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Why? Why, of all the houses in the
county, did it have to be that house?
Had Ben believed in karma, he’d say this was her way of screwing him over after
all this time.
Lucky for him, all he believed in
was the existence of evil people. And numerical statistics. Statistically, it
was only a matter of time until evil found its way to 4253 Iris Lane.
But, statistics or no, it sucked big
ones that he’d been the detective to get the call.
He had a 2011 Charger – dark blue
and rear wheel drive for police practicality – and the radio knob had snapped
off two days before; he couldn’t adjust the volume or turn the thing off. Short
of unscrewing the antennae – which he was about ten minutes from pulling over
and doing – he was stuck shuffling through channels. “Sympathy for the Devil”
seemed too ironic for words, so he flipped to the pop station and settled for
some chart-topping British boy band shit that was slightly more tolerable than
rap or hipster elevator music garbage. He wanted to turn the damn thing off –
take a moment to collect his thoughts before he hit his partner’s drive and
launched the two of them full-tilt into this new case – but in a way, maybe the
noise was a good thing. Maybe collecting his thoughts was a piss-poor idea
because once dread took hold of him, he wasn’t sure he could be objective when
he arrived at the house on Iris Lane.
Instead – prepubescent boys singing
shrilly about love they could only pretend to understand in the background – he
went back to the statistics. They were comforting.
Unlike a few choice members of the
Homicide unit, Ben had never viewed his job as something finite. There was no
clock-in/clock-out; no deserved “me” time, as someone had put it in the break
room one day. There were murders, and there were solves, and the cases that
unfolded in between were liquid: he worked them, as hard as he could, to the
best of his ability, until he had grounds for an arrest, and if that involved
all-nighters and bad takeout pizza for three straight months, so be it. He was
a perfectionist. He was maybe a little OCD. And he didn’t believe in shutting
off his phone or taking two-week vacations just to “get away from it all.” His
phone was always on and he was always ready to drop whatever meager scraps of a
personal life he had left when a detective was needed on a scene. He’d heard
the other guys say – behind his back – that he was long overdue for a meltdown
or a burnout. He was a Marine – neither of those things was coming. And his
on-the-job attitude was something he was trying to pass along to his new
partner.
Not always with success.
Trey Kaiden rented a room in an old
farmhouse owned by two of his high school friends on the other side of the
mountain from their newest crime scene. Ben tried to forgive his frat boy
lifestyle – he was only twenty-seven and the economic downswing had left all of
them scrambling for lodging – but he had certain expectations. When he swung
into the crowded gravel drive – Hondas and Toyotas were clustered together
under a stand of trees and covered in bird droppings – and didn’t see his
partner ready and waiting for him, it sent an aggressive surge of irritation
through him. It didn’t help that he was already keyed up about Iris Lane.
He blew the horn twice. A moment later,
the front door slammed open and Trey jogged down the end of the porch,
struggling into a windbreaker, sneakers unlaced.
“Jesus,” Ben said to himself.
He wasn’t a bad kid: attractive in
an easy sort of way, friendly, non-confrontational. He looked like he’d been a
popped-collar prep at one point, and had decided to go for “cool” now that he
was on the force and didn’t want to be ribbed by the other guys. Women –
witnesses and suspects alike – responded well to him, and most men couldn’t
find anything too coppish about him that set off their alarm bells. Ben wasn’t
sure he’d ever make a great detective, but in Cobb County, he didn’t think that
was ever going to be an issue.
“I gave you a twenty minute heads
up,” he said by way of greeting as Trey fell into the passenger seat and pulled
the door shut. “And you didn’t have your shoes tied? You have to be ready
faster than that.”
“Yeah.” Trey pitched forward in the
seat to lace his Nikes as Ben threw the Charger in reverse. “Sorry about that.
I had a date.”
It wasn’t even nine and the date had
already progressed to the state of undress: had to give the guy credit for
that.
“What’s with this?” Trey gestured
toward the radio; he chuckled. “Research for the next time you try to pick up
an eighteen-year-old?”
Ben toed the gas and heard the thump
of the kid’s head hitting the glove box.
Trey didn’t respond – he was smart
enough to never be indignant – but sat back, changed the station back to
classic rock (the Stones were done and Free was on) and asked, “So what’s the
case?”
