Sullivan turned and left the canvas structure that had been erected to keep their victim concealed from curious onlookers. As soon as he was gone Tain turned to Ashlyn.
“How much progress have you made going over all the missingpersons records?”
This was the first time anyone had mentioned them to Ashlyn. “I—”
“Get back to the office and dig through them. We need to make sure there aren’t any other girls out there we should be looking for as part of this investigation.”
“But Sullivan—”
“Do you see him getting in Nolan’s face for leaving you in the office? You aren’t even my partner, Hart. I don’t have time to give you a tour and hold your hand while you figure out what it means to work a real case.”
Ashlyn looked at the coroner, who’d suddenly developed a fascination with his own paperwork. Tain was still staring at her. There hadn’t been any discussion the night before when they’d arrived at his house. He’d simply pointed her to the spare bathroom and bedroom and marched upstairs, his husky following him. That morning, he’d made breakfast wordlessly, which had been a bit of a surprise, because she’d expected some sexist jibe about performing her womanly duties. The only thing he’d said was that she could leave her stuff if she wanted, in case her cabin wasn’t ready until the next day. She was staying at his house and he still wasn’t ready to give her a chance or hear her out.
For a moment, she wondered who annoyed her more, Nolan or Tain. Then she realized it didn’t matter, turned and left the tent without another word.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Eighteen months ago
“Mrs. Bird? My name is—”
“Are you trying to sell me something? You aren’t trying to sell me something, are you? I don’t like to be bothered at home by people telling me what they think I need to spend my money on.”
Ashlyn rubbed her forehead. “No, Mrs. Bird. This is Constable Hart calling, from the RCMP.”
“Who?”
“The police, Mrs. Bird. I’m calling about those missing girls.”
There was a small pause. “I can’t imagine why.”
“Why what?”
“Why would you call me about those missing girls.” The high-pitched voice cracked. “I don’t have them!”
“Mrs. Bird…” Ashlyn looked at the slip of paper in front of her. Another dead end she’d wasted time on. Not that it mattered much. She was stuck in the office and not going anywhere. Not if Nolan had his way, and Tain wasn’t about to let her off the leash either.
“If you call again, I’m going to phone the police!”
The click was followed by the dial tone. Ashlyn squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, the top of the handset resting against her chin as she rubbed her ear. She’d made so many phone calls the side of her head hurt from having the handset pressed against it, usually balanced on her shoulder as she tried to take notes or catch up on reading reports while she returned phone call after phone call.
She’d been able to move into her cabin. Although Tain had barely said a hundred words to her outside of the office in the two days she’d spent at his house, she’d developed a fondness for his husky and was missing the companionship of a pet.
An explanation about why they weren’t working with tribal police had never been forthcoming. In fact, since the morning she’d walked in with Tain, Nolan had barely said a hundred words to her in office.
To make matters worse, she couldn’t find the missingpersons folders she was supposed to be combing through. She’d asked Constable Keith, one of the officers who worked patrol in the area and knew where things were supposed to be, to search the filing cabinets in the rest of the station for her and had gone over every inch of community space in the task force office, but hadn’t turned up anything.
When she opened her eyes, she glanced at the locked drawer in Tain’s desk and thought of the scraping metal sound she’d heard when Campbell had been behind her. Too many secrets and too many male egos in conflict, marking their territory, fighting over what was still unclaimed. She made a note on the message from Mrs. Bird that confirmed she’d called back, the date and time, and included Mrs. Bird’s address before adding it to the mounting pile of useless tips.
She was on her last one.
It took a few seconds to dial the ten-digit phone number. It took longer for someone to answer. As Ashlyn waited on the line she found half of her hoping nobody would pick up so she wouldn’t have to deal with another bogus tip, and the other half just wanted to get it over and done with, crossed off the list so that she could move on.
Hopefully, move on to something more productive.
“What?”
The demanding tone was so unexpected Ashlyn wondered for a split second if the phone had been answered already and she hadn’t heard.
“Mrs. Wilson?”
A pause. “Who’s this?”
“Constable Ashlyn Hart, from the RCMP.” Ashlyn drew a breath. “You placed a call, something to do with the investigation into the disappearance of those girls.”
Silence.
“Mrs. Wilson, I’m calling because you left a message that said you knew something about the missing girls that could help our investigation.”
Ashlyn paused. Since the day she’d been transferred to Nighthawk Crossing, she’d made at least three hundred phone calls. Most had been useless, but the process of determining whether the would-be tipster was crazy or confused was unpredictable. Some proved unreliable from the moment they answered the phone, like Mrs. Bird, and others prolonged the ordeal by seeming lucid and serious for several minutes before their stories unraveled.
A few had called because they knew one of the girls and just wanted to talk.
Those were the hardest ones. Ashlyn never knew what to say. There had been one phone call from someone who knew Mary Donard, and all Ashlyn could do was agree when the girl had said they hoped Mary had just run off and would come home soon.
They’d succeeded in limiting the press coverage of the discovery of the bodies in the woods, and that included concealing the identity of the older victim. The press didn’t know about the baby, and they wanted to keep it that way. The advantage they had was that they still controlled the details that went public.
