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

by Ruttan, Sandra

“But you’re sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “It couldn’t have been kids breaking in for kicks?”

  Craig sat down on the stairs. “Her cabin wasn’t the only one broken into.”

  “Well, that should help her feel a bit better.”

  “I haven’t told her yet.”

  There was silence for a moment before Steve asked, “Why not?”

  “For one thing, she can feel safe here right now.”

  “Did she come crying to you, asking to stay at your house?”

  “No, bu—”

  “So she’s an excuse. You can hide your own insecurity and blame it on chivalry.”

  Hundreds of miles away and his dad could still turn his face red. “If I tell her, it’ll take away her peace of mind.”

  “And she’ll just kick your ass and feel betrayed when she finds out later.”

  Craig rubbed his forehead. “Maybe.”

  Steve was silent for a moment before he asked, “What does Sullivan think?”

  There was no response that wouldn’t get him in more trouble, and he knew it.

  “He doesn’t know,” Steve said.

  “Before you put the lecture on autopilot, that was her call, not mine.”

  “About the breakin at her place. She doesn’t even know about the one at yours, so don’t throw that at her feet. That’s on you.”

  “I…” Craig realized his father wasn’t going to like what he was about to say, but stalling wouldn’t make it any better. “I haven’t exactly made this easy on Constable Hart.”

  “Let me guess. The team’s welcomed her with open arms.”

  Craig thought about how many times Ashlyn had been left in office, alone. The few times they’d been out together at a scene she’d been more than capable. There really was no excuse. “No.”

  “And with all the men undermining her she doesn’t want to look vulnerable.”

  “To be honest with you, I’m surprised she reached out to me.”

  “I told her she could trust you.”

  It made sense, but until that moment it hadn’t even occurred to him that his name had come up before, when Steve had spoken to Ashlyn on the phone.

  “There’s something else she doesn’t know.” Craig paused. “The accident? Someone took a shot at her.”

  “I thought she hit a deer.”

  “So does she.”

  Craig listened to the silence on the other end of the line and the silence in the house and wondered where Ashlyn was, and whether she could hear him.

  “Why wouldn’t you tell her?”

  “That was Sullivan’s call.”

  “Craig, didn’t you locate a murder victim the next day?”

  “Three, and one of them was the woman Constable Hart was on her way to see that night.”

  It wasn’t hard to picture Steve, his face long with the weight of the news, closing his eyes as he tried to digest what Craig had told him.

  “I don’t like this.”

  “Me either.” Craig stood and started walking back downstairs. “Look, I know what you said, and I don’t like asking—”

  “I’ll be in touch.”

  There was a click and the phone went dead. Craig returned to the main level and put it down on the small table where Ashlyn had found it.

  She was standing by the fireplace and turned to face him.

  “It sounds like we have a lot to talk about.”

  “How much did you hear?”

  “Everything.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Eighteen months ago

  After Nolan got off the phone with his dad, Ashlyn suggested they eat first, then talk. He seemed surprised, but agreed. They were halfway through the meal when there was a knock at the door.

  That was when she told him she’d called Tain and asked him to come over.

  The tension between the two men couldn’t dissipate with the flip of a switch, and both had found themselves in the awkward position of putting their trust in her while she, in turn, had told them they needed to trust each other.

  “Between the three of us, I think we have all the pieces,” she said.

  The problem was, they knew who. They even knew where. What they didn’t know was why, and they had little in the way of evidence that would support a search warrant.

  Lack of evidence had been the problem from the beginning.

  “I say we call Sullivan,” Nolan said. “We do this by—”

  “Trying to do this by the book is what’s had us going in circles. For all we know, there are girls out there who are still alive. We need to find them,” Tain said.

  “We’ve got no reason to search the shipping company property,” Nolan countered.

  Ashlyn returned Tain’s gaze for a moment, and neither of them spoke. Nolan leaned back in his chair. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “Eddie Campbell has a cabin. It was his mother’s. She died almost two years ago.”

  “But Eddie stayed in town, at the old staff house for the inn. I thought you said that’s where the girls had been kept.”

  Tain leaned forward. “Never for long, and we know they aren’t there now. After Ashlyn and I talked this morning, she checked the land registries. Eddie’s mother had a large property with some buildings on it. He took possession of the property at the beginning of 2005.”

  “Just before the first girl disappeared,” Ashlyn added.

  Nolan didn’t meet her gaze. He kept his focus on the table, his face unreadable. After a few minutes he looked up. “Is the property on the Reserve? Don’t we need to go through Campbell?”

  “We can’t. Campbell’s been leaking information to the Native leaders about the investigation,” Ashlyn said.

  “Campbell’s the leak? Tell me you aren’t confused by the common surname, Hart. Constable Campbell’s the wrong color.”

  “I know they aren’t related,” she said, fighting to keep the irritation out of her voice. “You were there when I was talking to Eddie at The Goldmine. I know Eddie’s Native.”

  “It was Ashlyn who worked it out, in part because of something she found in your desk,” Tain said. “Campbell’s financial records. We could tell he was in debt, so he’d be the most obvious member of the team to try to bribe.”

