Beneath the Ashes

by Dea Poirier

  “No, why?”

  “If she was meeting up with someone, chances are there’d be some record of it on her phone. Whether a text or social media. Was her phone found in her things at the motel?”

  Austin glances at her computer, clicks a few times, and shakes her head. “It’s not listed on the evidence log. I haven’t seen any mention of her phone.”

  Phones go missing a lot in cases like this, so it doesn’t surprise me. But I wish we had it. “We need an officer to get her devices that are remaining from her parents’ home today; maybe the phone is there. We’ve got to search them,” I say.

  “I’ll have Blake handle it.”

  I sit at my borrowed desk, waiting for the computer to spring to life as I jiggle the mouse. Once it finally responds, I open the web browser and navigate to a search engine, then type Cade’s name. Several social media profiles pop up. I click through each, finding his name and an avatar of a kid in football gear, smiling from beneath a helmet. Though I can see his name, picture, and list of friends, the rest of his profile is locked down, with no public information that tells me anything about him.

  Next, I type in Melanie’s name. Several profiles appear. Her main page is filled with messages of condolences, notes about missing Melanie, and collages of pictures of her from birth all the way up until her death.

  Seeing it laid out like this makes me feel the loss more intensely. It’s easy to compartmentalize a life you can’t see. I swallow back the sadness climbing my throat and scroll further. She didn’t make many public posts—most are inspirational or cute animals, plus a few photos of her on her ATV. Not the kind of information that’s going to help me with this.

  I click on her friends list, though I’m not sure what I’m looking for. She’s not listed as in a relationship, and I’m not seeing any new friendships with men.

  When the well of social media runs dry, I walk back to Austin’s desk and lean against it, catching her in the middle of eating her breakfast. While everyone else has pictures or knickknacks on their desk, she’s got nothing. This may as well be a borrowed desk. “So what can you tell me about this ex-boyfriend? I tried to google him, finding him on social media, but all his accounts were private.”

  “He’s the son of one of the firefighters. His mom is a first-grade teacher. He’s got a bit of golden-boy syndrome because he plays football.” She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, brushing away some of the egg that’s stuck there. “Don’t get me wrong—he’s good—but he’s not good enough for that attitude of his.”

  Some of the comments from the interviews come back to me. Cade felt like he and Melanie were meant to be together, that she was his soul mate. He wanted to get really serious really fast. It started to scare her off. Some girls want serious commitment in high school, but it seems that she wasn’t one of them. Cade’s intense reaction makes me wonder what was really going on. Why he latched on to her so hard.

  “Has Cade ever been in trouble?” I ask.

  Austin shakes her head. “No, nothing serious.”

  While Austin finishes her breakfast, I head back to my borrowed desk to prepare my thoughts for the questioning. At nine, I tug on my coat, grab my things, and signal to Austin that it’s time to go. Light snowfall dusts the cars in the parking lot and freckles the dark pavement, making the ground look like a fallen night sky. The clouds above us are thick and gray, giving the impression it’s much later in the day than it is. We climb into my car, and Austin navigates for me. We drive through the city toward Cade’s house.

  I roll to a stop in front of a cape cod that’s a shade of blue normally reserved for nurseries. I climb out first, and Austin hangs back, as if steadying herself for what’s ahead. She pops the door open and joins me on the shoveled walk that leads to the front door. I ring the doorbell and wait, with Austin standing behind me.

  The door cracks open, revealing a man who looks like a carbon copy of the boy I saw in the football uniform online. He’s built wide, with chestnut-brown hair, pale milky skin, and green eyes. His brows crinkle with interest when he looks from me to Austin. Thick lines deepen on either side of his thin lips as he appraises us.

  “Can I help you?” he asks.

  “Mr. Dowling, we’re here to speak to Cade. I’m sure you heard about Melanie’s death?” Austin asks, stepping forward. Her approach isn’t as gentle as it should be, but Cade’s father and Austin clearly know each other. And when understanding, not anger, ripples over his face, I know she’s said the right thing.

