Secret Remains

by Jennifer Graeser Dornbush

  She saw Nick collecting cups from the guys and head out of the garage and around the back of the house for a beer run. She made a quick excuse to the other women—nature calling—and wedged her way out of the garage in his direction.

  The sidewalk led to an outdoor wooden staircase that brought her up to the back deck. She bounced up the stairs two at a time as Nick reached the top and disappeared to the deck beyond. When Emily hit the top step, she paused to watch him. He was at the keg, filling all the cups. Simple beer run. No DNA samples yet. Emily had taken one step backward, creeping slowly to get out of view, when a man wearing a bright-orange hunter’s cap came up behind her.

  “Hey, you okay? Didn’t mean to scare you,” he said, grabbing her by the arm as she nearly tipped backward. Nick looked over. Her cover was blown.

  “Thank you,” she said, steadying herself.

  “Nick, I think you’re out of napkins,” the guy said as he took the last two steps up the stairs and went onto the deck.

  Emily knew Nick had seen her, so she pretended she was heading for the sliding door that led into the kitchen.

  “Em! You’re here. I thought maybe you had ditched again.” His cheery booming voice stopped her in her tracks. “Check the pantry, Pete. And hey, can you take these to the guys in the garage for me?”

  “You bet,” said Pete, taking the four full cups of beer in his large palms.

  “I don’t want a drop of that spilled,” Nick joked. “Em, wait up.”

  “I’m not one to waste good beer,” said Pete, disappearing back down the staircase toward the garage.

  “Pete’s a brewer. Owns Mash Up, the microbrewery in town,” Nick told Emily.

  Emily nodded. “I’ve just gotta go check on … a thing that I brought.”

  “Oh, what did you make?”

  “I made one of the half a dozen identical apple pies. Not very original.”

  “If you used your mom’s recipe, then it’s probably the best one of the bunch,” said Nick, placing a hand on her forearm. “I’m glad I ran into you right now. Would you mind coming with me a sec?”

  “Sure?” This tracking plan wasn’t panning out exactly how she had hoped.

  Nick drew her back into the house, through the kitchen, and toward the stairs leading to the second floor.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Shhh.” He slipped her upstairs to his bedroom.

  “What are we doing here?” Emily asked, standing firmly near the door.

  “Can you shut that, please?” Nick waved his hand at the door.

  She shut them in, wondering what this might look like to the casual partygoer. She didn’t need to add steam to the Freeport gossip train. Emily glanced around the room. It was tastefully decorated in a nautical theme, navy and yellows. One whole wall was a window overlooking the lake. Breathtaking. Peaceful. She had a hard time diverting her eyes from the captivating view, but quickly turned to Nick. “Why are you being so secretive?”

  “Look, Em, I need a favor. I’m collecting surreptitious DNA samples from some of the pack who are here, and I need to get them expedited at the lab.”

  Well, no use sneaking around anymore now that he had just admitted to the plan.

  “That would be nice, but that’s not how it works. There’s not a single lab in the state or the country that isn’t backed up.”

  “What I’m saying is that I don’t have the clout to put a rush on them. But you … I was thinking maybe you could take them to Dr. Payton’s team.”

  “I see.” So this was it, huh? Her mind was already ahead of itself. Leverage.

  “He seems into you. Not that I want to encourage that.”

  “But you’re willing to throw me at him in this circumstance.” She was half joking. But Nick didn’t see the humor.

  “For the sake of the case? Please.”

  “I thought you wanted me to keep my hands at my sides.”

  “It’s a need-to-know situation, and now you need to know.”

  Finally.

  “Who are you tracking?”

  “Brett Tillerdale. Rick Bayfield. Landry Patrick. You remember any of those guys?”

  Emily thought she had been in an English class with Landry freshman year. It was hard to recall beyond that.

  “Just vaguely. But I’m not sure I would recognize them if I saw them now,” she said. “What happened to them?”

  “Brett doesn’t live in the area anymore. Landry and Rick are in Freeport. There, happy?”

  “I am,” said Emily, relaxing her stance. “Any alibis?”

  “Landry says he was out running the track after school.”

  “Can you get anyone to confirm that?”

  “Almost impossible. Landry didn’t remember that many people who were at the track that afternoon.”

  “If no one can place him at the track at the time of Sandi’s disappearance, that doesn’t bode well for him,” said Emily.

  “You’re right. And Landry was probably the closest friend to James because their parents were close. They spent a lot of time at each other’s houses.”

  “Interesting. That sounds like a conversation you need to expand down at the station.”

  “I’ll call him in if I have to.”

  “And Brett? Rick?” Emily continued.

  “Brett was working at Icy Cup. I doubled-checked the employer records. Rick was helping his dad at the family dairy. Paul confirmed with the dairy-farm foreman, who went back and checked the time cards.”

  “Paul checked them?”

  Nick employing a friend as a sleuthing sidekick was probably not the best investigative prowess.

  “Paul’s dad is friends with the foreman,” he said.

  She was annoyed. “The foreman could be lying.”

  “He has nothing to gain from being dishonest.”

  “What about James? Any luck finding him?” Emily asked.

