by Lyn Gala
She was a simple woman with a small life. Some people might have a problem with that, but she liked having a small life. She got her hair cut three times a year and never did her nails. While others killed themselves chasing promotions and degrees, she did her job, did it well, came home and enjoyed cooking and reading and just having time to do a whole lot of nothing. She’d earned that and now the universe was having the world’s biggest joke at her expense by giving her an interesting life.
Pasting on her most supportive expression, Paige headed for the bathroom. She was just going to have to pray for some sort of inspiration because she had no idea what the hell she was going to do now.
Chapter Three
Paige looked around the apartment, her stomach rolling.
Dark, congealed blood stained the carpet and spilled over onto the kitchen, where it made an orange inkblot against the yellow linoleum. The glass coffee table had shattered and the pieces sparkled like diamonds in the ugly gray carpet. Blood was smeared across one arm of the couch, and the wall behind the broken television had a huge streak that looked like someone had been cut open and then shoved up against the wall.
If she didn’t know that Brady was at her house, she would have looked at this and decided that he was dead. Actually, he was dead, but she would have assumed he was a more permanent sort of dead. No one could bleed this much and survive. A jar of change had been thrown against the wall and shards of curved glass and dimes and quarters glimmered. Paige wondered if Brady had tried to use it as a weapon. If so, it hadn’t worked. A crescent-shaped break in the wall suggested the jar had hit it rather than any of the suspects.
She swallowed the bile that tried to climb up her throat. No one deserved to die like this, but she felt a personal sort of failure that she hadn’t been here for her partner when he needed her so much. Logically, she might not have been able to save him, but he shouldn’t have died alone. Not like this.
It was too late for her to do anything about that, but she could help him now. Maybe. Paige looked around and tried to look at the crime scene like a tech or detective might. She knew that most murders came out of arguments and this looked like one hell of a fight, but Brady said he’d been jumped.
The area around the front door took the least amount of damage, just a few smears of blood. Maybe Brady was restrained or dead by the time they dragged him out. The fact was that she couldn’t process the scene without help. Short of finding a giant pentagram with an arrow pointing toward the killers, she didn’t have the training of a detective.
Up until this point, she’d never wanted to be the one in charge of an investigation—she hadn’t wanted the stress of watching an investigation fall apart and people die. She hadn’t wanted to carry that guilt because she knew how much damage guilt could do to a person. And now she was feeling the guilt anyway because she didn’t know how to help Brady.
Glancing at the clock, she realized that she was running out of time. She should be at the station soon. If she didn’t call this in now, she was going to have a hard time selling the story that she’d come over to pick Brady up for work. Heading into the bedroom, she grabbed a pair of jeans and a couple of shirts and rolled them into a tight bundle before tucking them into the bottom of her messenger bag and then pulling out her cell phone and dialing the dispatch’s direct number.
The army of cops that showed up for her officer in trouble call overwhelmed the small apartment complex, and Paige retreated to the shadow of a half-dead pine that was shedding brown needles. The morning was cool and dew made the world look slick and gray as she watched clouds crawl across the sky.
She needed the help to find Brady’s attackers, but she still felt strange hiding the truth from the department. She’d learned to trust police pretty early in life, back when her father hadn’t been able to really be there for her, and now she was hiding things from them.
Of course, if she told them that Brady had been turned into a vampire or a zombie or something, they were definitely going to find a very small padded cell for her. Maybe he was an alien. Aliens might make more sense than zombies. Then again, the simplest solution was that she’d totally and completely lost her mind and she was imagining all this. She wasn’t taking that off the table yet.
The captain’s car pulled up and Paige watched him head into the apartment. Most of the uniforms had been exiled from the apartment and they were either knocking on neighbors’ doors or talking in small groups, but the few that had wandered her way she’d warned them off with a curt “Not now”. So most were interviewing the neighbors.
An older man with a terrier was talking Alex’s ear off, but Alex didn’t seem to write much in his notebook. Two women whispered and clung to each other in exaggerated grief and a blonde woman in business clothes stood in the shadow of the carport, frowning at the apartment and ignoring Veronica Lee. The captain was only inside for a few minutes before he came out, his gaze sweeping over the area until he saw her under the tree. He spoke to a couple of uniforms at the top of the stairs and then he headed toward her.
“Silver? Are you okay?”
“Sir, I found his apartment like that.”
Captain Foley moved to sit on the chain draped between two concrete posts so cars couldn’t drive up onto the landscaping. “So you didn’t see anyone?”
She shook her head. “Was he having trouble with anyone? Arguments?” Foley asked. “Any rumors of trouble, even something small enough that you dismissed it?”
“Not that he said to me,” Paige said. “Everyone likes him.”
Captain Foley nodded and looked over at the apartment. “Not everyone. Someone picked his lock, so this wasn’t a push-in.”
Paige sucked in her breath. So Brady was right—they’d been waiting for him. This wasn’t a random attack—someone had targeted her partner. “Any idea who? Is there any evidence?” Paige held her breath as her chest tightened in anticipation. She just needed a clue so she could do something other than stand around like some fucking worthless statue. Pigeons were going to start crapping on her soon.