  He nods, a slight sadness hanging on his features. “I did. It’s so sad. Come on in,” he says, waving us inside.

  The foyer is sparse, filled only with a coatrack overflowing with coats, scarves, and hats. To our left, stairs lead upward; to our right, the hall opens into a living room filled with sports memorabilia. The walls are painted a dark blue, and signed jerseys hang on nearly every wall.

  “I’ll get Cade,” he says as he shows us to the living room.

  Austin and I both take a seat on the overstuffed couch. After a few minutes, Cade joins us in the living room. His green eyes narrow on us as he perches on a recliner across from us, a bottle of water clutched in his hands. Mr. Dowling walks in after Cade, standing near the door with his arms crossed.

  “Mr. Dowling, Cade is a minor, so you have every right to be here while he’s speaking with us if you like. However, I think he may be more forthcoming if you are not present. Please let me know how you’d like to proceed,” I say, speaking with confidence as I lay out the options.

  For a moment, he looks between Austin, Cade, and me; then he disappears up the stairs. I listen to the path he takes before I begin to speak again.

  “Thanks for coming down,” I say.

  His eyes flit from me to Austin, then back to me. “Does she need to be here?” Distaste hangs on his words, but I’m not sure why. Does he know Austin, or does he just not want to face this many cops at once?

  “Yes, she does,” I say.

  “Shame.”

  I brush off the comment. He’s got answers I need. “So, Cade, you dated Melanie?” Though I know he did, starting with the preliminaries makes people more comfortable in the questioning. If someone is comfortable enough, they’ll let information slip they might otherwise keep to themselves.

  He inclines his head but doesn’t speak. Instead, he cracks his bottle of water open, then takes a long, slow sip.

  “For how long?”

  “According to her or me?” he asks, a challenge to his words. As if he’s daring me to ask more.

  It strikes me that he doesn’t seem at all upset that Melanie is dead. Sure, we all process things differently, but this is jarring. He’s cheerful, bordering on flippant. It could be that he’s in shock still, that the death doesn’t feel quite real to him yet. After some of the friends saying that Cade thought Melanie was his soul mate, I have to say I expected blubbering, something.

  “Why don’t you explain both timelines to me?”

  “According to me, one year. Her, probably six months,” he says simply.

  “Why the discrepancy?”

  He laces his fingers together and rests them on top of his knees. “She tried to break up with me, but I didn’t accept her breakup.”

  I glance at Austin, and she cocks an eyebrow, as if, like me, she’s not sure that she heard him correctly. “You didn’t accept her breakup?” Austin chimes in.

  He smirks, like it’s the most normal thing in the world. “When you love someone, really love them, you can’t let them go. You have to hold on.” A smile slithers across his thin lips. But his eyes remain cold, distant. The look chills my blood.

  “So instead of letting her go when she wanted to break up, you held on?” I ask, wanting to be sure that I’m following his logic properly.

  “I did. I had to prove to her that I loved her.”

  “There are comments from her friends and family saying that you stalked her,” Austin says.

  Cade runs a hand t
hrough his hair, a low laugh slipping from him, and his eyes settle on Austin. “I wouldn’t call it stalking. I was just making myself available. And I’m sure if they really thought it was stalking, they would have called the police.” He smirks again, as if he’s too clever for his own good.

  “Did you try to visit her while she was in the hospital?” I ask, though I know that he tried several times, based on the information that we received from Nurse Jordan.

  His eyes flash as they snap back to me. “Of course I did. I worried about her. I love her.”

  It strikes me that he’s talking about Melanie as if she’s still alive. I sit back on the couch, considering how I want to play this. If I come at him too hard, he may shut down. For now, I don’t want him to think that he’s a suspect. I need him to keep talking; I can’t afford to have him clam up on me.

  “Is there anyone that Melanie ever mentioned to you who she was having problems with? Anyone you noticed giving her trouble?” I ask.

