A Circle of Crows

by Kelsey Kingsley

  I nodded, hoping something helpful would come of the man’s longwinded story. “Did ye end up together that night?”

  He shook his head, tucking his chin under as he sighed. “She gave me her number, I gave her mine, and she promised to call as soon as she got back home. We only spent a couple of hours together, but I already knew I wouldae loved her.”

  Rosie had kept her calm the whole time but as the man’s face fell once again, she released a loud sniffle, then apologized as she hurried from the room. I wanted to rush after her, to console her in any way I could, but I wasn’t done with James.

  “Do ye ken what happened to her that night?”

  He shook his head. “After I left her at the inn, I went back to Roland’s pub. That was it.”

  Narrowing my eyes, as the wheels in my brain turned, I asked, “And ye saw her go inside?”

  James nodded confidently. “Aye. I made sure of it.”

  Slumping back in the chair and tipping my head to stare at the ceiling, I resigned myself to the fact that this man was very unlikely the killer I was searching for. The case had seemed so obvious for a moment, but now, it felt even more like a mystery than before.

  “Thank ye for yer cooperation, lad,” I finally said, looking back to him with an appreciative smile. “And I’m sorry about … all of this.”

  James nodded somberly and asked, “Do ye need me for anythin’ else or …”

  Shaking my head, I replied, “Not at the moment, but expect to hear from me within the next day or two. And don’t run away next time.”

  He offered an apologetic smile as he stood, then left the room. I watched him leave, looking for any shred of evidence that might point me again in his direction. But he didn’t hurry. He didn’t rush out of the room like a bat out of hell. He moved slowly, hanging his head and gripping the back of his neck. He was upset, maybe even heartbroken, and I couldn’t imagine him being that skilled of an actor.

  After James had left, Rosie came back into the room and closed the door behind her.

  “He didn’t do it,” she stated, and I shook my head and replied, “No, he didn’t.”

  She was disappointed for a moment, and her face fell with her sagging shoulders. But then, she slowly nodded and said, “I’m glad he didn’t. He was nice. And I can totally see why Gracie liked him.” She smiled and turned to me, as she continued, “She had such a thing for green eyes. I remember when she first met Matt, it bothered her so much that he didn’t have green eyes, and I thought she was just being ridiculously picky. Like, her standards were way too high.”

  I shrugged, running my fingers along the beaten edge of the old desk. “Sometimes, our intuition comes through in odd ways,” I said. “It disguises itself as somethin’ trivial, like the color of a man’s eyes or the annoyin’ way a lass sips her drink, when really, that’s our gut tellin’ us to run far, far away.”

  “You didn’t like the way your ex-wife sipped her drink?”

  I smirked at her and shook my head. “God, no. She had to do it loudly, like she was puttin’ on a performance everyone was supposed to see, and then, she’d always smack her lips afterwards.” I acted it all out, smacking my lips loudly, then chuckled, scrubbing my palms against my face. “Most infuriatin’ thing.”

  Then, I clapped my hand against the desk, quickly changing the subject. “So, we need to head back to The Lazy Crow and make sure that James is tellin’ the truth. We’ll see if they have security cameras—”

  “You don’t think Roland would try to cover for his brother and delete the tapes?”

  I shook my head. “I doubt it. And in the event they don’t have video surveillance, hopefully The Whisperin’ Crow does.”

  With that said, I narrowed my eyes, staring ahead at a picture of the restaurant owner’s dog. My hand went to my chin, rubbing and tugging, and Rosie asked, “What is it?”

  “I'm just thinkin,” I leaned closer, folding my arms against the desk. “How strange is it that nearly every location involved in this investigation has the word crow in the name?”

  She considered it for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, it is kinda weird, but it's gotta just be coincidental. Nobody could've planned on,” she gestured with a hand toward nothing in particular, “what, creating a circle of crows?”

  My eyes dodged quickly toward her, as my lips parted in a silent gasp. “It's fuckin' crazy that ye said that,” I told her, my heart pounding loudly within my chest. “That's how I found her. I just,” I thrust a hand into the air, “looked to the sky, and there they were. The circlin' crows, pointin' me in her direction.”

  Rosie's entire body jolted and her arms wrapped tightly around her middle. Then, she giggled nervously. “God, that gives me the chills.”

  I glanced at my arms to see my goose-pimpled flesh and every hair standing on end, and I nodded. “Me as well,” I replied, and then, I stood up, grabbed my wrinkled coat, and threw it on. I headed for the door, with Rosie on my heels, and we collected TJ, still waiting in the dining room. I left Shavon's with my peculiar crew, and together, we reentered the circle and headed back to The Lazy Crow.

  And round and round, we go …

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  ROSIE

  The drive back to the pub was a quiet one.