  “He’s a ghost. None of these guys kept in contact with him after graduation.”

  “Nothing more from his dad?”

  “His dad said he got home a little after five, had dinner with the family, and then went upstairs to his office for the night.”

  “Did he mention anything about a broken nose?”

  “No.”

  “You’d think he’d remember his son coming home with a banged-up nose.”

  “I’m not sure his parents paid him much attention.”

  “What about Tiffani?” suggested Emily. “Why has she stayed so quiet? If your sister got murdered and her body was finally found and the case was reopened, wouldn’t you be hounding the police, the detectives, sheriff, anyone you could to crack the case?”

  “Of course I would.”

  Nick walked over to his bed and sat on the side that overlooked the water. He pressed his palms to his temples and squeezed. “I’m doing the best I can, okay?”

  “I’ll take the samples to U of M.”

  “Drop by the station Monday morning.”

  Emily held him in her gaze. “Nick, you need to submit your sample, too.”

  “Hands by your side, Hartford.” He turned his gaze out the window.

  She went to sit next to him on the bed. Together they stared at the lake, now surrounded by barren trees. The late-November winds stiffened the water into whitecaps rippling onto shore. The afternoon sun was waning across the sky into a formation of dark clouds billowing on the horizon. Storm clouds. The first snow, perhaps. It was expected any day. Tomorrow they might wake up to a white blanket on the ground.

  “Where are you spending Thanksgiving?” Nick asked, stirring them back to the present.

  She was about to say at home with Dad, then gulped down the response before the words escaped. Tears watered in the corners of her eyes. Nick put his arm around her and squeezed.

  “I’m going to my folks. And you’re welcome to join me. I’m sure they’d love to see you.”

  “Thanks,” she said, inhaling and taking one last look over the lake. “We better he
ad down. Or people are going to start to talk.”

  “I’ll go first. Make sure the coast is clear.”

  “We’re sneaking around like we’re fifteen,” said Emily.

  “Except no parents around.”

  “Freeport gossip is way more intimidating than parents catching you.”

  They both let out a small laugh.

  Nick stuck his head out of the bedroom. “Coast is clear. See ya down there.”

  When he disappeared into the hallway, Emily walked into the en suite bath. She spied his overflowing garbage can next to the toilet. Several used tissues and a dirty Q-tip were of special interest to her. Emily carefully plucked the items from the trash and placed them into an unused trash bag from under the sink.

  38

  The excitement in Dr. Payton’s voice practically leapt from the phone when Emily called him Sunday and asked if she could drive down on Monday morning to deliver the DNA samples.

  Putting a rush on it would be no problem. But he couldn’t produce official results until the week after the holiday because the staff and students had already left for Thanksgiving break.

  Waiting only one week was a gift, seeing as most testing could take up to two months. Emily expressed her gratitude and agreed to meet him in his office around noon. He promised her a tour of the facilities and dinner out if she could stay. She definitely would. A snowstorm was predicted and she didn’t want to return to Freeport on dark, slippery roads. So, Dr. Payton had graciously set her up in guest housing.

  After she arrived late Monday morning, she dropped her things in her room and headed and walked through the expansive campus to Dr. Payton’s building. The sidewalks were wet with fresh snow and tree branches were lined with white, but the campus was quiet at the start of this holiday week. It brought back memories of her own years at the University of Chicago and holidays spent in the dorms. She’d never minded being on her own those first couple of undergrad years. If she wasn’t skiing in Colorado with her aunt Laura, she would just crash at her aunt’s flat in Chicago for a staycation. It was cozy, quiet, and in the center of the theater district. She could sleep or play her music loud, and no one was there to wake her or complain about noise. And then came Brandon. After him, her holidays had been spent with his family in their ten-bedroom mansion in the tidy north suburbs. Or on the ski slopes in the Alps. Or the beaches of Aruba. It all just depended on what mood Brandon’s mother was in each year.

  Entering the medical building, Emily shook off the cold and stomped excess snow from her boots. She stepped into the atrium and paused to gain her bearings. There was a winding staircase in the middle that led to the second floor, where she found Dr. Payton’s office. His door was cracked open.

  “Charles? It’s me. Emily.”

  She heard a chair scrape against a wooden desk, and then he was at the door greeting her with a huge smile.

  “A pleasure to see you again.” He gave her a hearty handshake, holding on a just a bit longer than was customary.

  “I have the samples,” said Emily, removing them from her handbag.

  “Oh, not here. Let me take you to the lab.”

  He grabbed a set of keys from his desk and whisked them down the hall. At each doorway he told her the name of each professor and their specialty, although only a few were actually in for the day.

  They arrived at the lab on the third floor, and Dr. Payton unlocked the door and let them in. While the walls and floors were traditional brick and mortar from a hundred years ago, the equipment at each station was at least three to five years ahead of anything she had seen at the University of Chicago. Outstanding. Dr. Payton must have read her amazed expression.

  “Yes. We’re very lucky. We secured a large grant a couple years ago that keeps us funded,” said Dr. Payton. Emily let her eyes drink in every detail of the massive scientific power this lab held. “Just think. You would have your own research assistant. Access to state-of-the-art equipment. Summers off.”

