Beneath the Ashes

by Dea Poirier

  “Morning,” I say as I approach.

  She offers me a smile. “We’re all set to interview the parents. Sergeant Pelletier and some of the other guys spoke to them yesterday. They’ve officially identified her as well.”

  Interviewing the parents and other immediate family is my least favorite part of the job. Some family members can hold it together for the interview, while others are so weepy that I can’t get any information out of them. But it’s essential. The family has info I can’t get anywhere else, info that could make or break the case.

  “Do you know where to find them?” I ask.

  “Yes, and they’re expecting us around nine. We can grab some breakfast and then head over there.”

  I hardly touched my breakfast this morning—I find it difficult to eat when a case starts ramping up. My mind is too lost to the details. Austin and I walk out of the station together and climb into my Mustang. Though I’ve seen a diner and a café driving through Camden, I’m not sure where to go. After I follow her directions, we pull up to a coffee shop.

  Austin orders her breakfast while I grab a coffee. Once we’ve both got our orders, we head back to the car. Austin eats while I drive, and I soak in every drop of caffeine I can.

  Melanie’s family lives in a three-story colonial on the north side of Camden. The streets are lined with ancient, twisting oak trees and maple trees frosted with ice. Fresh snow still coats most of the sidewalk. I roll my car to a stop in front of the house, my tires crackling on the hard-packed snow. They haven’t gotten around to plowing the side streets yet. I throw open my door, and Austin follows suit, trailing me toward the house. I glance at her before I knock.

  “Any questions before we go in?”

  She shakes her head. “We’re meeting with Fran and Matthew Thomlinson.”

  I knock on the door, my blood surging like it always does before I question a victim’s family. It’s so hard to know which way this is going to go—if it’ll be good, if it’ll be bad, or if it’ll rip my heart out. It must be easier to do this job if you haven’t suffered a loss of your own.

  A few moments after I knock, footsteps thud inside, and a woman cracks open the door, peering out at me. I can make out a blue eye spiderwebbed with red veins, pale skin, and long white-blonde hair. After the woman eyes me and Austin, she opens the door fully, revealing a navy-blue robe over sweatpants.

  “Sergeant Pelletier told me you all were coming.” Her voice is hoarse, husky. But I can’t tell if that’s the usual pitch or if it’s from all the tears she’s shed.

  “Thank you for seeing us, Mrs. Thomlinson,” I say.

  She nods, sniffles, and opens the door wider before waving us inside. The interior of the house is well decorated. Family portraits adorn the front hall. The air smells heavily of cinnamon. Fran leads us into the living room, motioning for us to take a seat on a light floral sofa. She shifts closer to a table beside the sofa, flicking on a lamp beside us. The lamp doesn’t do much to illuminate the dim room.

  “Do you two need anything to drink?” she asks as she eyes us.

  I shake my head and glance at Austin, who does the same. “No, we’re okay.”

  She perches on a chair across from us, like she’s poised to run.

  “Will your husband be joining us?” I ask.

  Briefly she presses her lips together, then says, “No, I’m afraid not.”

  “Mrs. Thomlinson—”

  She holds her hand up. “Please, call me Fran.”

  “Fran, I’m so sorry about your daughter. I cannot imagine what you and your husband must be going through right now. Thank you for meeting with us. I know it’s probably still a shock.”

  With a slight nod of her head, she sniffles and then wipes her nose on a ball of tissues. The tip of her nose is red, like it’s not far off from being rubbed raw. “Thank you,” she croaks.

  “When was the last time that you saw your daughter?” I ask.

  Her brows knit together as she tries to remember. “Friday, I saw her at dinner. Then she was going to go do some shopping.”

  “Friday the twenty-first?” I ask, and her head dips in response. “Did you know that she was going to the Millay Inn that evening?”

  She shakes her head. “No, I have no idea why she would have gone there.”

  “Do you know if she had ever visited that hotel before?” Austin asks.

  “Not that I know of.”

  I clear my throat. I need to put the next part of this delicately. “I don’t know how much of the scene Sergeant Pelletier explained to you, but it appears that Melanie might have brought a man back to that motel room with her. Do you know who that might have been?”

  Her eyes go wide, and she straightens in her seat, as if the question has upset her, as if she didn’t expect this line of questioning at all. “Are you saying that she had sex with someone in that hotel room?” The pitch of her voice goes up several octaves.

  “It appears that she could have,” I explain. “We don’t know for sure. We’re trying to build an accurate picture of what happened during the events leading up to her death. If she had been there with someone, is there anyone who comes to mind that it could have been?”

  She shakes her head, but then her eyes seem to lose focus for a beat before snapping back. “Melanie had a serious boyfriend for two years. His name is Cade Dowling.” Her lips press together. “But I don’t think she would have gone to the motel with him.”

  “Two years? That’s a long time for an eighteen-year-old,” I say. “Why wouldn’t she have met him at the motel?”

  “Yes, she was serious about him. But they broke up recently. I don’t think that she wanted to get back together with him—but he really wanted to. He was hounding her. He tried proposing. He really didn’t take the breakup well at all.”