Despite that, the problem they faced was that the phone calls had tripled in the past few days. They’d seen an increase across the board, with families phoning for updates, friends calling because they didn’t know what else to do, and a few possible legitimate sightings interspersed in the nuisance calls.
“Mrs. Wilson, do you have some information for us?”
“That girl in the fire. The body. It was Jenny Johnson.”
Ashlyn straightened up. “Which fire?”
“The inn. The house across the street. The body inside.”
“The fire at the Blind Creek Inn?”
“It was Jenny Johnson’s body.”
“How do you—”
The click was followed by the familiar sound of dial tone.
Ashlyn stood. Adding the bogus calls to the thick file of useless tips was instinctive, and she placed the calls from family and friends in another folder. The few slips of paper that might contain helpful information had been placed on her notebook.
She grabbed the small pile with her left hand and picked up the message from Mrs. Wilson with her right, then marched down the hall to the small room where they’d previously met for shift changes.
Now, they met there when summoned, the shift lines blurred as they worked as long as they could to follow up on any possible leads. In the three days since discovering Mary Donard’s body, they hadn’t done much more than annoy the media.
The long table had been removed so they could try to comfortably seat a group of people who functioned as a team in name only. A handful of scattered chairs took up a fraction of the floor space, and a small table had been placed in the corner. A coffee urn sat on top.
Sullivan paced back and forth along the
far wall.
As she slid into a chair in the back left corner she wondered if that meant there’d been a significant development. Nolan had been leading the meetings, and Sullivan had rarely been present for the regular rundown of their standard checklists.
It seemed Nolan was being groomed for leadership. The older officers appeared indifferent to that fact, while Tain made no effort to conceal his contempt for the constable.
Oliver entered the room, walked over to the urn and poured himself a cup of coffee. As he turned he took a sip, his face scrunched into a look of disgust and he spit the liquid on the floor.
“Tastes like lukewarm piss,” he said.
“Time for the little lady to prove herself useful. Make them some coffee.”
The all-too-familiar voice came from behind her, to her right side. She turned and glanced at Tain as he leaned back against the wall on the other side of the door, then realized it was a mistake.
She’d acknowledged the comment was meant for her.
The three older men didn’t seem to know whether they were supposed to laugh at Tain or lecture him. Oliver turned and set his cup down, his face a crimson shade. Campbell and Aiken glanced at Sullivan, who’d turned to stare at Tain.
Nolan walked to the front of the room.
“Hart’s been doing an excellent job—”
“On clerical duty.”
Tain’s voice again, eliciting a snort from Aiken that was quickly stifled when he looked up to see the sergeant glaring at him.
“She follows orders, which is more than I can say for you.” Nolan didn’t give Tain a chance to respond. “Hart’s followed up on all the calls that have come in. Unfortunately, we don’t have many leads to work with, and I’ve done the follow-up with the legitimate tips that did come in. We’ve hit a roadblock. There are a few other potential witnesses we can track down, but we’re talking about people who may or may not have seen someone who looked like one of our victims months ago. Memories are hazy, and the information is getting thin, but we have two witnesses who believe they saw Kacey Young getting into a semi at a truck stop just outside Osoyoos around the time she was reported missing.”
Ashlyn sat up in her chair. A trucker would make sense. It explained the size of the region the girls had disappeared from. Truckers knew the roads, knew the areas, and their presence didn’t automatically arouse suspicions. It was a promising lead.
“Hitches a lift with a trucker eighteen, nineteen months ago,” Campbell said. “That’s a whole lot of help.”
“It’s a place to start,” Nolan said.
“Thousands of hitchhikers get in semis every year. She could be on the other side of the country. It’s a waste of time.”
“This is what we do, Campbell. We follow the leads we have until we either exhaust them or turn up some useful information.”
Campbell shook his head. “What you’ve got is nothing. It’s a dead end.”
“No. It’s a beginning.” Ashlyn had surprised herself by saying the words out loud, and apparently everyone else in the room had been caught off guard as well. They were all looking at her, so she tried to explain.
“There would be shipping records, weight scale information from the highways. If we can get someone out to the truck stop and talk to other truckers we might find some guys who work regular routes in the area.”
“Which would tell us what?” Campbell said. “Who delivers produce and who’s hauling livestock? We’ve got no probable cause. You can’t send us out there to start questioning truckers and requesting shipping manifests without a damn good reason.”
“Actually, in the wake of 9-11, you’d be amazed at what we can do without a warrant,” Ashlyn said. “The proximity to the border—”
Campbell jumped out of his chair. “You’ve got no idea what you’re dealing with here.”
“Then why don’t you enlighten me?” she snapped back, sick of Campbell’s attitude and unable to conceal her frustration.
Campbell looked at Sullivan, and some of the color drained out of his face. His breathing steadied, and he sat back down. “Look, so what if one of them got a ride near here a few months ago? It makes sense since they all went missing from this area. There’s nothing suspicious about that.”
“Except the fact that the trucker hasn’t come forward,” Ashlyn said. “I’d like to know why.”
