Dark Echoes: (Dark Falls, CO Romantic Thriller Book 7)

by Savannah Kade

  “Actually,” he said, “it was just an act of God. The local records were being kept in the precinct—probably for three to five years—before they were moved to off-site storage. There was a wave of massive storms a few years after Janet’s case. It caused flooding in the building and destroyed almost three years of records.”

  “Oh,” Risa said. That made perfect sense.

  “Back in the old days when all the records were on paper, until they were duplicated, any kind of disaster could be the end of them.”

  Risa nodded as she thought. She’d run into similar problems during her arson investigation training and when trying to pull blueprints before going into a burning building. Most of the businesses had been renovated, and that would generate a new set of blueprints for the file, but older houses were often a crapshoot when firefighters went in. The difference was, in a fire, she could sense her way around. Bedrooms were usually in similar locations. Closet doors often didn’t look like bedroom doors. But finding a murderer? That would be trickier than opening a door to see if anyone was still stuck inside.

  “Shit,” she said. “What do you do?”

  “Well, that’s where I’m hoping for a little bit of help from you.”

  “Oh?” She’d been glad to tell him about what Leah’s family had said, but it hadn’t occurred to her that she could be helpful.

  “You said you volunteered at the library sometimes? Without the police records, the best information will be in the newspaper archives.” He smiled at her, a question on his lips. “Can you get me into the back records in the library?”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Risa led Ethan into the back room of the library where the microfiche and the viewers were set up.

  They’d walked by the front desk where Alan smiled at her and Carol didn’t. Risa had no idea why Carol disliked her so much. But Carol disliked almost everyone, so Risa tried to let it roll off.

  Normally, Carol liked to show people to the microfiche room herself, but Risa just smiled and walked Ethan by. His federal status probably helped keep Carol out of it. She liked to be involved in everything, and Risa could tell it was hurting her to let them go by.

  Pulling the door closed behind them, she shut herself and Ethan into the small room together. She turned on the machine to warm up before scanning the small, neatly hand-labeled boxes up on the shelves.

  “Looks like the records will be about here,” she pointed. It was a little over her head. Normally, she’d pull the rolling stool over and step up and grab what she needed. But not with only one good foot. Besides, Ethan was already nudging her to the side and reaching up to get the box she’d pointed to.

  It shouldn’t have felt good when he brushed up against her full-sided, and it shouldn’t have felt good to have him smile down at her like he did. She was developing quite a crush here, which was a shame because it couldn’t go anywhere.

  Loading up the machine, Risa deftly set up all the necessary knobs and dials, turning them to focus and light and getting everything ready.

  Ethan grinned. “You really do work the microfiche well.”

  She laughed to cover her blush. Was he flirting? “This is what we have. Only some of the older records are digitized,” she said. “But not from fifty years ago. Maybe one day, but Carol is holding out on us.”

  Ethan had raised an eyebrow but didn’t ask further, and Risa didn’t expound on her stance on library politics. Instead, she quietly fired up a second machine and opened one of the boxes he’d pulled down. She noted which box she’d chosen so they could search through them in an organized manner without missing anything. Scanning old newspaper articles wasn’t easy, and it was certainly tiresome.

  “So,” she said, “I know I’m looking for references to Janet Deevers. Anything else?”

  “Missing children,” he said. “I don’t assume there was any particular place that would show up in the newspaper.”

  Though Risa had not lived here long, the library volunteer work had led her to the microfiche room more than once. She’d gained a passing familiarity with the old newspapers in Dark Falls. “I don’t think so. My guess, though, is that missing kids would usually have made headlines.”

  “I would have thought the same given the size of the town.”

  They searched for almost thirty minutes without finding anything about Janet, and Risa felt her eyes crossing before she finally saw it.

  “There!” Her shout was a little over-enthusiastic, and she pointed to the machine as though it might just project the image up on the wall. “Look, that’s the report from when Janet Deevers first went missing.” She scratched it down on a notepad she’d pulled out of one of the drawers. Golf-sized pencil stubs were scattered everywhere for random notes.

  It took a moment to scoot their chairs over so Ethan could look through the eyepieces of the machine she’d been using. “All right, let me read the article.”

  She watched as he thumbed through a few slides, checking out all the information the newspaper reported at the time. As was the case with newspapers, articles started in once section and were continued in another one in smaller print later. That meant, of course, Risa had to go find it.

  She watched as Ethan made notes of his own. Then she scrolled through the rest of the paper from that day, making sure they hadn’t missed anything.

  “Now,” he said, “we’ve got a start date. We have to keep going forward, possibly on that deck that you have. I’ll look on the next one and see what kind of follow-up information there is. Though honestly, what they tell us isn’t going to be as good as a police report.”

  Risa nodded. “My guess is you’re going to have to question the officers who worked the case at the time.” She’d been writing down dates and locations and information where somebody had last seen Janet or what she was wearing. Instead, Ethan had written down the names of officers on the case, anyone who made a statement, and the chief of police from fifty years ago. They were coming at it from different angles, and she was wondering if she was being helpful.