  “Do you think that he would have been capable of hurting your daughter?” I ask.

  “Love makes people do crazy things, things you don’t expect. He had an intensity about him. I don’t know if he would hurt her on purpose, but an accident. I could see that,” she says, her eyes going glassy again. Fran sniffles, then wipes her nose on a tissue.

  “So you don’t think she would have willingly gone to a hotel with him?” Austin asks.

  Fran purses her lips. “After how he acted during the breakup, I just don’t see her being comfortable with it. She didn’t even want him coming to the house.”

  “Was there anyone else who Melanie had trouble with? Anyone else who had been fixated on her?”

  She shakes her head. “Just her ex. Since she got out of the hospital, he’s been around here constantly trying to check up on her. I believe he also showed up there several times.”

  “Has he showed up here unannounced?”

  She fiddles with the tissue in her hands. “Yes, a few times. My husband made him leave, though. Melanie didn’t even want to come down to the living room while he was outside.”

  I make a note of that. “Was there any reason you didn’t call the police about it?”

  “It just seemed harmless at the time. I didn’t think he’d hurt her. We just thought that he was fixated on her because the breakup was so recent and that he’d get over it eventually.”

  The boyfriend is definitely at the top of my list for people to check out, but I need to know if there was anyone else. Her mention of the hospital has caught my interest, especially since Dr. White said it looked like Melanie had been in an accident recently. “You referred to the hospital. What was she in the hospital for?”

  “She had an ATV accident a few weeks ago. She and some of her girlfriends like to take their ATVs up through the woods. She bounced off the back of one and fractured her wrist; then one of the scrapes she got had a minor infection. She wasn’t there for long the second time, just a couple days, but that really made Cade freak out.”

  I jot that down. That explains the brace on her wrist. I’ll need to talk to the hospital to see if he came by or if anyone remembers anything about h
er stay that sticks out. “How long ago was she in the hospital?” I ask.

  “About a week ago.”

  “The medical examiner pointed out that there were several large bruises on her body in various stages of healing. Were those all caused by the ATV accident?”

  “As far as I know,” she says, straightening.

  “To your knowledge, was Cade ever violent with her?” Austin asks.

  She shakes her head. “No, nothing like that.”

  “Did she ever have unexplained bruises while they were dating?” I try again. Though her daughter may not have communicated abuse, it’s still a possibility.

  “No.”

  “And you don’t know of anyone else who may have been physical with her?” I ask carefully.

  “No, never.”

  “Is there anything else that you can think of that sticks out to you? Anything you think might help with the investigation?”

  My question hangs in the air between us; then she shakes her head. “Not that I can think of.”

  “Can you write down the information you have on Cade Dowling or any of her friends you think it’d be worth speaking to?” I ask and pass over my notepad to her.

  She writes down the information for me. Austin and I say our goodbyes and head out of the Thomlinson home. We pull away from Melanie’s house, and I zero in on the first name on the list of Melanie’s friends, Chloe Garcia. Austin helps me navigate across town to a house set back away from the road, a recently plowed driveway cutting through the snowy yard toward a canary-yellow colonial. Maroon shutters flank each window, and dagger-sharp icicles hang from the roof.

  “Anything I should know about Chloe?” I ask Austin as I park the car out front.

  “She’s popular, cliquish. Her mom owns an art gallery in the center of town.”

  When we reach the door, I ring the bell. Though the sun has come out, it’s barely added a breath of warmth. After we’ve waited a few seconds, the front door opens, revealing a young woman in black leggings and an oversize red flannel shirt. Her black hair falls in waves over her shoulder. She cocks her head as she surveys us.

  “Chloe?” I ask.

  “Yeah.” Her eyes narrow as she glances from me to Austin.

  “Could we come in for a moment to speak with you about Melanie?”

  She hesitates, her features a mask, but she waves us inside. The house looks like an extension of the art gallery Austin mentioned. Inside, the interior is stark, institutional gray walls mixed with exposed brick that must have been added during a renovation, since the exterior is wood siding. Unframed canvases line nearly every inch of wall space, adding splashes of color and life to the rooms. Chloe shows us into a living room filled with sleek Swedish furniture.

  “Why are you asking about Melanie?” she asks while we take a seat on the couch. Chloe sits across from us on a circular ottoman.

  “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but Melanie passed away,” I say gently. I’m a bit surprised she hasn’t heard. I imagined that news would have spread all over town by now.

  Chloe sucks in a sharp breath and shoves several strands of hair behind her ear. “No, that can’t be. I would have . . . no,” she stammers.

  “I’m sorry,” I say again as she shoves up from the ottoman and begins to pace in front of the table.

  “How?” she asks finally, whipping toward us, tears pooling in her eyes.

  “The details are not being shared with anyone but the family for now,” I say, which is true, but I also can’t bear to tell the specifics to this girl. Some facts are too terrible. They won’t help her get closure. They’ll only bring about nightmares. There’s another reason I won’t share the particulars, though—we intend to keep some of them as holdback evidence so that we can rule out any false confessions. I give her a little time to compose herself as she sniffles and tears coat her cheeks.