  Austin eyes me, but I don’t turn to look at her. If she had experience here, she’d know what I’m up to. I just hope she keeps her mouth shut.

  “No, not that I know of,” he says. And that answer isn’t something I’d expect a guilty person to give. If he did this, he’d look for an opportunity to point fingers at someone else. Anyone else.

  “Who do you think hurt her?” I ask.

  He sits back in his chair and crosses his arms. “If you ask me, I think she killed herself.”

  Killed herself by strapping herself to a bed with plastic taped over her head and then dumping cigarette ashes all over her own body? Now that’d be a magic act. But then again, no one outside of law enforcement knows those details. We’ve held that information back. Only the killer would know.

  “And why do you think she would have killed herself?”

  “She’s been depressed since we broke up. She seemed distant from everything, everyone.”

  Maybe she was depressed and distant because her ex-boyfriend wouldn’t stop stalking her, I want to snap, but I don’t.

  “I’ve heard from several others that you may have been fixated on Melanie, possibly dangerously so,” I say carefully. I don’t want to provoke him, but I need his take on it.

  “Fixated?” He laughs, but it’s humorless. His eyes are too sharp. “We are in love.”

  I have to wonder if this “love” of his became dangerous. Especially if he thought she was dating someone else.

  “One of Melanie’s friends mentioned that she might have been dating someone else. Do you know anything about that?” I ask, watching him carefully for his reaction. His eyes narrow as he looks from me to Austin.

  “There’s no way she ever would have,” he says, waving his hands through the air as if the gesture can wipe the words still lingering there away.

  “Cade, where were you on the evening of February twenty-first?” I ask.

  “At home,” he says simply.

  “Can anyone confirm that?”

  “My family, my computer. I was playing video games with some friends. I was online until around two in the morning.”

  I make a note to have someone at the station check into the alibi. I finish up my questioning with Cade. After we leave the Dowling residence, Austin and I update Sergeant Pelletier on the interview and have Zane confirm Cade’s alibi, which ends up checking out. I spend the rest of the day noting what I found out from the interview with Cade and combing over other interviews before finally heading back to a hotel for the night.

  As I slide under the comforter in the hotel bed, I shoot Noah a text to check in on him, but there’s no response. I sit up. My gut aches as I look at the picture I have saved for his contact in my phone. I’m surprised to find that I miss him, that I wish he were lying in bed next to me. Though I want to leave him to his research, I find my finger hovering over the call button. It rings three times, and just as I’m about to give up, thinking it’ll go to voice mail, he answers.

  “Hey,” he says, a little breathless, like he ran for the phone.

  “What are you up to?” I ask, falling back onto the hotel bed.

  “You caught me getting out of the shower,” he says with a low laugh.

  In my mind’s eye, I can’t help but imagine that: his muscled core glistening with droplets of water, a damp towel tied around his waist.

  “How’s everything there?” I ask.

  “They’re ninety percent certain this new body is connected to the others. Though she was dumped a mile from the previous victims, at the edge of the woods. They found a ligature still tied around her neck. All the other victims had been strangled with a similar rope. The date of death, anticipated age of the victim—they all seem to match.”

  “Oh, wow.” When bodies like this pop up relating to cold cases, they can spark new interest, lead a fresh generation of detectives toward solving them. “Do they have any DNA yet on the vic?”

  “They’ve run it through their internal database, no hits. The next step is to run it against familial DNA databases online. They’re hoping they can find someone related to her.”

  “I hope they do,” I say, and I mean it. Not just for her sake and the family but for Noah. I know how much this case means to him, how personal it all is. “How are you holding up?”

  “Being back here is bringing up memories, but I feel like with this new evidence, maybe now they really stand a chance at solving it.”

  “Or maybe the story you’re writing will add the attention it needs,” I offer. As much as I love to hate journalists, I do have to admit that a lot of investigative reporting and interest in cold cases are what drives them to be solved. Otherwise they’d just get lost among the new cases that pile up every day. It’s not that police departments don’t want to solve them; it’s about resources. If there’s enough pressure from the outside, cities will give us more resources for these old cases.

