by Carsen Taite
“You make it sound like there’s been a whole bunch of other women.” Claire shook her head. “There hasn’t, but yes, that’s the way it usually works.”
Riley leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Let’s change that pattern. You go do your work and I’ll do mine. When we’re both done, let’s find each other and do this,” she motioned to the bed, “again. Okay?”
Claire studied Riley’s face, looking for any sign she was annoyed about her imminent departure, but she saw nothing but kindness and caring, laced with a trace of longing, which was entirely different from the resentment she was used to from other women. “That sounds perfect.”
Chapter Eighteen
Claire pulled up to the station and parked, but before she exited her vehicle, she closed her eyes for a moment and imagined she was back at Riley’s apartment, curled against her body, resting before another bout of making love.
Whoa. Making love? Where had those words come from? She rephrased the thought in her head as “having sex,” but the term didn’t begin to describe the intimacy she’d shared with Riley. Their closeness had been steadily growing, and whatever she chose to name last night’s activity, it couldn’t be reduced to a mere physical act. She liked Riley, that was for sure, but were her feelings deeper still?
Claire filed the internal debate away, determined to examine it later, when she wasn’t distracted by this case and whatever it was her boss wanted this morning. The real challenge would be focusing on the investigation with visions of Riley’s naked body on a continuous reel in her head.
When she entered the building, she spotted Nick in the lobby. “Good morning. Thanks for hosting last night. I had a great time.”
“You must have because you seem unusually happy this morning.” He pulled her aside. “Cheryl thinks you went home with Riley last night. Tell me you’re not that crazy.”
Claire averted her eyes before she could stop herself even though she knew it would confirm his suspicions. “I’m not crazy, but let’s agree not to talk about Riley. I don’t want to fight with you. We need to stick together right now.”
Nick sighed. “Fine. United front for the boss, but at some point, we need to discuss what’s going on. Any idea why we’re getting hauled in this morning?”
“I hope it’s because Holland is forming a task force and wants us to lead it,” Claire said.
“I hear a but…”
“But I have a feeling we’re going to get chewed out for not solving this case before the third body showed up.”
A few minutes later, they were standing outside Major Holland’s office. Through the closed door, they could hear raised voices, and Claire was certain she recognized one of them. When the door finally opened, her suspicion was confirmed. Bruce was standing to the side of her commander’s desk, his face red and his expression agitated. “Chief Kehler,” Claire said, easily assuming the formality expected in public. “Good to see you, sir.” She turned to her squad commander. “Major Holland, nice to see you too.”
Holland shook her head. “You’ll probably change your mind about that before you leave here.” She pointed to the chairs in front of her desk. “Sit.”
“What the hell’s going on?” Bruce bellowed. “Three dead bodies? Are you ready to make an arrest? I’ve got the mayor’s office, the county commissioners, and every other bastard with pull in this town breathing down my neck. The chief is asking if we need to bring in the feds, but I told him my people are capable of solving crimes without having their hands held. Was I wrong?”
Claire flicked a glance at Nick to let him know she would respond, and he answered with a slight nod. “You weren’t wrong. We’re making progress.” She walked him through their investigation so far, including their interviews with the members of the Eastside Sketchers. “We have a couple of potential people of interest in the group,” she said, referring to Buster and Jensen, “and we’re taking a closer look.”
“Unless one of them is Riley Flynn, you’re wasting your time. She and Frank Flynn should be your prime suspects. Didn’t you say Riley confessed that the drawings were hers?”
Claire’s gut wrenched at his deliberate twisting of the facts. She took a deep breath and slowly let it go before responding. “Yes, the sketches are hers. But she has a solid alibi for at least one of the murders, and we have nothing to tie Frank Flynn to the case.”
“Other than the fact, these murders started weeks after his release and there are strong similarities in the MO,” Bruce said. “For all you know, he’s leaving her sketches at the murder scenes in some kind of weird father-daughter connection. Have you even given him a hard look?”
They hadn’t, but for good reasons, but reasons Claire was hesitant to point out when it was clear Bruce had an irrational attachment to tagging Riley’s dad with these crimes. If Nick were here alone, he would probably speak up in defense of their decision not to focus on Frank Flynn, but he was in a completely different position than she was. Bruce wasn’t his mentor, with powerful sway over her career. And he hadn’t slept with Riley last night, an act that Bruce would surely deem a clear detriment to her subjectivity. There was only one solution. Take a closer look at Frank Flynn. If he did commit the murders, he deserved to be punished. If he didn’t, then they could check another suspect off their list and move on.
“We’ll take a closer look,” she said, purposefully not looking in Nick’s direction. She’d be able to explain her decision later, when they weren’t standing in front of their superiors. For now, she needed to get Bruce off her back, so they could solve this case their way.
“Great,” Bruce said, his anger dissipating into a self-satisfied smile. “Glad we’re on the same page.”
Major Holland gave them a rundown of the resources the department was making available to the investigation in terms of personnel, etc., and dismissed them to get back to work. Claire led Nick out of the office.
