “If they were raising cash, it’s likely Scott had secured in advance fake IDs for them. Who in this county or surrounding counties would he have gone to for that? We find the person he paid, we learn the names they would have been using. If we find those names were never used, we can rule out they left of their own choice.”

  Gabriel looked over with interest. “That’s smart thinking, Evie.” He then asked his father, “Who made good fake IDs in your day?”

  “I’ll have to think on it, but Robert Light comes to mind. He might be a place to start, or maybe Chesapeake Bob. They would have done the quality of work Scott would look for. If they didn’t make the IDs themselves, they would know others who could have. They’ll talk to me.”

  “Thanks, Caleb.” Evie picked up a marker, added the item to the work list.

  “All right, Evie,” Ann said, “you can eliminate that they left of their own accord if the IDs they acquired were never used. Or if they did go on their own, you’ll know what names they planned to travel under. Any other ideas floating out there?” Ann scanned the group.

  Gabriel shook his head. Caleb did as well. Evie felt like she was burned out just coming up with this one. “I’m fried.” She put down the marker. Ann and Paul needed to be heading to the airport. Caleb needed to get home. Gabriel too. For the fifth day of her working vacation, it wasn’t so bad an ending for the day.

  “I wish you luck with this tomorrow,” Ann said as she stood, gathered up her jacket and briefcase. “Paul and I will be back Friday evening. Rachel is coming down with us to stay the weekend with Grace.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Evie said. She could see a long Thursday and Friday ahead of her as she tried to put some details to what had been discussed tonight. If they could figure out what new names Scott had arranged to use, prove those names had never been used, it would confirm their murders, with the missing cash as a probable motive. If the names had been used, it would indicate the Florist family had left of their own accord, the money with them.

  Either way, it would be critically useful toward solving the case. Evie would gladly take it. She said good-night to Gabriel and Caleb, then headed out with Ann and Paul. The vacation house would be quiet tonight with just Evie there, but she was okay with that. She was ready to crash and get some much-needed sleep.

  TWELVE

  Evie Blackwell

  It was already Friday, and Evie didn’t look up from the report she was reading as a chair scraped across the floor and Gabriel sat down. He thankfully had stopped whistling that song fragment, though he still made sure she was aware he was coming through the door. “Eat something, Evie. You’ve been nose to the grindstone for the last day and a half.”

  She marked her place in the report and glanced up as a plate stacked with tacos slid onto the table. Gabriel looked less put together than usual, his hair windblown, a couple of burrs caught on his shirtsleeve, his jeans dirt-stained. She hadn’t seen much of him since Wednesday night. He’d been spending most of his time out at the farm. Evie reached for napkins and a taco. “How’s the search going?”

  “Josh has the dogs working the animal trails now. Grace mostly gives a polite smile and stays quiet. She loses her train of thought when she tries to have a conversation. Josh is keeping her moving, which is probably for the best, and making sure to put something to eat in front of her when they do take a break. Consider me doing the same. Eat.” He unwrapped a taco for himself. “So, you’re still working on the possibility the Florist family left of their own volition?”

  Evie accepted that he didn’t want to talk about the farm and went with the change of subject. She nodded. “The money withdrawals say they were making contingency plans. They would have had a plan—for the new names, new job references, everything. Scott’s a detail guy, you can see that in the reports he wrote, and the doctor described him as ‘deliberative.’ Scott would want to leave here and establish the family in a new place as quickly as possible. New job, new apartment, new school for Joe. He would have figured out exactly how to do that. He had two years to get the plan in place.”

  “Dad will find you names for the fake IDs Scott arranged—if they are out there.”

  “He’s trying,” Evie said. It didn’t follow that the Florists would have squirreled away cash without arranging new IDs. So far, the people Caleb had spoken with were adamant Scott hadn’t approached them about the matter. It was likely, though, that Scott would have gone outside the county, even beyond the adjacent counties, to get them made. Scott might have tapped someone as far away as Chicago. It could take some time, but Evie was certain Caleb would find the person Scott had approached.

  Gabriel tapped his knuckles lightly on the table. “You need to come at the case from another direction, Evie. This idea is interesting to speculate on, but you’ve gotten yourself hung up in the weeds.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “You think so?”

  “Lay out how you might look for them once you have the names they arranged, add that to the wall of things to do, then start looking for new possibilities again. You found the counseling connection, Paul found the money trail, you’ll find something else. At least until Dad comes back with names you can search. My opinion is they prepared to run, but in the end had no reason to do so.”

