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

by Ruttan, Sandra

  Nolan was unable to face what they all feared they’d find.

  Ashlyn pushed the questions from the forefront of her thoughts and reached for the bags. She pulled one out of the way, followed by another and another, and after a fourth bag was moved, only the extended left arm remained propped up by piles of rubbish.

  She had a clear view of their victim’s body from the side, and with the garbage removed, a second body was exposed. Ashlyn fought the urge to wrap her arms around herself, her spine quivering as though a bucket of ice water had been poured down her back. Despite the chill, it was a sharp intake of breath beside her that made her jump. As she blinked, she looked up at Tain, his gaze fixed on the body of the baby that had originally been concealed by its mother.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Eighteen months ago

  As Ashlyn watched Constable Melissa Keith, she felt like slipping back into the hallway and waiting until later to approach her. Keith’s easy banter with Getz and the other uniformed officers and her infectious laugh had a way of making Ashlyn feel like she was back in junior high, in her awkward ugly duckling phase, when she had feet three sizes too big for her body, felt like everyone was staring at her, and second-guessed her every word.

  A few weeks earlier, Ashlyn couldn’t have imagined feeling so insecure, but she’d let the indifference of Oliver and Aiken, the resentment of Campbell and the tension with Tain and Nolan get the better of her.

  She took a deep breath, drew herself up to her full height and approached the group of officers.

  “Constable Keith, do you have a moment?” she asked.

  Keith’s wide smile didn’t fade as she nodded and started walking out of the room, into the hall. Ashlyn offered Getz and the others a small smile before following Keith.

  “I’ve been trying to track down the missingpersons reports—” Ashlyn began.

  “All we can find are reports for younger children, men, and women over thirty. The other ones are missing,” Keith said.

  “Like someone went through the folders and took out all the teenage girls and younger women who could be considered potential victims.” Ashlyn frowned. “I can’t even get a handle on how they came up with the list of eleven we’re investigating.”

  “That I can help you with,” Keith said. “A few weeks before the task force was assembled, Constable Tain compiled a list.”

  Ashlyn felt her eyes widen. “You mean, Tain’s the last person we know of who had access to all the files?”

  Keith hesitated, her smile now completely gone. “No, I know the task force started going through them, and Tain wasn’t even originally assigned to the group. Tain had been partnered with Winters, but when Winters was put on the team, Tain was left on regular rotation. Nolan was part of the task force before he was.” She stopped talking abruptly.

  “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “The day Winters got attacked? It was Nolan’s first day. Sullivan reassigned Tain after Winters was hospitalized, and then Tain started looking for those files. It seems that between the time he made the list and the time he was reassigned, they went missing.”

  Ashlyn considered that. “Why did Tain make the list if he wasn’t originally part of the task force?”

  Keith shrugged. “All I know is that Tain had a tip, something about cross-border smuggling. He was trying to find a break in the case. They tried for a bust, and it went bad. Before that, he’d asked me to gather the missingpersons files for him, but that was before there was a task force. I just assumed Sullivan had him do it. Nobody really knew what he was working on, except Winters.”

  “So Tain took the list to Sullivan?”

  Keith shook her head. “The names came from the local paper. An anonymous tip from someone close to the investigation.”

  “Did you tell Sullivan that Tain had made the list?”

  She glanced over her shoulder, then leaned closer and lowered her voice. “Look…maybe I shouldn’t have said he made the list. I think he did. But he never told me why he wanted the files or what he was doing with them.”

  “You sounded pretty confident a minute ago.”

  “I went by his desk and he had them stacked with a piece of paper on top. Ten names. When he came in, I asked if he wanted me to put the files back or if he wanted to see the new ones that had come in. He told me to get lost.” Keith hesitated. “I’m sure it’s the same list, but if you ask me, it’s not Tain’s style to talk to reporters.”

  Which raised the question of how someone had taken Tain’s list and fed it to the press.

  “Look, I know you’re pretty new to the area, but you’ve been on the streets more than I have. What can you tell me about Bobby Hobbs and Eddie Campbell?”

  Melissa Keith gave her an Oh my God look and her upper lip curled. “Hobbs thinks the world of himself. Most nights of the week you can find him out at The Goldmine. Find a pair of tight jeans and a low-cut shirt and you’ll have the displeasure of meeting him inside of five minutes.”

  “What about Eddie?”

  “He’s there sometimes, too. If Bobby gets lucky, he ditches Eddie.”

  “Eddie not much of a ladies’ man?”

  “When I first came to town, I thought it would be good to get to know people, know who hung out where. I wanted to have a feel for the place.”

  Ashlyn nodded. It made sense. It was something she hadn’t had a chance to do herself.

  “Bobby and Eddie were sitting together, drinking. Bobby started hitting on me, and he wouldn’t take no for an answer. I was about to pull out my badge when Eddie came over and told him to lay off.

  “It didn’t really fit with what I’d heard. Everyone had always told me that Bobby was the leader and Eddie did whatever he was told.”

  “Maybe they had it backwards.”

  “No.” Melissa shook her head. “I’ve had my share of run-ins with the two of them since, and it wasn’t the first time I’d seen them together. Bobby usually calls the shots, but that night, Eddie stepped up.”