This was the part that had caught
Ben’s heart in his throat; for a handful of seconds, before the victim’s age
had registered in his mind and he’d realized she was too old to be Clara, he’d
felt something he never had before. A great sweeping riptide of emotion, spicy
and nauseating, had flooded his every nerve, leaving him dumbstruck and
breathless on his brother’s patio. What
if it’s her? he’d thought, and his lungs had seized and he’d choked on
cigar smoke. Then “eleven” had struck home and, just as quickly as it had come,
the tide went surging back out again, leaving him weak as a baby. In those few,
desperate seconds, his very worst fear had been confirmed: he had a weakness. A
strong one. Crippling, actually. He’d decided to put it out of his mind…at
least until they reached the crime scene.
“Eleven-year-old white female,” he
said, and heard Trey’s snatch of breath; no cop liked working child murders.
“Found on the neighbor’s property. First responders found what looks like vomit
around her mouth, but we won’t know anything till the medical examiner shows
up.”
“Shit,” Trey said, voice quavering.
“Get the nerves outta your system
now,” Ben told him. “Uniforms said the mother’s hysterical and the neighbors
are pretty shook up. There’s a pack of Marlboros and a Snickers in the glove
box if you need it.”
He stole a sideways glance as he
drove and saw Trey’s fast grimace of disgust in the dash lights; Ben smiled to
himself. So newbie didn’t like the thought of being too rattled to handle the
scene – another point in his favor.
“What’s the address?”
Ben told him.
“Iris…Isn’t that a farm? Don’t they
give riding lessons there or something?”
“How would you know?”
“My little sister’s been bugging my
mom about learning – she had a flier taped up on her wall. It’s called Castle
or something. Cadbury?”
“Canterbury,” Ben supplied, and felt
Trey’s eyes on him. He didn’t offer to explain.
By the time they’d navigated the
side streets off Burnt Hickory – at least four deer streaking in front of the
car in the headlights, diving into the national park grounds – Trey had managed
to tie both shoes and was watching out the window like an excited puppy. They
had to drive past the victim’s house on the way into the farm and Ben took
note: a brown ranch with a yard in need of a makeover, lights blazing in the
windows. And then the sign for Canterbury Farm reared up on his left, stacked
stone and stucco with a solar light that illuminated the glossy stylized
lettering. There was a gate – tubular steel painted black to emulate iron – and
it stood open, black board fence flanking a drive shaded by oaks that bore
scars from the Civil War. In the daylight, it was picturesque; at night, it
looked like the entrance to some medieval house of torture, and in a way, he
supposed that’s what it was. For him.
“Nice place,” Trey observed as they
swept up the slow curve toward the house. It stood – flat-roofed and glittering
with lit windows – on a hill landscaped to perfection, more solar lights giving
glimpses of manicure beds and trees, a swingset in the front yard for Clara. It
was midcentury – brick and dark wood siding, too many windows and two-story on
the back half, flanked by skinny cedars at the north and south ends.
Ben knew it well: the feel –
polished brick and wood and leather – the taste of the air and the smell of
things cooking undercut by furniture polish. He knew what the view from the
living room back toward the barn looked like, the gentle roll of pasture. He
knew which stairs creaked. He knew the dry warmth of the sunken family room
when a fire was roaring on the stone hearth and snow flurries were swirling
past the windows. Even if he hadn’t been there often, the place had stamped
itself across his senses, an image of what might have been, like an alternate
reality he got to step inside every few months.
Why?
he thought again. Of all the houses, why
did it have to be this one?
There was a small
crowd down by the barn, just within reach of the arena lights, the civilians
clustered tightly together, apart from the bright blue tarp that shielded the
corpse. Techs in dark uniforms were moving over the sand, throwing long,
distorted shadows, placing markers and taking pictures; their camera flashes
seemed almost alien from a distance. Ben had been at this so long that the
thought of a body sprawled and waiting for him didn’t touch his nerves; it was
the thought of who might be standing at the fence that tightened his gut and
flexed his fingers. In the detached, professional part of his brain, he took
stock of the white medical examiner’s and CSI’s vans and the white-and-blue
patrol car, the two uniforms walking up to meet them. But there was a
rebellious spot in his mind that was fixated wholly on the civilians – one in
particular. He hadn’t told Trey yet, and didn’t plan on it unless something
forced his hand.
“Detectives,” one of them called,
and Ben recognized him as Ortiz by voice alone, which meant the other was his
partner, Myers. “Doctor Harding,” he said of the county ME, “has already
examined the body. He’s waiting to give you an overview and the CSIs are doing
their thing.”
“Good.” Ben paused beneath the inky
shadow of an oak and fished his notebook from his back pocket, already flipped
to a fresh page. Ortiz and Myers drew to a halt in front of them and it was too
dark to make out their faces. “Who found the body?”
“Farm owner,” Myers said, and Ben
cursed inwardly. “Jade Donovan. She was leaving the house around eight – with
one of the other witnesses, Asher McMahon, on a date or some such – when they
saw the body and went down to see what it was. McMahon was the one who called
911.”