“What was that all about?” he whispered. “And why did you—”
She placed a finger over her lips. “Let’s ride together and catch up then,” she said, hoping he’d follow her lead and hold off talking about this until they were sure they were alone. Her instincts were spot-on because at that moment, Bruce called out to her.
“Detective Hanlon, a word.”
She told Nick to meet her in the lobby and she walked back toward Bruce who pulled her into an empty conference room and shut the door.
“I thought you wanted this promotion,” Bruce said. “People don’t get promotions by being nice. It’s time for you to make some hard calls. You feel sorry for this girl because her dad’s a killer? Your sympathy would be better spent on the three women he may have killed. Explain your reservations to their families, or better yet, make an arrest and give their families some closure. If Flynn says he has an alibi, I want it turned inside out. If there are any holes in his story, arrest him. His hearing’s on Monday and if the judge rules in his favor, the press he’ll get will make him untouchable. You have until then to make a case and I want twice-daily reports on the progress you’ve made between now and then. Understood?”
She did. He expected them to work all weekend until they found something, anything, to tie Frank Flynn to the murders. She’d put in the hours, but at the end of the weekend, if the evidence didn’t point to Frank, she wasn’t going to pretend it did. Until then, she’d let Bruce think she was doing everything in her power to fulfill his prophecy as long as he didn’t hurt Riley in the process.
* * *
Riley tore another sheet out of her sketchpad and crumpled it into a ball.
“That’s the third one,” said Jensen. “Not feeling it today?”
“Guess not,” she said. She’d set up between him and Warren outside of the Shed at the Dallas Farmer’s Market for the last hour, and the rest of the Eastside Sketchers were scattered around the market. Unlike the others, Riley had nothing to show for her efforts, and not for lack of subject matter. On a Saturday, the market was bustling with both locals and tourist
s, but unlike all the other times she’d come here to draw, this time she was completely uninspired.
She knew why even if she didn’t want to admit it. She’d let Claire get too close too quickly, and when Claire had texted this afternoon to say she couldn’t make it to the meet-up, her inspiration drained away.
Riley picked up her phone and read the screen again, looking for some deeper meaning behind Claire’s message. Things are heating up at work. Will text you when I’m free. Had the text not come on the heels of a similar one on Friday night, she might have taken it at face value, but Claire blowing her off twice within twenty-four hours of the most intimate night of her life made Riley question whether she’d been misreading the signals Claire had been sending all along.
When had she become the kind of person who got attached, staring at her phone, looking for crumbs of affection between the sparse words in a text message? She’d never let anyone else get this close and her current state of aggravation told her that had been a solid plan. Maybe it was true that Claire had to work, and sure, Riley had said she wasn’t the clingy sort, but she couldn’t help but feel the first tender moments of any relationship were fragile, deserving a little more attention than a few words of text.
Hell, what did she know? It wasn’t like she’d been in a relationship before. And it wasn’t like Claire was ghosting her. She wished she had someone to talk to, but Buster and Natalie had tickets to a concert after the meet-up, and she wasn’t in the mood to spill her heart out to any of the others over drinks at the Ginger Man.
Jensen tapped her on the shoulder. “No shame in bailing if you’re not feeling it.”
“Let her be,” Warren said with a gentle smile. “She might want to channel some of that aggravation into her art.”
“It’s an urbanscape, not a Munch,” Jensen said. “What’s she going to do, draw ominous clouds and everyone screaming?”
Riley waved her pencil in the air. “Truce, you two. I appreciate the concern, but it’s true, I’m just having an off day.” She started packing her bag. “I’m going to head out.”
“If you’re still not feeling it tomorrow, we can cancel,” Jensen said.
Riley paused for a moment, and then she remembered. She’d promised to meet him at his place and walk to one of her favorite spots at the lake to catch the sunset. She wanted to take him up on his offer to cancel, but walking around the lake might be the perfect antidote to her current mood. “No, let’s do it. I’ll meet you at your place around four thirty.”
“Perfection,” Jensen said.
On a normal day, she’d respond in kind, but she could only manage a wave as she left the group and headed back to her car for the short ride back to her place. When she pulled up in front of the brownstone, her phone buzzed, and she grabbed it and stared at the screen. She didn’t recognize the number, but thinking Claire could be calling from work, she answered anyway. “Hello?”
“Riley, it’s Morgan Bradley.”
It took her a moment to register it was her father’s attorney calling. “Uh, hi. What can I do for you?”
“I don’t mean to bother you, but your father just sent me a text that Detective Hanlon and her partner came by his house today. I remembered you mentioned Detective Hanlon had come to talk to you as well, and I wanted to find out if she’s been in touch with you.”
Riley stared out the window, unsure how to respond. Yes, Claire had been in touch with her, but not in the way Morgan was talking about, and no way was she giving details about her relationship with Claire to a virtual stranger. But Claire had mentioned her father earlier in the week. The night of the third murder when Claire had shown up at her house. She’d said that Frank hadn’t been home that night, but Claire hadn’t pressed past the implication that Frank had had the opportunity to commit the crime, and she hadn’t brought it up Thursday night during their brainstorming session with Nick and Cheryl. Maybe Claire’s visit to Frank today was simply to check off a box before moving on with the investigation, and she said as much to Morgan.
