"Roger. What about this?" Seth held up a photo of a woman with sleek blond hair and a carefully made up face. "It was beneath a Guillermo's Pizza magnet on the fridge."
"Front and center?"
He shook his head. "Shoved around the side, near the wall."
Blond hair, seriously dark brows. The contrast suggested a dye job. "Probably his ex. The landlady claims they had a falling out nine days ago. Hold it steady?" Kate snapped another photo, this time of the woman's picture. "Bag that too. And ask the landlady if it's the ex. If so, a name would help. If she doesn't know, her husband probably does."
She'd bet that tidy stash of Benjamins on it.
"Also, contact the station and see if Carole's making headway with the data dumps. The phone beside the bed doesn't have caller ID, so we'll definitely need his carrier to provide a list of who he's been chatting with lately. I didn't come across a cellphone, either. Let's cross our fingers Kusić had one on him when he was taken and the bastard didn't realize it." Though, as meticulous as this guy was, she doubted it.
Their best bet was probably that laptop she'd spotted—but only if the killer had been in email contact with Kusić.
Again, with this guy? Not likely.
"What about the cat?"
The minx had rejoined them and resumed its purring love affair with Seth's legs. Kate tossed the man a grin for his coming troubles as she headed for the door.
"Looks like she's decided for you. Unless a relative steps up, she's yours. Call me if you find anything else. Bye."
Kate's smile lingered as she reached the front door to the trailer. She paused on the landing to remove her gloves and protective booties, shoving them in her pocket as she headed into Kusić's rutted drive. She made the mistake of glancing at the bumper stickers on his truck as she climbed into her Durango.
Her smiled faded.
She refused to allow her newfound confidence to follow. She'd made it through that trailer without imploding. She'd make it through the coming days of the investigation. It was like picking a path through a minefield: one careful step at a time.
Fortunately, the next was easy.
Kate accessed the internet browser on her phone and typed in Bill Manning, MD. She clicked on the leading link and scanned the man's bio. Midway through the second sentence, her confidence shattered. The doubts set in. Claustrophobia followed.
Bill Manning did practice in Little Rock. In fact, he was the head of his department—at the Fort Leaves veterans' hospital.
An Army shrink.
Like it or not, one all-too-quick phone call later, she had an appointment.
It was worse than Kate feared. Fort Leaves was crawling with vets. And she was still in the parking lot.
The only blessing she'd been able to come up with during the thirty-minute drive was that Little Rock had two VA facilities. Grant worked at the one across town. The chances of her running into him and having to force a friendly chat outside a shrink's office of all places were close to nil. Thank God.
So pull the pin. Lob the grenade.
Sure, she might blow off her own head. But then it would be over, wouldn't it? She could low crawl back to the warm, tidy foxhole she'd dug for herself in Braxton, issuing tickets and making the occasional meth or drunk-driving bust.
Just like her dad.
That got her to kill the Durango's engine. It even had her abandoning the SUV altogether. Dread settled in, cold and low, as her boots ate up the walkway, growing heavier with each step. All too soon, she'd reached the hospital's courtyard. She forced herself to breach the doors. US Army crowded the seats of the inner lobby. Based on the tattoos she noted, a handful of sailors, airmen and Marines had joined the soldiers currently marking time in medical purgatory, the entire lot deemed too old and/or too damned damaged to continue serving their country.
Like her.
Kate headed for the bank of elevators, grateful when the closest opened immediately. She waited for a lab-coated physician to exit, then entered the blessedly empty lift.
"Hold the door, please!"
Great. She should've taken the stairs.
"Thanks, ma'am."
"No problem." Kate turned to support the wall as a shaggy, thirty-something vet maneuvered his wheelchair inside. Based on the De Oppresso Liber script peeking from beneath the sleeve of his tee, he'd been Special Forces. Cop or not, she should've ceased cataloguing his features then. But she didn't. The band on her chest tightened as she noted the jagged scar on the left side of his face. It was almost as long and livid as hers, though without the charmingly abundant collection of pocks and smaller scars that complemented the remainder of her face and neck.