  She ate another taco while she pondered that. She almost agreed with him. She’d given her idea a day and a half and it was losing momentum. “I’ll give it a few more hours, then change tactics, see what else I ca
n find,” she said.

  “It comes back to the basic question, Why go?”

  Evie had come up with only one new answer that made sense to her. “A .22 sounds like a lady’s gun. Did Susan shoot Frank Ash?”

  Gabriel made a face between a wince and a frown.

  Evie understood the sentiment, but it was worth considering. “Owning a .22, being comfortable firing it, sounds like something a cop’s wife might have for her own protection. There’s no gun permit on file for her, but maybe it got slipped out of the records. Her son comes home very upset, Scott goes to confront Frank Ash, maybe can’t find him that day, goes home and tells his wife what happened, then has to go to work because he’s on shift that night. Susan waits until Scott has left the house and Joe is settled. She heads out to find Frank Ash, figuring there aren’t all that many places he might be. She finds him by chance at the truck stop when she stops to fill up the car with gas. She shoots him, never says a word to her family or to the doctor. Everyone around her has plausible deniability.”

  “It would be a reason they ran two years later when the body’s found,” Gabriel said. “Susan finally tells Scott what she’s done. And Scott makes the decision to run . . . probably fly out of an airport somewhere that night as they got clean away.”

  Evie nodded. “It’s a long shot, Gabe, and I don’t see how Susan stays calm and level-headed for the two years they were in counseling, but it’s the only thing that would explain their leaving when they did that doesn’t have the doctor lying to us.” She moved to the next problem. “When your dad gets me the names Scott arranged for new IDs, it’s still going to be a challenge to find them. I doubt they used those names for more than a few months, a year at most, before they changed them again.”

  “Start in Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, as far as you can go and still be in a U.S. territory,” Gabriel suggested. “Their photos were plastered everywhere around the Midwest. They can’t afford to be recognized. If they were preparing to run, odds are good the location was studied carefully. They may have made a flight to that destination early in their planning to make arrangements, or maybe just one of them flies there to set up bank accounts, look at housing options, schools. We can’t find the cash because some of it has already been transferred ahead under the new IDs. But something will still be out there.”

  “You’re willing to head down this rabbit trail,” Evie noted, wiping her mouth with a napkin.

  “I’m a realist. You’ve come up with ideas we haven’t considered before. I need that new thinking. Eventually, one of them will pan out. Dad comes up with new IDs, has names, that’s the time to explore this one further. I’d like you looking at the overall case to find the next possibility.”

  “Okay.” Evie leaned back, the last of her soda in hand. “I did have one rather interesting thought last night. Assume the family is still alive. What are the odds the son managed to become a cop when he grew up?”

  Once again Gabriel looked at her, intrigued. “I like that, Evie. He certainly had his focus on that when he was a boy.”

  “He’d be old enough now to be out of a police academy. Choose your state. I think we could find him if we look at police academy graduating class pictures. He surely looks something like his dad. And I’ve got photos of his dad at age twenty.”

  “Put that on the board. It’s an interesting question to follow up on.” He rapped his knuckles on the table again. “Keep at it, Evie.” He pushed back his chair. “I’ll be down at the office for an hour, then back here. Anything you need? Dessert?”

  “I’m good.”

  He smiled, nodded, and left.

  Evie picked up the roll of sweet-tarts that had appeared beside her plate. She knew this case and the Dayton one, along with his job as sheriff, was running Gabriel in circles, and yet he still found the energy to take care of others. She smiled and popped in a sweet-tart from the roll.

  She turned to study the crime wall. Come on, Florist family. Did you leave on your own? Did someone kill you? Which way does this case fork? I need a way to locate you, even if it’s simply your remains.

  She went back to reading a report by Phil Peters, the officer Scott Florist most often partnered with on the job. She needed to sit down and talk with the retired officer. If someone had known about the counseling, if someone had known Scott Florist was taking a particular interest in the disappearance of Frank Ash, that person was most likely Phil Peters. But before she had that conversation, she needed to know enough about him to have a sense of the man—what kind of cop he was, his background, and connections within the county. Would he be about protecting Scott even after this many years, or would he be willing to offer details if he knew them? It was the next logical place for her to dig.

  Gabriel Thane

  Gabriel could feel a tension headache starting and swallowed two Tylenol before rejoining Evie. This week felt like it had been going on for a month.

