Finch spoke without thought, as though the words themselves fell out of her mouth. “Burklow was a detective back in the day.”
Strode gave Burklow another look. He guessed he did look older than Strode initially thought. Certainly older than him and Finch. Burklow had strong lines across his forehead and a small bald spot on the top of his head that Strode hadn’t noticed before.
“A damn good detective too.”
Finch’s eyes pulled from the window but fell to the sticky table between her and Strode. “Now I’m stuck with him. It’s like having a child for a partner. I call him when he’s overslept after a long night with Mr. Daniels.”
Strode gave her a blank look.
Finch raised her hand and closed her fingers like they were hugging a glass. “You know, Mr. Daniels.”
Strode did know. Conversations like this, this one-on-one thing, weren’t his strong suit anymore. But still, he tried. “Well, then, if he was so great once, what happened?”
“His daughter. His only daughter. She got hurt. And Jack—Burklow, I mean—blames himself. I think he drinks himself to sleep every night because he can’t bear to be alone with his thoughts. Alone in a house that used to be full of love and laughter that now sits quietly.”
They both looked to Burklow outside to make sure he wasn’t coming in. The cigar between his fingers was only halfway gone. They still had a little time.
Finch went on. “They got into it one night. You see, Burklow’s wife died. She got pneumonia a couple of winters ago and just never bounced back. I was still in training then.” Finch stopped and smiled at Strode. “Well, as you know.” She shook her head. “Anyway, last summer, only about a year and a half since Sarah’s death, Burklow began to see another woman. A married woman. And a mother of one of his daughter’s closest friends.”
Strode adjusted in his seat. The only thing more uncomfortable than a one-on-one conversation was one about others’ indiscretions.
Still, Strode tried to remain present. “Did his daughter confront him about it?”
Finch nodded. “But I don’t think he was willing to stop seeing the woman. So, his daughter stormed out.”
Strode’s interest was piqued. He leaned in. “Did Burklow go after her?”
Finch’s eyes shifted. This wasn’t a juicy drama. It was a tragedy. “No. No, he didn’t.”
Finch took a deep breath, with her heavy, pained eyes on Strode, and went on. “It was storming bad that night. There’s a backroad not far from here, and when it rains really hard, the water sort of collects. Drivers forget and speed along. Distracted and angry drivers are even more careless. The water built up so quickly. She turned—”
Finch put her hand under her nose, and her eyes were glossy. “And she lost control.”
“Hydroplaned?”
Finch bit into her lip, fighting the tears. This woman had heart. Strode knew many men would call that an unnecessary emotion, but he would call it a “heightened empathy” that allowed Finch to catch details others would only skim, or miss entirely. It made her an intelligent and thorough investigator.
She waited for a moment until she could speak without letting a tear fall. “Yes. Hydroplaned. Right into the lake. The station’s team thinks she couldn’t get her seatbelt undone when the car hit the water. By the time they got there, everyone, even Burklow, knew the team was going in not to bring Jack’s daughter home, but to give him a body to bury.”
Strode figured he was supposed to say something, but Finch went on.
“Jack,” Finch’s eyes widened, “Burklow just hasn’t been the same since.”
Strode tasted blood. He had been gnawing away at his lip without even noticing how hard he was doing it.
Strode lowered his head. He wondered if he could open up to Finch. If he should.
“I can’t say I blame him. I always wanted a kid. My wife and I, my ex-wife, we tried for years. Then, that night, when I responded to the screams at the Warrens, I saw Laurie Warren. The first thing I thought was if I was that girl’s father, how destroyed I would be.”
Strode sighed. “Then, when I saw in the photos that there were two little girls, I searched everywhere for the younger one.”
“Jackie,” Finch whispered.
“Yes, Jackie.” Strode let her name hang in the air before taking a deep breath and moving on. “But I couldn’t find her anywhere, and it turned out I didn’t need either of the girls to be my own for it to ruin me.”
And then Teddy on top of it all. He didn’t want to say it. People already thought he was out of his mind. Strode thought it best not to help guide them there when people began empathizing with him.
Finch gave Strode an even better version of the consoling look he had tried to offer her in the woods. He gave her a weak smile.
“I don’t think you’re ruined, Strode. Changed, maybe a little scarred, of course, but not damaged. Everyone else, they see the horror of this job sometimes and think it’s simply that, part of the job. They all shake it off because that’s what gets them home in time for dinner and a game show.”
Strode said, “But for us, there can’t be anything else after something like that.”
Finch shook her head, disagreeing. “No. We know there’s something else. We know there are more pieces to put together, and we can’t walk away from a puzzle left unsolved.”
She said the exact epiphany that unboxed itself in Strode’s mind, “And that is what makes us good cops, and I’m willing to bet, one heck of a team.”
Strode nearly felt himself blush as he realized the growing expansion of his smile. It was more reassurance than he had gotten from anyone in a long time.
Strode and Finch didn’t notice Burklow come into the beat-up diner. His sweat was visibly noticeable in the woods the day before, but in that compact space of the leather booth, Strode couldn’t tell which smelled worse, the stale food or Burklow. How was that possible first thing in the morning?
