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

by Savannah Kade

  When Ethan arrived, he spent a few minutes getting checked in and making his way down various hallways to the right room. As pretty as the place looked with its clean carpet and sunshine-yellow walls, nothing could hide the smell of people in their final stages of life.

  Still, when he arrived in the correct room, Ethan found a bedridden man who smiled up at him and said, “Ah, Detective Eames, happy to see you. If you can close this case, I can die in peace.”

  Ethan felt a genuine smile cross his face, and something unwound in his chest. He had no idea what the man would say, but he was confident it would help.

  Karl Marx—unfortunate name, Ethan thought—was full of information, but the warm, fuzzy feeling began to fade quickly. The more he spoke, the colder Ethan’s blood ran. What hadn’t been in the papers, and what young Carol hadn’t known when she overheard the Deevers talking, was that Janet Deevers had been laid out in the woods. Hands and feet spread out.

  “Like a…starfish,” Marx offered. “She was still in the clothing she’d gone missing in. Though it didn’t look like she’d been wearing it the whole time. Truthfully, though, we couldn’t tell.”

  Ethan had to double check, but instead of asking the same questions again, he asked Marx when Janet had gone missing exactly. He wanted to be sure the man wasn’t spinning tales.

  Marx rattled off the date perfectly. “It’s one of those cases that sticks with you.”

  Ethan understood that. They next discussed what the officers had done upon opening the case.

  “Not much,” Marx snorted. “We thought her parents were hysterical and that she’d run away. It wasn’t until she turned up dead that we felt we had a real problem.” He went on about how they weren’t able to lift fingerprints from the body and that collecting DNA wasn’t a thing at the time.

  Ethan wanted to tell him that there was no such thing on this case, either. The body had been too cleaned up in some places and too dirty in others. So far, no one had found a single fingerprint or splash of DNA to lift. He was working this one old-school.

  Even the leaves that he and Grace had so carefully bagged had, so far, turned up nothing other than being the correct leaves to match the theory that Kaylee’s body had slid down the embankment.

  Ethan asked Marx a few more questions, wanting to ensure he could trust the information the man gave. “And when was she found?”

  “Jesus, weeks later. She’d been dead quite a while, but it had been a colder time of year than it is now. So she hadn’t decomposed much.” He looked away. “I hate talking about this. I mean, I’ve seen worse but the way they cut her…”

  That was when Ethan leaned forward. He trusted this now. Besides, unless somebody was feeding the old man information here in the nursing home, how would he have known to mention the cuts in the first place? This also matched Carol’s information. It might be the first real break in the case.

  Now, Ethan was on pins and needles waiting. “What kinds of cuts?”

  “Up and down her arms and legs.”

  “Straight or curved?”

  “Straight.”

  Every answer matched exactly what they had seen on Kaylee, and Ethan was getting chills. “Where on her legs?”

  “Along the outside, kind of like the stripes the kids wear down their running pants now.” The old man motioned with one hand.

  Ethan nodded. “How were they arranged?”

  “Get me a pencil, boy.”

  Ethan watched as the old man recreated lines that could have been lifted from Kaylee’s tiny form. He asked Marx to point out any other locations, and, of course, Janet’s arms had also been cut…just like Kaylee’s.

  Ethan took the paper and looked at it. “Is this exactly what it was that was on there? Did you memorize this?”

  “Naw, I made that up. But that’s what they looked like. I mean, it looked like writing—just like that.”

  Ethan’s eyebrows snapped up. Writing? That had not occurred to him nor to Dr. Grunholdt. The old man looked at him with sallow eyes. “I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. I think it might be Latin.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Risa’s head automatically popped up as a knock came at her door. The knock sounded mushy and slow, and she wondered about that as she made her way to get her eye to the peephole.

  She’d wobbled her way to the door, her booted foot feeling chunky as she put pressure on it. Pulling the door open, she saw a weary-looking Ethan, but she found she still was smiling at him.

  “Come on in.” She was gesturing him inside and wondering what she could do to help when she watched a return smile light up his face.

  “Hey, no crutches?”

  “Nope,” she said. “Just the boot.”

  He was looking down at her feet now and frowning. “What’s that? You’re wearing heels?”

  Risa laughed. On her right foot was a cute little shoe in beige leather from a pair she often wore with some of her nice dresses—but only the one shoe. She sighed, “It’s the right height to go with the boot. Otherwise, my hips will be off, and it’ll throw my back out. If that happens, I’ll be a lot longer getting back to work.”

  Ethan smiled, and then he frowned. “How many shifts are you out?”

  “Two more,” she said and heard the irritation in her own voice. “But standing on it doesn’t mean lifting. I can’t do anything other than ride a desk and haul paperwork.”

  “Is that what you’ll do?”

  “Oh, you bet. Honestly, the chief is being nice giving me these two days off.”

  There was a brief pause between them then—an almost-awkward silence. She’d closed the door behind him. Glancing up at the clock on the wall in the kitchen, she saw it was almost 9:30.

  “Ethan?” She asked.

