Our Daughter's Bones: An absolutely gripping crime fiction novel (Detective Mackenzie Price Book 1)

by Ruhi Choudhary

  “We don’t, but she lied to you and Bruce. What if it was because she suspected something? Something that scared her? If there’s anyone who knew Erica better than anyone else, it was Abby.”

  “This is assuming that Erica was killed by someone she knew, and not a stranger,” Daniel said. “A random pervert sees a young woman walking into the woods at night, follows her…”

  “Of course that’s possible, but Abby already knew more than what she let on. Her diary is very personal. She doesn’t hold back. The missing pages might have information on what happened that night,” countered Mackenzie.

  Sully nodded. “It can’t be a coincidence that pages were ripped out from her diary. Everything that Abby knows about this case could be in there,” he said. “Make it a top priority to find them, along with tracking that pervert from the video.”

  “What about the other messages between them from that day, Clint? What do they say?” Mackenzie asked.

  “They texted back and forth in the afternoon, between 2 p.m. and 3:15 p.m. They discussed homework and Quinn.”

  “Quinn? What about him?”

  Clint wiped his smudgy glasses with the hem of his shirt. He read over the text messages exchanged between Abby and Erica just a few hours before the latter was murdered. Mackenzie listened intently. Erica had been reconsidering getting back with Quinn—perhaps there had been heartfelt appeals in person that day, before his late-night texts. But Abby had been discouraging her affections toward him, informing her of his philandering ways and asserting her value in her life.

  “That was it?”

  “Regarding Quinn, yes.”

  “Can you extract all of her texts going back a month before she died and send them to us?” Nick asked.

  “Sure.”

  “This makes Quinn a possible suspect. He had motive to hurt both,” Mackenzie said.

  “Let’s not rush into any assumptions,” Sully warned.

  Daniel popped gum into his mouth. Mackenzie could hear the crunch of his jaw as he chewed it. It reminded her of Sterling cracking his knuckles whenever he was stressed. “Sergeant, we’ve seen people murder their exes. Obviously, Abby wasn’t in his good books. If she discovered that he killed Erica, then he could’ve gone after her.”

  Mackenzie winced like someone had pinched her. There were more reasons for Abby to be dead than alive.

  “What about that man from the video? Why are we forgetting him? He’s a better lead than a seventeen-year-old boy!”

  “No one’s ignoring him, Sully. Mack’s following up on that. But you can’t ignore the fact that Quinn’s at least a person of interest,” Nick said.

  Sully pursed his lips in a pout. He glanced at the clock. It was twenty minutes to five. “Screw it,” he muttered, and took a sip from one of the glasses. His mouth moved as he rinsed his pallet and took another sip. “Boy, that’s good. Look, Nathaniel Jones is too big a name in this town. He controls the media. I don’t want to piss him off. It’s been bad enough that Samuel Perez has the mayor questioning our competency—”

  “One girl was buried alive, and the other is missing!” Mackenzie hollered louder than she had intended to. “Our focus needs to be them, not on politics or the Sharks’ championship prospects.”

  “This is how the world works, Mack,” Sully said flatly. “If you don’t like it, tough. This case is delicate. The mayor is up for re-election soon. Do you know the people who contribute the most to his campaign? Perez and Jones. Everything can be affected—promotions, budgets, resource allocation, transfers. You name it.”

  Mackenzie let out a breath sharp enough to cause friction inside her nose. Grinding her jaw, she crossed her arms.

  Sully sighed. “I’m not asking you all not to do your due diligence. I would never do that. Justice will always take priority. All I’m asking is that you approach this with some… tact. Is that fair?”

  “Yes,” Mackenzie mumbled petulantly.

  “Good. Quinn and Abby lied about their last conversations with Erica. Someone talked to Abby right before she was taken and hasn’t come forward. Everybody’s hiding something. Find out what.”

  Twenty-Nine

  Reams of paper sat on Mackenzie’s desk. The Erica Perez file was thick—witness statements, police reports, crime lab reports, exhibit lists, copies of warrants, autopsy reports. Next to it was the Abby Correia file—a lot thinner, but understandably so.

