The Frailty of Flesh

by Sandra Ruttan

  Her brow wrinkled. “Why?”

  “You take after your father’s side of the family.”

  A quick rap at the door was the only warning they had that someone was coming in. When Williams appeared he looked happy, like he was already about to say something. He was carrying Craig’s bag. Then he saw Emma.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Her cheeks colored. “I came to see Craig.”

  Williams paused, appeared to be thinking over what he’d been about to say, and then discarded it. “Well, I have good news. The doctor says he’ll let you out of here.”

  “You mean I miss the rubber chicken and Jell-O lunch?”

  “I’ll make it up to you.” He set the bag down beside the bed. “We’ll wait for you in the hall.”

  They managed to beat the lunch-hour rush, and had ordered when Williams shifted the conversation back to Emma. “We’ve talked about this before.”

  “I’m not getting my hopes up,” she said, chin jutting out.

  In all their exchanges, Craig had never seen her that passionate. She was emphatic and yet somehow he sensed her disappointment, read it in the hurt in her eyes.

  “Isn’t there anything you can do?” Craig asked.

  Williams hesitated as he glanced at Emma. “We could try to go back, interview the witnesses again, try to poke holes in the time line Darren and Donny gave us. The only reason Donny was convicted for Hope’s murder was because of Lisa Harrington’s testimony. From what I’ve read, it sounds like she’s recanting.” The waitress brought their food, and for a moment the conversation was set aside as she made sure they got the correct orders and had everything they needed. Then Williams continued, “It feels like it’s now or never.”

  That made sense, from a certain point of view.

  “The lawsuit makes it tricky.” Emma lifted a fork full of salad. “If the RCMP loses or settles, and you reopen the investigation he could have a second suit.”

  Williams nodded. “They’re watching this closely.”

  “Which is how you knew I was here.” Craig speared a potato. “I didn’t check in at the police station for a reason.”

  “Brandy told me where you were staying.” Williams hesitated. “In front of Darren.”

  Craig remembered telling Brandy the name of the motel, just in case. He held up a hand. “It’s not your fault.”

  They continued eating in silence, until Williams’s cell phone rang.

  As soon as he answered it his face clouded. “It took them this long?” he said as he glanced at his watch, then reached up with his free hand to rub his forehead. “Right. I’m on my way.”

  “They’ve brought Darren in for questioning,” he said as he snapped the phone shut.

  Craig exchanged a glance with Emma, and they both tossed their napkins down on their plates and started to push their chairs back from the table.

  “Not so fast. I’ll drop you off at your vehicle,” Williams said to Craig. “I suspect you’ll want to head back to the Lower Mainland. It seems Donny’s parole officer has finally confirmed he’s not at home, and he didn’t show up for work today. A credit-card purchase puts him in the Lower Mainland.” He looked at Emma. “What about you?”

  “I’ll get a flight back. If Donny’s arrested, my editor will want firsthand coverage.”

  “I have to drive back anyway,” Craig said as he stood up. “You can ride with me.”

  Her hesitation was barely noticeable before she nodded. “Let’s go.”

  Ashlyn and Tain had just taken off their coats when Zidani stormed in.

  “Now I have to meet with the deputy chief constable from the Port Moody Police Department about that witless wonder of theirs.” He pointed a finger at Ashlyn. “Nurani Patel and Matt Lewis. Break the news to them.”

  “Are we pressing charges?”

  “We’re still looking at the Patel girl, but for now, cut her loose.”

  He scowled as he turned and walked away.

  “I can tell them,” Tain said. “You call Craig.”

  She held up her hand. “It’s okay. Let’s go get this over with.”

  Tain took the lead with Matt. Any fleeting thought that the boy might be overcome with guilt and share anything he’d held back earlier disappeared when he started to cry. Ashlyn finally called his parents.

  Then they went to talk to Nurani Patel.