  He lets out a low laugh. “Maybe.”

  “You need to use your spotlight. Mention the story in some of your interviews. The brighter that spotlight gets, the bigger a shadow you’ll cast. Use it to your advantage,” I say. I know what he’s capable of, and I know he can get attention on this if he wants.

  “I’ll consider that. How’s your case coming?” he asks, obviously ready to change the subject.

  I give him a Cliff’s Notes version of events so far.

  “I bet the boyfriend did it,” he says quickly.

  “He seems borderline sociopathic and obsessive, but the scene didn’t scream intensity to me. I would think that given his obsessive nature with the victim, we would have seen a very different method of killing.” The act was deliberate, sexual. But typically, in those scenarios where a lover is angry and intense feelings are involved, I’d expect to see a shooting, more physical trauma, or two parties being punished. This didn’t say punished to me. It seemed like the killer wanted to humiliate and control the victim, which can line up with a scorned lover sometimes, but I’m still not convinced that Melanie would have willingly gone to a hotel with Cade. The fact that the killer chose to suffocate the victim also shows they didn’t want to kill her with their own hands. They didn’t want to feel the life leave the body. It says control but detachment, wanting to punish but without seeing the victim and without being seen. “Maybe our killer is acting out punishing someone else through these victims. I’ve seen that before.”

  “I’d still keep an eye on him.”

  Noah and I spend a few more minutes catching up, until sleep drags me down. We say good night, and I drift off to sleep, wishing that he were next to me.

  CHAPTER 6

  It’s been four days since Melanie’s body was found, three days since Noah went to Tennessee. Though I’ve been through all the interviews several times, as well as her medical records, the most important evidence I’ve seen so far is piled in front of me. I’ve got the texts from Melanie’s phone printed out, thanks to the Camden PD tech guy. He was able to comb through her devices after we got the
m from her parents. We were in luck—she had left her phone at home. However, that fact does strike me as odd. Did she forget it? Or was there another reason she left it behind?

  I’ve sorted all the messages: the ones from known numbers, her everyday messages with friends and family, and then a few exchanges with two different burner phone numbers. The first number has messaged Melanie infrequently over the course of a few months, with messages that give a time and what look like coordinates. The messages go back months, but the most recent was February 18. At first, I thought they might have been messages from Cade, but his contact info is saved in her phone, and I can’t see why he’d send her coordinates.

  On my computer, I type in the coordinates, and they bring up several locations in Bald Mountain Preserve, Camden Hills State Park, and Meadow Mountain Preserve. Places all easily accessible. Is this her mystery man texting her places for rendezvous? Or is this something entirely different?

  The texts from the other burner phone number lead me to believe she was seeing someone. Someone she must have been keeping secret, because there’s no mention of dating anyone new in her texts to her friends. The messages start a week after she left the hospital the first time, for her wrist, around January 26.

  203-555-2983: Sunday, January 26, 9:48 a.m.—When can I see you again

  Melanie: Sunday, January 26, 9:49 a.m.—Who is this?

  203-555-2983: Sunday, January 26, 9:49 a.m.—Do you give out your number that much?

  Melanie: Sunday, January 26, 10:01 a.m.—Oh, lol, no

  203-555-2983: Sunday, January 26, 10:04 a.m.—Tonight?

  Melanie: Sunday, January 26, 10:05 a.m.—Can’t maybe tomorrow

  203-555-2983: Monday, January 27, 11:07 a.m.—Now?

  Melanie: Monday, January 27, 11:38 a.m.—I’m at school can’t

  203-555-2983: Monday, January 27, 11:39 a.m.—After?

  Melanie: Monday, January 27, 2:15 p.m.—You’re persistent

  203-555-2983: Monday, January 27, 2:16 p.m.—You’re beautiful

  Melanie: Monday, January 27, 2:20 p.m.—lol

  Melanie: Monday, January 27, 2:21 p.m.—okay, tonight