  A missing person generated a lot less information.

  She pulled up the fifty-one names on her computer and quickly began sorting them. Out of fifty-one, twenty-nine were men. Luckily, their addresses and phone numbers were available. She ran them through the DMV records, and got driver’s license photos and dates of birth. Filtering by ethnicity, she narrowed the list to twenty-four. Assuming the man was below the age of seventy, she eliminated five more names.

  Nineteen.

  That was a good enough number. She drummed her fingers on the keyboard. Her mind raced. The aroma of greasy Chinese food wafted up her nose. She peeked round the partition to see Troy stuffing his mouth with stir-fry noodles while playing fantasy football. Her stomach growled, but she ignored her hunger.

  No time.

  It was then she noticed something sneaking out from under a pile of papers belonging to the Perez file. She pulled it out—it was a pack of gum. She frowned in confusion before the realization hit her that it likely belonged to Daniel. He was always chewing this gum.

  “Troy, was Daniel in here?”

  “Yeah, he was looking for something. A pen, maybe.”

  She looked at the five pens she kept on her desk. They looked undisturbed, sitting in the order she liked. Maybe he put it back?

  Mackenzie ran the nineteen remaining names on the Washington State Identification System (WASIS) database to check for a criminal record. One name popped up.

  Eddy Rowinski.

  It wasn’t even a harmless charge like shoplifting. He had been charged with aggravated assault twice and had spent nine months in prison three years ago. The first time he hit his girlfriend on the head with a pipe. He didn’t break any bones, but she was hospitalized with a concussion for several days. She refused to press charges. The county prosecutor did, but it being Eddy’s first charge, he got away with just community service.

  Community service? Something wasn’t right. For a charge as serious as this, it shouldn’t have mattered if it were his first offense.

  A year later, he pushed his girlfriend through the window. Again, she refused to press charges. But this time the prosecutor made sure that Eddy got prison time.

  She looked up the county prosecutor on the case—Isaac DeLuca. He had been the prosecutor on a case Mackenzie had solved last year. She didn’t know a lawyer more obsessed with justice.

  Not even Sterling.

  She bet that Eddy’s girlfriend waited for him to get out of prison. They were likely still together. And he was likely still beating her. He lived at the same address and did online administrative work for Magnus Pharma, some pharmaceutical company in Canada.

  Mackenzie inspected his photograph from DMV records. His face was young and bony. His hairless scalp had a tattoo of a snake. His eyes stared at the camera, dead and cold. His upper lip was thin and curled in a sneer.

  But the image began to shift. The eyes tailed into slits and moved further apart. The cheeks got rounder. The hairless scalp retreated into a balding brown. As Mackenzie stared at the screen, Eddy’s face morphed into her father’s.

  “It’ll always be like this! We’ll never get away from him.”

  “Hush, baby.”

  “Do you like this? Do you like being beaten?” She looked at her mother sharply, knowing that the words were wrong. But crying was exhausting. Even as tears flowed unchecked down her cheeks and her hiccups felt like little earthquakes.

  Melody was unrecognizable. Her skin was porcelain white, devoid of any blemish or puffiness. Mackenzie trailed her fingers up her mother’s smooth arms. The purple b
ruises had dissolved.

  Healthy and beautiful. Unlike roadkill.

  She wondered if it was a mirage. The mind did that; it morphed reality. She rubbed her mother’s soft curly hair. The light reflected on the black strands dancing in between her fingers.

  “How?”

  “Makeup, sweetheart.” She pinched Mackenzie’s chin. “You can always paint over your reality.”

  “Why?”

  “So that no one thinks about hurting you.”

  A door swung open and closed downstairs. Melody shot up from the bed, trembling and fixing her hair. Her lips quivered. She scrambled to put on her shoes. “Your father just left. I have to get him back. I don’t want the neighbors to see him like this!”

  “I’ll help!”

  “Absolutely not. Stay here!” Melody bolted out of the room.