  “I know this is incredibly difficult,” I say gently. “But in investigations like this, time is of the essence. Every minute can make a big difference in our chances of finding who did this to her.”

  “It was Cade,” she snaps, her eyes locking on mine. Her body has gone rigid, fists clenched at her sides. “If someone did this to her, it was him.”

  “How can you be so sure about that?” Austin asks.

  “He went psycho after she broke things off with him. He got way too serious too fast. He was saying that he wanted to marry her, that they were soul mates.” She shakes her head and crosses her arms. “A few times, she told him that he needed to take it easy, and every time he ended up threatening to kill himself or something if she broke up with him.”

  That intensity level is a huge red flag. “Did he ever hurt her or threaten to?” I ask, wanting to phrase this question carefully.

  “No, not that she ever told me.”

  “Do you ever remember seeing unexplained bruises on her?”

  “Unexplained? No. She was always out hiking, on her ATV, stuff like that.” She sniffles and wrinkles her nose, making her displeasure clear. “She fell sometimes while she was out. She ended up with bruises that way.”

  “Did you see any of these incidents occur?” I ask. Abuse can easily be covered up with stories about falls or accidents. And many times, domestic abuse can lead to homicide. I need to be sure that’s not what we’re looking at here.

  “No, but I don’t think she lied about it.”

  “Is there anything else about Cade that we should know?”

  “He was basically stalking her,” she says as she starts to pace again. “He’d show up at her house and just stand outside, waiting for her to come out. Then if she didn’t, he’d call her cell phone over and over again.”

  I make notes of all of that. “Is it possible that she was seeing someone else?” I ask. If this ex-boyfriend was stalking her, I find it unlikely that she would have booked a hotel room to meet up with him. But she booked it to meet up with someone.

  “She mentioned being interested in an older guy,” she says, her words almost a question, as if the thought just occurred to her.

  “Did she say a name? Where she met him?”

  Chloe shakes her head. “No, she didn’t give me any details. She said she wanted it to be a sure thing first. She was afraid she’d jinx it.”

  “Jinx it?”

  “Yeah, like he was too good to be true or something.”

  I try to make sense of that. An older guy who was too good to be true. This was likely the man outside the motel. If she was dating someone new, I’ll need to speak with her other friends to see if anyone saw her with this guy or knows who he might be.

  I finish up with my questioning of Chloe, and then Austin and I interview several more friends of Melanie’s. All of them share Chloe’s concern about Cade, but none saw any signs of abuse. And though I hope to find out more about this older guy she was seeing, she didn’t mention him to any of her other friends. With the information about her boyfriend fresh in my mind, I text Sergeant Pelletier with the information on Cade. He’s my best lead to follow up with for now. I want to set up an interview with him as soon as possible. In the meantime, I need to get to that hospital to see what they know about Melanie’s stay after she had her ATV accident.

  CHAPTER 4

  I maneuver the car out of the driveway after the last of our interviews with Melanie’s friends and steer back toward Camden. We’ll have to follow Route 1 south toward Rockport to the Pen Bay Medical Center. It’s a twenty-minute drive in good weather, but with the snow gently falling around us, I know it’ll be closer to a half hour.

  It looks as though they’ve plucked out the forest to build the medical center. The large building seems entirely out of place here, and though it seems absurdly large for a city of this size, the Pen Bay Medical Center supports many of the local communities. Hospitals are few and far between out here. Most of the time, we just go to an urgent care facility since the hospitals are difficult to find. Once I turn in, we weave our way through the parking lot and
head toward the administrative offices.

  I grab my phone, glancing at the name of the head of security that Sergeant Pelletier sent me when I told him my next stop. The double doors glide open automatically as I approach, and I head toward the receptionist’s desk. A woman with cropped red hair clicks away at a keyboard. I pull out my badge, ready to show her when she looks up.

  “Yes?” she asks without taking her eyes off the screen.

  I introduce myself and Austin. “We’re here to see David Bowden. Sergeant Pelletier from Camden PD told me I could find him here.”

  Finally, she glances at my badge for half a second before grabbing the phone. “David, there are some cops here to see you.” Her words are clipped.

  “Thanks,” I say, though she doesn’t look back at me, just returns to typing.

  David Bowden strolls down the hall like he owns the place. Well, I guess it’s him, judging by the confidence—security guys always have it—and the belt he wears that’s adorned with a handgun, pepper spray, and handcuffs.

  “Officers,” he says as he approaches. “Detective Calderwood? Sergeant Pelletier told me to expect you two.” A low chuckle rolls from his thin lips. “But he didn’t tell me to expect you.” He eyes Austin. “And you are?”

  “Officer Harleson,” Austin says.

  Though I try to remain stoic, I’m sure I grimace as his eyes crawl over me, at what’s visible through my open coat. But considering his eyes are surveying every inch of me other than my face, I’m sure he wouldn’t notice either way.

  “Yes, I’m Detective Calderwood. Thank you for meeting with me, Mr. Bowden. Do you have an office where we can speak privately?” I ask, glancing toward the nurse I know is eavesdropping on us.