Like the majority of the civilians she'd met, she dropped her gaze. Another mistake. The vet's legs were missing.
Her wrist began to itch.
She clamped her fingers around the dive watch and started the twist. It didn't help. By the time the lift reached her floor, respect and common courtesy were openly battling desperation.
The second the doors opened, the former lost.
Kate skirted the vet's wheelchair with a muffled, "Excuse me," and rudely exited first, double-timing down the hall. She kept going, twisting, until she'd located the shrink's office and was forced to let go of the watch to open the door.
She entered the outer office, deliberately ignoring the bowed heads and sightless stares of the half-dozen patients scattered about the rust-colored chairs and skeletal couches of the waiting room. It was the only way she could keep her frayed nerves knitted together as she made a beeline for the glassed-in reception counter.
An older woman slid the window open and beamed out at her. "Good afternoon. How may I help you?"
Kate retrieved her credentials. "Deputy Holland, Braxton PD. I'm here to speak with Dr. Bill Manning."
The woman's smile melted into disappointment. "You must be the officer who phoned. I'm sorry, but Dr. Manning was called out on a patient emergency ten minutes ago. I have no idea when he'll return. Will another doctor do?"
"Unfortunately, no." Kate retrieved a business card and passed it through the window. "Please tell the doctor I need to speak to him as soon as possible. It's important."
"Of course. If it helps, Dr. Manning spends Saturday mornings catching up on paperwork. He should be in by eight." The receptionist held up Kate's card. "But I will see that he gets your message today."
"Thank you."
Kate kept her stare well above the tops of the patients' heads as she turned to depart—and stumbled to a stop.
Surely that wasn't—
But it was.
Kate stared at the collection of vivid, cobalt-blue Afghan pottery perched along the wall shelf, transfixed. For several moments, the air refused to enter her lungs—and then, suddenly, it was ripping in and then back out with terrifying speed. Bile churned through her belly as sweat popped out along her pores. Within seconds, her T-shirt was damp and clammy.
Please, God. Not now.
Where was Ruger when she needed him? Because she did need him. Desperately.
Dreading the coming meltdown, she forced one foot in front of the other until she'd flat-out bolted from the room. Air still searing through her lungs, she slammed into something hard—and harder.
It took a moment for the metal edges of the wheelchair biting into her thighs to register with her brain, along with the raw ends of the missing legs of the man inside it.
Shock reset her lungs. Her scattered thoughts took longer, but soon they too coalesced, only to be supplanted by a fresh wave of humiliation.
The elevator. Her seriously rude exit.
"I am so sorry."
The vet actually laughed. "Not a problem. Been a while since I've served as speed bump to someone so pretty."
Pretty? Had he seen her face?
But, yes, he had noticed her scars. Because he was staring straight at them. Not as Kusić's landlady had stared. Nor even how Kate had glanced at his in that elevator. In fact, he
didn't appear horrified or mesmerized, or even mildly curious.
The man simply...looked.
For some inexplicable reason, that simple stare from those dark, fathomless eyes diffused the bomb ticking within.
Kate drew in a fortifying breath and met the vet's smile with her own. "Thank you for the compliment. It's a lie, but not one I can make an arrest over."
The man opened his mouth as if to argue, then shook his head and chuckled instead. "Don't know about you, soldier, but I've been incarcerated in this building too damned long. I could use some joe before I break loose. You?"
She blinked.
His brow lifted. "Coffee. You remember? Liquid. Black. Able to dissolve the tires of a Humvee in two seconds flat? The stuff that kept you vertical and moving mostly forward at oh-dark-thirty when you were so tired you'd have crawled in the sack with a viper if it meant five more minutes of shut-eye?"
She remembered. She'd just forgotten...this. The easy camaraderie that sprang up between soldiers within moments of meeting. That was all this was. The man wasn't coming on to her. He was simply a grunt who wanted to shoot the shit for a bit with someone who'd been where he'd been, seen what he'd seen, and survived anyway. It was pleasantly familiar, and oddly compelling. Like him.
