Lullaby for the Nameless (Nolan, Hart & Tain Thrillers)

by Ruttan, Sandra

  Complete with follow-up details attached. She’d done the legwork on every call that had come in since her partner had left, as well as the messages he’d tossed in front of her. Some of the callers had been identified as cranks, people who tried to be helpful by calling the police with what turned out to be useless information. Sue Sanders claimed she’d seen Mary Donard at the local diner when she was on her way to a ten a.m. appointment with Dr. Daniels on the fifteenth. Sue couldn’t remember which month, but she knew for a fact that it was the fifteenth, and if Ashlyn would stop being so lazy and call the doctor’s office, they’d tell her themselves.

  It turned out the only appointment she’d had with the doctor in recent years was on the seventeenth of December 2002, but between Ashlyn and the receptionist, Sue Sanders wasn’t playing with a full deck.

  Ashlyn didn’t call Mrs. Sanders back to let her know what conclusion she’d reached about her tip.

  Doubt was cast on another potential lead when she’d called the helpful citizen, only to discover he had no memory of calling the police at all. A third had called from a long-term nursing facility. Staff confirmed the patient in question had been a resident for two years and hadn’t been off the property in more than four months and therefore couldn’t possibly have seen a missing girl at a church dance two weeks ago.

  For the very few she couldn’t refute or substantiate, Ashlyn had outlined a course of action for further investigation. In most cases it involved reassigning personnel to conduct interviews.

  Part of her was tempted to reassign herself and get out of the building. The lack of windows in the room where the desks were located was starting to bother her. As important as chasing leads was, she wanted to see the town and get a sense of the local area. The one night she’d spent in a motel on the outskirts of Nighthawk Crossing hadn’t offered her much of an introduction; after all the miles she’d driven, she’d been too tired to do more than order room service and fall asleep early.

  Instead, Ashlyn got up and stretched toward the ceiling, then braced her hands on the edge of the desk and extended her right leg, then left. When she straightened up again, she reached up from the side, first from one side, then the other. Her attempt to loosen the kink that had developed in her back during the long drive failed, but it still felt good to stand.

  As she glanced at Tain’s desk, she thought back to the files she’d been reading that morning. That was the meat of the investigation. Although she hadn’t read it all, she’d skimmed through enough to know that the files on each of the missing girls whose disappearances were believed to be connected had been included, as well as all the leads that they’d followed up on, tips that had been eliminated, avenues of investigation that had been exhausted.

  She wanted to see those files again.

  Ashlyn replayed the scene from the morning and was fairly certain Tain had taken the key with him. Short of picking the lock, there was no way she was going to get a chance to see the copied documents.

  The palm of her hand smacked against her forehead. Of course. They were copies. The originals had to be around somewhere, and as a member of the team, she had access. She didn’t need someone’s permission to review information pertinent to the case she’d been assigned.

  When she’d looked around the desks earlier, she’d limited her survey to things clearly out in plain sight.

  She’d almost forgotten the filing cabinets in the corner.

  No matter how hard she’d tried to prepare herself for this transfer, Ashlyn realized she’d expected it to be different. In the past, a colleague had always shown her around, at least pointed out where things were kept. Other than the one prolonged assignment in plainclothes—a technicality, really, an exception made to help the locals feel more at ease with the police because of a history of problems in an area primarily populated by Aboriginals—she’d spent most of her time in smaller communities, where she’d worn a uniform and driven a patrol car.

  The job had required her to get out and make contact with people.

  This assignment was different. A long-term investigation that involved different tactics than the ones community policing emphasized. When she’d been reassigned, she’d been told she’d be working plainclothes for this assignment and that part of the reason they were sending in outsiders was to get a fresh perspective, as well as to show the community how seriously they were taking the investigation.

  It was hard to know what to think about the team and what they were dealing with. So far, they had eleven cases that seemed to be connected, and the trail was already cold. They didn’t know if this was a murder investigation or if the girls had been lured into prostitution and were living on the streets in Vancouver, a fact that compounded their problems. Every possible sighting from Victoria to Halifax, from Edmonton to Vegas had to be considered.

  This wasn’t meant to be a short-term investigation, where they got in and got out fast. Despite that, she’d been told this was a temporary transfer.

  It didn’t make sense.

  She thought about her fleeting introductions to the other half of the team. Two of the men were at least ten to fifteen years older than she was, with more experience, but she’d read about those members of the team from old newspaper articles before she’d packed her bags. There hadn’t been any photographs, but the article had mentioned the three officers and Winters, who had been the oldest member listed, in his midforties. She hadn’t met him yet. She looked at the nameplate on the desk that was now hers and realized she didn’t even know if he was still working the case, but the fact that she’d been given his desk made that doubtful.

  What she remembered from the articles was that all had worked in the Interior of the province or in the north, for the bulk of their careers. They’d all worked for local detachments for several months prior to being reassigned officially. Only Winters had worked in larger urban areas, including Vancouver.