  Mackenzie ran after her but was too slow. She felt the air swish and slam into her as her mother swung the door shut. She gasped when she heard the door click.

  She banged her fists against the door. She screamed for her mother to let her out. She knew what was coming. Soon enough, she heard it. The loud curses that had polluted their home. The sounds of fists beating skin. Furniture toppling and glass shattering.

  Mackenzie felt rage build up like never before. Brick by brick, her innocence crumbled. She curled her fists tight and imagined the door was her father. She banged and pounded and punched and thumped it. Every hit sent a zing of cold fulfillment through her.

  “No! Don’t touch her! No!” she cried till her scream felt like shards of glass inside her throat.

  Eventually, she gave up. Her chest rose and fell. Dried blood was splattered over the door—the remnants of her anger. She fell on the floor, staring at her swollen hands. One day, her rage would kill someone.

  “Anyone we should be focusing on?” Nick’s voice snapped Mackenzie back to the present. He nodded towards the names she’d been working through.

  “This guy is the top of my list.” She leaned back so Nick could read her screen. “We should pay him a visit.”

  “No time like the present,” Nick replied. “I’ll drive.”

  Thirty

  The car went over a bump in the road, and Mackenzie felt the contents of her stomach shift. She looked out the window to the blurring green trees, fading into the dusk. The car’s wiper blades were working furiously, but she could still barely see the road ahead.

  She felt like she was inside a live painting, with colors swarming around her. Everything was out of focus. Nothing felt tangible.

  She clutched her throat and swallowed the vomit.

  “Motion sickness?” Nick said from her side.

  “Yup.”

  “There’s some Gravol in the glove box.”

  She fished it out and gulped the large pill dry. “Thanks.”

  It hit her that Nick never had motion sickness. But he always kept medicine in his car for her. She glanced at him.

  “Why are you staring at me?” he asked without looking away from the road.

  “I was thinking.”

  “About what?”

  She looked at the crescent-shaped scar on his right temple. “I was thinking about how you got that scar.”

  A smile played on his lips, but he didn’t look at her. “Yeah, you did hit me pretty hard. Last time I’ll save you from a mugger.”

  “I thought you were one too! Why were you wearing that black hoodie?”

  “Who carries a pipe on them, Mack?”

  “A normal woman concerned for her safety.”

  He smirked and eyed her jacket. “You still carrying a pipe?”

  “I can use my gun now.”

  “Not as effective as a pipe, though.”

  “No way. Pipes are the deadliest weapons.”

  “Not any grenades or nuclear warheads.”

  They’d been close for almost a decade. Eight years ago, she’d taken a lateral transfer from New York to Lakemore. The day she stepped foot back in the town that hid her darkest secret, she attacked Nick, mistaking him for a mugger. The next day she discovered that they were coworkers.

  She smiled, remembering their meeting. But when she saw him smile, she stopped herself. He noticed her change, because he ran his hand through his hair and blew out a breath.

  She knew him too well. He knew her too well. So why had he kept things from her?

  She pulled out Abby’s diary.

  “Reading will make your motion sickness worse.”

  Oh, you care about me now? she wanted to retort.

  Dear diary

  Honestly, I’m getting sick of everyone around me. There’s Hannah, still being lazy and flaky. Erica is being too naive and timid. The people in my class are too preoccupied with who got laid and who got more likes on Instagram. I am better than this. Why don’t they think? About their lives? About their dreams? Am I the only one who cares? Life is just one big chess game and I bet I’m the only one who plays. I bet these losers around me don’t even know the rules of the game.

  “We’re here,” Nick pulled up in front of a ramshackle wood-clad house. The rain had suddenly died into a harmless drizzle, leaving the asphalt glistening. The smell of wet mud lingered in the air. It was Mackenzie’s favorite time—when the downpour had halted.

  There was pristine clarity at this time. She could see everything just the way it was.

  Eddy Rowinski lived at the edge of Lakemore, in the middle of nowhere. His house wasn’t large, but sat on a giant patch of land; the closest neighbor was at least two miles away.

