Forsaken Trust

by Meredith Doench

  Harvey filled her pockets with her phone, wallet, badge, and keys. She walked over and leaned down to kiss me. I turned away before her lips met mine, and she kissed me on the cheek instead. “It didn’t mean anything, Hansen. Don’t worry about it.”

  My gaze fell on the nightstand and on the stone Bennett had given me after our kayak down the Powell River. I felt the weight of my body sinking, the edges of water swirling up along my face and filling my ears. Slowly the rising water swallowed me whole, and I sank into a bottomless mass of its heavy safety.

  After some time, I got up and locked the door behind Harvey. I let the blanket fall to the floor and stepped into the shower. The hotel bathroom stank of vomit. The water pounded against my face, and I turned it hotter and hotter as if I were trying to scorch myself. Scouring my body clean, I washed every centimeter of skin, every place where the fractured memories of last night still lingered. I scrubbed my hair three times to be sure the smoke and stale beer smell was out of it and thought of Bennett. She’d given me cryptic warnings about Harvey, but I’d dismissed them. What was it she’d said? Harvey could be difficult. And I knew there had been something between those two, something that didn’t end well. No matter how many times I told myself the night with Harvey didn’t matter, I knew it would come back to bite me someday. Then again, what exactly did Bennett and I have together, anyway? Nothing more than an acknowledgment of the undeniable attraction between us followed by a promise to see one another after the case ended. I leaned against the wet shower wall and let the water beat down on me long after it grew cold.

  I couldn’t fool myself. That promise I made to see Bennett again after the case meant something—to both of us. Typical, I told myself. Screwing up any chance of a relationship before it ever gets started. I felt helpless against my self-destructive self, and it wasn’t long before I did something I hadn’t done in much too long—I cried.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Day Seven: 8:00 a.m.

  Director Colby Sanders considered me from across his desk as I told him about the findings from the Wallace Lake case.

  “Once I left Wallace Lake, I didn’t hear anything from you,” Sanders said. “It’s unacceptable.”

  “My apologies,” I said. “I had very little to report.”

  Sanders rubbed his brow where the tanned creases of skin folded together. “You can’t go out on your own again, Hansen. I won’t have you going after serial killers without backup like you did in Willow’s Ridge. Protocol is there for a reason. For fuck’s sake, use it.”

  “I didn’t want to bother you with the minor details,” I said.

  “Hansen”—he groaned—“it’s your job to bother me with everything, and it’s my job to decide if those details matter or not. Period.”

  “So,” I said, leaning back in my chair, “I guess now would be the time to tell you what I’ve been thinking about.”

  “In regards to this case?”

  I nodded. “Remember that interview I did with you when I was still in the academy? You talked to me about the Linda Clarke case.”

  “Oh God, how could I forget Clarke? Why is she on your mind?”

  “I can’t explain it all, Sanders, but Cooper isn’t the killer we’ve been looking for. We should be looking for a woman.”

  “Lord, it’s that spidey sense you got going on.” He rolled his eyes, but indulged me. “All right, tell me.”

  “Think about the use of poison. The group tattoos and the stab wounds from behind—it leads to a female killer. And then there’s the location of the bodies. Why dump the victims on such a popular river if you don’t want them to be found?”

  Sanders turned a pale blue Bic lighter over and over in his hand. He swiped the ball and let the flame glow a few seconds. “Okay, Hansen, I’ll play. Let’s say it is a woman who killed our victims. Why would she kill these aging drug addicts? What’s in it for her?”

  “Money. Just as it was for Clarke.”

  “These victims weren’t the type to have investment portfolios, Hansen. I doubt they could scrape together the money for rent most months. Life insurance payments would have been out of the question,” he said.

  “Yes, but someone could have been paying the premiums for them. And most insurance companies pay double if a person is murdered.”

  He lit the flame of the lighter again. “Heterosexual serials tend to kill the opposite sex. Are you thinking she’s a lesbian?”