  The youngest of the three older officers—Ashlyn guessed Campbell had at least half a dozen years on her, although his age hadn’t been stated—was a hometown boy, who’d grown up in Nighthawk Crossing and spent his entire career in the Similkameen Valley, and if what he’d said that morning was any indication, he didn’t like outsiders meddling in local affairs. He’d been defensive and hostile, and she never had gotten an answer to her question.

  There was no indication any had worked in a city that had a population of 100,000. That fact alone didn’t mean that they were unskilled or incapable of being effective on this task force, but she thought back to her own training, to the common philosophies about the differences between small-town policing and city casework.

  The differences between community men and career men. Not that officers who focused on community policing didn’t have careers, but major advancement often came through high-profile cases, and that meant working in urban areas where the job was divided by the nature of the crimes instead of the town boundary lines.

  Nolan and Tain hadn’t been mentioned, although the article had concluded with the fact that other officers were being reassigned. Ashlyn wondered about the date and whether their transfers had been withheld from the article or really happened after.

  Considering the pressure the RCMP had been under to demonstrate they took the investigations seriously, wouldn’t they want to emphasize the number of officers assigned? She hadn’t found any articles about additional staff once they’d been named.

  She thought about Campbell’s attitude that morning. Perhaps the truth was in the extreme reaction, that there was concern about how the local people would feel if the investigation was being run by outsiders.

  Did that somehow suggest the local officers weren’t capable of serving their communities? Was that why they’d picked a rookie, along with a handful of officers who’d focused on community policing?

  She had expected to work with the tribal police, especially considering the number of missing Aboriginal girls and the high number of Native Peoples residing in the area.
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br />   Now that she considered the situation, she realized she’d expected more Native officers to be assigned.

  One other thing she hadn’t expected: to be the only woman.

  Three officers who’d built careers on community policing shared one shift, and they were the three who had the most experience. By comparison, the combination of herself, Tain and Nolan on one shift was even more baffling. There was no doubt she was the youngest of the three, but not by much, and she’d pursued her career in law enforcement as soon as she’d completed her degree. Tain and Nolan had both only been with the RCMP for a few years, and there was nothing in the newspaper reports that indicated experience with a case like this one because they hadn’t even been mentioned.

  For a moment, she wondered if she would ever get a chance to sneak a look at their personnel files, then dismissed that thought with a mental note to do a little digging on Nolan and Tain later. Her job was to focus on the investigation, and everything she was looking for was in the filing cabinets. She started to pull out the details of the casework to date, but changed her mind and took out the information that had been collected on each of the missing girls instead.

  The files contained the usual information: last known address, next of kin, age, height, eye color. Each had a photo attached to the upper left corner of the folder and a report of the girl’s disappearance.

  From there, the files varied dramatically.

  Some reports had been filed by mothers. In one case, a sibling had called the police, and another girl’s absence had been noted by her aunt.

  Another investigation had been initiated by a statement from a volunteer in a soup kitchen who’d eventually wondered what had happened to one of the regulars.

  The length of time that elapsed before the reports were made also varied. The mother of one of the girls made the report a month after her daughter had disappeared. Kacey Young, who appeared to be the first girl to disappear, had been reported missing by her sister after two weeks. It only took the man from the soup kitchen ten days to pick up a phone, and the aunt had contacted police after one week.

  Another file had been initiated when the girl didn’t start school in the fall. A diligent teacher had attempted to contact the parents, and when their letter was returned, they contacted the tribal council. They’d conducted their own investigation and determined that the girl, whose parents had been killed in a car accident earlier in the summer, hadn’t been seen since near the end of August.

  They hadn’t contacted the RCMP until three weeks after news of the task force was made public, which meant Wendy George had been missing for nearly thirteen months, and the report had come in only a few days before Ashlyn had been reassigned.

  The George file was the thinnest one they had, with nothing more than the statement. Ashlyn read it over a second time, noting that Constable Campbell had taken the initiating report.

  She set that folder to her left and went through the other files one by one. The report in the Young case had been made to Constable Tain. Constable Aiken had spoken to the aunt, who’d filed her report almost eighteen months ago. Oliver had been the initial contact on three other cases that dated back almost a year. The girls had all gone missing over a two-week period from November 5 to November 19.

  Winters, the officer she hadn’t met and may have replaced, had taken the statements for two other girls, and while Tain had opened the file on the most recent girl to disappear, Winters had done the follow-up.

  The girl’s mother had waited six weeks to tell police. Winters had done some digging: Wanda Johnson worked from home. More specifically, from the bedroom. Jenny had a habit of running off and had been picked up as a juvenile on one solicitation charge already.

  Campbell, Aiken, Oliver and Tain had all been involved with at least one case prior to being reassigned to the task force. Was Ashlyn the only member of the team who hadn’t had some earlier involvement in the investigation?

  She riffled through the reports one more time.

  Nolan had taken one report, filed in Penticton, for a girl who’d gone missing eight months earlier.

