Kisscut (27 page)

"Oh, shit," Tessa sat up, wiping her eyes. "Dad's coming."

Sara sat up, too, though she did not know why. It was not as if Eddie could send her to her room for sitting in the parking lot too long.

"Where's that auger?" he demanded, throwing open Sara's door. "What're you two talking about in here?" When he did not get an answer, he said, "Do you know how much gas you're wasting, sitting here with the engine running?"

Sara laughed, and he popped her on the leg, asking, "What would your mama say if she saw that look on your face?"

Tessa answered, "Probably, 'It's about damn time.'"

They started giggling, and Eddie gave them both a sharp look before slamming the door closed and walking away.

The morgue was housed in the basement of the Grant Medical Center, and no matter how hot it got outside, it was always cool in the tiled subterranean rooms. Sara felt bumps come out on her skin as she walked back to her office.

"Hey, Dr. Linton," Carlos said in his soft, heavily accented voice. He was dressed in his usual green scrubs, and held a clipboard at an angle against his thick waist. Sara had hired Carlos six years ago, right out of high school. He was short for his age, and wore his hair cut in a bilevel, which did not do much for his round face. Carlos was efficient, though, and he never complained about having to do what amounted to shit work, literal and figurative. Sara could trust him in the morgue to take care of things and keep his mouth shut.

Sara managed a smile for him. "What's up?"

He handed her his clipboard, saying, "That Weaver kid is still here. What do you want me to do with her?"

Sara felt her heart sink as she thought of the baby. Dottie Weaver had no reason to claim the child since Sara had told her it was not Jenny's. Something about that fragile little girl sitting in the freezer broke Sara's heart.

"Dr. Linton?" Carlos asked.

"I'm sorry," Sara apologized. "What did you say?"

"I asked what you wanted to do with the bodies."

Sara shook her head at the plural, thinking she had missed something. She looked down at the chart and saw that Jenny Weaver's name was at the top. Sara thumbed through the paperwork, noting that she had released the body on Sunday. There was no accompanying form from the funeral home to verify that she had been picked up.

"She's still here?" Sara asked.

Carlos nodded, tucking a hand into his hip.

"We haven't gotten a call from Brock?" she asked, referring to the funeral director in town.

"No, ma'am," he said.

Sara glanced back at the paperwork, as if that could offer an explanation. "We haven't heard from the mother?"

"We haven't heard from anybody."

"Let me make some phone calls," she told him, walking into her office.

Sara knew the number to Brock's Funeral Home by heart, and she dialed it into the phone, watching Carlos through the window. He was mopping the floor in slow, deliberate strokes, his back to her.

The phone was picked up on the first ring. "Brock's Funeral Home."

"Brock," Sara said, recognizing the man's voice. Dan Brock was Sara's age, and they had gone to school together from kindergarten on.

"Sara Linton," Brock said, genuine pleasure in his voice. "How you?"

"I'm great, Brock," she answered. "I hate to cut right down to business, but have you gotten a call on a Jennifer Weaver?"

"The one what was shot last weekend?" he asked. "Sure haven't. Gotta say, I was expecting that call."

"Why is that?"

"Well, Dottie goes to my church," he told her. "I just assumed she'd call on me."

"Do you know her well?"

"Well enough to say hi to," he answered. "Plus, that little Jenny was a peach. She was in the children's choir for a while. Sang like an angel."

Sara nodded, remembering that Brock directed the children's choir in his spare time. "Sara?" Brock prompted.

"Sorry," Sara told him, thinking she was too easily distracted lately. "Thanks for the information."

"It hasn't been in the paper, either."

"What's that?"

"The obituaries," Brock said, giving a self-deprecating chuckle. "Tools of the trade. We like to see who's doing who, if you know what I mean."

"And there's been no mention?"

"Nary a peep," he told her. "Maybe they sent her up North? I think that's where her daddy is."

"Still, it would've been in the paper, right?" Sara asked, playing dumb. Brock was generally discreet because of the business he was in, but she did not want to start rumors.

"Maybe," he said. "Or the church bulletin at least. I haven't seen it there, either." He paused, then said, "Heck, Sara, you know how some people are about death. They just don't want to admit it happened, especially with a kid involved. Maybe she handled it quietly just so she could get through it, you know?"