  “No, I’m thinking that the women killed were easy targets. Our killer went for those in desperation and those that would not be missed. Besides, poison was involved. The victims were stabbed in the back, for God’s sake. How much more of a female kill can you get?”

  “That’s an interesting take on the profile, Hansen, but remember, Cooper wasn’t exactly the manliest man of them all. He had the gear in his cab, and he always had antifreeze handy. Who says he wasn’t a chickenshit and didn’t stab the women from behind?”

  “He didn’t do that with Henderson. He attacked her face to face.”

  “He was pumped up on heroin, Hansen. Feeling much stronger than he really was.”

  “He was a junkie, Sanders. He was always pumped up on something. I just can’t make Cooper work.”

  Sanders gave me a half smile, and shrugged. “Here we are, Hansen, back to you not being able to let a case go, despite all the evidence.”

  “It doesn’t add up.” I tried to continue my argument, but Sanders had me. There were only my unsettled feelings about the case—nothing more. Feelings amounted to nothing in the court of law. Without my father to stand by my side in the investigation and help me make a sound argument, I was going nowhere fast.

  “Only to you,” Sanders said. “Look, if it makes you feel better, run the social security numbers again. Contact insurance agencies. But I can already tell you what will pop up.” Sanders made a zero with his ring finger and thumb. “A whole lot of nothing.”

  Neither of us said anything for a few minutes. There was only the sound of his plastic lighter edges hitting the desk.

  “Damn building regulations,” he finally said. “Join me outside for a smoke?”

  The sun shone bright, and I leaned against the third-story balcony railing while Sanders lit up beside me. An old ashtray sat between us overflowing with cigarette butts, mostly from Sanders. His weathered hands rested on the old rail. Out beyond us were the prison grounds, a medium security unit for males that neighbored our agency building. Fields surrounded us in most directions—rows and rows of corn now tall and waiting to be cut down at the end of the season.

  “I need your word, Hansen. Once I get the final reports from you today, I need you to end your investigation at Wallace Lake and begin your next assignment, gut feelings or not. Do I have it?”

  I nodded. There was a strange dichotomy going on between Sanders and me, and I’d recognized it ever since the Willow’s Ridge case ended. He was my boss, my superior, but the Willow’s Ridge case had broken down many of those authoritative walls. He’d told me time and again that my skills sometimes outmatched his. Most days we jumbled back and forth from a friendship to a superior-subordinate role without much warning. I never knew what to expect, and I figured our relationship was just as confusing for him as it was for me.

  Sanders took a long drag on his cigarette. When he finally blew the smoke through his nostrils, he started again. “The thing is, Hansen, your silence from Wallace Lake felt personal.”

  “It wasn’t.”

  “No?” He gave me a hard look. “This isn’t about how things went down after Willow’s Ridge? Again?”

  I shook my head.

  “Look at me,” Sanders said. His eyes held mine—slate blue and full of no nonsense. “I fucked up. I shouldn’t have used you in the Willow’s Ridge case. It was too personal—I realize that now. I’m sorry, but I can’t keep apologizing.” He looked away from me then, out across the cornfields. “You’re going to have to make a choice here, Hansen. You bury that grudge you�
�re hauling around and we get back to the way things were, or you move on. I can search out another director for you.”

  His words took me by surprise. It took me a moment to digest what he’d just said. “You’ve never really apologized, Sanders. Thank you.”

  He nodded. “Give my offer some thought, Hansen.”

  “I will.”

  When I turned to go back to my office, Sanders said, “You did good work, Hansen. Be proud of that. You finished the teaching career of a child molester and shook up the drug culture that has found a stronghold in Wallace Lake.” He ground out the butt of his cigarette. “Sometimes these cases just don’t pan out like we expect. Have the closed case file on my desk by five.”