  When Ashlyn opened the door the girl stopped pacing the room and looked startled, for a moment frozen. She must have sensed their defeat because she straightened up and tossed her head. “It’s about time.”

  “So sorry to keep you waiting.” Ashlyn infused her words with a healthy dose of sarcasm. “We’re still investigating, but you can go.”

  “Hmmmph. It’s about time. I have things to do,” Nurani said as she started to walk to the door.

  “Shame about Shannon,” Ashlyn said as she looked at Tain.

  “So young. Matt’s taking it pretty hard.”

  Nurani stopped. “What about Shannon?”

  “I thought you had things to do,” Ashlyn said.

  “We wouldn’t want to keep you,” Tain added.

  “Really, we’re so sorry that a pesky little thing like Shannon’s murder messed up your morning.”

  Nurani blanched. “What are you talking about?”

  “You got her killed.”

  A flash of anger lit her eyes. “I tried to help her.”

  “Next time you want to help someone”—Ashlyn pulled out her cell phone and located the photo of Richard Reimer— “remember this. Remember just how valuable your help was.”

  Nurani gagged and ran past them, down the hallway.

  “You’ll be the parent who takes her kids to the morgue to show them the damage drugs can do, won’t you?” Tain said as they walked back to their desk.

  “Better than dealing with their death.”

  As soon as the words were out she regretted them, because she’d seen the look on Tain’s face before. She could only describe it as haunted, a glimpse of raw pain that was normally concealed under the constructed mask.

  It was a look she’d seen all too often on this case, usually when Tain thought she wasn’t watching.

  Before she could say anything he put up his hand and walked off.

  As soon as she got back to her desk she tried to phone Craig. Although she’d left a message on his cell phone earlier, she knew he wouldn’t be able to use it in the hospital. First all the lines were busy. Then she got through and asked for his room.

  “That patient has been released.”

  “Really?” He hadn’t returned her call. “Thank you.”

  She hung up and her phone started to ring. She answered it, thinking it might be Craig. When the caller identified themselves she almost laughed. Social services, after all this time.

  The apology came out sounding like, “I’m thawwy I thook tho long,” and Ashlyn rubbed her forehead as the woman bumbled through the explanation, interspersed with sneezing and coughing as though she was trying to emphasize just how severe her cold was.

  “Please, can you just tell me the status of the complaint and investigation?”

  To her relief, the woman offered to fax her a report. Once Ashlyn had it, she headed straight for Zidani’s office. She paused long enough to knock, but didn’t wait for an invitation.

  “Constable Hart.” Zidani frowned as she walked in and shut the door behind her. “I’m in a meeting at the moment.” He pointed at the man sitting across from him, who Ashlyn quickly identified as the deputy chief from the Port Moody police.

  “I know. You need to see this, sir.” Sign of respect tacked on for good measure as she set the papers on the desk in front of him.

  He skimmed the contents, then stopped, picked it up, got up and passed it to the deputy chief constable.

  “It says there that social services spoke to Parker four times and have been waiting on a report from him for over a month.”

  The deputy chief glanced a
t Ashlyn. “Look, he’s a young officer. He’s made a few mistakes.”

  “A few? He screwed up the routine search on Friday. He missed the murder weapon. Then he wasn’t thorough at the hospital. If he’d done his job, we might have found Shannon Reimer that afternoon, and it’s possible four people would still be alive. He fell asleep while monitoring the family home.”

  “Hang on. Christopher was in the house with his father. Now that we know he shot him, there was nothing anyone could have done to stop that from happening.”

  “But he might have been able to prevent Christopher from leaving. Too late for Richard, but not too late to save Shannon and Tracy.”

  “Parker tells me you’ve been on him since day one because you didn’t like the way he looked at you.”

  “That’s Parker’s excuse because he was responsible for supervising Christopher Reimer while we covered the crime scene. He failed to get Christopher food or water, and left him in the back of an unheated cruiser. The boy was numb and in shock. The fact that he was the killer doesn’t change that. We didn’t know that then.”