“You can’t work this, Silver.”
Paige shook her head. “I’m not looking to work it, Captain. I just want to help or to know what’s going on or something. He’s my partner.”
The captain looked at her sadly. She understood that look. She’d learned it when she’d seen her mother die and the police on the scene had looked at her with this pity every time she’d asked to see her mom. She’d hated the pity then and she hated it now. The captain sighed. “You saw how much blood was in there.”
She nodded.
“If it’s his blood—”
“I know,” Paige cut him off. “There’s too much, but I can’t assume he’s gone,” she said, not pointing out the fact that she knew he wasn’t gone because the last time she’d seen him, he’d been taking the world’s longest shower in her bathroom. He was dead, but he wasn’t gone. She was definitely feeling like the stranger in a very strange land.
“None of us are assuming that. We’re working this as an assault and kidnapping. We’re pulling resources off the taskforce for this. It’s our first priority.”
“The taskforce?” Paige’s stomach twisted with guilt. After a lifetime of trying to avoid guilt, she was getting buried in an avalanche of the stuff. “But the rapist is out there. We can’t let the case go cold.” Paige wanted to find who had killed Brady, but not at the cost of more deaths. This rapist was a sadistic bastard, and even if he wasn’t technically setting out to murder his victims, his methods were brutal enough that more women would die if they couldn’t catch him.
“We’re not letting either of these cases go cold. But right now I just need you to tell me what happened last time you saw Ross.”
Paige swallowed. The last time she’d seen Brady, he’d been in her bathroom, his back marked with strange scars and his wrists still red from having been tied so tightly that the ropes had dug into his skin. “We were working the neighborhood around Sixth and Dogw
ood,” she lied.
“Was there anything that didn’t land in the report? Anyone who just gave you a bad feeling?”
Paige leaned back into the rough bark of the pine as she realized why he was asking. “You think someone related to the case did this?”
Foley didn’t answer right away, but his expression answered for him.
“Captain?”
“Uniforms have found two different witnesses that remember a blue sedan sitting outside the apartment last night. They thought Officer Ross had company.”
The air left Paige’s lungs. Witnesses had described a blue sedan at several of the rape-murders. But that implied that the rapist was a vampire. Paige thought about the way the few witnesses had refused to talk, their stark terror and the way they sought Brady’s protection. Usually rape victims were more likely to turn to her. She was less physically intimidating and she was old enough that the young victims would look at her like a mother and the older ones would see her as a potential friend.
But these victims had been drawn to Brady with his broad shoulders and strength. Had they seen something that scared them more than a rapist? Is that why they turned to Brady?
“Silver, you look like shit. Take the day off.”
Paige shook her head. “I would rather work.”
“You can’t work this case.”
“Then I can go over old reports,” Paige practically snapped. She could see the worry in the captain’s face and she struggled to rein in her emotions. “I could work the tip line,” she offered in her best conciliatory tone. “Captain, I don’t want to be home when my partner is out there somewhere.”
She also didn’t want to be at home when the forensics came in and the clues started circulating around the bullpen. Cops gossiped. They never called it gossip, but they did it. It was like they had to try out every theory, discuss every bit of evidence and run alternate theories of the crime by everyone. The detectives did it to try to get ideas for cases and the uniforms picked up the habit.
For a long time, Foley just stared at her. Standing up, he took a step closer to her. “Silver, you’re not going to be doing anyone any good if you come in to the station. Your head isn’t here.”
“I’m not going to be doing myself any good sitting at home wondering where my partner is or if he’s alive.”
“Run your old reports,” Foley offered.
“Yes sir.” Relief washed through her.
“And Silver, we will find him.”
“But not alive,” Paige said softly. She still hated that he had died alone. Worse, she couldn’t talk to anyone about her guilt because she couldn’t exactly explain how she knew for a fact that he was dead. She really couldn’t talk about him being the walking, talking sort of dead.
“Did you do something to your arm?”
Paige reached for her sore arm. When her hand was halfway there, she realized that the bite mark had bled just enough to leave a brownish rust stain on her light blue uniform sleeve.
“A dog. I got bit by a dog that was going after the chickens.”
“The chickens?” From Foley’s tone of voice, it was pretty clear that he thought Paige had just slipped one or two mental gears.
“Chickens. I keep a few chickens and sometimes stray cats or dogs will try to get into the coop. I got caught by a dog last night. I thought the bleeding had stopped.”
“You might want to go get a rabies shot or a tetanus shot or something before you come down to the station. Have one of the others drive you.”
“My car….”
“Paige.” Foley stopped and just sighed. “Just have another officer drive you. Ross was your partner and no one expects you to be okay.”
“Is my partner. He still is,” Paige said firmly. Foley laid a hand on her shoulder.
“He still is, Silver, and you will be the first one to get any news when we find him. Okay?”
Paige swallowed her frustration and forced herself to smile at his offer. “Thank you.”