  Alec was clearly deep in thought, with his palm cupping his chin, his fingers moving softly against his jaw. TJ kept his headphones plugged into his ears, staring out the window in silent contemplation. I could only imagine the things that swirled around both of their heads: Alec, with all of his clues and the dead end we'd encountered once again, and TJ …

  I had no idea what TJ thought about, and I was too scared to ask. Girls and sex were the usual suspects, I assumed, and I wanted no part in it. His father could tackle those subjects. But right now, with the mental shitstorm we were facing, and with this unwanted adventure we were on, I dreaded the thought of what he was going through. I knew we should talk about it. I knew I'd have to eventually. And maybe it made me a horrible mother to want to avoid the topic, but I just couldn't cope with it right now. I couldn't mentally handle it, when I could barely handle this myself.

  So, instead, I spent the drive to the pub thinking about James.

  When I'd first met him, when I thought he was my sister's killer, I had set aside his appealing physical appearance and immediately despised him. I saw in him the soul of a murderer, black and deadly, and it was an all-encompassing effort to not kill him myself.

  But now, knowing the truth and his affection for Gracie, I only thought about him with sadness and gratitude. He hadn't killed her, there was no doubt of that in my mind, and I was glad that he had given her a few hours of happiness before there was nothing left for her to feel. And then, I felt a new bout of grief, for a love that would never be, and I hated that. I hated everything about it, for both of them. And for all of us.

  ***

  When we returned to The Lazy Crow, Roland was more than happy to show us the surveillance videos, and there, we watched the budding romance between my sister and James.

  They wore smiles I envied, laughing with their whole bodies and staring at each other with the unexplained knowledge that they had stumbled upon another piece of their souls. I sniffled, as I watched the footage, holding a hand beneath my nose and wishing so much that I could have witnessed their relationship come to fruition. I wished so badly that everything could have been different, and that one day I would attend their wedding and see the birth of their children. But instead, I had to watch the phantom of something that could never be, and it pressed against my heart with a soul-crushing weight. After just a few minutes, it became too much.

  “I'll be right back,” I whispered around the lump in my throat, leaving the office, to go sit at the bar.

  Roland glanced at me from behind the glossy strip of rich mahogany, and asked, “Can I, ah, can I get ye somethin', lass?”

  I shook my head, lifting a hand in a dismissive gesture. “No, I'm okay. I just needed to,” I
pulled in a deep breath, “get out of there and get some air, I guess.”

  “Aye,” he said, nodding. “And I'm … I'm sorry … about what happened to yer sister.”

  I struggled to smile. “Yeah, me, too.”

  “James said she was here on holiday,” he went on solemnly. “We see a lot of tourists comin' through this area. Folks wanna see the Highlands but also want the wee village experience.”

  “That's what Gracie had said about Fort Crow,” I replied. “She didn't want to stay in Inverness or Fort William, because it was too, I don't know, typical or something.”

  He chuckled. “Fort Crow is a hipster town, for sure.”

  Then, his laughter subsided, as he asked, “My point is, lass, isn’t it possible that the person ye're lookin' for could be someone not even from here?”

  I narrowed my eyes and nodded. “Sure. Anything is possible at this point.”

  “Aye,” he said, as he came to stand nearer to me. His voice dropped to a low, gruff whisper, as he continued, “But, anyway, this sorta thing happens, y'ken? Tourists die sometimes, under terrible circumstances. It's to be expected, am I right?”

  Looking up, I found his eyes intently on me. There was something he wasn't saying. Something he was trying to tell me and me alone. I cocked my head, holding his gaze, and asked, “Is Gracie not the first?”

  “Yer inspector friend can help ye with that,” he replied, as hushed as before. “But go ahead and read about Madison Lang.”

  “Madison Lang? Who is that?”

  The front door opened, as a couple entered the pub. Their boisterous laughter and conversation flooded the small establishment, and before Roland could tend to them, he leaned closer and said, “Read about her, and I suspect that, whoever took her life, also took the life of yer sister.”

  ***

  “’Madison Lang,’” I read aloud in the car, as we drove back to The Whispering Crow, “’a resident of Williamsburg, Virginia, never returned from her Scotland vacation. The twenty-seven-year-old woman was staying in the small town of Fort Crow, in the Scottish Highlands, when her family says they stopped hearing from her. Days after her disappearance, constables from the Fort Crow Police Station discovered her body in Coille Feannag, a popular location for tourists to take pictures and go hiking. The autopsy confirmed that she had accidentally fallen to her death.’”

  Laying my phone in my lap, I turned to Alec and uttered a whispered, “Holy shit.”

  “Couldn't it really be an accident, though?” TJ asked, his voice wound tight.

  Alec's hand worked tirelessly at his chin as he slowly nodded. “Could be. But it's unlikely.”

  I narrowed my eyes, working through the recently discovered pieces of the puzzle. “So, whoever performs the autopsies for your department is, what? Getting paid off? Getting falsified information? Or …” I turned to him, with worry creasing my forehead, as I added, “Or they did it.”

  “Aye, seems that way,” he muttered, nodding. “The problem is, I wanna involve my colleagues as little as possible. I dinnae want them to suspect I'm investigatin' this on my own. I'll need to see if there's still a file for Madison Lang and see who performed her autopsy.”

  “You haven't heard about her?”

  He shrugged, shaking his head. “I only transferred here a few months ago,” he answered. “And if it was an accidental death without a thorough investigation, it's unlikely I wouldae heard about it all the way in Edinburgh.”