  The deputy chief hesitated, looked at Zidani, who held up his hand. “We can’t bail you out here. Two people were murdered inside Byron Smythe’s home. If he catches wind of Parker’s track record he’ll have a case for incompetence.”

  “And if we discipline Parker we admit our guilt.”

  “If you do nothing you’re condoning his actions,” Zidani said. “We’ve got our own case right now. We can’t afford to take some mud for you over this one, and from what I’ve seen Parker isn’t worth it.”

  The deputy chief constable stood and nodded. “Suspended without pay, pending the outcome of an internal investigation.”

  He shook Zidani’s hand, then Ashlyn’s.

  “Be sure to tell Parker I wish him happy holidays,” she said.

  The deputy chief glanced at Zidani, then opened the door and walked out.

  “Was that really necessary?” Zidani asked her.

  “I don’t know, but it felt good.”

  They’d been driving for less than an hour when Craig’s cell phone rang.

  “Do you mind?” he asked Emma.

  She answered it.

  “Yes, this is his number.” A pause as her cheeks colored. “Yes, I am. He’s driving. Can I—” She nodded and started rummaging through her bag, extracting a pen and pad of paper. “Right. Thanks.”

  When Emma hung up she was still scribbling notes. Craig was trying to decipher them. “Is that shorthand?”

  She looked up as she tucked her hair back behind her ears. “My own version.”

  “Who was that?”

  “You spoke to a corrections officer at the prison Donny Lockridge did his time in. He confirmed that Lisa Harrington’s visits were more than just guilt trips. When he was released from prison guess who picked him up?”

  What did it say about his judgment if he’d presumed so much into Lisa Harrington that he’d missed the reality? That she was actually a calculated, manipulative woman who had an involvement with the murderer of her daughter? She’d filed a lawsuit against his father, his employer…Was she that good of an actress that most would have made the same mistake, or had he imagined the emotions he’d assumed he’d read?

  At least one thing was clear: She’d played him from the beginning.

  “But why me?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Lisa Harrington came to speak to me before I was even asked to check into the investigation. Why? Why involve me?”

  “She knew you were Steve Daly’s son. Considering the allegations about their involvement, that would make her youngest child your half sister.” Emma shrugged. “It gives you a personal stake in this.”

  “Only I never told her Steve’s my father.” He thought back to what she’d said when they’d first met, that she didn’t remember him from the investigation. That he looked young. “She thought I’d been part of the original investigation.”

  Emma’s eyes took on a faraway look and her mouth formed a hard line.

  “What is it?”

  “I talked to Frank to get you put on the investigation.”

  “You mentioned something about that back at the hospital.”

  She looked at him. “But didn’t you wonder how I knew about Donny’s planned legal action before it was public?”

  “I had…I just…”

  “You were too busy avoiding this pain-in-the-ass reporter to question it.”

  As he flicked the windshield wipers on he replayed their conversations, the details she’d shared before they went public, even the break-in at his parents’ house…

  His cell phone rang again and he nodded when she glanced at him questioningly She answered it. After a moment of silence she thanked the caller and hung up.

  “That was Bob. First, he said you asked him to check on the birth records for all of Lisa Harrington’s children.”

  Craig nodded.

  “He said the father’s name is blank for both Destiny and Desiree.”

  “What about Hope?”

  “That’s the interesting thing. There’s no record of a birth certificate for her.”

  “Hmmm. Sometimes records go missing, people make mistakes.” It was too soon to jump to conclusions, although it was interesting.

  “Well, that’s not all. According to Lisa Harrington’s arrest records, she’s only thirty-nine years old.”

  Craig did the math, deducted the ten years Donny had spent in jail and Hope’s age…

  “He did have some good news. Brandy wouldn’t change her story, but the neighbors heard the whole thing. They’re charging Darren so that they can search the house.”