  The wooden porch creaked under their weight. The flimsy door rattled against the hinges when they banged it. Cobwebs were strung in the corners of the house.

  A woman opened the door abruptly. “What do you want?”

  Mackenzie froze. The woman had a deep cut on her lips, and her right hand was bandaged. When Nick flashed his badge, her eyes shifted nervously. “I didn’t call the police.”

  “We know. We’re looking for Eddy Rowinski.”

  “Who’s out there?” A voice damaged by excessive smoking called from inside. “Who you talkin’ to?”

  “The Lakemore PD.” Her voice shook.

  Eddy appeared at the door with a cigarette tucked behind his ear. Short hair dusted his tattooed scalp. Mackenzie’s eyes skimmed over his hand—a kidney-shaped mark was present on the back. This was their guy.

  “Who called you?”

  “No one,” Nick said. Eddy put his arm around the woman’s shoulders. “We have some questions. Can we come inside?”

  “Got a warrant? Didn’t think so. So, what do you want?”

  Nick pulled out a picture of Abby. “She’s been missing for a week. Ever seen her before?”

  Eddy eyed the picture for no more than a second. “Nope. Anything else?”

  “Are you sure?”

  He pulled a face and tightened his grip around his girlfriend. “Yes.”

  Mackenzie pulled out another picture. “Here you are, talking to her at a gas station. Just before she disappeared.”

  “I don’t see no face, miss.” He flashed a smile. His teeth were stained and chipped. Mackenzie’s eyes darted up his arms. Needle marks. But she saw the girlfriend go stiff. She glared at Eddy from the corner of her eye.

  “You should’ve been more careful with the cameras, Eddy,” Mackenzie said, deadpan. “Not only did we confirm that to be your jacket, but that’s your birthmark on the hand.”

  “Fine.” He kept his burning gaze on her and put the cigarette in his mouth. “Clara, go back inside.”

  “No. We need to talk to her.”

  “She knows nothing.”

  “That’s what you think.”

  “You’re not fuckin’ talkin’ to her!”

  “Want me to get a warrant, Eddy? And ransack your house?” Mackenzie got in his face. She was taller than average for a woman, and he was shorter than average for a man. “Will be easy considering your record.”

  His face turned red.
“I just made small talk with her. That girl.”

  “Why?” Nick asked.

  “She’s cute,” he shrugged. “Saw her standing at the gas station like she was waiting for someone. Just talked to her.”

  Clara pressed herself against the door, her face blank. Her boyfriend just admitted to approaching another girl because she was cute. But she showed nothing, like she was used to this.

  “She’s in high school.” Nick raised his eyebrows.

  “I didn’t know that at first. Thought she was in college. When I realized she was in school, I backed off. I’m no pedophile.”

  “Did you see anyone else approach her?” Mackenzie asked.

  “Nah. She just walked away.”

  “And you didn’t come forward when you saw the news?”

  “With my record? Look at me!” he cackled. “I don’t know what happened to that girl anyway.”

  “Clara, can we talk? I want to confirm his alibi.”

  Clara’s eyes bulged like a deer in headlights. The air felt heavy and brittle. Mackenzie knew this wasn’t the best tactic, but she also knew she couldn’t just walk away. The way Eddy glowered at Clara, she knew he could lunge at her anytime. He jerked his head to Clara, giving his approval.

  Once they were away from Eddy and Nick, Mackenzie asked desperately, “Do you need help?”

  “No.” Clara looked at her feet.

  She saw Nick talking to Eddy, but his attention was glued to Clara. “Listen to me, Clara,” she dropped her voice, “right now, you feel like you can take it. You feel like you can handle him. It hurts, and you’re terrified that he’ll kill you, but you feel like you’ve survived so many years with him, you’ll manage the rest of your life too. What if you’re not alone in the future? What happens if you bring a child into the picture?”

  Clara’s nostrils flared. Her mouth twitched.

  “I know you’ve probably heard all of this before. Even if you never bring a child into this, you don’t deserve this. But you tell yourself that life is unfair and accept your situation for what it is. I can help you change it. Please allow me to––”