by S. E. Harmon
“What is it?” Danny demanded.
“Footprints.”
He met my gaze grimly. At some point she was in that trunk, kicking for all she was worth. Hard enough to leave impressions in the trunk liner.
I made my way to the front of the car, where the door had been left ajar. Danny trailed behind and handed me a pair of gloves. I snapped them on and leaned into the car.
“Look how far back that seat is,” Danny murmured from behind. “We know Amy wasn’t driving.”
When Gonzalez moved for the passenger-side door, Danny shook his head. “Just one person,” Danny instructed. “We don’t need everyone tramping all over the evidence.”
Gonzalez rolled his eyes but stepped back. He was already pissed because I had found that car. “Check the visors,” he snapped.
Of course I’m going to check the fucking visors. I almost bit my own tongue off, trying not to retort in kind. I checked both visors only to find registration information for Dinah Greene. An insurance card. A fast food flyer. I checked the other side carefully. A couple parking stubs.
I ran a gloved hand under the seat and felt in the nooks and crannies. And then snagged my hand on something sharp. “Fuck,” I muttered.
“What? What is it?”
“Something stuck me.” I tentatively reached back into the hole until I grasped the small item. I pulled it out gingerly. “A key.” The plastic fob had splintered and made a sharp edge. “A key to what, though? Safety deposit box?”
“Looks like the key to a storage locker.” At my inquiring look, he shrugged. “I had a locker once to store my wave runners before I sold them.” He squinted at the fob. “You see any numbers on it?”
I flipped it over and over in my hands and checked every spare inch of the fob and key. “Not quite that lucky.”
“Great,” Gonzalez drawled. “So now we just have to comb every storage locker in every storage facility in the tristate area. That’s just great.”
“Hey, you wanna lay off?” Kevin growled. “This is the best piece of evidence we’ve had in a long time. Don’t be jealous because you didn’t find it.”
“Jealous? Of that freak?”
“Hey.” Tab’s voice was all business. “I don’t care how we found it, only that we did. Unless I’m mistaken there’s still a girl missing.” When they didn’t answer her, she prodded, “Right?”
I tuned them out as I turned the key over in my hands and stared at it. “It’s going to take us forever to search all those units. And I’m betting there’ll be no financial trail.”
“Can’t you just—” Danny glanced around. “—you know.”
My eyes narrowed. “Can’t I what?”
“Can’t you ask her?” Danny finished, his mouth a tight line.
Damned if that sentence didn’t sound like it had air quotes around it. “No,” I said shortly. “I can’t ask. I don’t know where she is right now.”
“We’ve got to get this processed for prints.” He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “And we’ve got to search this area.”
“Her killer wouldn’t go through so much trouble to hide the car and bury her out here. If he was going to do that, he’d just leave her in the car.”
“Well, unfortunately for me, my lieutenant does not accept ‘because Rain said so’ as a good reason not to follow protocol.”
I swallowed a four-letter reply.
IT WAS dawn before they found her.
Or what they assumed was her. Of course the remains would have to be processed to be sure. DNA extractions, testing, the whole nine. But I knew it was her.
The normally pitch-black area was lit up. I stood slightly past the yellow-and-black crime scene tape and watched the anthropologist, a short, stout woman named Callie, gather Amy’s remains. She worked at the speed of slow and used a small trowel to place them into buckets organized by quadrant.
Danny stood a short distance away, close enough to touch. From the look on his face, he might as well have been on Mars.
I moved closer, so our shoulders bumped briefly. “You okay?”
“Hmm? Yeah.” His smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Of course.”
It was going to be a long day. For everyone.
“We’re about a mile or so from where we found her car,” Danny murmured. “Do you think she knew she was going the wrong way?”
“I don’t know.”
I certainly hoped not. From my best guess, she probably woke up in the trunk and tried to kick her way out. Eventually she probably calmed enough to find the trunk latch and get out. Only to be confronted with miles and miles of thick vegetation. It was tough land to navigate, even if you weren’t disoriented and injured.
“You really saw her, didn’t you?”
I was quiet for a moment. “Yeah.”
He rubbed his eyes with his knuckles. “I don’t want to talk about this.”
“You’re the one who brought it up.”
“Well, I’m putting it back down.”
“Fine by me.”
“I need some time to think.”
“I said it’s fine.”
Of course it wasn’t. He checked his watch and grimaced. “You should get home. Get some rest. No need for both of us to be here.”
As much as I wanted to argue, I was so tired I was starting to see double. I wanted a shower and a bed, ASAP. I took a few steps toward the car and then turned around.
I bit my lip and thought of Anna. Maybe Ethan was wrong. “They don’t all end this way,” I said.
It was clear Danny was thinking of her too. “Yeah.” His jaw was so tight it looked like it might shatter. “They do.”
Chapter 24
I SPENT a lot of time around the morgue later that day, harassing the ME to give me a preliminary cause of death. That caused Sanders, otherwise known as the ME Who Gave Zero Fucks, to threaten me with bodily injury. Which led to me going home early.
I navigated the late-afternoon roads without much thought, already so used to the drive I could do it with my eyes closed. There was barely a smattering of seven-o’clock traffic to keep me entertained. It gave me a lot of time to think. To brood. Too much time.