  “Hoping they’ll find something that implicates him in my assault,” he said as the phone rang again.

  As she identified the phone as Craig’s and confirmed they had dialed the right number he looked at the puffy snow that was plummeting to earth. It seemed misleading to refer to them as snowflakes when they were about the size of a quarter. The windshield wipers, on high, barely kept up with the downfall.

  Emma covered the mouthpiece with her hand. “It’s the lab. They’ll only talk to you.”

  A quick glance failed to reveal the source of his headset for hands-free talking. “Can you hold the phone up?”

  She leaned over and pressed the phone against the side of his head.

  “Constable Nolan.”

  “It’s Greg, from the lab. Sorry to be such a pest about it…”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Who says you’re unreasonable? I thought you’d be ready to take my head off because it’s taken so long to get back to you.”

  “People say I’m unreasonable?”

  “Figure of speech.”

  “Right. But I just couriered the chain to you yesterday.”

  “First, about the blood samples from Steve Daly’s house.”

  “Oh.” It still seemed fast to him. No doubt pressure from the bosses was on everyone to produce results, which meant Craig’s evidence had been expedited. “What did you find?”

  “You also asked me to double-check the tests done in the Hope Harrington case.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “We have a match.”

  Craig frowned. “On what?”

  “DNA samples taken from under the fingernails of Hope Harrington? Matches the blood taken from Sergeant Daly’s house. Same source.”

  “Shit.”

  “Shouldn’t that help you?”

  “They never identified the source of that DNA. All they knew was it wasn’t a match for Donny Lockridge, and it wasn’t someone Hope was related to.” It didn’t make any sense.

  “Well, there’s more. That other sample you gave me, blood from the Harrington house from Saturday morning?”

  Craig was starting to see it. “A match.”

  “How’d you know?”

  “Lucky guess. What about the other samples I gave you? The DNA…” He almost choked just sayi
ng the words. What if the answer was something he wasn’t ready to face?

  “Still working on it.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  Once Emma had taken the phone away there was nothing but the sound of the windshield wipers flicking back and forth. It was as though planeloads of cottonballs had just been dropped from the sky. Craig was beginning to wonder if they’d be able to make it back.

  The phone rang again. She flipped it open. “Craig Nolan’s answering service.”

  After a few seconds she said, “Hello?” and then clapped the phone shut. “Guess it was the wrong number,” she said. “Do you have a charger? It’s nearly dead.”

  “Should be one in the glove compartment.” If he’d remembered to pack it. He turned the radio on and flicked around until he found a weather report. Heavy snowfall for the Okanagan, which was the name of the valley Kelowna was located in.

  “That doesn’t sound promising,” Emma said.

  “It’s just for the Okanagan. That might mean we’re driving out of it.” So much for catching up with Donny Lockridge. Even if they made it home, this had slowed them down. If anyone tipped off Donny about Darren’s arrest he would have a significant head start. By the time they reached the Lower Mainland Lockridge could be gone.

  Ashlyn cut the connection and then slowly set the phone down. Once she’d learned Craig had been released from the hospital she’d phoned the Kelowna RCMP and eventually tracked down a Constable Williams, who was investigating Craig’s assault.

  “He’s on his way back to the Lower Mainland,” Williams had told her once she’d identified herself. “You could try him on his cell.”

  Try him on his cell… Leaving her to wonder why he hadn’t called her back. She’d called anyway.

  He hadn’t said anything about going to Kelowna with a woman. He was supposed to be working the case alone.

  Her phone rang, and her heart sank. Part of her still wanted it to be Craig, and another part of her was certain she’d be disappointed when she answered.

  “Constable Hart.”

  “Liam Kincaid.” His tone was warm, though he sounded tired. “I just wanted to see if you’re okay.”

  After the initial wave of hurt washed over her, Ashlyn actually smiled. “You heard?”