  “Sorry. I was just suddenly hungry. I need dinner.” His phrases were disjointed, as though he didn’t quite know how to say them. “Have you eaten? Never mind,” he answered almost as soon as he asked. “Of course you have. Everyone has eaten dinner by now.”

  He was shaking his head as though to remove a stupid idea, then stepping aside like he might push past her and leave. She laughed.

  “Actually, I sat on my couch and had some chips. I was just talking myself into getting some real food.”

  He looked up then, hopeful, and seemed to notice that she was standing between him and the door. There was no quick getaway for him, and Risa took advantage of that. She almost laughed at the thought. She was not going to get in anyone’s way.

  “Is there any chance I can take you out for dinner?” He rubbed at the back of his neck as though it pained him to ask, but he smiled sheepishly.

  “Did you come here to ask me to dinner?” It almost sounded like a last-minute Hail Mary because he’d found himself inexplicably stuck inside her apartment. When he nodded, she smiled. “I’m good with that. Where to?”

  “That’s the problem. This is a shitty offer. I don’t know where to go. I only know we need to get out of town. I really would like to sit down and drink a beer and take a load off, but I just don’t think...”

  Risa nodded. She understood. If anyone in Dark Falls saw him drinking and maybe having a laugh or two, they might get angry. He was supposed to be working the Schulte case. It wasn’t something she’d thought about before she’d become a firefighter, before she’d hung out with cops, but there were cop bars for a reason. Officers were expected to be “on,” and people got mad when they saw the detectives on a big case take a break.

  They had to take breaks, Risa had learned. They learned how to turn it off even in the worst cases. There’d been a string of arsons here recently, and she’d understood the officers had needed a place to go where they could throw back a couple beers and tell awful jokes and watch sports on TV. It had to be done so they could go home and get some sleep at night. She understood.

  “Is Palisade far enough?” It was a small town with wineries and high-end housing—the kind Risa couldn’t afford, though the place was
beautiful. “On the other side, there’s a roadhouse. No one will question you there.”

  “Are you up for a roadhouse?”

  She scoffed. “Please. I’m almost six feet tall.”

  He moved closer, into her personal space, and stood up to his full height. He stretched upward, making up for where he’d been letting his shoulders slouch. “You’re not that tall.”

  She laughed. “I can handle a roadhouse. And I will tell you this: they have the best burgers.”

  “Good selection of beer?” He asked.

  “Solid. I mean, if you need any particular microbrew, probably not.”

  He shook his head. “I just need something other than watered-down shit.”

  Once she convinced him that she could drive perfectly well with her uninjured right foot, Ethan gave in and thanked her for the offer. He’d probably been driving all over God’s green earth. And, she thought, he was less likely to be recognized in her car than his. She headed into her room to gather her things.

  He looked questioningly at her feet when she came back with her purse. Good point. The kitten heel did not go with her jeans and her T-shirt that read Seattle Cider Company. That part was fine for the bar. Honestly, even the boot was good. “Give me a second.” She traded the heel out for a sneaker that was a close-enough match and told herself she’d spend most of the time sitting down.

  In the passenger seat of the car as she pulled out of town, he leaned his head back and closed his eyes. For a moment, she thought he was going to fall asleep, and for another moment, she thought she was going to let him. But then his eyes fluttered, and he sat up.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I’m not being good company.”

  “I don’t expect you to work at being good company. I know what you’re up against,” she said. “Did you catch a break?”

  She knew that’s what he’d been wanting, and he nodded.

  “You don’t seem all that happy about it.”

  Ethan was still talking to her, though he was looking out the window. He’d been watching the metal sculptures in the middle of the freeways go by. He had turned his head as they went past the library, as though he’d been looking at the city, but she suspected other things were on his mind.

  “In a case like this,” he said to the window, “a break is good. But when you get a break, you always seem to learn something you didn’t want to know.”

  Risa waited a moment and absorbed that, not wanting to reply with the wrong thing. Eventually, she’d asked, “So you did your interviews, right?”

  He’d nodded.

  “And what you found, then, was that the Janet Deevers case is related.” It was the only thing that would have put him in this mood.

  Once again, Ethan didn’t agree, but he didn’t say no, either. Risa knew that information made the case at hand much more serious. She wanted to ask if that was enough to declare it a serial killer. If that was enough to get a team out to look for the guy. Or if fifty years between murders was too long for them to put the man hours on it. But as she was opening her mouth, Ethan turned and asked her, “Can you ask me about anything but the case tonight?”

  Despite the new chill settling in her bones and her concerns about the man she’d glimpsed again at the bottom of her staircase that morning, Risa agreed.

  Chapter Twenty

  Risa enjoyed watching Ethan relax as they waited for the food to arrive. He got the first beer in him pretty quickly, as though he needed to just turn the day off. She’d done the same, though as the driver, she would be finished after just one.

  With a smile on his face and a clear desire to change the topic from the Kaylee Schulte case and the worries of the day, Ethan steered the conversation. He asked her all kinds of odd and inane things. He asked her to tell her funniest firefighter story, and she had to tell him about the time the sex shop on the edge of town went into flashover. He’d laughed so hard, he almost snorted his beer when she got to the part about the low melting point of sex toys.