The captain gave her a sympathetic look and then he turned and headed back toward the sea of police still filling the small apartment complex’s parking lot. He talked to one or two officers before heading over to Daniel Kim, one of the first detectives to show up. Paige wanted to hear what they were saying, but as she started toward them, John Kalani intercepted her.
“How about we get a coffee?” he offered. She gave him a weak smile and started to turn him down when Rick Lewis and Veronica Lee and Alex Harris all started coming her way. All she wanted was to be left alone and allowed to eavesdrop on the investigation and it looked like half the department was suddenly determined to be her best friend. Paige sighed as she realized that not only did they mean well, but they were also not going to be put off. A brother in blue was down and they were going to close ranks around her whether she wanted it or not.
“Sure,” she agreed. “But let’s get it at the station so we don’t risk missing any news.”
“Deal,” John said as he gestured toward one of the cars.
Chapter Four
“So, what do you think of the black gum tree leaves?” Alex asked as he leaned over one of the desks. Paige hated that the rape investigation had lost a half-dozen good people to Brady’s case, but she didn’t hate it enough to protest.
“There are a lot of those down on Cedar Dam Road,” John said.
“Those trees are scattered all over the place. Hell, Brady could have tracked them in from one of the neighborhoods him and Silver were working yesterday.” Veronica ignored the half-dozen dirty looks she got from all the other cops who were busy pretending they had good leads.
“Newer neighborhoods don’t have those. They aren’t exactly the sort of trees people plant on purpose. Were there any black gum trees around where you and Brady were canvassing yesterday?” John asked before Alex could tell Veronica to shut up. Alex looked ready to blow and he wasn’t the most diplomatic man in creation. It was all getting so annoying that Paige was two seconds away from telling them all to just leave her the hell alone.
“No,” she answered. “I didn’t see any, but then I wasn’t looking at the trees.”
“No one looks at the trees. Face it, we’re grasping at straws,” Veronica said. Paige stood up so fast that her chair went scuttling backward. “But they’ll find something,” Veronica hurried to add. Ignoring all of them, Paige headed for the coffeepot. If she drank too much more, her shakes were going to start shaking, but coffee and the bathroom were about the only places she was getting any privacy, and when she went to the bathroom, Veronica had a bad habit of following.
“Seriously, Lee, shut the fuck up,” Alex suggested in a low whisper that Paige probably wasn’t supposed to hear.
“I’m just talking about the evidence,” Veronica defended herself.
“Don’t. Really don’t. You make me want to grab the Prozac and Silver doesn’t need to hear that shit right now.” Alex glanced over and Paige focused on her coffee cup. Brady said he’d been held at an old house and now the detectives were talking about black gum tree leaves tracked into his house. That was still adding up to about half the county.
Paige dumped a package of sugar into her cup and stirred slowly. They must have taken Brady out in a van or something big enough to handle a body over six feet tall. Even scrunched up, Brady wouldn’t exactly fit in the trunk of a VW. And again, that gave her nothing.
She headed back to the cluster of cops waiting to torture her with emotional support. “Has someone gone out to talk to Brady’s folks?” Paige had only met them once, but they seemed like pretty decent parents—better than anything she’d had growing up. They deserved to hear from someone who would break the news gently. Hell, they deserved to know that even dead Brady was up and walking around, but she didn’t want to be the one to break that news.
Alex nodded. “The captain went out there to tell them himself. Remember? He said he was going.”
Paige frowned. “Oh yeah. I think I’ve had one too many cups of
coffee.”
The group all nodded and got thoughtful looks on their faces. “Do you think this could have been some fight over a girl?” Veronica asked. Alex and John both looked like they might pop a vein from trying to not explode. It was funny, but Paige figured Veronica was about the most oblivious person in the station. She had less femininity to her than most of the guys, but then women still had a point to prove when they went into fields like law enforcement, and showing their touchy-feely side didn’t exactly prove much in a testosterone pit like a police station.
“I think Brady had more sense than to get in a pissing match over some girl,” Paige said firmly.
“I agree.” John sat on the corner of the desk and propped a boot on one of the chairs. “He was focused on the job and getting a good review from Silver. Besides, the fight was inside the apartment, and if you’re fighting with someone over a girl, you don’t invite them in and then let them jump you. You have the fight right at the door.”
“Harris, Kalani,” one of the detectives called, “you’re canvassing 9th for victims.”
John frowned, and from his expression, he was about to try to talk his way out of it, but Paige shook her head. “John, don’t. You and Alex go work the canvass. Hell, I’m feeling bad enough about the fact that resources are getting pulled off this rape case. Don’t make it worse.”
Alex reached over and squeezed her shoulder. “They’ll find him. You watch—Ross is a tough kid and they’re going to find him.”
Paige nodded and bit down on a stupid, desperate desire to just tell them everything. Instead Alex and John grabbed their caps and headed over to the detective who had called them. The state police had sent down a profiler and he was in the corner watching everyone with a sharp gaze that made Paige want to escape. “I’m hitting the bathroom,” Paige announced before putting her coffee down and heading for the ladies’ room. Unfortunately, the detectives had called John and Alex away, leaving her with Veronica.