Even without seeing her ghost, I would’ve known it was likely to turn out that way. Most cold cases did. Every time I searched the missing person database and came back with thousands of results, I knew most of them ended badly. Most of their lives had ended, period, and the police were just catching up. It was daunting. A whole room full of trying to catch up.
I slowed as I turned down the rough path to the house, but the car bumped along anyway and made my teeth rattle. At some point we’d discussed paving the lane, but the unspoiled beauty of the place almost made the thought of smooth concrete sacrilege. I skipped the garage and parked in the driveway.
But I didn’t get out right away. Instead I stared absently at the front of the house. The cedar siding and surrounding decks with wooden porch railings almost gave the whole thing a lodge feel. The only thing better than the wraparound decks were the large windows that brought the outside in. It couldn’t be further away from my sterile, low-maintenance rental apartment that was a convenient ten minutes from work. Everything about the house screamed character, from the multicolored stone fireplace to the skylights to Danny’s carefully maintained wood floors. “Original wood,” he would stress as I rolled my eyes.
I wanted to stay.
I knew that just like I knew my own name. I didn’t want to go back to my lonely little apartment and my dying fern. It wasn’t like I had to work in DC. There were always viable transfer opportunities. I could… we could make things work. That was of course assuming quite a bit. That Danny still wanted me, ghosts and all. But asking him where we stood might take a little more courage than I had.
There was a sudden blur of motion on my window, and I jumped. I glanced over only to see my own flushed face and an older woman smiling through the glass. I let the window down a crack. “Yes?”
�
��Are you almost finished in there? I didn’t want to disturb you, but I really need to talk to you, dearie.”
I groaned. “Look, I’m a little backed up with ghosts right now. Okay? You’re just going to have to wait your turn.”
Her eyes widened, and she very nearly clutched her pearls. “Well. I just wanted to know if you could give me directions. I’m a little turned around out here.”
I gaped at her for a minute and then glanced in my rearview. I didn’t see her car, but she must’ve pulled in while I was busy pondering life. “Oh God, I’m so sorry. Why don’t you pull out first, and I’ll just lead you back to the main road.”
“Well… if it’s no trouble. My name’s Gladys.”
“Rain,” I said and stuck out my hand.
She glanced at my hand and stepped back a little. I guess I didn’t blame her. I hadn’t made the best first impression. She looked at me, forehead creased. “Do you really see ghosts?”
“No,” I practically shouted. Good God, I was blurting it out to perfect strangers. “I misspoke is all.”
“You know, my Aunt Gussie just passed on about a month ago. I would sure love to know what happened to the pendant she said she’d leave for me. I’d like to give it to my daughter.”
“I don’t really—”
“It’s a Saint Christopher’s medal,” she said as she peered at me from behind thick glasses. “Been in the family for years.”
My shoulders slumped. “I guess I could ask around.”
“Oh.” She beamed. “That would be absolutely wonderful.”
I sighed. “Let me take you to the main road.”
“You’re just the sweetest thing.” She waved and tottered off.
That’s me. The sweetest thing. Finding cats in trees and helping little old ladies cross the street. Not only that, but I was officially the jumpiest person on Earth. I looked in my rearview as I pressed the start button.
There was no car. No old woman. No nothing. No wonder she didn’t want to shake my hand. I scowled and got out of the car. Sneakyass ghost. “I’m working on someone else’s problem right now. There’s a line, Gladys!”
When I glanced over again, Ethan was grinning at me. “She’s good, isn’t she?”
“Does that old bat really have an Aunt Gussie?”
“I don’t know,” he said with a shrug. “But you just made her a promise. I’d get on that if I were you.”
I sighed. Wine. The situation really needed wine.
AFTER SPEAKING with Aunt Gussie, locating a pendant in the hidden drawer of a jewelry box and giving it to Gladys’s baffled daughter, I was exhausted. Danny still wasn’t back, so I heated up some leftover pizza and ate it standing in the kitchen and only paused long enough to sprinkle parmesan and red pepper flakes on top. Afterward I changed—a wrinkled tank and some khaki shorts—and grabbed a beer from the fridge. I padded out to the deck barefoot and risked possible splinters just for the feel of the distressed wood.
I sat in one of the Adirondacks and propped my crossed feet up on the railing. I stuck my earbuds in and listened to Jenna’s interview on my iPad while I made notes. I wanted to ask her about that key, and I wanted to press her more about her plans to leave for Arizona. Amy had been awfully sure about the whole Pemberton thing. I wanted to know if that was just one person reading the relationship wrong… or Jenna lying to us again.
I was halfway through the interview when a woman suddenly drifted up the deck steps. She was also barefoot, and when she sat in the chair next to me, she tucked her legs under her. I paused the recording and took out one earbud.
“It’s going to rain,” she said conversationally.
“I don’t mind a little bad weather.”
As if on cue, the sky rumbled threateningly. It was dark and cloudy, and little droplets of rain fell on my skin. But I wasn’t ready to go inside just yet.
Her gaze was hesitant. Questioning. “You looked troubled.”
