Point of Disappearance, page 19
Tate held Birdie’s thin hands in his. “You don’t have to apologize, Birdie. I understood because I blamed myself.”
“I know you did, and I had no right to add to your guilt. You were a child. I was just so angry, I had to direct it somewhere. I’m ashamed it landed on you.”
“You lost your son. You don’t owe anyone any apologies.”
“And you lost your best friend and your innocence.” She patted his arm and nodded toward a dark-haired woman with a baby in her arms walking toward them. “Did you see Celine before the funeral?”
“No.” He held out his hand to Jeremy’s sister. “I think I would’ve recognized you anywhere.”
She kissed his cheek. “I don’t doubt it, the way you and Jeremy used to bug me and Astrid all the time. Mom’s coming to live with us in Idaho. She doesn’t need to wait anymore, and I need her expertise with this one.”
“That’s a great idea.” Tate tickled the baby under the chin, and she gurgled.
“He’s a natural with kids.” Blanca came up behind him and put a casual hand on his shoulder.
Birdie touched Blanca’s face. “Celine, this is Agent Blanca Lopez with the FBI. She’s the one who helped Tate bring our Jeremy home to us.”
Celine shifted her baby to the other hip. “Nice to meet you in person, Agent Lopez. I read all about you and how you were able to connect all the cases of the missing boys.”
“Tate’s the one who found Noah Fielding, rescued me from Summers and made him tell us where he’d buried Jeremy. If he ever gets tired of forest fires, he might have another career opportunity.”
Squeezing Tate’s arm, Celine said, “And Jeremy’s up there smiling down at you, Tate.”
Blanca took Tate’s hand, and they wandered away from the rest of the mourners, who included Gabe’s family, Andrew Finnigan’s mother and the Fielding family, who’d returned to the island for Jeremy’s funeral.
They sat together on a bench under several towering Douglas firs. The sun shifted through the branches, creating a dappled pattern across their laps.
Tate traced one of these patterns on Blanca’s thigh with his fingertip. “I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that Dr. Summers fed on his own grief to destroy so many other lives.”
“Look at Birdie. Grief makes people react irrationally—oh, and Dr. Summers happens to be a psychopath. The point is, you brought peace to a lot of people...and indescribable happiness to the Fieldings. Noah worships you.” She rubbed his back and kissed his jaw. “You also brought peace to yourself and that twelve-year-boy you used to be.”
“I may have done the heavy lifting, but you’re the one who thought out of the box and linked all those cases together. None of the other law enforcement officials who looked at these abductions brought the same insight that you did. You’re a rock star, Blanca Lopez. Does the agency know that now?”
“I think they’re catching on to my brilliance. They have an assignment for me in DC, some analyst work.” She tucked her arm in his. “That means I have to go home, but there’s always face-to-face on our laptops. We can get kinda kinky online.”
“Yeah, about that.” He pressed his lips to the side of her head. “I put in for an assignment that’s going to take me to DC. Do you think you can show me around when I’m there?”
She squealed and grabbed his face with both of her hands. “No way. Are you serious? I mean, I know we talked about taking this relationship further, but I thought that was just you sweet-talking your way into my bed.”
He eased out a breath, not wanting to show her how relieved he was at her response. “Ha! I told you I didn’t do one-night stands, not with you.”
She put her luscious mouth on his. “That’s not what I heard around here. Small towns, ya know?”
“Ah, that was before. Before you helped that skinny twelve-year-old boy find peace and redemption.”
She kissed him again, and he didn’t feel guilty at all about his happiness. In fact, he had a feeling that Jeremy was giving him a wink.
* * *
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Under the Cover of Darkness
by K.D. Richards
Chapter One
Detective Yara Thomas hadn’t had time to grab a cup of coffee or boot up her computer before her lieutenant bellowed for her from his office.
So it was going to be that kind of day.
She stood in front of his desk as Lieutenant Ted Wilson gave her a brief rundown of the new case he was assigning to her. His exact words were, “Dead body in a car on old Route 30. Go.”
She went.
Forty minutes later, she slowed around a curve and parked her standard-issue unmarked police sedan at an angle next to a police cruiser with its red and blue lights still flashing. Together her car and the cruiser created a barrier completely blocking the southbound lane of the road. A tow truck from one of the area towing companies that the department contracted had blocked the northbound lane. Not that anyone was traveling this stretch of the highway at night. The faster, better-paved and more centrally located interstate had long since enticed most of the traffic that might have made the trek down this dark, forlorn road.
A frigid wind blew as Yara stepped from the unmarked police sedan. She wore what she thought of as her work uniform—black slacks, a button-down shirt, blue with thin white stripes today, but the color and pattern varied from day to day, and black low-heeled boots. As usual her long, dark brown hair was pulled back in a tight, tidy bun. As a concession to the early November weather, she’d added a black pea coat to her usual ensemble along with a black knit cap, which she pulled down over the tops of her ears as she strode toward her sometimes partner, Martin Rachlin, who stood talking to a uniformed officer and another man. As she did, she made note of the scene.