"You're right," Sara told him. "Anyway, thanks for the information."

"I hear Grace Patterson doesn't have much longer," he said, and she imagined business was slow if he was being so chatty. "That's gonna be a hard one."

"You know her, too?"

"She helped me with the choir before she took sick this last time. Wonderful woman."

"I've heard that."

"From what I've gathered, she's just eat up with the cancer," he said. "Those are always the hard ones." His voice had dropped, and he seemed genuinely upset. "Well, hell, Sara, you know what I'm talking about."

Sara did, and she understood his grief. She couldn't imagine having to do Dan Brock's job. He probably felt the same way about hers.

"Guess there's no word on the little girl yet?" he asked.

"No," Sara said. "Not that I know of."

"Jeffrey's a good man," he told her. "If anyone can find her, it's him."

Sara wanted to believe this, but with everything she had learned about the case lately, she wasn't too sure.

Brock lightened his tone. "You take care now," he said. "Best to your mama and them."

Sara wished him the same and hung up the phone. She pressed the button for a new line and called Jeffrey.

Chapter Fourteen

Lena tried not to make it too obvious that she was listening to Jeffrey's telephone conversation with Sara Linton. This was incredibly difficult to do, as they were both in the front seat of Jeffrey's car. Lena looked out the window, feigning a casualness she did not feel. Part of her was still struck by what had happened with Mark only hours before. Time would only tell if he would make it. Oxygen had been cut off to his brain for some time, and until he woke up from the coma, there was no way to predict how much damage had been done.

Lena glanced at Jeffrey as he told Sara what Mark had said about his relationship with Grace Patterson. Whatever Sara said in response was brief and to the point, because Jeffrey agreed with her immediately.

"I'll see you tonight," Jeffrey said, then replaced the phone in the cradle. He started in on Lena immediately. "I told you not to be alone with Mark," he said.

"I know," Lena responded, and started to tell him again why she had let Brad leave the trailer. He stopped her, holding up his hand.

"I'm only going to say this once, Lena," Jeffrey began, and it seemed like he had been wanting to say this for a while. "You're not the boss here."

"I know that."

"Don't interrupt me," he ordered, cutting his eyes at her. "I've been doing this job a hell of a lot longer than you, and I tell you to do things a certain way because I know what I'm doing."

She opened her mouth to agree, but then thought better of it.

"Being a detective gives you some autonomy, but at the end of the day you take your orders from me." He looked at her, as if anticipating she'd argue. "If I can't trust you to follow simple orders, why should I keep you working for me?"

Obviously, it was her turn to speak, but she couldn't come up with anything to say.

"I want you to think about this, Lena. I know you like your job and I know you're good at it when you decide to be, but after what happened…" He shook his head, as if that wasn't right. "Even before what happened. You've got a problem taking orders, and that makes you more dangerous to me than the crooks."

Lena felt the sting from his words and rushed to defend herself. "Mark wouldn't have confided in me if Brad had been there."

"He might not have tried to take his life, either," Jeffrey said. He was quiet, staring out at the road as he drove. He sighed, then said, "That wasn't fair."

Lena was silent.

"Mark probably would've found a way to do something like this. He's a very troubled kid. It wasn't your fault."

She nodded, not knowing whether what he was saying was true or not. At least he was trying to comfort her, which is a hell of a lot more than she had done with him when they had talked about his shooting Jenny Weaver.

"And it's not just Mark. Have you made an appointment with a therapist yet?"

She shook her head.

Jeffrey said, " Lena, I hate to say this now, but there never seems to be a good time." He paused, as if making sure to word this carefully. "You need to think about whether or not you want to be a cop anymore."

She nodded, biting the tip of her tongue so that she wouldn't start crying. How could she not be a cop? If she wasn't a police detective, what was she? Certainly not a sister; barely a woman. Lena wasn't even sure some days if she was a human being.

"You're a good cop," he said.

She nodded again, resting her head against her hand, staring out the side window so he wouldn't see her face. Her throat felt like it was closing up as she strained not to cry. She hated herself for being so weak, and the thought of breaking down in front of Jeffrey was enough to keep her from sobbing like a girl.

"We'll talk when this case is over," Jeffrey told her, and his voice was reassuring, but it didn't help. "I want to help you, Lena, but I can't help you if you don't want to be helped."