Ben blinked, then nodded, though
they couldn’t see him. “Who’s down there?”
“Donovan and McMahon,” Ortiz said.
“A second farm owner – Carver – and the vic’s mother, Alicia Latham.”
The mother: that was a pleasant
thought.
“She’s in bad shape?” Trey asked.
Myers snorted. “What do you think?”
“Try not to say anything that stupid
when we get down there,” Ben chastised. To the uniforms, he said, “Thanks,” and
started toward the barn. When they left the shadows, and there was enough
ambient light to see, he scribbled names in his pad: McMahon, Carver, Latham,
and then Jade – just Jade.
Dr. Harding met them at the gate.
“Detective Haley.” He was a man of few words: nothing but the essentials. Ben
liked him.
“Doc. Do you mind walking my partner
through it while I talk to the witnesses?”
Harding flicked a glance toward the
bystanders – a woman, obviously the mother, was weeping in great shuddering
sobs, murmuring, “My baby,” over and over; someone held her, and Ben figured he
knew who – and lifted one shoulder in what might have been a shrug. “Good luck
with that.” He flicked his fingers. “Come along, Kaiden. I’ve got vomit to show
you.”
“Thanks,” Trey muttered as he
climbed over the fence.
In truth, Ben would have rather licked the vomit than do what he was
about to. But it was important he not allow himself to be swayed by personal
discomfort; this case had to be worked like any other, despite whose arena in
which their body had been found. And, heartless though it seemed, he wanted to
question the mother while she was still raw; he wanted to get a sense of her
true reaction to the loss of her child before she had a chance to compose
herself and started thinking about what she should say rather than what she
couldn’t keep from saying. It was a cruel truth: in child murders, the parents
were always under suspicion. When it came to passionate crimes, no one was more
passionate than a parent.
His witnesses were at the rail, the
fence between them and the body, where the light was just strong enough to cast
long black shadows down their faces. The mother was obvious: pinned-up hair and
baggy sweats, shattered breathing, heaving sobs, thin fingers clenched round
the arm supporting her. She was the picture of every grieving mother he’d come
across; it was the girl – the woman – holding her that sent gooseflesh down his
spine.
She was twenty-eight now, but still
leggy, still crowned with a waterfall of dark coffee hair, pale face still
delicate and refined. Her lips were pressed in a tight, white line, and her
head was bowed, free hand between Alicia Latham’s shoulder blades in a touch
meant to be soothing. She glanced up at the sound of his approach, mouth
forming an O of surprise, eyes wide and bright and tear-filled. Shock crashed
through her – he could see it – before she smoothed her expression and her gaze
went skidding away from his, out toward the arena and the place where Harding and
Trey crouched. Her profile was something from a painting; the deep, rattled
breath she took sent a half-dozen memories cartwheeling through his head.
“Alicia,” Jade said, gently, “the
detectives are here.”
While the woman disengaged her wet
face from the front of Jade’s sweater, Ben took note of the other two. One he
didn’t recognize; McMahon, he supposed. But the other was Jeremy Carver. Tall,
ballet thin, dark-headed and pretty enough to be almost feminine, Jade’s gay
best friend was the closest thing she had to a brother; Clara thought of him as
an uncle. He had his hands in the pockets of his high-necked jacket, face too
pale, gaze somehow able to do disapproving as it fell over him and moved away.
The other guy – Jade’s date – looked like he either had, or was about to puke.
Standard reactions all around; no
alarms went off in his head.
“Mrs. Latham,” Ben said.
She was mopping at her face with a
sleeve and cut a glance up at him from under gummy lashes. She had blunt,
unremarkable features going soft with age and hair an unnatural shade of
red-brown. Trauma did ugly things to women’s faces, and hers was wrecked:
lined, puckered, sagging and bloated from crying.
“Mrs. Latham,” he said again.
Her eyes pinged in crazy leaps over
his face, her mouth opened, and for a moment, Ben thought she meant to respond.
But she dissolved into tears again, a desperate sound catching in her throat.
“Detective,” Jade said, her voice
tight, “can’t this wait?”
Over the top of Alicia Latham’s
head, her expression was all too familiar, loaded with revulsion. Ben twitched
a non-smile. “I’m afraid not; it has to be tonight.”
Jade kicked her chin up and wound a
protective arm around the weeping woman’s shoulders. “We’re going up to the
house while your people…” her eyes went to the arena and the picture-snapping
techs. “You can come up and talk to us there.”
I like it!!!!
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Great! Thanks. I'm nervous about this one.
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