Burklow stuffed a packet of spare crackers on the table into his mouth. Strode wondered how long that packet had been there. It was sitting there when he and Finch sat down. The thought made him realize he was the guy who “recycled” coffee filters and grounds.
“Is that right, Strode?” Burklow asked.
Shit. I did it again. Be present. Cover this one and pay attention.
“Uh-huh. Yeah.” Strode nodded and tried to hide the confusion on his face.
Finch and Burklow looked at one another and back to Strode, as if Burklow’s rejoining had made him the outsider again.
“Is that what they said, exactly? And what about the boy? Did anyone look for him?”
Strode hurdled over the first question. “Of course, we looked for Teddy. After what I saw the first ti—”
Strode stopped himself, a thick welt building in his throat that made the diner’s stale air feel thinner. “I just didn’t want to see the kid get hurt. We looked everywhere.”
Again, Strode removed himself from his present company and dove into his inner thoughts—the personal ones.
“Hell, my wife and I would’ve taken the little guy ourselves. He had some Yankees cards in his room. But I could’ve made a real Cubs fan out of him. I know it. And Maggie, she would’ve loved that little boy so much. No woman ever would’ve felt good enough.”
Strode laughed and beat his fist into the table, startling the other two—a failed attempt at smoothly breaking the tension. Strode took a moment to compose himself. Looking at his lap, he said, “I need a look at those other reports.”
Finch nodded. “Burklow, we can follow you to the station and work in your office.”
“No,” Burklow said. Strode was surprised to see the man arch his eyebrows and narrow his eyes.
By god, the man has a thinking face.
“Not my office. If we’re going to be on our own with this investigation, as I think we’d be better off doing, we ca
n’t draw attention to ourselves. Let’s keep this between the three of us as much as we can. Whoever is doing this is still in town. Hell, they could be from here.”
Finch nodded like a diligent protégé of Burklow’s.
Burklow slapped his hands on the table. “Alright, you two. Let’s get to work. And let’s—” Burklow put his hand to the side of his mouth, as if that was a useful sound barrier. “—get a decent cup of coffee at my place. I’ll stop and get the files and meet you two there.”
The waitress, who seemed to have forgotten her table until Burklow’s loud dig, scoffed and pushed her way into the kitchen. Burklow threw a five from his worn leather wallet on the sticky table and said, “Okay, let’s move.”
Finch rose from the booth and ran her hands over her thick, black hair to smooth any pieces astray. There weren’t any.
Strode followed Finch outside, and he couldn’t help but feel hopeful. Hopefully, Finch and Burklow were the real deal, and they’d see this through with him. And hopefully, along the way, he could unveil some truth behind the disappearances of Jackie Warren and Teddy Blackwood.
6
There was a worm inside Strode’s brain. One that wiggled around and occasionally gnawed at his memory center. Think, think, it demanded. But think about what? What was he missing?
Strode hated that feeling. Every cop, or every good cop, did.
Strode and Finch walked to the red Ford Pinto, and Finch climbed in. Strode raised his elbows to the top of the vehicle and brought his hands to his face. He was beginning to think that damned worm had the answer. But every time his train of thought got closer to it, it hopped off the tracks and sought shelter in the darkness of the unknown.
“What are you trying to figure out exactly? What exactly do you need to know?”
Maggie was always so good at getting his thoughts rolling. She organized them. It was as if she could flip open the top of Strode’s head and bring what mattered most front and center. Every time he talked to her about a case, he eventually reached that a-ha moment.
But the Starling Nightmare, the missing Blackwood boy—those had to be different. Strode hadn’t known how to begin thinking about those, so Maggie had been unable to help. When she tried, another cinderblock stacked in the ever-growing wall Strode was building in his mind. It pushed her farther away.
He then realized how Maggie felt. Every time he tried to see what he couldn’t, his brain threw him back, flat on his ass. And when his mind felt like really burning Strode bad, it carved open a new gory corpse manifestation of the little girl he saw in the family photos but never found. When Jackie Warren came around, Strode would do anything he could to get out of his head. And it only got worse with Teddy.
Strode felt paralyzed by the thought of Jackie and Teddy. He stretched his arms out and put his palms on top of the driver-side door. When he leaned his hips back to take a deep breath, he saw Finch sitting inside the car. Lately, Strode had spent so much time alone, he was having trouble remembering how to behave in someone else’s company.
He realized how insane he probably looked to Finch. Strode took a deep breath, opened the door, and lowered himself into his seat.
His mind raced as he tried to think of what to say when Finch asked for the hundredth time that day if he was okay. But Finch didn’t ask. Strode wondered, after their talk, if she knew what he was thinking. Or if she didn’t, maybe she understood why his mind carried him away here and there.
When Strode started the car, Finch pointed ahead. “You’re going to take this road for about fifteen minutes, and then you’ll turn left into the first neighborhood.”
Strode nodded, turned the radio dial, and was pleased when the car filled with one of his favorite Beatles tunes. He nodded along, focusing on the words and the smoothness of the sitar, and tried to let it carry some of his tension and anxiousness away.