  She paused before flat-out asking him, “Is it better if I’m here or if I’m not? I mean I can go shelve books and you can stay here by yourself and just …”

  His hand was on her arm before she even finished the sentence. “Don’t go,” he said. “I actually really like having you here. I don’t normally get to consult civilians.”

  “I’m hardly a civilian,” she laughed.

  “I know, but I don’t normally get to consult civilians because of the type of information. I think it’s good to have another set of eyes, somebody looking at the clues differently than I am. That’s even more important right now, when I’m the only agent here.”

  There was something in his voice, something that said he was irritated about that. Also a tone of regret, but she couldn’t quite catch it. He’d moved on to the next topic before she had a chance.

  “Given that you were already there at the scene and that you already know so much, and given that you’re the one who brought this information to me, I’m letting you lead. So, I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.”

  Risa frowned. “Is there information you’re holding back from me?”

  He’d seemed put off by that but answered honestly. “Look, there’s only so much I’m allowed to say. Right now, you know about as much as anybody. But if there’s new information, I might not be able to share it.’

  That sucked, she thought, but took it in stride. She understood what that confidentiality meant in cases like these. While she knew she wouldn’t break it, she still wasn’t authorized to get information on the case.

  Fifteen minutes later, they found a follow-up article. Ten minutes after that, they found another one. As they went on, they managed to gather more and more information about Janet Deevers.

  Then Risa had an idea. “I know who you need to ask. I know who knows everything about what happens in Dark Falls: Carol Kastrop. Our head librarian.”

  Chapter Seventee
n

  Ethan smiled when Risa suggested he talk to the head librarian about Janet Deevers. What made Ethan laugh was Risa saying Carol was “of an age.”

  Still, the idea was a good one. Carol had grown up in Dark Falls. So, if the rumors of “Carol knows everything about the town” were true, the woman would probably be a help.

  On top of that? Carol was a librarian. If she didn’t know what Ethan needed, she would know where to find it. Risa said Carol loved to be useful. That could be a help or a hindrance, but Ethan crossed his fingers and hoped. With the FBI database not up to par, and the local police records missing, he was stuck with whatever he could find. He didn’t think he’d ever interviewed a town librarian as part of a case before. He smiled to himself, glad Risa had suggested it.

  Ethan would have gone back to the Deevers family. He would have gone back to the chief, too. He would go to any of the still-living officers who had interviewed anyone at the time about the case. But interviewing the librarian would not have occurred to him.

  Risa, as usual, volunteered her help. “Let me introduce you. She doesn’t like me, but she doesn’t like anyone. Still, I think she’ll like you.”

  “Is it my charm?” he asked, glad they were behind the closed doors of the microfiche room. Though he didn’t want to admit it, he was flirting with Risa. He couldn’t seem to stop himself.

  “That’s not it.” Risa made a face at him. “It’s because you’re an adorable little red-haired white boy, and you need her help. That’s what Carol likes.”

  Ethan tossed his head back and laughed. It was the first truly funny thought he’d had in several days and he was grateful for it. Again, he hoped nobody caught him. Quickly, he shut down the sound and turned around to look through the little wired window in the door. No one was watching.

  “Ouch.” Despite his word, he was still grinning at her.

  Risa’s lush mouth smiled back at him, and he’d felt that kick in his chest—the one he had no right feeling and had to quash entirely. But he didn’t want to.

  “Okay, let’s go meet with Carol,” he said. He’d gone out with a smile on his face. But, an hour later, the smile was entirely gone.

  Shit on a cracker. The Janet Deevers case matched Kaylee Schulte’s closer than Ethan wanted to admit. And that would have gone entirely unnoticed if not for Carol and old town families like the Devs.

  It had taken ten minutes to get Carol away from her perch. She’d made them wait while she gave very clear instructions to her co-worker. Risa introduced Ethan to the librarian then left him with sour-faced Carol and began chatting up her friend behind the desk. Ethan had to say he was grateful that Carol felt the need to pull this fine-looking young man away from Risa.

  It was obvious the guy had a crush on her. The way Risa was smiling back at him, Ethan had begun to wonder if she had feelings for him, too.

  She should have feelings for that guy, he thought. At least the logical part of his brain told him that. The rest of him, however, completely disagreed.

  Once Carol had led them into a private room, he brought Risa in with them, thinking she’d been very helpful so far. Surely it wasn’t just to keep her away from the guy behind the desk…

  It wasn’t until he got the door closed, and Carol was giving a sour look at Risa’s being there, that he thought better of it. By then, it was too late to ask Risa to leave. Ethan welcomed whatever insight she brought, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to be left alone with the sour-faced old woman. Though he could admit that he was, for the first time, openly violating protocol by letting her into the interview.

  Three different times he told himself to ask her to leave. Each time, he didn’t. In the end, he smiled at her and gave her instructions. “Feel free to interject with any questions that you think of.”

  It was the only way he could think of right then to make her presence necessary. So, he pulled out a notepad and pen that he always had on him. He’d found a long time ago that, when interviewing older people, having his recorder on the table made them nervous.