Despite that scar and the inescapable need for that chair.
"Oh, my God! Kate? Katie Marie Holland? Is it really you?"
And it was over.
Kate turned toward the bullet of fizzing energy headed her way. Elizabeth Vogel. Other than Grant's brother Dan, the sole true friend Kate had possessed in high school. And with Dan dead, Liz was due the only high-school reunion left possible.
The vet shrugged as Kate turned back. "Looks like you've got some reconnecting to do. Feel free to take a raincheck. I'm here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, about this time."
"Thanks. I will."
"I'll hold you to it, soldier." The man spun his chair around, flashing his grin at Liz as he took off down the hall. "Have a great weekend, Doc. And congrats, again!"
"Thanks, Steve."
Kate lost sight of the vet as slender arms were flung around her. Liz's familiar mass of strawberry curls tumbled in, smothering her.
"Oh, wow. I can't believe it's you. I was afraid I'd never see you again. How have you been?"
Kate gave her old friend a mutual squeeze and stepped back.
Breathed.
Lied. "Fantastic."
The precise moment that soft blue gaze settled on her scars, Kate felt it. But then it was gone. It moved on, brightening along with her friend's smile. Pretending. As if its owner wanted to believe that the mottled flesh polluting over a third of Kate's face, and the darker wounds that lay beneath, didn't exist.
Though they both knew painfully well that they did.
Kate appreciated the fantasy nonetheless. Nor was she eager to shatter it. Not here.
Still rattled by that pottery, she swerved into the path the wheelchaired vet had plowed, leaving room for Liz to accompany her, preferably right out of the hospital.
Despite this kinder, gentler blast from her past, she was done with this place.
Kate consciously brightened her own smile as they walked. "So, what about you, Lizzie-Lace? If I remember correctly, you hightailed it out of Braxton three days after I did, equally determined never to return."
The dimples Kate had been so jealous of at sixteen vanished, along with her friend's smile. "Things changed. My dad's been sick. Alzheimer's. Early onset."
"Oh, Liz, I'm so sorry." Kate knew Liz's granddad had been diagnosed in his early fifties. But her father too?
"Yeah. He was diagnosed my senior year of under grad. I transferred to UAMS and moved home to help my mom. She died two years later. Heart attack. It took me a bit longer to graduate, but I managed. In fact, I just finished my residency—and I've accepted a staff position. You're looking at Fort Leaves' newest psychiatrist."
That explained the vet's congratulations.
Kate added her own as she paused at the door to the stairs. There was no way she was getting trapped in another elevator with another vet. Not today.
"I'm truly sorry about your folks. They were always so great to me." Especially Liz's mom after the woman had discovered that Kate's mother had died shortly before she and her dad had moved to Braxton. "How's your pops doing?"
Liz shrugged as Kate opened the door. "He has good moments and bad. Right now we're wading through a patch of bad. But enough of that." Her friend's irrepressible smile returned, piercing the gloom as they entered the stairwell. "I want to hear about you. Tell me everything I've missed since you stopped taking my calls and answering my emails."
Kate winced. She should've seen that coming. After all, this was Liz. The woman was nothing if not forthright. Fortunately, she was also forgiving. "I apologize for that. I was wading through a dark patch myself back then."
Namely, her first tour in Iraq. Her first mass grave. It was something she still didn't talk about, lest the accompanying horror ooze in.
Maybe the holes in her brain were a blessing in disguise. Eventually, all the ugliness might just seep right out.
Liz shook her head as they reached the second landing. "Don't worry about it. I could've tried harder to pin you down. A mistake I plan on correcting right now. Do you have time for lunch? The cafeteria's special usually isn't, but the sandwiches are okay. They're on the other side of this door."
Kate wavered. With her sole lead dealing with a patient emergency, she should return to Kusić's trailer. If only to keep Seth company 'til the crime unit arrived. But she'd missed breakfast. And there was that prescription pad she'd found warming the sides of all those Benjamins. Liz might know Dr. Manning. With a few careful questions, she might be able to glean a feel for the man before they met—even know up front if the shrink had a history of "losing" his scripts, or if this batch had actually been stolen.
