Lullaby for the Nameless (11 page)

Did that somehow suggest the local officers weren’t capable of serving their communities? Was that why they’d picked a rookie, along with a handful of officers who’d focused on community policing?

She had expected to work with the tribal police, especially considering the number of missing Aboriginal girls and the high number of Native Peoples residing in the area.

Now that she considered the situation, she realized she’d expected more Native officers to be assigned.

One other thing she hadn’t expected: to be the only woman.

Three officers who’d built careers on community policing shared one shift, and they were the three who had the most experience. By comparison, the combination of herself, Tain and Nolan on one shift was even more baffling. There was no doubt she was the youngest of the three, but not by much, and she’d pursued her career in law enforcement as soon as she’d completed her degree. Tain and Nolan had both only been with the RCMP for a few years, and there was nothing in the newspaper reports that indicated experience with a case like this one because they hadn’t even been mentioned.

For a moment, she wondered if she would ever get a chance to sneak a look at their personnel files, then dismissed that thought with a mental note to do a little digging on Nolan and Tain later. Her job was to focus on the investigation, and everything she was looking for was in the filing cabinets. She started to pull out the details of the casework to date, but changed her mind and took out the information that had been collected on each of the missing girls instead.

From there, the files varied dramatically.

Some reports had been filed by mothers. In one case, a sibling had called the police, and another girl’s absence had been noted by her aunt.

Another investigation had been initiated by a statement from a volunteer in a soup kitchen who’d eventually wondered what had happened to one of the regulars.

The length of time that elapsed before the reports were made also varied. The mother of one of the girls made the report a month after her daughter had disappeared. Kacey Young, who appeared to be the first girl to disappear, had been reported missing by her sister after two weeks. It only took the man from the soup kitchen ten days to pick up a phone, and the aunt had contacted police after one week.

Another file had been initiated when the girl didn’t start school in the fall. A diligent teacher had attempted to contact the parents, and when their letter was returned, they contacted the tribal council. They’d conducted their own investigation and determined that the girl, whose parents had been killed in a car accident earlier in the summer, hadn’t been seen since near the end of August.

They hadn’t contacted the RCMP until three weeks after news of the task force was made public, which meant Wendy George had been missing for nearly thirteen months, and the report had come in only a few days before Ashlyn had been reassigned.

The George file was the thinnest one they had, with nothing more than the statement. Ashlyn read it over a second time, noting that Constable Campbell had taken the initiating report.

Winters, the officer she hadn’t met and may have replaced, had taken the statements for two other girls, and while Tain had opened the file on the most recent girl to disappear, Winters had done the follow-up.

The girl’s mother had waited six weeks to tell police. Winters had done some digging: Wanda Johnson worked from home. More specifically, from the bedroom. Jenny had a habit of running off and had been picked up as a juvenile on one solicitation charge already.

Campbell, Aiken, Oliver and Tain had all been involved with at least one case prior to being reassigned to the task force. Was Ashlyn the only member of the team who hadn’t had some earlier involvement in the investigation?

She riffled through the reports one more time.

Nolan had taken one report, filed in Penticton, for a girl who’d gone missing eight months earlier.

Sergeant Sullivan had opened the file on the first missing Caucasian girl himself. Millie Harper had gone missing just days before Wendy George had last been seen.

Ashlyn pulled the desk drawers open one by one, but they were all empty. She thought back to her introduction to Tain, and wondered what his response would be if he found her going through the cupboards under the printer.

If reprimanded, Nolan might accuse her of deliberately informing their commanding officer that he’d left her behind. He’d jump to conclusions first and, if she was lucky, listen to explanations later. Considering the tension between Nolan and Tain, it was hardly surprising that Nolan wouldn’t feel like slipping into tour-guide mode so he could give her an introduction to the case and the town.

That would allow Tain to slip off his radar. Whatever Nolan was doing at the moment, the one thing she was convinced of was that it involved keeping an eye on the third member of their team.

Even if she took Tain out of the equation, Nolan’s reluctance to work with her could have been caused by a number of things. The picture on his desk could be his girlfriend, and he might be nervous about her reaction to him working closely with a woman his own age. He may have worked with a woman before and had problems.

He may also be a chauvinistic jerk, although at the moment she was more likely to award that title to Tain. There’d been enough of a warm smile lurking behind Nolan’s eyes for split seconds for her to think better of him.

Or maybe she’d imagined it, even wished she’d seen it.

A remnant of the strong smell of smoke that had clung to Nolan and Tain still lingered in the air, and she thought about the reference to a large fire in the town. It was possible the events of the morning had thrown them off, that Nolan had prior meetings set up, things he had to take care of personally, and he didn’t have time to show a new partner around, but she just couldn’t make herself believe it.