  “Why?”

  “It wasn’t chivalry, if that’s what you’re thinking. Bobby had a few choice words for me and took off. For a minute, Eddie stood there, staring at me. I said thanks, and he still didn’t say anything. You know the look a guy gives you, when he’s undressing you with your eyes? It was like that, only creepier.”

  “So Eddie’s lacking social skills?”

  “Which fits with what everyone says, about Bobby being the leader and Eddie just following him around and doing what he’s told.” Melissa frowned. “But that night? Eddie just stood there, staring at me. Eddie sat down, uninvited. And he told me a story that put chills down my spine.

  “According to some old Native legend, there was a woman stealing children from the tribes. She would make them eat from her food, and once they did, they grew a root that went into the ground and chained them there forever.”

  “Was it a white woman?” Ashlyn asked.

  “Funny, I thought that might be the punch line too. Some way for Eddie to tell me I’m evil or to remind me of all the bad things that we’ve done to his people for hundreds of years. Don’t get me wrong. Our ancestors left us with a lot of things to answer for.”

  Ashlyn nodded. She didn’t want to get sidetracked with a discussion about the history of the mistreatment of the First Nations population. The problem was, there was no way to really make restitution for all the sins committed, and the crimes that were on her mind were current ones. Land claims and reparations were for the lawyers and politicians. She wanted to find out who was abducting and murdering these young girls.

  “One of the children cut off the root, and when she did she was able to run home and lead the people to the old woman’s home. They rescued the children, but when they cut their roots, they got sick. They were in terrible pain and cried and begged for their lives to end, and after several days they died.

  “The only one who didn’t get sick and die was the girl who’d cut her own root.”


  Ashlyn had heard the legend about the stolen children and the roots, but she’d never heard that ending. “Are you sure he wasn’t making up a crazy story just to have some fun at your expense?”

  Melissa shrugged. “Anything’s possible. It wasn’t what he said. It was how he said it.” She let out a breath and folded her arms across her chest. “When he’d finished telling me that part of the story he leaned in real close to me and didn’t blink. All he said was that it would have been better if their mothers had stabbed them through the heart themselves.”

  Ashlyn felt a chill run down her spine. Melissa didn’t know all of the crime-scene details from the bodies they’d recovered, so she had no way of realizing just how creepy Eddie’s comment was. “Is there a psych file on this guy?”

  “If there isn’t, there should be, but if you want more info, you should talk to Tain. The smuggling operation he was going after? Word was Hobbs was at the center of it.”

  “Really?” Ashlyn started to turn, then stopped. “Any chance you can follow up on that 911 call that came in?”

  “The one that reported your accident?” Keith asked.

  “No, the one about the body…” Ashlyn stopped. “What do you mean, reported my accident?”

  “The call came in after Nolan had found you, so we were already on our way. A 911 call reporting that someone had shot at a vehicle being driven by an RCMP officer, and she was injured.” Keith frowned. “You mean you didn’t know?”

  Ashlyn shook her head. “Nobody told me.”

  Keith leaned closer and lowered her voice. “Well, you didn’t hear it from me, but they pulled a bullet out of your dashboard. I can’t believe they didn’t tell you. I mean, after what happened to Winters…”

  Ashlyn nodded, but it was an automatic action, and she went through the motions of thanking Constable Keith and walking back down the hall. She stopped at her desk long enough to perform a few quick web searches. After Mrs. Wilson’s murder, she’d looked up photos of Bobby Hobbs and Eddie Campbell, and made a note that at some point they should be questioned about Jenny Johnson.

  After all, if they’d hung out with her all the time, wasn’t it possible they knew something about her disappearance? Jenny’s mother hadn’t been too attentive. The fact that she’d waited several weeks to report her daughter missing proved that.

  What Ashlyn didn’t understand was why none of the local cops had talked to Bobby or Eddie. If they knew everybody, they knew who Jenny’s friends were, but there was no evidence that anyone other than Winters had tried to follow up.

  And as she’d learned from Steve already, some of what Winters had reportedly learned had been left out of the files.

  Why?

  The answers would have to wait. At some point adrenaline alone wasn’t enough to fend off the fatigue, and over the past few days the entire team had hit the wall. The Surrey lead had stalled, and with the discovery of more bodies, they’d been unable to follow up on Nolan’s lead. Campbell had been surlier than usual, and everyone was on edge.

  It was only seven o’clock, but Sullivan had all but thrown her from the building himself. Everyone had been ordered to take time off. She wasn’t expected back for thirty-six hours.

  Since they’d discovered the body in the Dumpster and identified her as Wendy George, Ashlyn had been combing through the autopsy reports and information collected from the coroner while trying to stay on top of the tips that continued to pour in.

  Tain had spent the past few days searching the woods.

  With Tain and Nolan out of the office most of the time and the second shift investigating the murder of Mrs. Wilson, Ashlyn hadn’t been confronted with the tension within the team for a few days. For all the hours they’d put in, they didn’t seem to be making any headway with the investigation.

  The day before Nolan had sat at his desk and started asking her about the reports and the tips.