“Then you follow up on it. I’m sure if you could find some tight jeans and park yourself outside a truck stop you’ll have no problem getting the guys to talk to you.” Campbell almost smiled. “They’ll probably tell you anything you want to hear.”
“You know what, Campbell? I think she’s got a point,” Tain said.
“Oh, well, aren’t you suddenly the knight in shining armor.” Campbell’s sneer didn’t fade when he looked at Ashlyn. “Don’t worry, hon, it’s not all about you. Tain’s got a hard-on for a couple of local punks he hasn’t been able to bust, and since they work for a shipping company, I’m sure he figures this is a good chance to try to find something he can use on them. Isn’t it, Tain? Only problem is, you tried that already, and you came up empty-handed because there’s nothing to find.”
“Yeah? Maybe I came up empty-handed because you shot off your mouth.”
Campbell was on his feet, quickly followed by Sullivan, Aiken and Oliver. The accusations and insults were lost in the chorus of shouting, and Ashlyn looked at Nolan, who’d stayed out of it.
Sullivan’s voice rose above the others. “That’s enough! Sit down, now.”
Tain slithered back to his spot against the wall, and the others found their seats. Campbell’s face was as red as a ripe tomato.
“Look, this is a tough investigation. We don’t have the resources city departments have, and we don’t have enough manpower,” Sullivan said. “I understand that everyone’s tired and we’d all like to see some progress, but we can’t start pointing fingers at one another, especially without facts.”
The speech was followed by silence, but Ashlyn noted that the color didn’t fade from Campbell’s face. He also hadn’t looked up since he’d been ordered back to his chair.
“You don’t actually think it’s somebody local who’s killing these girls, do you?” Oliver said. “Those of us who’ve worked here for a while, who’ve put down roots, we know these people. Sure, you’ve got your drunks, you’ve got your bullies who use their wives as punching bags, and there’s the odd bit of petty theft, occasional drug use, but most people in this town are good folks.”
“We have to look at every possibility,” Sullivan said. “Until we’ve made an arrest, that means chasing down every possible lead. Okay, before we get to assignments, anybody have anything else?”
“Actually, I have something I want to chase down,” Ashlyn said.
“Oh really? What’s that?” Tain asked.
Ashlyn ignored him and kept her focus on the men at the front of the room. “It might be nothing, but we had a call about the body in the fire. I have reason to believe she could be one of our missing girls.”
“You mean the body found at Blind Creek Inn? We don’t have an ID yet that I’m aware of, and there’s been nothing to tie that victim to our investigation,” Sullivan said. “What have you got that suggests a connection?”
“Women’s intuition,” Tain muttered, but not softly enough to prevent her from hearing.
Ashlyn held up the slip of paper in her right hand. “A tip that says it was one of our girls.”
“Credible?” Nolan asked.
She nodded. “I think so. At least worth following up on.” She almost held her breath. Sullivan had every right to pass the tip over to Tain, and she knew it.
“Which victim?”
Tain’s voice cut through, but his tone had changed. The attitude and arrogance were gone, replaced by something bordering on concern. There was a look in his eyes, as though he was going back over some information in his mind, trying to piece something together.
“Jenny Johnson.”
“Okay, Hart. You and Nolan can track it down.”
“Sir—” Tain said. Sullivan cut him off.
“Tain, you have other things to deal with, and I told you before, it’s the team’s case. Not just yours.” The sergeant glared at him for a moment, then turned back to Hart. “Let Tain know if it’s credible. We can’t afford to ignore anything that hasn’t been called in by a crazy. Oliver can start tracking down shipping records and weight scale information,” Sullivan said. “Campbell, you and Aiken will deal with the truck stop.”
“Hang on. They found three bodies in Surrey this week, all young girls who’d been sexually assaulted. Each one had been stabbed through the chest,” Campbell said. “Why aren’t we looking to see if there’s a connection?”
“Were the girls held? Were they impregnated?” Tain asked. “Dressed in an old-fashioned white gown, partially wrapped in plastic and frozen before their body was disposed of?”
“Maybe they were,” Campbell said. “It’s not like we’re releasing all the details.”
He had a point, acknowledged by the fact that not even Tain challenged him. Ashlyn watched Tain lean back against the wall again, fold his arms and give the slightest shake of his head.
She looked at Sullivan.
“We’ll be following up on that investigation, to see if there’s a connection. Campbell, you and Aiken start coordinating with Surrey, but if it turns out to be a dead end, I want you to follow up with Nolan’s lead right away. And, Campbell, that’s an order. Understood?”
Campbell glared at Nolan as he swallowed. “Yes, sir.”
Ashlyn stood, aware of Tain watching her with a solemn gaze. She wasn’t sure if he intended to intercept her, but she hoped she could exit the room quickly and avoid any other confrontations.
“Hart?” Sullivan gestured to her and pointed at Nolan as he walked toward the front of the room. When he passed Tain he said, “I would have thought this would make you happy.” Tain only glared at Ashlyn and Nolan before marching out of the room.
Lullaby for the Nameless (Nolan, Hart & Tain Thrillers) Page 43