A second uniformed officer stood guard next to a red Mercedes sitting on the side of the road, the driver’s side door open. The plate read “Flyin’” and Yara couldn’t help but wonder how many times the driver had been pulled over for speeding.
No flares around the car. The hood was closed. None of the three tires she could see were flat. No indication that the driver had stopped because the car had become disabled in some way.
If the car didn’t break down, why had the driver chosen to pull over on this desolate road?
“What do we have?” she asked, stopping next to Martin.
Martin was a couple of inches shorter than her five-ten and outwardly self-conscious about his stature. He compensated for it by donning a tough-guy attitude that often grated on her nerves, although she did her best to be a team player and not show it.
Martin gestured toward the older man, who looked more than a little shell-shocked. Yara put him in his early sixties. Medium height, thinning brown hair, bushy eyebrows. “This is Nelson Freeman. He stopped when he saw the car to see if the driver needed help.”
“I saw the blood and I freaked out. I called 911,” Mr. Freeman said.
She gave the man what she hoped was a calming smile. “That’s exactly the right thing.”
He wrung his hands. “Maybe I should have tried CPR. Maybe she could have been saved if I’d tried.”
She put a hand on the man’s shoulder. “You did exactly the right thing. Sir, do you live around here?”
He nodded. “Yes, ah, my wife and I. I was on my way home from work this morning when I saw the car. I work security at an office building on the Upper West Side. The night shift. I prefer taking this side road because it’s quiet. Only a few cars ever use it.”
She glanced at Martin. “Do we have Mr. Freeman’s statement and contact information?”
Martin nodded.
She motioned for the uniform standing near the Mercedes. She read his nameplate when he joined the group. Kilingham. “Officer Kilingham, can you make sure Mr. Freeman gets back to his car? Sir, you can go home now. If we need anything more from you, we’ll be in contact.”
The officer led Mr. Freeman away.
She turned back to Martin and the uniform he’d been talking to when she walked up.
Martin was older than her by two years but she’d joined the force right out of college and doggedly worked her way up to detective in only five years. Two years better than the average, but still a year longer than it had taken her older brother, Henry, who was now a sergeant with the San Francisco Police Department and, according to her other brother, Eddie, soon to be a lieutenant. Always the little sister chasing her smarter, braver, stronger big brother and not quite catching up.
Personal problems were for another day, so she forced her focus back to the present.
“Officer Connell.” Martin jerked his head at the officer. “First on scene.”
Connell had the buzz cut that so many of the young uniforms seemed to favor. As was her habit, she noted his stats—average height, dark hair and eyes, stocky, but not fat. May have been a wrestler in school. “Ma’am, my partner and I were first on scene. We arrived at 21:12 hours.” Connell threw his shoulders back and met Yara’s gaze directly.
She appreciated the show of respect. Too many of the guys on the force still held misogynistic views about female superiors even in the twenty-first century. It looked like Connell wasn’t one of them.
“The car looked to be disabled,” Connell continued.
“Was the driver’s side door open like it is now? Yara looked up from the notepad she’d taken from her pocket when Connell had begun talking.
He shook his head. “No, ma’am. I opened the door to ascertain the possibility of giving first aid. It was too late.”
She made a note. “Okay, go on. The car appeared to be disabled when you got here...”
“Yes. I called in the tags and they were clear. I couldn’t see it when I first pulled up, but as I approached the vehicle on the driver’s side with my flashlight out, blood was visible on the window. I called for the driver and anyone inside the car to show their hands. When there was no movement from inside, I approached.” He paused, swallowing hard.
Yara surmised it was his first time seeing a dead body. He looked young, but then all the uniforms were looking younger and younger these days. “It’s okay, Officer Connell. Take your time.”
Connell swallowed again before continuing. “I could see there was only one person in the car and that...she was covered in blood. It didn’t look like she was breathing. I tried the door and it opened. She was slumped over the steering wheel. I could tell she was gone but I felt for a pulse. When I didn’t find one, I called for EMTs and major crimes.”
Yara nodded. “Good work.” She jerked her chin in the direction of the tow truck. “Could you let the driver know we will be here a while yet.”
Connell marched off to take care of the task.
Yara turned to Martin. “Have you taken a look yet?”
“Just a quick one. CSI has gotten all the photos and the medical examiner’s people are ready to move the body so we should be good to do a more thorough look-through. I figured you’d want to haul the whole car back to forensics and have them do their thing there.”
“Sounds good.”
She stuffed her notebook back into her coat pocket and followed Martin to the luxury sports car.
An air freshener shaped like a tree hung from the rearview mirror. It must have been pretty new because the smell of pine hung heavy in the interior of the car even with the open door.