  *

  I sat behind my desk drawing endless looping circles on my case notes. I’d been back in Columbus for less than twenty-four hours, and I couldn’t stop thinking about the center of my Wallace Lake circle: Joan Marco. The computer cursor blinked before me with a reminder of all the reports I still had to write. The truth was I didn’t have much to report other than the arrest of Cody Allard. Everything else boiled down to suspicion about Joan and Henry Marco along with the victims’ shared tattoo. I’d run the four victims’ social security numbers again and found nothing. If someone was making life insurance money off the deaths of these women, there wasn’t a paper trail for me or anyone else to follow.

  I thought about Rhonda’s insistence that there was more going on beneath the surface. Secrets in our town aren’t buried very deep, she’d said. What was she so afraid to come out and tell me? It all sounded so metaphorical. I was a cop, not a literature professor. How was I supposed to make sense of that?

  I’d spent my first day back in Columbus doing laundry and cleaning my apartment. Everything, it seemed, was filthy. Sanders had given me a head start by collecting the trash in the TV room and kitchen as well as doing some of the dishes. Still, I’d let everything go for months. When I opened the apartment door and stepped in, all I wanted to do was shut that door and walk away. I wanted to go back to my hotel room in Wallace Lake and keep digging on the case. I wanted to escape the memory of these past few months inside the apartment’s darkness. I wanted to forget how I’d been sucked into the hole of depression. I wanted to be stronger than the drink that now beckoned to me.

  So I got to work cleaning. I hauled mounds of clothes down to the building’s basement laundry room and changed out my sheets and towels with freshly laundered ones. I opened the only window in my place to let in some fresh air and started a grocery list. A grocery list! I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been to the grocery. I also downloaded the Zillow app to my phone and began the search for a new place to live. I did everything I could to not think about what was eating me up inside—what I’d done with Alison Harvey.

  A part of me felt like it was really Rowan I’d betrayed that night. Rowan, who had given so much of herself to me until she didn’t. Rowan, who’d wanted to move on but, for some reason, still contacted me.

  I’d have to tell Bennett what happened with Harvey and soon. If she found out any other way, it would only destroy what little chance I still might have with her. But when her text message flashed on my phone around ten p.m.—Thinking of you—I didn’t tell her. Instead, we exchanged texts about Cooper’s autopsy reports. We discussed the dirt and debris found in this cab that matched the soil around the Powell River. We planned a meeting for Sunday in the tiny town of Springrock, a location halfway between our two homes. We planned to hike the trails that would lead us deep into the wooded landscape and then dine in a little mom-and-pop restaurant on their local steak and potatoes. I went along with her plans for a day together as though nothing had happened, as though I didn’t have this guilty secret lodged so deep inside my throat that it felt like a jagged piercing boulder.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Day Eight: 7:30 p.m.

  It had been a little over a week since Sanders came barging into my apartment, and we started working on the Wallace Lake case. One week ago I had been so depressed I could hardly move. I’d been reliving every second of my relationship with Rowan over and over in my mind. Now, I had three women on my mind: Bennett, Harvey, and Rowan. How did I let myself get into this place? I wanted to kick myself as I pushed open the door for the sushi bar.

  The restaurant was empty save for the back booth where she waited for me. The explosion of curls swallowed her slim shoulders, and I caught the familiar glint of her nose ring in the overhead light.

  Rowan stood to greet me and she pulled me into an awkward hug, our arms and shoulders bumping until we both gave up the attempt and sat down.

  Rowan flashed that radiant smile of hers. “Thanks for meeting me.”

  “Sure.” I reached for a menu even though I hated everything there was to hate about sushi. I knew Rowan loved it, so I agreed to meet her there. We’d come to an impasse in our relationship regarding food: I hated most of what she loved and she hated most of what I loved. To avoid the long lecture about my lack of taking care of myself, I usually relented to wherever she wanted to go.

  “You look good, Luce. A little on the thin side, but good.”

  I shrugged. “I miss your cooking, that’s for sure.”

  The waitress took Rowan’s order and mine for a beer and a bowl of broth. Then Rowan smiled and patted the box beside her.