  “Is that real?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Risa replied, a smile on her face as she tipped back the last of her beer. “I mean, it makes sense. Sex toys are made for...” She paused, wondering how much what she said gave away. “You know, they’re made for texture and sensation, not durability.” She heard the strange tone on that last word. It was an odd conversation to be having, but Ethan was smiling. So she went on. “And, you probably wouldn’t think about it, but all that cheap lingerie, it’s cheap. Turns out, it’s highly flammable. I don’t think the companies that make those worry about keeping the garments up to code. Not for a peekaboo corset.”

  He raised his eyebrows, and for a moment she realized she had ventured into sex talk with a man she wasn’t having sex with. She was grateful then that her dark skin did a reasonable job of hiding the heavy blush she could feel crawling up her face. She also tried to hide it behind a wide smile, as though she hadn’t just wandered into dicey territory.

  The smile, or maybe the beer, or maybe the talk about sex toys and lingerie, created some kind of spark in Ethan’s eyes. Risa found that she liked it far too much. Luckily, he changed the topic, though she realized she needed to get a new “funniest fire ever” story.

  “So, what was the training like for firefighting?” He asked it as though he really wanted to know. “I mean, I hear all these stories from the macho guys, but I always think they’re exaggerating.”

  Risa laughed and told him about firefighting training, about how she hadn’t been the only woman in her academy class. But she had hung in when others dropped out—men and women alike.

  It felt good when Ethan smiled as though he had no doubt she would. Her family hadn’t doubted her, either; she’d been raised to believe she could be anything she wanted. It had been more than a little bit of a shock getting out of her insular community and finding out that other people didn’t think so.

  Risa told him how she’d walked through her degree, knowing what she wanted to do. She’d gone into school with a plan, and she’d aced it. She told him how she’d walked into firefighter training, expecting everyone to welcome her with welcome arms. She was, after all, a Caldwell.

  “If it was anything like what officers or FBI agents go through, no one gets a pass,” he said as he chuckled.

  Risa nodded. “Yeah, I don’t know if they picked on me for being a woman and for being black just as a way to test me, or if there was really something behind it…” She let it trail off. It was a question she’d probably never get the answer to. “I mean, the training officers, they ultimately picked on everyone for something. Maybe they thought those were my weak points.” She shrugged.

  “But they weren’t,” Ethan added in, shaking his head as though he already knew that story.

  “I think it was the first time in my life that I really started to get some real drive. It was what I’d always wanted to do, but I hadn’t ever had to fight for it before, you know?”

  He nodded. “I know. I wanted to be an agent from a relatively young age, too. My cousin went in the year ahead of me. And, well...” He sat back a little bit, his expression turning more somber. “Her little sister went missing at age eight. She caught the FBI bug right then. I think she thought she’d find her sister—”

  “Did they?” Risa leaned forward.

  “No.” She didn’t like the sad look that crossed his face then. “Emmaline died. But Eleri recently found her sister’s remains and managed to bring them home. It only took twenty years.”

  “Wow.” Risa was stunned. “And what about your ambitions?”

  “To me, watching what their family went through was hard. There was nothing El or I could do. We were just kids.” He paused. “Emmaline was my father’s brother’s daughter. But seeing what it does to a family…it lit the fire in me.”

  “Ouch.” Risa wanted to ask, “Like Kaylee?” but she didn’t. She’d promised not to bring it up. So, she shifted the conversation again, trying to do as he’d asked. It wasn’t very subt
le, but she went for it. “So, at the end of firefighter training, we had to do the hot box.”

  “What’s that?”

  She explained to him about a multi-level crawl-through building that was designed specifically for firefighter training. “Every trainee has to go through. Though you can choose your own path, you have to start at one end and get out at the other. And you have to hit certain spots in between before you can trigger the trapdoor at the end.”

  “So?” he asked. “I mean, it sounds like one of those fun mazes at Halloween, but no one jumping out at you.”

  “Most of it’s not flat, it’s vertical changes, stairs and missing floors,” she said. “You’re in full PPE, and all of it is on fire.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I don’t know if you’ve ever gone caving, but it’s like that. But with fire. Some of the hallways are so low and narrow you can barely get through. You’re down on your hands and knees and your gear hardly fits, and you’re shimmying along. You think about taking off your hat so you’ll fit through.”

  “But you don’t, because that’s really bad,” he filled in as she nodded. Then he asked again, “And it’s all on fire?”

  “Mm-hmm.” She tipped her empty bottle at him. Then she added the kicker. “And where it’s not on fire, there’s no light.”

  “What?” he asked, leaning forward. The server showed up then, offered them refills, and Risa took water. But she motioned for Ethan to get another, and he took her up on it.

  Risa looked at him and said, “Yes, it’s pitch black.”

  “But you have a light on your helmet, right?”

  “In the real world, yes. But the training isn’t for the everyday fire. The training is for when things go wrong. So, you go into a practice fire, and your trainer will rip away your oxygen, or something like that.”

  “Holy shit,” he said again. “That’s seriously badass.”