A white woman, mid to late twenties, with blond hair now matted with crimson blood rested against the steering wheel. One arm hung on either side of her body, pink manicured nails sparkling. She wore a long, gray bubble coat and pink strappy heels. Her long pale legs were bare, but the hem of a pink skirt peeked through the opening where the two sides of her coat gaped open at her knees. Her head was turned toward the driver’s side window, which made it easy to see the bullet wound in her right temple.
Yara’s eyes traveled over the interior of the car. A gun lay on the console between the two seats next to the gearshift.
Suicide?
Possible. She didn’t see a note but that wasn’t unusual at all. Despite what people were used to seeing on television, most people who committed suicide did not leave a note explaining why they’d decided to take such an extreme, and final, step.
A purse lay on the floor on the passenger footwell. Yara stepped around to that side of the car and opened the door with a gloved hand. “Her purse is still here so that reduces the chances this is a robbery gone bad.”
A look of confusion traveled across Martin’s face. “Robbery? I’m surprised you’re even considering it. This looks like a clear-cut case of suicide to me. Dark road. Gun in the car.”
Yara grabbed the purse from the car and glanced at Martin over the roof of the car. Yes, she’d worked her tail off to make detective in record time, but one of the reasons that Martin had struggled with the same task, only earning his shield a little more than a year ago, was that he had developed the habit of jumping to conclusions.
“I’m considering everything until the evidence tells us otherwise.”
Martin frowned but didn’t say anything more. He was one of the men in the department who couldn’t quite hide their displeasure with working with a more senior woman. Too bad. If she had her way, she’d always work alone, but the powers that be had determined that pairing detectives up was a good idea, at least in certain cases. Assigning two detectives to every case just wasn’t feasible. She could only hope that Martin would catch his own case and leave her to work this one, whether it turned out to be a suicide or something more insidious, alone.
She pawed through the medium-sized Louis Vuitton bag that ran in the thousands of dollars. The car, the purse. Whoever this woman was, she had money.
Yara found the woman’s wallet, also a Louis Vuitton and also costing a good chunk of change, and pulled out the driver’s license.
“Name on the driver’s license is Tanya Rutger.” She bent down, looking across the vehicle’s interior to compare the face in the driver’s license photo with the one she saw on the other side of the car. “Looks like her.”
She handed the license off to Martin and stepped back so he could do his own comparison. “She’s twenty-nine. Lives in Manhattan.” As she spoke, she went through the other items in the purse. “Has got lots of credit cards. Let’s see. I’ve got an employee identification for the Stryder Medical Clinic. Same name as the license. Says she’s a nurse there.”
Martin straightened and handed Tanya’s driver’s license back to her. “My mother was a nurse. They must be making a lot more money than they made back in the day if Tanya can afford this car and a place in Manhattan.”
“Don’t forget the purse.” Yara held it out in front of her. “It retails for a couple grand and the wallet is another grand.”
Martin cocked an eyebrow.
“According to People magazine. I myself am a lowly public servant who can only dream of such luxuries. Hence the People magazine subscription and no Louis Vuitton.”
Martin chuckled.
Yara frowned. “What do you think about Nelson Freeman? Is he involved in this?”
The man had seemed like a Good Samaritan just trying to do the neighborly thing and help a stranded motorist, but it wouldn’t be the first time a killer had hung around the crime scene. For some it was part of the thrill.
Martin shook his head. “No. He seems credible. He was definitely shaken. Didn’t detect any alcohol on his breath and he didn’t have a record when I ran him. I think it happened just like he said it did.”
She agreed with Martin’s assessment. She’d take a look at Nelson Freeman but she didn’t expect him to be anything more than a guy who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
She crouched down, giving the interior of the car another once-over. The forensic guys would have a look for fingerprints on the gun and gunpowder residue on Tanya’s hands but the blood-spatter patterns were consistent with someone sitting in the driver’s seat and shooting themselves in the right temple. As best she could tell, there was no blood on the outside of the car, which would be consistent with a suicide.
What was so bad that you thought this was the best choice, Tanya?
That was the question. Assuming this was, as it looked, a suicide.
Something tickled at the back of Yara’s mind. She opened the purse again. Wallet. Keys, probably for her apartment and maybe work. Lipstick. Half a dozen receipts. Earbuds. And a business card for Brandon West, Attorney at Law.
Her breath hitched. Why did her victim have Brandon’s business card? He was one of the best attorneys in town, which meant he was likely one of the most expensive. He also did mostly corporate work. So what would the victim, a nurse, need with a corporate lawyer?
Then again, the connection didn’t have to be professional. It could be personal. Maybe Tanya and Brandon were seeing each other.
The thought wrapped around her chest and squeezed the air from her lungs.
She sucked in a deep breath and pushed thoughts of Brandon away.
