He looked at the gigantic board they’d started for their John Doe. Lots of questions, but no answers.
Then he looked at the new board beside it. The one for Leigh. Lots of questions, but no answers.
This was not how he liked to work.
There was always a reason for a murder. Always. And there was no such thing as a perfect murder. There were clues. They just hadn’t asked the right questions yet. Or maybe the answers weren’t available yet.
Sometimes the hardest part of a homicide investigation was asking all the questions you thought would matter, only to stumble onto the ones that really did matter. And as his mentor had told him a million times, there were no shortcuts. You never get to the right question without asking a lot of the wrong ones.
Time to get asking.
Gabe flopped down at the desk across from him. “You sure you want this case?”
“What?”
“Leigh. You sure you want it? You’re awfully close—”
“That’s why I want it.”
Gabe’s eyebrows bounced up. “You’re too close.”
“I don’t buy that line of reasoning.”
Gabe didn’t argue with him, but Ryan could tell he didn’t agree either. Gabe was too good of a friend to be a jerk about it. Too good of a cop to let it go without saying something.
“Look,” Ryan said. “I need something to do while we wait on forensics from the John Doe case.”
“Whatever.”
The “Don’t say I didn’t warn you” was implied.
8
Monday morning came way too early. Ryan pulled into the hospital parking lot running on three hours of sleep, a large coffee, and a chicken biscuit.
His first stop wasn’t Leigh’s room.
His first stop was a waiting room on the third floor. He’d called on his way in for an update. Pete was off the ventilator and had been moved to a room.
Two officers stood outside the door. A chaplain and several of Pete’s friends spoke in hushed tones from some chairs in the corner. Pete’s folks had just arrived after driving nonstop from their home in Iowa. His girlfriend was with her sister on a cruise in the Caribbean. She still didn’t know.
Ryan’s stomach churned as he approached Pete’s parents. “Mr. and Mrs. Stanfield, I’m Ryan Parker.”
“You’re the one who was with him when it happened,” Mrs. Stanfield said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She nodded toward the chaplain and dropped her voice. “He told us he was guarding someone?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m afraid it’s an open investigation and not something I can talk about, but he was injured in the line of duty and we’re doing everything we can to find out who did this.”
Mr. Stanfield’s deep voice shook when he spoke. “Can you tell us if he was guarding a prisoner or . . .”
Oh. Now he understood.
“No, sir. He was protecting an innocent individual who’d been attacked earlier in the day.”
Somehow that seemed to ease Mr. Stanfield’s mind. Not that it changed what had happened to Pete, but maybe it made the reality a tiny bit easier to swallow.
“I just wanted to check in on you this morning before I go to the office,” Ryan told them. He nodded toward the chaplain. “If you need to reach me, Chaplain Sullivan has all my information.”
They nodded and said thank you.
He wasn’t sure what they could possibly be thanking him for. He still had no idea what had happened or why. But maybe it helped them to put a face and name to the man who was searching for the person responsible.
Ryan took the stairs to the fourth floor and down the twisting hallways to Leigh’s room. He pulled up short. An officer should have been stationed outside her room. He placed one hand on his weapon and took measured steps toward her door.
The door opened and two officers emerged.
“Oh, hey, Parker,” Carlos said. “I introduced Charlie to Leigh. I’m headed out. Everything was quiet here.”
Way to overreact, Parker.
Ryan hoped his laughter sounded natural. “Great,” he said. “I’m assuming she’s awake?”
“Yeah.”
Ryan knocked on the door and found Leigh sitting in a chair. Eyes bright.
“Did you bring me a biscuit?” she asked.
He handed over a paper bag. “As requested,” he said. Leigh wasted no time unwrapping the biscuit.
“Thank heaven,” Keri muttered from the corner. “She’s not very nice when she’s hungry.”
“I am so,” Leigh said through a mouthful of food.
Keri didn’t attempt to hide her obvious disagreement. She looked at Ryan with an expression that said, “See what I’ve had to put up with all night?”
Leigh threw a wadded napkin at Keri and they all laughed. She seemed more herself this morning.
“So when are you going to let me out of here?” Leigh asked.
“I could ask the same,” Keri chimed in.
“As soon as the doctor releases you,” Ryan said. “I have to get in to the office, but he’s promised to give me a call once you’re free to go.”
Keri smirked. “I’ll have you know I am not the patient here. Once Megyn returns, I’ll be finding my way to my nice, warm bed.”
It had taken Ryan about three seconds to figure out that Keri was worried sick about Leigh. She’d caught him outside the recovery room and the way she lit into him, demanding to know what had happened, he had to wonder if she somehow thought he was the one who’d cut Leigh’s brake line. But then her voice had cracked. All the sauciness she threw around was a shield, probably one she raised regularly to protect herself. But even when she tried, she couldn’t mask her genuine affection for Leigh.