“These past few weeks have been fairly taxing. I found out some things about myself that I’d rather not know.”
Her mouth tightened as though she knew what I was going to say. “Sometimes those are the only things worth knowing.”
“Turns out I can see ghosts.”
“That so?” She didn’t seem surprised.
“Sometimes they even talk to me. If they have something to say, that is.” I took out my other earbud. “So. What is it you have to tell me?”
She folded her arms around herself and looked off. At what, I couldn’t be sure. I wished I could just put my arms around her. Shore her up. Let her know it was going to be okay. She looked so young. Sad. Lost.
She looked like him.
“You look so different from the others. Much more… solid.” A thought struck me suddenly, and I frowned. “Are you feeding off his energy or something?”
“I don’t know.” She cast me an angry look. “You act like I wanted this.”
“If you didn’t want to be here, then why are you?”
“Where else would I go?”
Quiet enveloped us both as the thunder rumbled in the distance.
“You can’t stay,” I said into the silence. “He needs to move on.”
“I know,” she said, her voice a little choked. “Ethan said you were cool. That you would help me.”
“Of course I will.”
“You know how I got this scar?”
I shook my head.
“Playing hide-and-seek with a bunch of neighborhood kids. I climbed up in a tree and watched them look. I thought I was rather clever until I realized that I was stuck.” A little smile played on her lips as she remembered. “I was too embarrassed to tell anyone, so I just stayed there. I knew he would come looking for me.”
“And did he?”
“You know Danny. Of course he did.” She sighed. “He stood at the base of my tree, telling me a story about a brave little toaster. He was almost to the end of the story when he stopped. I finally broke my silence just to find out the ending of the story, and he told me that I had to at least be braver than a fucking toaster and come down first. I tried, and when I got scared part way down, he came up and got me.”
She swiped at her cheek. “That was Danny. Always getting me out of my scrapes. Catching me when I fell. Helping me down when I climbed too high. We had it good, me and Danny.”
“Until you were separated.”
“I didn’t feel protected anymore. Unsure of everyone and everything.” She shook her head. “I made some stupid choices.”
I almost didn’t want to ask, but I had to know. “Was it… your father?”
“Of course not.” She sent me a glare. “I was seeing… someone that I shouldn’t. Some guy that I thought I loved. But turns out, I really didn’t know him at all. We used to go out at night in his car and ride around. Go to the park and smoke. It was just my time to get away from all the other kids in the foster home. One day he gave me something a little stronger. I didn’t ask enough questions.” She plucked at the hem of her shorts. “It was over quickly.”
My jaw tightened in anger. “Who is this guy?”
“Doesn’t matter. He OD’d a long time ago.”
“Where… where did he put you?”
“Does that matter?” She asked exasperatedly. “It was all so long ago.”
“It matters to Danny,” I shot back. “Everything about you matters to him. It would probably bring him some peace to give you a proper burial.”
“It’s a lost cause. He buried me out in an undeveloped area.”
“Do you know the exact coordinates? We’re skilled in recovery—”
“There is no recovery,” she said firmly. “There’s a Wal-Mart over it now.”
Fuck. “I’m sorry,” I said inanely.
“If you just feel like digging for bones so much, there’s another cold case stuck in Hellar Lake,” she said, clearly frustrated. “VW Beetles make nice caskets, I guess.”
“I’m sorry,” I said again. I didn’
t know what else to say.
“I guess I should just get on with it.” She nervously rubbed her hands on her shorts. “You don’t happen to know what happens… after?”
I shook my head. “I wish I knew.”
“Okay.” She nodded twice. “Okay then. Tell him… tell him that I love him. That it wasn’t dad. Tell him that I miss him. I don’t blame him for anything. And thank you. For loving me more than I loved myself.”
“I can do that.”
“Good.” She closed her eyes and let out a deep breath as though exhausted. “That’ll be real good.”
“I still think he’d like to know the name of this guy. He’s a detective, Anna. It’s what he does. It’ll drive him crazy.”
“It’s all in the past.”
“Even if you don’t know his real name, I have some imaging software that’s remarkably advanced. We can build a composite—” I turned to grab my iPad, and when I turned back, she was gone. And considering she’d finished her business, maybe for good.
I sighed. Unfortunately I had bigger problems. I still had to figure out a way to tell Danny.
BY THE time I heard his car pull in, I still hadn’t figured it out.
I listened with half an ear as he moved about. The hum of the air conditioner kicked on as he lowered it. Water in the sink. The fridge opened and shut a few times. Even though you could see the deck from almost every angle of the living room and kitchen, he didn’t join me outside. And when his bedroom door closed, it sounded awfully final.
That was okay. I pushed out of the chair, stood, and stretched. I was done waiting for Danny to come to me.
I paused with my knuckles above his door and wondered if I was doing the right thing. I could hear that he was still moving around. Yes. It was the right thing. I brought my knuckles down and rapped loudly. Then I winced and knocked a little softer, like I wasn’t running point on a drug raid.
There was more rustling, and he pulled open the door. Just a crack. “What?”
I huffed. Friendly greeting. “Just wanted to say hey. In case you were wondering where I was.”