  Emily grinned at Dr. Payton. “You know how to sweeten the pot,” she said.

  “I can log in those samples now, if you want. Show you how these bad boys work,” he added.

  Emily handed them over. He took them to the back, where he processed them and logged them into their computer system. “We’ll be a bit backlogged from the Thanksgiving weekend, but I’ll make it a priority to get to these first thing next Monday.”

  “That’s perfect. We’re just really grateful for the expediency.” Her eyes were drawn again to the beautiful instruments before her.

  Dr. Payton laughed. “Can’t stop staring, can you?”

  “Caught me.”

  Dr. Payton logged in the last sample. Nick’s.

  “Nick Larson? The sheriff?” He gave her a curious look.

  Emily struggled to respond and settled on, “It’s complicated.”

  “Is he a suspect?”

  Emily smiled and decided to change the subject. “The guest housing is really nice. And thank you for the orchids in my room.”

  “My pleasure. Want to make you feel at home here.”

  She squirmed inside and diverted her eyes from his to her surroundings. It was a dream lab. “Tell me more about the work you’re doing here.”

  “I have several grad students working on a machine I developed that will swab DNA from mass casualties on-site for instant results. Can you imagine how much time that would save in victim identification?”

  “What a huge relief for families. How does it work?”

  “The theory is that you swab the samples and place them on the well of this small microplate. You can then run the direct DNA amplification process in less than two minutes.”

  “Has it been tested? What’s the accuracy rate?”

  “We’re over ninety-seven percent accurate. But to really put it to the test, unfortunately, we would need a real mass disaster. So we’re prepped and ready to go on-site, but of course, it’s a sad reality to have to wait for.”

  Dr. Payton printed out a report of the log for her. “Here’s yours. I’ll call you with the results next week.”

  Emily tucked it into her bag. He led them from the lab back to his office, and they talked for some time about the department’s needs and future direction. Emily could see that she would fit in nicely here. She and Dr. Payton had similar views about pedagogy and what they expected in student participation and research methods. She would have the freedom to experiment and work with some of the top law enforcement in the country to help them develop tests she and her father had dreamed of years ago—like X-ray machines that let you examine evidence at the site of the crime. Never had she imagined in med school that her life might take this turn.

  Dr. Payton walked her back to guest housing. It was just past one, but the sky was dark gray and foreboding. Snow had started coming down hard by the time they reached the building.

  “What do you think so far?”

  “I’m impressed. I’ve always loved university life almost as much as I loved forensics. It’s all very tempting.”

  “Then I’ve done the first part right. I was hoping the shiny gadgets would lure you. In part, anyhow.”

  She laughed. “You’ve given me a lot to consider,” she said as he opened the door for her.

  “I’m glad we’ve made it this far in the process.”

  “No promises just yet.”

  “I can’t help that I’ve had my fingers crossed since our first morgue meeting.”

  “I have to ask. How did you find me? And why me?”

  Dr. Payton chuckled. “I’ve sort of been stalking you. But in a professional way.”

  “Okay?”

  “I’ve read a lot of your dad’s articles in the Journal of Forensic Science. He mentions you in some of them. I started to dig and discovered you were only fourteen when you helped him with a murder-suicide. I was intrigued. So I searched a little more. Discovered your background, med school, surgical residency. When Sheriff Larson phoned, I jumped at the chance
to come to Freeport. But I sure didn’t expect to see you. That was pure bonus.”

  “And you decided to offer me a job? Just like that.”

  “I know talent when I see it.”

  Emily was touched by his compliment, and a little wary. No one had ever pursued her so doggedly before. For a slot in school. For a job. She had been an excellent student, but that had held little water when she’d been faced with the fierce competition of others as gifted as she. Emily had always excelled, but not without hard work.

  She glanced beyond him to the snow outside, falling so thickly it had covered the footprints they had just made.

  “You don’t have to walk all the way back to your building for your car, do you?”

  “Actually, yes. It’s a good thing I don’t mind a brisk walk in the snow.”

  “Too bad you don’t have a pair of cross-country skis. Please be careful.”

  “I’ll pick you up ten to eight. The restaurant’s not too far from here. Wait in the lobby. I’ll escort you to the car.”

  “I’ll be ready.”

  He took off, disappearing within seconds into the white whirlwind. She liked being put on a pedestal. She liked being pursued. She really liked his caliber and his style. He was a hard worker, persistent, and serious. And he didn’t make her feel overlooked. He offered potential and possibility. On her terms. It was tempting.

  * * *

  Dr. Payton picked her up from guest housing that evening in his Audi SUV. They valeted at Chateau Le Bleu just a few minutes down the road. Given the snowstorm, Emily and Dr. Payton virtually had the place to themselves, barring a Chinese family seated near the window at the front.

  The host seated them at a two-top in a darker corner with a tea light candle casting a soft glow over the silver and linens. A bottle of red was on the table, and the waiter arrived to pour a small taster sample in a red goblet. Emily swirled the liquid a few times and inhaled. She had learned how to taste wine from her many wine tastings with Brandon, from Napa to Bordeaux.