“That could be true,” Morgan replied. “My trust level is pretty low when it comes to the police talking to your father. They don’t exactly have a good track record where he’s concerned.”
Riley started to protest. To say, “But this is Claire. She’s honorable and her only goal is to find the truth. She’s not like those other cops.” But if Morgan asked how she’d come to these characterizations, she wasn’t prepared to answer without divulging the depth of her feelings and risking putting Claire’s objectivity under a microscope. “I don’t know what they’re up to,” she said—an honest, yet incomplete answer.
“Okay. Well, I’m sorry to bug you on a Saturday. Any chance you’ve changed your mind about attending the hearing on Monday?”
“I haven’t decided,” Riley didn’t try to curb the edge in her voice. “I doubt I’ll decide until right before it happens.”
“Fair enough. Do whatever’s right for you. For what it’s worth, no matter what the judge says, everyone in my firm believes he’s innocent.”
After she ended the call, Riley went up to her apartment, set the kettle on for tea, and dug out the file full of motions Morgan had given her. It was thick and the language in the documents was stiff and formal, but Riley spent the next few hours reading every word. By the time she reached the end, she was convinced Morgan was right. Her father’s conviction was a combination of unfortunate circumstances, shoddy police work, and a rush to judgment.
But if he was innocent of Linda Bradshaw’s murder, why was Claire questioning him about these new cases? Granted, she didn’t know all of the facts of the new cases, but it looked like the only similarities were the race and ages of the female victims. And didn’t it stand to reason that if he wasn’t guilty of the original case involving a white, twenty-something woman, then there was nothing left to link him to these current crimes?
A knock on her door startled her out of her focus. She walked to the door, hoping it wasn’t one of the neighbors needing her services—the coeds downstairs had a habit of locking themselves out on the weekend. The knocking grew more intense as she closed the distance, bolstering her suspicions, and she called out, “On my way.”
She opened the door without looking first, convinced she was right about the neighbors, but she was wrong. It was Claire standing on her doorstep, looking tired and sad and delicious all at the same time. Riley had never been happier to be wrong.
* * *
Nick edged in front of Claire and she let him. Frank Flynn wasn’t a big guy, but he sported the kind of muscles someone got when all they had to do with their free time was work out in the prison gym. He was standing in his doorway, blocking their view inside, and a dog was barking furiously from somewhere behind him. Nick flashed his shield. “I’m Detective Redding and this is Detective Hanlon. Are you Frank Flynn?”
“I find it hard to believe you don’t already know who I am. Don’t you people have a bull’s-eye with my face on it at your headquarters?”
“Mr. Flynn, we’d like to talk to you for a moment,” Claire asked, ignoring his remark. “May we come inside?”
“No, you may not.”
She tried a different tack. “Then could you step out here?”
He shook his head. “Let me be clear. If you want to talk to me, you can call my attorney.”
“We’re not here to talk to you about your pending case,” Nick chimed in.
“My attorney. Call her.”
Claire recognized the mantra of someone who’d been through the system, but she couldn’t resist one last question. “Is that your dog?” Claire asked, leaning to the right in an attempt to see the canine.
“My attorney’s name is Morgan Bradley. Would you like her phone number?”
Claire shook her head at Nick, and they walked back to her car. “Well, that was a bust,” she said as they drove away.
“He has a dog.”
“We don’t even know if it’s his,” Claire said. “Besi
des, I thought you were firmly on the Frank Flynn was wronged side.”
“He was. For what happened in the past, but right now, we don’t have much else to go on. I’ll take a break wherever we can find it.”
“I hear you, but that’s a leap. Lots of people have dogs.”
“I know,” he said. “Are you headed back to the station?”
“No, I can no longer stare at files full of disjointed information unless I’m in the comfort of my own home. Let’s call it a night and start back tomorrow. I’ll take you home.”
A few minutes later, she pulled up in front of Nick’s house. “You want to come in for some of Cheryl’s outrageously expensive tequila?” he asked.
Claire wavered for a moment. “Better not. I still need to send a report to Bruce. A few sips of that stuff and I’ll forget why I wanted to be a detective in the first place.”
“Tell you what. You go home and get some rest and I’ll send tonight’s report. You get the next one.”
Normally, she’d wave off the offer, but she wasn’t sure she was in any condition to write a coherent report. “Thanks. Make sure to make it clear he refused to talk to us and invoked counsel.”
“Will do.”
She watched him walk to the door and smiled when Cheryl poked her head out and waved. What would it be like to come home at the end of a grueling day to someone who loved you, and when had she started wondering about things like that?
She didn’t know the answer, but she did know that she didn’t want to end this day without seeing Riley, if only for a few minutes. She drove straight to the brownstone and took the stairs to Riley’s apartment two at a time, praying her idea to surprise Riley instead of calling first wouldn’t fall flat. When Riley opened the door, her expression was guarded, and Claire wondered if she miscalculated her chance of a welcome.
“Surprise,” she said. “I know I should’ve called, but it’s been a helluva day, and all I could think about was how much I wanted to see you before it ends. But now I’m thinking maybe that was a bad idea. You don’t look particularly happy to see me.”