  I nodded, uncomfortable in a bundle of nerves and tension. “When do you go back to work?”

  “Tomorrow,” he said, and when I turned to him, wide-eyed and scared, he told me, “I don’t have a choice. Like I said, I cannae let them suspect a thing, and I never take an unscheduled day from work. Ever. If I did, someone would be concerned. Finley or Frasier, most likely. They'd call, or worse, check on me, and I cannae have that. Not when I dunno who is involved.”

  “You trust no one?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “No one.”

  “Sounds like you need to be transferred again,” I muttered, not intending to make a joke, but he laughed.

  “Y'know, lass,” he said, raking a hand through his hair, “I'm startin' to think the verra same thing.”

  ***

  “Hello again, Inspector,” Isla, the young woman at the desk, greeted, as we walked into The Whispering Crow.

  “Good afternoon,” Alec said, nodding. “Mind if I ask ye a question?”

  She looked between the three of us, and replied, “No, of course not.”

  Alec leaned against the high desk and asked, “Do ye have any surveillance cameras on the premises?”

  The woman leaned forward, planting her elbows on the desk's cluttered surface. She looked up at him with a pair of fluttery, doe eyes, clearly with the intention of flirting with him, and I turned away, to keep the unwarranted jealousy from getting the better of me.

  “Aye, we do,” she answered.

  “And do ye have any video footage from the 16th of October?”

  I looked back to her then, and saw her shake her head. “No, I'm afraid we delete all of our footage every three days.”

  Alec nodded and crossed his arms, as his hand went to his chin. “What about yer customer logs? Do ye have records?”

  I was relieved to watch her face light up as she nodded. “Aye. We keep everythin'.”

  “Can I see them?”

  Then, her face fell as quickly as it had lifted, as she replied, “The only person with access to the guest books is the owner of the inn, and she's not here right now.”

  Alec closed his eyes and pulled in a deep breath, like he was struggling to hold onto his patience, and he drawled, “All right, can ye tell me when she'll be in?”

  The woman lifted her cellphone from the desk and tapped through the screen, until she nodded and with triumph said, “She will be here on Friday, if ye wanted to come by then. But she'll only be in the building from eight to ten at night, mind ye.”

  Alec hummed contemplatively and shook his head. “Is there a way we could call her in sooner?”

  Isla shrugged helplessly, an apologetic look in her eyes. “I could try, but I’m afraid she’s out of town this week.”

  “Is there any way I could speak to her, then?”

  She nodded and promptly wrote the owner’s cell number down onto a piece of paper, then handed it to Alec. He accepted with a grateful nod and thanked her.

  “I’ll give her a ring then,” he said. “Otherwise, I suppose I'll be back sometime between eight and ten on Friday.” He stood up straight and unsuccessfully smoothed out the lapels of his jacket. “Thank ye again for yer time, miss. Ye’ve been a great help.”

  He pressed his hand to my back and steered me toward the door, as TJ walked by my side, his eyes trained on his phone. All these moments, as we left each establishment, had begun to meld into one. It felt like we'd just done this, and still had nothing to show for it. That painful fact weighed heavily against my shoulders, as we piled into the car and turned in the direction of the house. All I could do was put my trust in this man and have faith in his ability to lead us to the other side. And I tried not to fear what that might entail.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  ALEC

  In the glow of my computer screen, I sat with two internet browser windows open. On one, a picture of Grace Allan, and on the another, a picture of Madison Lang.

  I'm not sure exactly what I'd hoped to see. A resemblance of some sort, I suppose. The same hair color, stature, eye color—anything to link these two women together, other than the circumstances behind their mutual demise. But there was nothing remotely similar about them, and yet, as I stared at their pretty, bright, smiling faces, it felt far more than coincidental.

  A knock came at my bedroom door, and I beckoned whoever it was to come in. The door opened, and there was Rick, wearing his uniform of vest and pristine slacks. There was a stack of papers held beneath his arm, and before he could close the door, I ju
mped from my chair to take them from him.

  “Rosie was right,” he said quietly, pointing at the close-up photograph of Grace's pale leg and the dark purple mark. “That has to be a buckle.”

  I nodded at the unmistakable imprint. “Aye. But what do ye reckon this is right here?”

  “Well, I had a thought about that,” he said, taking a seat at the edge of my bed with a picture identical to the one I held. “Before I came home, I looked into the backseat and started wonderin'.” He held up the picture and ran his finger along the broken, jagged strip running the width of her thigh. “What if this is the seam between the seats?”

  Crossing my arms and shaking my head, I asked, “Why would it look like that, though?”

  “I know it seems farfetched, but what if there's a tear in the seat? A tear would leave a mark that looks like,” he pointed at the picture, “a tear … wouldn’t it?”

  “Hm,” I grunted, peering at the picture once again. It was difficult to do, trying to visualize what he was seeing, but when I considered the point he was making, I couldn't find any reason to believe he was wrong. “Y'know, I think ye could be right.”

  “It's not much evidence,” he said, sighing. “I dinnae ken how ye'd even find the bastard on this alone. Ye cannae search every backseat in Fort Crow—”