It sounded like Hank's A.A. bullshit, and Lena had had enough of that to last her a lifetime. She cleared her throat and said, "Okay," still staring out the window.

Jeffrey was silent as he drove, and she didn't speak again until she noticed that he missed the turnoff heading back into town and the station.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"Dottie Weaver's house," he said. "She hasn't picked up the body at the morgue."

"It's been a while," Lena said, surreptitiously wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. "Do you think something's wrong with her?"

"I don't know," Jeffrey told her, his jaw working.

"Do you think she's done something?" Lena asked. "Like Mark?"

He gave her a curt nod, and she did not push it.

Jeffrey pointed up the road, saying, " Randolph Street is up here, right?"

"Yes," Lena confirmed, and Jeffrey took the turn onto Randolph. The driveways were few and far between, most of the houses set back from the road and resting on three to four acres each. They were in an older section of Grant, built back before people started throwing cheap houses on top of each other. Jeffrey braked the car in front of a gray mailbox that was open in the front, mail stacked so tight someone would have to use a crowbar to get it out.

"This is it," he said. He backed up the car and turned into a tree-lined driveway. If he noticed the four copies of the
Grant Observer
wrapped in plastic bags at the head of the drive, he did not say.

The Weaver home was farther back from the road than Lena would have guessed, and a few seconds passed before a small ranch house came into view. A second level had been added at some point, and the bottom of the house did not really match the top.

"Do you see a car?" Jeffrey asked, stopping in front of an open carport.

Lena looked around, wondering why he had asked a question with such an obvious answer. "No."

They both got out of the car, and Lena walked around the perimeter of the house, checking every window on the first floor. Either the curtains or the blinds were drawn on each one, and she could not see inside. There was a double door leading to what was probably the basement, but it was locked tight. The small windows around the foundation had been painted black from the inside.

As she circled back around the house, she could hear Jeffrey knocking on the front door, calling, "Mrs. Weaver?"

Lena stood at the bottom of the porch steps, wiping the sweat off her forehead with the back of her arm. "I couldn't see anything. All the curtains are drawn." She told him about the basement and the blackened windows.

Jeffrey glanced around the yard, and she could sense how anxious he was. Dottie Weaver had not bothered to get her newspapers or mail for a while. She was divorced and her daughter had just been killed. Maybe she had felt there wasn't a lot to go on living for.

Jeffrey asked, "Did you check the windows?"

"They're all locked tight," she reported.

"Even that broken one?"

Lena got his meaning. As law officers, they needed a damn good reason to go into Weaver's house without a warrant. A bad feeling was not good enough to go on. A broken window was.

She asked, "You mean the broken one in the basement?"

He gave her a curt nod.

"What if an alarm goes off?"

"Then we'll call the police," he said, walking down the steps.

Lena would have broken the window herself, but she appreciated that Jeffrey was trying to keep her out of this gray area of the law as much as he could. She leaned against the porch railing, waiting for the sound of broken glass. It came about a minute later, and then several more minutes passed with nothing further from Jeffrey. She was about to go around to the back of the house when she heard his footsteps inside.

He stood in the doorway, one hand on the knob, the other holding a bright yellow raincoat.

"Lacey's?" Lena asked, taking the coat. It was small enough for a child, but the label in the back took away all doubt. Someone had sewn the child's name onto it in case it was lost.

"Jesus," Lena mumbled, then looked back up at Jeffrey. He shook his head no, meaning he had not found her in the house.

He stepped aside so that she could walk in. Heat enveloped her, and the house felt hotter inside than it was outside. The first room was large, and probably was used as a living room. It was hard to tell, though, because all the furniture was gone. Even the carpet had been pulled up from the floor, and the tacking around the perimeter stood out like teeth.

"What the…?" Lena said, walking through the room. She noticed that Jeffrey had his weapon drawn, the muzzle pointed toward the floor. Lena followed suit, kicking herself for being so stupid. She had been so shocked to see Lacey's coat and the state of the house that she had forgotten that someone might still be in the house. With all the noise they had made outside, whoever might be inside was certainly aware there was company.

Jeffrey nodded for her to follow him into the kitchen, which was in the same state as the main room. All the cabinet doors were open, showing empty shelves. Lena walked through the dining room, a den, and a small office, all of them empty, all of them missing carpeting.