Then Strode remembered that he needed to continue to try to be present, especially with the first person who had truly taken him seriously in months.
He turned the volume down and turned to Finch, “Do you like The Beatles?”
Finch pulled her gaze from the small shops passing by. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”
Strode smiled. He had a feeling that someone as smart as Finch also struggled with being both physically and emotionally present. He wished that was his problem, just too intelligent to do both at once rather than too broken.
Strode started to ask again but saw Finch had already slipped away. He turned the volume up and let Lennon’s voice fill the Pinto. He followed the road for about fifteen minutes and felt overwhelmed by the number of trees in town. Rather, the way they were all clustered together, masking whatever lay amongst them.
“The turn.”
Strode stared into the trees, hoping whatever he felt he was missing would jump out at him. Or at least give him a sign.
“The turn.”
Whatever they were tracking could hide so easily amongst all the trees. Strode thought their killer had used the leaves and twists of the branches as cover to move through the town.
“Strode. Strode. The turn.”
Strode cranked the wheel to the left. Finch let out a little sigh when the curb elevated her side of the vehicle and then slammed back to the pavement.
Strode cringed. “Sorry about that.”
Finch smiled. “It’s okay.”
Finch didn’t need to give Strode any further directions. Burklow had beat them, and his car was in the drive.
They got out of the car, and Strode smiled as he heard Finch humming “Norwegian Wood.”
Burklow’s house wasn’t what Strode expected—at least not on the outside. The egg-shell colored paint was crisp, as were the navy double front doors. It reminded him of the home in the sitcom The Brady Bunch.
Finch nodded to the house and said, “Don’t give him too much credit,” she said. “Sarah did it all. She liked things a certain way. Even a single chip in the paint would’ve had her out here in one-hundred-degree weather, repainting the whole thing.”
Finch stood back with Strode, looking at the house and seemingly speaking beyond it. “I always liked her. I met her when I was training here. She told me every time I saw her that if the rest of the country could keep up and put women in roles like a police officer, we’d all be better off.” Finch smiled. “The world needs a woman’s touch, Sarah would say. I think that’s why Burklow wanted me with him, to commemorate Sarah.”
“Sarah sounds an awful lot like Maggie. Warm and kind, but capable and strong-willed. I can see why Burklow took to her, just as I did Maggie. No matter how long you’re around women like that, you’ll always underestimate them. As, I know, people do you.”
Finch seemed taken back by the compliment. Her eyes widened and she cocked her head before saying, “Thank you.”
Part of Strode wished there were more officers like Finch back in Indiana. He couldn’t find the perfect words, but he thought she was incredibly decent.
Burklow came barreling out of the double doors with another cigar hanging from his mouth and a glass of a warm honey-colored drink. Strode wondered how anyone could toss whiskey like that so early in the day. But he stood there, drink in hand, with a big-ass grin on his face. It was like a fat, redneck Jay Gatsby.
Finch laughed. “Good God. You’d think he was hosting a barbecue instead of investigating a murder.”
Strode was just glad to see he had changed. Hopefully he had taken a quick shower too. Strode wondered how long his thoughts carried him away at the diner. It had to have been longer than he thought.
Again, he was thankful for Finch’s understanding and patience.
With the cigar wagging between his lips, Burklow yelled, “Come on, fellow man and woman of blue!”
Strode and Finch went up the drive and to the blue doors. It felt like another dimension, one that countered the one on the outside of the house. The i
nside of the house was a somber reminder of Sarah’s death. The weight of it seemed to hit Strode as soon as he stepped inside. From what Finch told him, signs of Sarah’s absence were everywhere: peeling wallpaper, a potent odor of cigars and alcohol, piles of newspapers, and what looked like baseball scorecards on the table and counter.
Strode realized he was staring. Burklow caught his wandering eyes, and Strode straightened himself up, trying to think fast.
“I noticed your scorecards. Who’s your team?”
Burklow raised his glass, again reminding Strode of a loose imitation of the high-class party host from the 1920s. “Yankees all the way, baby.”
The Blackwood boy liked the Yankees.
Burklow went on, “My dad was a huge Joe DiMaggio fan. He was born in New York.”
Strode wondered how Teddy, born in Oakhaven, New Hampshire, became a Yankees fan. He supposed it could simply be geographical.
As Burklow told a story about one of the best games he went to growing up, Strode continued to eye everything in the home. The place was without what Finch had said was Sarah’s touch. Maggie would’ve called the mismatched floral and brown leather furniture in the living room sickening.
“Drink, anyone? Coffee?”
Bypassing the coffee pot, Burklow went right to his nearly empty alcohol shelf. Below it was a trash bin filled with Jack Daniels and Jim Beam bottles.
Finch shook her head. “Just the files.”
Burklow grinned and pointed to Finch. “All work with this one.”
He carried the Jim Beam bottle to the kitchen counter and grabbed a stack of four thick files. He tossed them on the dining room table. “Here’s everything we have.”
Strode grabbed the top one labeled “Byers.” The first of the documents was the basic template with the detail of the event, actions taken, and a summary. It looked like a half-assed job. Both the details and descriptions were vague.
Take Your Turn, Teddy Page 15