  He asked her if he could record their conversation but then slipped the device discreetly back into his pocket. It would catch the sound just fine. Badge, gun, recording device—that’s what the FBI demanded he carry, and pretty much in that order.

  So, he kept the notebook out to jot down things he wanted to come back around to, but he wasn’t really taking notes. He let the device do that.

  “So, we found a case and—” he paused. He briefed her on her new clearance status, letting her know that this information and the very fact that he’d asked these questions could go no further.

  Carol put her hands on her knees, leaned forward, and stared at him with a prim expression. “There are a good number of people in this library who just saw us come into this room. I have a suspicion that they’ll have a suspicion of exactly what we’re doing.”

  “Understood,” Ethan told her. “However, if anyone asks what we discussed, you are to say, ‘no comment.’”

  He then asked her what she knew about Janet Deevers and watched as her face changed from stern, reprimanding old teacher to concerned and saddened citizen. That was interesting.

  “Janet was Ellie Deevers’ older sister. Ellie and I were best friends. ‘Ellie and Carol all the time’ and all that.”

  “How old were you,” he asked, “when Janet Deevers disappeared?”

  “Gosh, five or six. Janet was almost fifteen at the time. It was a good-sized family, and there were a few other siblings in between her and Ellie.

  “And they were?” he asked. Janet’s obituary had listed her surviving family. But he wanted to know who Carol remembered. Newspapers didn’t always get everything correct.

  The older woman listed all the same siblings the paper had. Ethan nodded and motioned her to go on. “How do you remember it?”

  “Oh, I remember that first night, when Janet didn’t come home for dinner. The whole family was atwitter with wondering where she’d gone. She’d been seen talking to some guy—”

  Ethan stopped her, got a name, a little bit of a reference, and motioned again for her to continue.

  “It seemed like he was trying to be her beau, and the family didn’t like that. So, she said she quit seeing him, apparently. I really can’t tell you how accurate all this is. Keep in mind, I was barely in primary school at the time.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “The whole town went looking for her, even though a lot of people were convinced she’d run off. And it was, gosh, maybe two weeks later, they found her.”

  “Tell me about that,” Ethan prompted. “Where did they find her?”

  “Out in the woods.”

  That seemed to be the moment when Carol started putting two and two together. “You’re trying to connect Janet Deevers to the Schulte girl!”

  “No, I’m trying to see if they connect. I don’t make connections where they don’t exist, Mrs. Kastrop.”

  She nodded her understanding, her face pinched and prim, but as though she appreciated the logic of it. She then talked him and Risa through the family relationships and the funeral and more. It had taken him a little more prodding to get her to tell what she had overheard the Deevers saying one night.

  Carol looked away, down and to the side.

  Ethan noted the motion, but her words hit him hard.

  “Mrs. Deevers cried for so long.” Carol sighed, the sound sad. “She would drink and yell. But one day I remember her yelling, ‘He cut up my baby!’”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Ethan dropped Risa off at home so she could get to her car and make it to her doctor’s appointment on time. He wished her good luck but barely managed to get the sound out. He was already pulling away, headed to interview the first of two officers who had worked the Deevers case back when Janet first disappeared.

  Carol’s information had knocked him for a loop. He thought—when Risa brought him the case—that it would be just a missing girl from five decades ago. He h
ad not banked on a real connection between the cases.

  Unfortunately, young kids went missing all the time. It was awful, but it didn’t mean the cases were connected. What he was looking for was absolute proof, and Carol Kastrop’s words were stunning. According to the librarian, she had specifically heard Mrs. Deevers stating that her daughter had been cut.

  That sure sounded a lot like Kaylee Schulte.

  Right now, the public record didn’t reflect any of the cuts on Kaylee’s body. He had to entertain the possibility that one of the Schultes had told people, and word had gotten around about the damage that little Kaylee had suffered. It was possible Carol had heard and was even exaggerating a little, just to get herself a spot in the action. But if she didn’t know about Kaylee—and it seemed she didn’t—then the Janet Deevers story just got a lot more interesting.

  So did Risa’s worry about the fifty-year time frame.

  While he’d been in the interview with Carol, he’d had two new voicemails from Mr. Schulte. Kaylee’s father had been leaving ever-angrier messages demanding action. He’d been calling the DFPD, too, but this was Ethan’s case.

  His big concern was that, if he called back, Ethan could either tell Mr. Schulte nothing—which would only net him more yelling—or he could say what he was really doing. But anything about “working a lead from fifty years ago” would likely make everyone declare him completely batshit. The bureau would probably pull him off the case.

  He first had to prove that he had a solid lead. The chief at the time of the Deevers' case had passed nearly twenty years ago. And sure enough, when Ethan asked around, he discovered a handful of people he wanted to question had already passed on.

  One of the two men he needed to interview—the lead detectives from the case—was in a nearby full-care nursing home. The place was keeping him on bed rest, but, according to everyone he spoke to, the man’s mental faculties were still intact. Ethan was hoping he would enjoy helping to solve an old, cold case.