And Leigh must have known that herself, because the look she gave Keri was full of feigned outrage. “Fine,” she said with an exaggerated huff. “Leave me in here. Go sleep. I’ll be fine.”
Keri folded her hands in front of her and whispered, “Dear Lord, give me patience with this patient.”
“I’ll be back,” Ryan said. Their laughter followed him into the hallway. At least Keri was keeping Leigh entertained. And if she was entertained, then he could hope she wasn’t spiraling into fear.
With everything she’d been through, anything that kept her mind occupied in the present had to be good medicine.
Thirty minutes in heavy morning traffic and he finally made it to his office in downtown Carrington. Today was going to be brutal.
Ten hours later he came up for air.
One of his dive team buddies, Adam Campbell, had been the one to escort Leigh home. He reported back that she was in good spirits when he left. The sheriff had approved an around-the-clock security detail, and there was no shortage of volunteers.
Every member of the law enforcement community—the local city police departments and the sheriff’s office—felt the weight of what had happened to Pete.
Whoever was behind this had unwittingly made it easier for investigators to catch them. Leigh’s case would have been taken seriously and the criminal behind it would have been hunted down. But with the addition of one of their own spending the night in the ICU and at least one more day in the hospital, the sheriff’s office had been deluged with offers of aid.
And the sheriff wasn’t too proud to accept them. He’d even received a call from a professor from the local university’s computer forensics/cybersecurity department who was willing to volunteer her team to comb through the video footage. Adam knew her well and was going to help coordinate with her office.
While Leigh was being released from the hospital, Ryan had spent most of the day juggling paperwork, coordinating the volunteers and offers of assistance, setting up protective details for both Leigh and Pete, and of course, there were the two hours he’d spent at the autopsy of his John Doe.
He took a sip of stale coffee as he looked over the report again. Both the ME and the anthropologist had gone over everything but had given him almost
nothing to go on.
Their John Doe was a white male. Probably between the ages of fifty-five and sixty. He’d been in decent physical condition. He’d broken his right arm and his left femur, probably in his teens, and he’d had surgery on both knees. They estimated his height to be six-one to six-three.
Ryan had no idea how they’d come to that conclusion given that the guy was missing some key parts, but they were the experts.
The water exposure had messed up almost every other thing they would normally be able to tell about a body. Tox screens would be useless. They would need the bones for the DNA analysis and those tests took months to get back—and that assumed the guy was in a database of some kind, which almost never happened.
Given the way this case had gone, he wasn’t holding his breath.
But the case had some other unique aspects. The killer hadn’t undressed the body. Whoever this guy was, he’d lopped off his head, hands, and feet but hadn’t bothered to remove the guy’s clothes. They were in pretty bad shape because it appeared the killer had doused the body in some sort of acid before wrapping it like a mummy and dropping it into the lake. The clothing was eaten away, as was some of the skin, but not all of it.
This case got weirder every time someone gave him a new piece of information.
The ME was hopeful some forensics buddies of hers could pull something off the clothing. Maybe a brand or something about the chemicals used.
Another thing Ryan wasn’t going to hold his breath for.
He glanced at his watch. Six-thirty. Hardly a late night this soon into a homicide investigation, but he was, once again, at a dead end.
It was temporary. By tomorrow there would be more missing persons cases to review, more security footage to watch, more homeowners who’d come back from vacation for him to visit.
Normally a delay like this would make him crazy, but not tonight.
He dialed Leigh’s number.
“Shouldn’t you be working?” Leigh had answered his calls that way all day. Not that he’d called often. Six times wasn’t often. Right?
“As a matter of fact, I’m leaving the office and wanted to see if you’d had dinner yet,” he said.
“You’re leaving the office?” Skepticism laced her words.
“Yes, ma’am.” He waited for her to reply. He hadn’t expected it to take but a second, but as the silence stretched it became awkward.
“Leigh?”
“Yeah, I’m here,” she said. “I don’t want to bother you.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Other than the obvious, of course.”
“Of course,” he said. “Then what is it?”
Her sigh floated through his headset. “You have to be tired. I’m sure you’d rather go home . . .”
She thought he didn’t want to come over? Wow. He must be hiding his mixed-up emotions better than he’d thought. Or maybe the anesthesia had dulled her senses enough that she didn’t remember their tense conversation in her room yesterday.
Keep it professional. Keep it friendly. Keep it in the realm where Kirk won’t kill you and the sheriff won’t fire you. “I need to eat. You need to eat. If I go home, I’ll eat a frozen pizza. If I bring you a meal, I can probably get the sheriff to pay for it. Trust me, you’re doing me a favor.”
Her silence made him wonder if she’d bought his argument. “Fine,” she said. “But I’m not picking the food. Surprise me.”
Awesome.
“See you in a few.”
He would have texted Kirk, but with the time difference, Kirk was asleep by now. So he did the next best thing. He pulled up her profiles on social media. She liked coffee. She liked college football. She liked the lake.
And she liked barbecue.
Leigh Weston might be the perfect woman.