The house had a bad feeling to it, and she let herself think what Jeffrey had probably thought when he had found the yellow raincoat. Lacey had been here. She could still be here. At least, her body could.

"Smell that?" Jeffrey whispered.

Lena sniffed the air, and realized that she had been smelling fresh paint with something sharper underneath. "Clorox," she whispered back. "Something else I can't place."

"Those pictures of Mark you took when you arrested him," Jeffrey began. "He had paint on his clothes, right?"

Lena nodded, turning around in the room. She looked around the corner, finding the stairs. "Have you been up yet?" she asked, just as a tapping noise came from upstairs.

They both raised their weapons at the same time, and Lena took point before Jeffrey could. She walked sideways up the stairs, keeping her gun directed up toward the ceiling. She tested her foot on each stair, noting that they, too, had been stripped. Every muscle in her body tensed as adrenaline pumped through her system.

At the top of the stairs, Lena paused before looking down a long hallway. A wall was to her left, a small window that she had not noticed from the outside mounted up high. It was cracked open, and Lena saw some leaves and debris on the floor. Black curtains hung from a rod with weights sewn into the bottom edges. The paint under the window was marked where the weights had hit it, and fresh white paint lined the edge of the material. Lena pointed this out to Jeffrey, thinking it might have caused the noise they heard, and Jeffrey shrugged, as if to say maybe, maybe not.

Lean started to go down the hall, but Jeffrey walked ahead of her, peering into the open doorways of each room. She followed, seeing that the bathroom and two bedrooms had been cleaned out just like the downstairs. She wondered if Jeffrey's gut clenched each time he looked into a room, thinking Lacey Patterson might be in there. Lena had an eerie reminder of this morning with Mark as Jeffrey stopped in front of the only closed door at the end of the hall.

He stood in front of the door, both hands cupping his gun. For some reason, he wasn't moving, and Lena thought to take over, but something about the look on his face stopped her. Was he scared of what he would find? Lena knew she was.

He leaned toward the door, like he heard something.

She mouthed, "What?"

He shook his head, as if to tell her to give him a minute to think. Lena stood beside him, her shoulder to the wall by the door, sweating as she waited for him to make a decision. She hoped he would not wait too long, because stopping to think was taking away some of her resolve.

Finally, he motioned her back behind him, then even farther back. He kept waving her down the hall, then into the stairway. When she was standing on the stair second from the top, her neck craned so she could look around the corner, he seemed satisfied. Lena braced herself for action as he raised his foot and kicked in the door. A flash of light came a split-second later, and somehow the door blew back, pushing Jeffrey down the hallway. A roar came a couple of beats later, and Lena ducked into the stairs as a ball of fire flashed up the hallway.

"Jesus," she whispered, covering herself with her arms as she knelt on the stairs. Lena waited for the heat to envelop her, or flames to eat her alive, but nothing happened. She stood from her crouch and peered around the corner into the hallway. Jeffrey was underneath the door, but he was moving. The top of the door was charred to a crisp. There were black soot marks along the walls, but there was no fire. The heat must have been so intense that it burned itself out.

She heard a crackling to her left and turned quickly. The black curtains were on fire. Lena took off her jacket and beat them until they fell from the rod. She stamped the last embers out on the floor just as Jeffrey pushed the door off of him.

"What the hell happened?" he demanded, touching his face and body, probably to see if he had been burned. He seemed okay from what Lena could tell. Somehow, the door had protected him from the blast.

"I have no idea," she said, dropping her coat and walking over to help him stand.

"I thought I smelled something outside the door," he told her, leaning heavily on her shoulder. "What the hell
was
that?"

She asked, "What did you smell?"

"Gasoline, I guess. I wasn't sure. It was hard to tell with the paint." He brushed his slacks off, but there was really no point. They both looked at his shoes. The soles had melted from the heat.

"Dammit," he muttered. "I just bought these last week."

Lena stared at him, wondering if he had hit his head.

"Are you all right?" he asked, brushing something off her shoulder.

"I'm fine," she told him, and she was, but only because Jeffrey had made her stand in the stairwell.

"Is that out?" he asked, pointing to the window. The heat from the blast had knocked out the panes and busted the sash. There were dark gashes in the wall where the curtains had ignited.