  Evie gave an absent-minded thanks when she reached for the drink he set beside her, but looked up in surprise when she realized it was a milk shake. She was reading police reports, he noticed, a stack of them.

  “Tell me about Phil Peters,” Evie said, leaning back in her chair.

  “What might you be looking for?” he asked around the straw of his own chocolate milk shake.

  “He’s the next interview we need to have. Is he a good cop? A fussy one? A live-and-let-live type about the rules? What would he have noticed about Scott Florist?”

  Gabriel smiled at the questions. “I’ll start by mentioning Susan Florist introduced Phil Peters to his future wife, so there was in general a good vibe between the two couples. Susan and Jenna were friends, often seen together around town, shopping or grabbing a coffee. The guys were friendly, and not just as partners on the job. I don’t think they hung out at each other’s place, not as close as that, but still, friendly.”

  “Okay. That’s useful.”

  “Scott and Phil were very different individuals. Phil was a former Navy investigator, came from a strict and disciplined world. He liked to control things in a rather nitpicking kind of way, though that was fine. If you keep the small things under control, the big ones are more manageable. Scott Florist liked that about him, actually. It’s why they most often partnered together. They liked each other’s style. Different ways of getting there, but the same intensity to get the job done right. They worked well together, no friction in that relationship.”

  “Think Phil will talk about Scott?”

  “He’ll talk to us,” Gabriel assured her. “He’s retired now, lives over in Indiana, about a two-hour drive if you want to talk in person. This case has always mattered to him. Phil and Jenna’s wedding was that Sunday, and Scott Florist was to stand up as the best man. Scott and his family go missing Friday morning. The wedding almost got postponed. In fact, his fiancée, Jenna, said that would be best. But my dad talked them into going ahead as planned—the honeymoon cruise was already paid for, and it was non-refundable.

  “Looking back, that was probably a mistake, not delaying things. While on his honeymoon, Phil was calling in at least three times a day, offering ideas and asking questions. As soon as they got back to town, Phil started right in, working the case around the clock. That caused problems in the new marriage. I seem to remember them living apart for a time. But they’ve been back together for the last . . . what, eight years? Jenna might be as helpful to talk with as Phil. Jenna and Susan were good friends long before Phil entered the picture.”

  “They have any children?” Evie asked.

  “No. I know Jenna likes kids—she worked for the school district here. So it surprises me they don’t have three or four by now. That may have been part of the marriage tension for all I know, not being able to have children for some reason.” Gabriel’s cellphone rang. He checked the readout and tensed. “Josh,” he told Evie. “Yes, Josh,” he said into the phone.

  “You need to come right away. Will just gave me the signal to get Grace out of here.”
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br />   Gabriel flinched. “We’re on our way.” He met Evie’s gaze as he pushed back his chair. “Human remains at the farm.”

  She closed up the file. “Adult or child?” she asked as she stood.

  “Don’t know yet.” He saw a massive sequence of events coming at him in the next few hours and shifted into triage mode. “I’m calling state crime-scene folks next, but until I know what we’re dealing with, the lid stays on. I’m not bringing in my own deputies yet.”

  “It has to be that way, Gabriel. You’ll know more in a couple hours.”

  He nodded, already speed-dialing his dad’s number. He got his voicemail, left a message for his dad to call Evie. “When he checks in with you, tell him what’s going on. What time are Ann and Paul due in with Rachel?”

  “Six.”

  “Josh will have Grace at his place, or he will have taken her to our parents’ house.”

  “I’ll make sure they know. Head on out to the farm, Gabriel. I’ll get locked up, post security here, make sure Grace is settled with Rachel before we drive out. We can talk then about what we tell Grace, if tonight or tomorrow morning makes the most sense for when to do so.”

  “Thanks, Evie.”

  “We knew this day was coming. Go ahead and work the scene. You’ll deal with it because you have to.”

  He nodded. “I’ll call you as soon as I have details.” He headed out to the farm, speaking to the crime-scene personnel as he drove. He hoped the remains were that of Grace’s parents, but realistically he knew the odds favored the Dayton girl. He could only hope it wasn’t someone else they didn’t even have on their radar yet.

  Gabriel parked behind Will, shut off his truck, and bowed his head over the wheel. “God, you know how I get when I’m dealing with death. Don’t let me puke.” He sighed, got out, pulled a couple of water bottles out of the cooler behind the seat. He made another call. “Will, I’m here. How do I find you?”