  Nolan stared at Ashlyn. Whatever questions he had about her searching his desk, he didn’t let them distract him from the issue at hand. “Yeah, that’s what I’d figured, but I couldn’t get any further. I was supposed to investigate the team, but I was also supposed to work the case. We’d never planned on what happened to Winters or the investigation snowballing the way it did.”

  “I followed up on Ashlyn’s hunch,” Tain said. “Campbell had a gambling problem. He’d been smart enough to keep it out of town, but he was in deep to some casinos on other Reserves. We think that when they found out he was the liaison officer from Nighthawk Crossing, they found a way he could pay it back.”

  “That’s why he didn’t want anyone talking to the Reserve police,” Ashlyn said.

  “Do you think they were part of it?”

  Tain held up a hand. “All we know is, Campbell owed them. There’s a serious problem with illegal trade on Reserves.”

  “And someone from inside the department tipped them off about the raid on Blind Creek Shipping a few months ago,” Nolan said. “Campbell had access.”

  “He wasn’t the only one, but he’s the one who’s got motive.”

  “And he wasn’t too happy when we came up with the tip about truckers. Considering how difficult you were,” Nolan nodded at Tain, “Campbell’s complaining didn’t seem unusual.” He was quiet for a moment before he looked at Ashlyn.

  “You think they’re at the cabin?”

  She nodded. Tain pulled a map out of his pocket.

  “It’s actually not on Reserve land. Not entirely. This little piece here”—Tain pointed—“is, but it’s nothing but woods. Over here there’s a house, and then out here there are a couple cabins. I asked
around, quietly. Mrs. Campbell used to rent the cabins to fishermen in the summer and hunters in the fall. Had quite a business from what I hear, but the land was under dispute. She believed it was all part of the Reserve. When she died, the courts did an assessment and most of her land fell within town limits, so there were a lot of back taxes owing. There was an appeal, but Eddie lost.”

  “The ruling was made about a month ago,” Ashlyn said.

  “So they started taking girls out there, thinking it’s Native land. When the courts decide it isn’t, they appeal, and when they lose we start finding bodies.”

  “One other thing,” Tain said. “The property had a walk-in refrigerator. Part of the services offered to the hunters, I guess. From the scale of this, I’d say there’s about a mile between the house and the cabins, and there’s another half a mile to the fridge, here.” He tapped the paper. “It’s partially underground, from what I was told. And a lot of people were pretty surprised Eddie didn’t take up the business, because there was a lot of demand.”

  “If we’d been able to follow up on the leads about the truck stops days ago…”

  “What’s done is done,” Ashlyn said. “We need to get out there, and if we call Sullivan, he’s going to tell us we don’t have enough for a warrant. We don’t have anyone saying they saw the girls there, and with the Blind Creek Inn burned to the ground along with the staff house across the street, that’s a dead end.”

  “That was probably the point,” Nolan said.

  Tain leaned forward, his hands folded in front of him, resting on the table. After a few seconds he looked up at Nolan. “Jenny came to me. She told me everything she knew. If it hadn’t been for the leak in our department…”

  For a moment they were silent. There could still be girls alive, but at the very least, they all knew that if Bobby and Eddie had been stopped months ago, Jenny wouldn’t have died.

  “She was pregnant. She wanted a second chance.” Tain shook his head. “I thought we could give it to her.”

  Nolan nodded. “I understand that, but if we go out there, we risk any evidence we find being thrown out of court.”

  Ashlyn shrugged. “Then what if we go out there to question them? Nobody’s talked to Eddie or Bobby about Jenny Johnson, and she was on the payroll for the shipping company where they both work.”

  “Hoping for exigent circumstances?” Nolan reached for his phone. “First we talk to Sullivan.”

  Ashlyn slumped back in her chair and looked at Tain, who stared silently back, unreadable. They’d known this was the risk they were taking when they decided to talk to Nolan. Now they’d have to take Sullivan through it all again, and try to persuade him that the risks were worth it.

  PART FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Despite the unpredictability of driving in the mountains in early spring with the dramatic shifts in weather that could make the roads treacherous, the drive should have been a refreshing change. The long gaps between towns, the trees and mountain peaks interspersed with valleys, the lakes and rivers all should have been a welcome break from the concrete and steel of the Lower Mainland. Cities hemmed you in, ensnared you in a manmade environment that showed off the best and worst of what man could create. Some thought the explanation for mass murderers and the senseless slayings that filled the news each night was too many people pressed in too close together, with no avenue for escape or natural release for the buildup of pressure.

  There are cities that never sleep, and within them there were those who can’t filter out the hum, unable to quiet the mind.

  Tain knew that blaming any perceived rise in violence on urban sprawl was a fallacy. In the distance he could see more mountains. The one that drew his gaze was the one he was convinced they’d found Mary Donard’s body on. From this distance, he knew he couldn’t be sure if it was the right mountain, but it didn’t matter.

  All that mattered was that when he’d left Nighthawk Crossing, he’d been happy to put the experience behind him. He’d never planned to go back.

  As he looked at the now-familiar roads and countryside as they approached the town he felt his chest tighten. Anyone, anywhere, was capable of the most horrific crimes. This small community that straddled the border between two countries was proof of that.