  “I can make some calls, split things up so we can get through them faster,” he offered.

  She’d accepted the olive branch readily and handed him a stack of slips, but Sullivan had entered the room two minutes later. Nolan had held up a finger while he was on the phone, and kept the sergeant waiting until he’d finished writing down the details of his call.

  “My office. I have something you need to handle,” Sullivan had said as soon as Nolan had hung up.

  Nolan had flashed her an apologetic smile, set the messages on his desk and told her to leave them. Before he left he’d said, “If I get back before you’re done, I’ll go through them.”

  He hadn’t. She wasn’t surprised, but she wasn’t annoyed either. Just the act of offering to work with her helped dispel any doubts that had surfaced in the few days since he’d argued to take her to the Dumpster. She didn’t question that it wasn’t his choice to leave her in office this time, but rather Sullivan’s.

  When Nolan had returned, he’d been apologetic. “Sorry. Where are we at?”

  “A few more tips about truck stops.” The open folder she’d passed to him had a map taped inside, with the truck stop sighting locations marked in red, and the girls’ homes marked in green. “One guy said he’d seen Millie Harper talking to a dark-skinned man before getting into his truck.”

  “So the purple line connects the girl’s home to the truck stop she was reportedly seen at?”

  Ashlyn nodded. “They’re all within a few miles. I wrote the distance down in the margins.”

  “Maybe when we regroup we can follow up on this.”

  What she didn’t tell him was what was missing from her map. An unconfirmed sighting of Jenny Johnson at a diner two months earlier, right around the time she went missing, with a man who sounded a lot like Constable Tain. She’d leaned back in her chair, unaware she was tapping her notebook against her fingers until Campbell had walked in and glared at her, wondering if she might be able to make it to the diner herself.

  Whatever she decided, first she had to go to the store and as she drove, she turned over everything that she’d learned from Constable Keith as she picked out enough groceries to carry her over for a few more days, paid, loaded them into the car and drove to the cabin the department had provided for her. As she turned down the now-familiar roads, she thought about what Melissa had told her, about Eddie’s strange story that was one part legend to two parts pure fiction.

  Or was it fantasy?

  Was that why Tain had been so edgy? Had he seen the bodies and thought of some twisted version of an old Native tale and feared the killer was living on the Reserves? Most serial killers were white males, but the particulars of this case, the fact that the killer had kept the girls alive for an extended period of time…

  They’d done preliminary tests. The infants recovered with the women shared the same father.

  Technically, this wasn’t a serial-killer case. Not yet. The problem with serial-killer cases wasn’t just the strain on the department as they tried to find enough manpower to investigate, and it wasn’t the public’s panic. The real problem was that the individual victims got lost in the crowd. They just became a number. It was too easy to lose sight of the fact that every girl was an individual, who’d had hopes and dreams, and their lives had been cut short brutally and senselessly.

  It was almost necessary to lose sight of those facts to stay sane. Out of eleven missing girls, they’d recovered three of their bodies, counting the one found in the burned-out building. That meant there were eight more girls out there, somewhere, and the pile of tips that needed to be investigated was mounting.

  She loaded her groceries in her left arm as she slipped her shoes off outside before entering and picked them up with her right hand after unlocking the door. Although she barely took notice of her surroundings, she was vaguely aware of the sound of Nolan’s Rodeo pulling up to his cabin as she closed the door behind her.

  Ashlyn bent down to set her shoes on the shelf in the bottom of the closet, then walked down the short hall and set the bags, and her coat on the count
er. It took less than a minute to put the cheese, milk and yogurt in the refrigerator and then she turned around and looked at the Spartan cabin, and wondered how she was going to keep her mind off work for a few hours, never mind a full day.

  Melissa had given her an idea, and she took less than half a second to debate it before she went to the bedroom, dug out a pair of black jeans, a purple shirt with a scooped neck that had sleeves long enough to conceal her bandages, and got changed.

  By the time she arrived at The Goldmine she felt transformed, no longer a new cop in the area, trying to fit in with a team of men who didn’t want to work with her, but just a new girl in town trying to get a feel for the place.

  She asked for a table that appeared to be in the center of the action on the bar side.

  “Menu?” asked the gum-chewing waitress with bleach-blonde hair that had grown out long enough to show the dark roots asked.

  “Please.” Ashlyn slid her jacket off and set it on the chair behind her. She tried to lean back and look relaxed as she scanned the menu and occasionally glanced around the room.

  Bobby Hobbs and Eddie Campbell were at a table in the corner.

  She looked back at her menu.

  “What can I get ya ta drink?” A different waitress. Slim and pretty in a wearing-too-much-make-up kind of way. She would have looked better if she’d gone easy with the face paint.

  “A Coke, thanks.”

  The menu was as generic as they came, with burgers and fries, sandwiches and fries, steaks, ribs and more alcoholic beverages than dessert options. She’d finally settled on what to order and closed her menu when the chair beside her slid out.

  Bobby Hobbs sat down and put his hand on her shoulder as he leaned over and whispered in her ear, “I bet a girl like you knows how to have a good time.” Said as he worked his hand over, to the back of her neck.