  “Thanks for bringing it to me,” I said. “I didn’t want to come to the house.”

  Rowan collected her mass of curls at her shoulders and tied them back. “Of course,” she said. “It’s your childhood in a box. You need to have it with you.”

  I thought about everything the box contained. It had many of my childhood mementos and photographs that my dad had saved over the years. He’d even saved some of my soccer and softball team medals. I’d played both until I was nearly sixteen. And then, I’d met Marci Tucker through the One True Path organization and everything changed. Nothing more went into the box. I reached up and clasped the Irish cross pendant around my neck, just to be sure it was still there.

  “The dogs are doing great. I know they’d love to see you.”

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to talk about Toto and Daisy. Not yet, anyway. I was surprised to find that I wasn’t nervous. In fact, it was the opposite: Rowan was reaching to fill the gaps of silence between us and speaking too fast, a sure sign she was uncomfortable.

  “The case in Wallace Lake has been all over the news,” she said. “Congratulations on closing it so fast. I keep thinking about those poor women. And that bastard trucker.”

  “I just love the poetic justice of it all,” I said. “The hired hooker killed him with his own gun in his own cab. Dumb-ass.”

  Rowan laughed, and we joked about the craziness of the Cooper case as well as the media’s appetite for anything and everything about Wilma Henderson. The topic helped both of us to loosen up.

  “Maybe you could do speaking engagements about the case, Luce.”

  I nearly spit my mouthful of water at her. “Me? Give lectures?”

  “Why not? Didn’t Sanders do a lot of lectures about that woman he chased for so long?”

  “The BWS Killer. He did, but you’re forgetting one important thing. I don’t know how to give a lecture.”

  Rowan shrugged. “You could learn.”

  “Right,” I teased her.

  Rowan shrugged. “I’m just saying—you’re really good at your job, and people are really interested in this dark shit. Go public with it. Then someday when you’re old and sick of investigative work, you could teach at the academy.”

  I groaned. Rowan was always pushing me to do better, to be better, to improve everything about me. Her constant life planning for Special Agent Luce Hansen exhausted me.

  “Anyway,” she said. “Are you happy the case is over?”

  I reached for my glass of water. “I’m glad we got Cooper off the streets.”

  Rowan sipped her iced tea and watched me closely. “Uh-oh,” she final
ly said. “I hear a big b-u-t coming.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. I missed Rowan calling out what was really going on with me, sometimes before I even recognized it myself.

  “I think there’s more to the case,” I said, “but I can’t prove it.”

  “What does Sanders say?”

  “He says to drop it.” I took a long pull on my beer.

  A darkness crossed Rowan’s face. Was it worry? Or was it the outward appearance of what she must have been thinking: Here we go again. “Just be careful, Luce. Don’t get pulled into another hole you can’t get out of.”

  I wanted to roll my eyes at her but refrained. I didn’t need another warning—what I needed was someone to listen and talk through it with me. Besides, I wasn’t even sure I could trust my instincts anymore. Everything pointed to the case being over—maybe I needed to trust in that.

  “Why did you want to meet with me, Rowan? I mean, you could have dropped the box off at the office.”

  She sat back in the booth and waited until my eyes met hers. “I wanted to see you. I wanted to be sure you’re okay.”

  “I’m okay. And I’m glad to see you are, too.”

  “Really?”

  “Really,” I said. “You look…happy.”

  “There are reasons for that.”

  I tried not to take Rowan’s answer as insensitive. It had been a long time since we’d seen each other, and I had no right to expect she wouldn’t find someone else.

  After the waitress brought our food, I listened as Rowan told me about Sydney, another artist working in Columbus, and how the two of them met. As she talked and I sipped my soup, I realized that, in a weird way, Rowan was seeking my approval. She didn’t need it, of course; we were done. I was touched, though, that she wanted it. And I realized that I was okay with Rowan moving on. I never thought I would be. Now that the time was here, though, I was strangely fine with it all. “I’m happy for you, Rowan.”