  Beside him, Ashlyn sat in silence. She stared straight ahead with an unwavering gaze. He wasn’t buying the calm demeanor, no matter how hard she tried to appear at ease. The coroner had confirmed his suspicions. Newspaper articles found with the body in the woods created a condensed history of their careers, carefully planted clues meant to ensure that even if the bodies had been found by someone else, Craig, Ashlyn and Tain would have been called in at some point, although whoever it was had clearly planned to dispose of the bodies where the three of them were working.

  There had been loose ends with the original investigation, because they’d never recovered all of the suspected victims, but there was no doubt in Tain’s mind that the guilty weren’t running free. The only person they’d harbored doubts about who’d never been tried was Kurdy, and even Tain believed any involvement he had was peripheral, with the exception of Jenny Johnson’s murder. Kurdy was a suspected arsonist with a long history of connections to fires, and he worked with Eddie and Bobby, but he was also experienced and arson was one of the hardest crimes to prove.

  He’d never been charged.

  Tain hadn’t mentioned his suspicions about Kurdy to Ashlyn, and he was beginning to regret it. The body in the woods had been left with a neon sign that pointed to Craig, Ashlyn and himself, and Millie had been nothing more than a means to an end.

  And that end involved getting their attention.

  Who would do that? Why? As hard as he tried to shake the questions from his mind, his thoughts kept going back to Kurdy.

  As they drove into town Ashlyn remained silent, but Tain sensed the tension emanating off of her. She was striving too hard to look controlled, staring straight ahead instead of looking out the windows, trying to pinpoint what had changed and what had stayed the same in the small town they’d worked in months earlier.

  Tain stopped in front of the station where they’d first met. “Ash—”

  “I’m fine.” She undid her seat belt and got out of the car.

  He followed her to the front door and they stepped inside. The same beige carpeting lined the halls, the same receptionist sat behind the desk by the entrance, and waved them through without breaking her conversation on the phone.

  The station was the way Tain remembered it, until they reached the sergeant’s office. Sergeant Winters stood and waved them in.

  Winters had never recovered the short-term memory loss he suffered about what had happened right before he’d been attacked, but otherwise he’d been given a clean bill of health after several months of physiotherapy for his injuries. When he’d returned to work they’d put him on desk duty, but he didn’t stay there long.

  Tim was one of the few officers originally involved in the Missing Killer case who hadn’t focused exclusively on community policing. He’d spent time working in the Lower Mainland, had a lot of experience on the street, and hadn’t been content to stay stuck in office. First he’d proven himself on the streets, and recently he’d earned a promotion.

  “You must be my replacement,” Winters said as he extended his hand to Ashlyn.

  “Your standin, maybe. I was actually partnered with Craig Nolan.”

  Winters nodded as he waved at the chairs and returned to his own, behind his desk. He picked up a pencil that he twirled in his fingers and leaned back in his chair as he spoke. “Nolan’s name lives on around here. Well, all your names still come up from time to time. I never did meet Nolan. Or you”—he gestured at Ashlyn with the pencil—“until now. Heard a few good stories about your current and former partners at each other’s throats.”

  Tain saw Ashlyn glance at him. She hadn’t sat back in her chair either. The small talk wasn’t something she’d factored on, and he
realized now she probably hadn’t known it was the same Winters who had been promoted, if she’d even known the name of the new sergeant.

  “Well, you might get a chance to meet Nolan for yourself,” Tain said. “We believe he’s here.”

  The first shadow crossed Winters’s face. “What do you mean, believe?”

  “He’s been suspended,” Ashlyn said. “We think he’s heading out to the camp where…” Her voice broke, and she didn’t try to finish the sentence.

  All traces of the easy smile and casual demeanor Winters had displayed since their arrival disappeared. For a few minutes the pencil twirled in his hands, and then he tossed it down on the desk and leaned forward. “I know about Millie.” Although he’d never met the girl, the way Winters said her name told Tain that the burden of that case still weighed on him.

  “Hey!” A familiar voice cut in from the hall and Tain turned to see Constable Keith, hair a little longer but still blonde, nose piercing gone. “It’s good to see you.”

  Whatever else Keith might have added, she quickly cut off the reunion when she glanced at Winters. As she backed away from the office she said she hoped to see them later.

  “When I heard the news, I wondered how long it would take for you two to get up here,” Winters said.

  “The bosses were arguing over whether to have us work Millie’s murder, and they were afraid the press would start pointing fingers,” Ashlyn said. “I don’t think they wanted us here unless it was absolutely necessary.”

  Winters nodded.

  “And I know Nolan was working the manhunt. Christ, just the thought of Kurdy killing his wife and kids—”

  “Wait, what do you mean, Kurdy?” Ashlyn asked.

  “You didn’t know? Hank Kurtis Jeffers. Otherwise known as Kurdy,” Winters said. “I figured that was why they put Nolan on the manhunt.”

  “Yeager didn’t say anything about the connection,” Tain said. “And we didn’t know.”

  “Come on. We all get briefings, and something as high profile as the manhunt…How could you not know?”