Whoa. Slow that train down, Parker. You couldn’t base a relationship off of a shared interest in smoked pork. Leigh was fine and sensitive, and she didn’t need someone like him—with a job like his—messing up her world.
But that didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy her company for the time being.
That was perfectly acceptable.
Leigh paced the living room, straightening an already straight stack of books, fluffing an already fluffed pillow. Everything hurt, but the more she kept moving the faster her recovery would be.
Her breathing spiked when her phone chimed, but as she read the message every cell in her body relaxed.
Ryan was here.
Get yourself together, girl. It’s not a date.
The doorbell rang and she started to skip to the door, but her throbbing leg brought that to an immediate halt. She kept her pace measured as she limped the rest of the way to the door. She didn’t open it at once. “Who is it?”
“Ryan.”
She checked the peephole to be sure, then disarmed the security system and threw back the locks.
He carried in two plastic bags and set them on the counter with a triumphant smile. “Dinner is served.”
The hint of smokiness in the air could only mean one thing. “You brought barbecue? I could kiss you!”
His eyes widened in surprise.
If only there was a way to call back those last four words. She could apologize or try to explain herself, but that would make it worse. No. Better to carry on like nothing weird had happened. It was just an expression. It wasn’t like she was actually going to kiss him.
He cleared his throat. “I wasn’t sure what you liked or what that tender tummy of yours would be up for. I got a little of everything.” He pulled out round containers, square containers, tiny plastic containers of sauce, and one giant tub that had to be slaw.
“This is perfect,” she said. She grabbed plates, forks, and spoons, and they served themselves from the minibuffet he’d provided. She took a small portion of everything—beans, slaw, macaroni and cheese, pulled pork, and hush puppies.
When they’d fixed their plates, they settled in at the kitchen bar much as they’d done two nights earlier. Ryan blessed the food and they dug in.
“Have you eaten at all today?” she asked as he piled a second bun high with pork, slaw, and barbecue sauce.
“Some,” he said. “More than I usually get to eat in the middle of a case.”
“Any leads on the John Doe from the lake?”
Ryan held up one finger as he chewed. Maybe she could have timed her question a little better. She took a bite of her hush puppy while she waited. The food was amazing, but she forced herself to chew each bite, swallow, and pause.
Ryan took a sip of his tea before he answered her question. “Not much. But enough to keep things moving. Under the circumstances, it’s more than I would have expected to have at this point.”
She took another bite. So did he. She guessed that was all the information she was going to get on the subject of the John Doe. There were probably confidentiality laws or something at work.
But why hadn’t he told her anything about her case? “Any leads on who messed up my brakes?”
Ryan’s entire body tensed. His fork froze in the air. She regretted the question. She should have waited. At least until after they had finished supper.
He put it down and turned to her. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have made you ask. That was quite insensitive.”
“No, it’s fine,” she said.
“Gabe and I have been going over security footage from the hospital.”
“Found anything?”
“No,” he said. “But we will.”
By the end of the week, they’d fallen into a pattern of sorts. Ryan called every morning on his way to work. Random officers and friends bought groceries and delivered meals from restaurants. Ryan came for dinner every night. They’d had Thai, Mexican, and Cuban food, chef salads, and pizza.
Leigh hadn’t stepped an inch outside her door.
And she was about to lose her mind.
Sure, she was all safe and sound tucked away in the house, but this was
no way to live. This was existing. This was hiding.
It had been a week since Ryan and Gabe had discovered the John Doe, and as far as she could tell, they weren’t having much luck finding out anything about him, much less who had put him in the lake.
Today was a beautiful spring Saturday. She could see trees blossoming. Boat traffic had picked up on the lake as families got out to enjoy a day on the water.
But she couldn’t even open her windows to let in some fresh air.
It had been six days since her brakes had been cut and they weren’t any closer to figuring out who’d done that either. Ryan was trying to be optimistic. At least in front of her.
She understood why he wouldn’t want to admit things had stalled out. Especially to her. She didn’t want to make him feel bad. She was confident he had been and was continuing to do everything he could possibly do.
But she was done sitting around waiting for something to happen.
She picked up the phone and called Dr. Price.
She’d just hung up when her phone buzzed again.
Ryan.
“I’ve been in the neighborhood this morning,” he said. “Thought I might stop by before I head back to the office. Do you mind?”
“Of course not,” she said.
“Good. Could you open your door?”
He was already here? She glanced around the house. One advantage to being cooped inside was she had no trouble keeping everything nice and neat.
And having her house surrounded by police officers ensured that she got up and got dressed every morning. There was no lounging around all day in her pajamas when total strangers were standing guard on her deck.
She opened the door and Ryan entered with a bouquet of flowers in one hand and a bouquet of balloons in the other.
“You have a lot of admirers,” he said as he placed the flowers beside the four others on the kitchen counter.
“Not really,” she said. “I suspect Keri has something to do with this.”
Beneath the Surface Page 9