"I can manage a sandwich. I don't have long, though. I'm in the middle of something at work."
Liz glanced at her Braxton PD jacket as they entered the cafeteria. "I see that. I'm assuming you decided to get out of the Army after...what happened."
Kate's stride faltered. Why, she wasn't sure. Liz was bound to remark on her scars eventually, even if they'd both been actively trying to pretend they didn't exist.
Impossible now. Not with her right cheek all but throbbing and Liz's ivory ones turning scarlet.
Silence reigned as they entered the line to select their sandwiches. Kate added two apples and an extra bottle of juice, since she wasn't sure when or if she'd find the time for dinner. She'd yet to receive a call regarding the autopsy, but it was bound to happen soon, given its priority.
Kate reached the register first, and paid for both meals as Liz found a quiet table in the corner.
The moment they sat, Liz leaned in to give her hand a squeeze. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to put you on the spot, and so awkwardly. I guess it's different when it's a friend. It's just... What I'm trying to say is, I've been with the VA for a while. I did my residency here and, well, your...experience has sort of become an unofficial case study on crisis and memory among the psychiatric community."
In other words, the whispers Kate had worked so hard to ignore during her four mandatory weeks of mental waterboarding disguised as therapy had spread beyond Walter Reed and the Army. She and her missing marbles had become water cooler fodder for the shrinks across the VA system, too.
Lovely.
She could count on two fingers the number of times she'd opened up regarding what she did and didn't remember about that ambush and her subsequent escape from her captors eleven hours later. Old friends or not, she'd be damned if she'd be adding a third finger today. Especially in a public cafeteria.
Liz seemed to understand. Even better, she appeared determined to change the subject too.
Twin dimples heralded the return of that jaunty smile as the woman leaned forward, her giddy, I've got a secret whisper thickening the ai
r as it had back at Braxton High at their old lunch room table. "You'll never guess who else moved home."
Why not? It beat discussing herself. "Who?"
"Grant."
Kate was thankful they were sitting or she'd have stumbled again. "Grant Parish?"
The dimples deepened. "Yup. Or, as they say around here, God's gift to single doctors, nurses and patients alike. Not that he's noticed. I think he's seeing someone."
He was. Her. Until they had a chance to talk, anyway.
She might've volunteered the former, had she been able to get a word in edgewise. Liz was so anxious to smooth things over, she was babbling a mile a minute. Kate forced herself to swallow her shock long enough to pay attention.
"—deployed to Iraq, too. Though I guess you wouldn't have run into each other, since he was a surgeon. Or would you? Anyway, he got out right before Dan was killed in Afghanistan. Grant returned home to help their dad through the funeral, then went to work up in Fayetteville for a bit. He moved back down here a year and a half ago, but we only ran into each other recently."
The shock must've finally reached Kate's face anyway, because Liz blanched. "Oh, God—Dan." Her eyes welled up as she scraped the curls from her face. "You didn't know he was dead, did you?"
"Yeah, I knew."
She'd seen Dan's name on one of the countless Killed in Action lists that had reverberated through her email when she'd been CID. At the time, she'd been working her second mass grave. The victim-to-investigator ratio had been so obscene, she'd barely had a moment to squeeze in an overseas call to Grant's father, Abel, before returning to catalogue the corpses in that godforsaken pit. As a fellow soldier, she'd hoped Dan would've understood.
But the pain and the guilt lingered.
"Liz, I know about Grant, too. I was the one seeing him."
"Was?"
"Am." For another few hours, at least. A day, tops. Ah, Christ—Abel. She'd lose Grant's dad in the breakup, too. She hadn't thought of that. Hadn't wanted to. "It's...complicated."
"Oh, Katie. With you, it always was. That's why we love you so much." The high school camaraderie returned as Liz leaned closer to deliver another conspiratorial whisper. "Based on what little I gleaned from Grant, he's firmly hooked."
The Garbage Man Page 5