  Sergeant Sullivan had opened the file on the first missing Caucasian girl himself. Millie Harper had gone missing just days before Wendy George had last been seen.

  Ashlyn pulled the desk drawers open one by one, but they were all empty. She thought back to her introduction to Tain, and wondered what his response would be if he found her going through the cupboards under the printer.

  She could snoop around and take the chance, or she could try to find someone she could ask. The risk was that she’d run into the sergeant. If asked where Nolan was, she wouldn’t have an answer, but the bigger question would be whether she was prepared to cover for him.

  If reprimanded, Nolan might accuse her of deliberately informing their commanding officer that he’d left her behind. He’d jump to conclusions first and, if she was lucky, listen to explanations later. Considering the tension between Nolan and Tain, it was hardly surprising that Nolan wouldn’t feel like slipping into tour-guide mode so he could give her an introduction to the case and the town.

  That would allow Tain to slip off his radar. Whatever Nolan was doing at the moment, the one thing she was convinced of was that it involved keeping an eye on the third member of their team.

  Even if she took Tain out of the equation, Nolan’s reluctance to work with her could have been caused by a number of things. The picture on his desk could be his girlfriend, and he might be nervous about her reaction to him working closely with a woman his own age. He may have worked with a woman before and had problems.

  He may also be a chauvinistic jerk, although at the moment she was more likely to award that title to Tain. There’d been enough of a warm smile lurking behind Nolan’s eyes for split seconds for her to think better of him.

  Or maybe she’d imagined it, even wished she’d seen it.

  A remnant of the strong smell of smoke that had clung to Nolan and Tain still lingered in the air, and she thought about the reference to a large fire in the town. It was possible the events of the morning had thrown them off, that Nolan had prior meetings set up, things he had to take care of personally, and he didn’t have time to show a new partner around, but she just couldn’t make herself believe it.

  In the distance, the back door slammed shut. She hoped it wasn’t Tain.

  As she stood, Nolan marched into the room. He appeared to do a double take when he saw her move and stopped.

  “I was just—”

  Nolan looked at the files on her desk. It took him less than two seconds to close the gap and grab the top folder.

  “What the hell are you doing?” He didn’t give her a chance to answer. “I left you with a very specific job to do. Do you have a problem following orders?”

  She felt the color in her cheeks. “No, I—”

  “For once, can’t someone on this team just do what they’re told?” he muttered as he turned and started moving toward his desk.

  “I did.”

  He spun around. “Excuse me?”

  Cheeks still burning, Ashlyn reached over and pointed at the pile of papers she’d left for him. “Every message you gave me and all the calls that have come in since.” She watched as he picked up the first sheet, skimmed it, then leafed through the stack.

  He looked up and for a second, the tension he’d carried in his face was gone. “I’m…I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have accused you like that. It’s just…” His voice trailed off.

  She knew he wasn’t going to explain.

  “I thought it would be helpful to familiarize myself with the case. I didn’t get a chance to read all the copies before Tain took them earlier.”

  His eyes narrowed. “What copies?”

  Something about the way his mouth settled into a hard line and the ruddy shade his face turned made her wonder if it was the mention of Tain’s name or something more that had struck a chord with Nolan.

  She opened her mouth, still trying to
work out a response, when Nolan’s phone rang. He grabbed the handset, reached for a pen, then stopped. The color in his cheeks evaporated, and he looked up at her with a softness in his eyes that hinted at sadness.

  Nolan hung up the phone. “Grab your coat.”

  She was about to ask where they were going but thought better of it. As she pulled her jacket on, she noticed the solemn gaze, the way all the tension in Nolan shifted. Before, his shoulders had pinched and the lines in his face were hard.

  Now his face had softened and sagged, which made him look as though he’d aged a few years in the past few minutes. Even his shoulders had dropped, although his hands were balled into loose fists.

  He looked up. “They found a body.”

  There hadn’t been a chance to see much of the town on the drive over. A few blocks from the station they’d turned onto a road heading into the mountains. A quick glance in the mirror gave Ashlyn a glimpse of a row of buildings that led to where a fire truck was still parked several blocks down the street, presumably at the site of the fire Tain and Nolan had referred to earlier.

  In only a few minutes she felt like she was in the middle of nowhere. There were no houses or stores, not even power lines or hydro poles along the road. She was surprised by the patches of snow that clung to the earth in some places as they climbed up out of the town. The Isuzu Rodeo Nolan drove jolted as the front right tire dipped into one pothole, then another. The sport utility vehicle bumped along as they ascended the mountainside. When they reached a turn, Nolan went right, and Ashlyn soon found herself staring down a gorge with nothing but air between the vehicle and the edge of the cliff.

  “That’s why I didn’t bring a company car.”

  They were the only words Nolan had said since they’d left the office, and she waited until they turned to the left and began driving on what seemed like a level path cut out from the middle of a large forest before she said, “I didn’t realize we were that far up.”

  “You aren’t from British Columbia?”