In the distance, the back door slammed shut. She hoped it wasn’t Tain.

“I was just—”

Nolan looked at the files on her desk. It took him less than two seconds to close the gap and grab the top folder.

“What the hell are you doing?” He didn’t give her a chance to answer. “I left you with a very specific job to do. Do you have a problem following orders?”

She felt the color in her cheeks. “No, I—”

“For once, can’t someone on this team just do what they’re told?” he muttered as he turned and started moving toward his desk.

“I did.”

He spun around. “Excuse me?”

Cheeks still burning, Ashlyn reached over and pointed at the pile of papers she’d left for him. “Every message you gave me and all the calls that have come in since.” She watched as he picked up the first sheet, skimmed it, then leafed through the stack.

He looked up and for a second, the tension he’d carried in his face was gone. “I’m…I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have accused you like that. It’s just…” His voice trailed off.

She knew he wasn’t going to explain.

“I thought it would be helpful to familiarize myself with the case. I didn’t get a chance to read all the copies before Tain took them earlier.”

His eyes narrowed. “What copies?”

Something about the way his mouth settled into a hard line and the ruddy shade his face turned made her wonder if it was the mention of Tain’s name or something more that had struck a chord with Nolan.

She opened her mouth, still trying to work out a response, when Nolan’s phone rang. He grabbed the handset, reached for a pen, then stopped. The color in his cheeks evaporated, and he looked up at her with a softness in his eyes that hinted at sadness.

She was about to ask where they were going but thought better of it. As she pulled her jacket on, she noticed the solemn gaze, the way all the tension in Nolan shifted. Before, his shoulders had pinched and the lines in his face were hard.

Now his face had softened and sagged, which made him look as though he’d aged a few years in the past few minutes. Even his shoulders had dropped, although his hands were balled into loose fists.

He looked up. “They found a body.”

There hadn’t been a chance to see much of the town on the drive over. A few blocks from the station they’d turned onto a road heading into the mountains. A quick glance in the mirror gave Ashlyn a glimpse of a row of buildings that led to where a fire truck was still parked several blocks down the street, presumably at the site of the fire Tain and Nolan had referred to earlier.

In only a few minutes she felt like she was in the middle of nowhere. There were no houses or stores, not even power lines or hydro poles along the road. She was surprised by the patches of snow that clung to the earth in some places as they climbed up out of the town. The Isuzu Rodeo Nolan drove jolted as the front right tire dipped into one pothole, then another. The sport utility vehicle bumped along as they ascended the mountainside. When they reached a turn, Nolan went right, and Ashlyn soon found herself staring down a gorge with nothing but air between the vehicle and the edge of the cliff.

“That’s why I didn’t bring a company car.”

They were the only words Nolan had said since they’d left the office, and she waited until they turned to the left and began driving on what seemed like a level path cut out from the middle of a large forest before she said, “I didn’t realize we were that far up.”

“You aren’t from British Columbia?”

He glanced at her. “The mountains can be deceptive.”

“This is your vehicle?”

A quick nod was his only answer. Ahead, a few cars lined the side of the road, and Nolan pulled over and parked.

The ground crunched beneath Ashlyn’s feet as she followed Nolan along the road. It was like thin ice, the pressure of each footfall cracking the early winter shell, except most of the road wasn’t slick. She hadn’t realized how much colder it could be after such a short drive up into the mountains, but she was glad it hadn’t warmed up enough during the day for the ground to thaw completely because they would have been walking through mudholes. As it was, it had warmed up enough in some places for water to pool, and she guessed there’d been a fair bit of rain recently because the puddles looked deep.

A uniformed officer waited by the side of the road opposite from where they’d parked. “Nolan,” he said. The man offered Ashlyn nothing more than a quick glance before he turned and led the way into the bush.

“I assume you told Rick there’s no hunting in national parks,” Nolan said.

“Yes.”

“Was Rick surprised?”

“No, I was. He pulled out a map and argued over boundary lines with me. I didn’t realize this part of the mountain wasn’t part of the park.”

“That makes two of us,” Nolan said.

“He’s got a permit.”

“Guess that means he’s got a legitimate reason to be wandering around in the woods in the middle of nowhere with a gun,” Nolan said.

It caught her on the cheek and cut into the skin. Without reaching up she knew it was bleeding, because she could feel the trickle of blood racing toward her chin. Tears welled in her eyes from the sting, but she kept her focus on fishing through her pocket for a tissue so she could wipe her face.

Underfoot, the terrain wasn’t what she’d describe as inviting. Although much of the ground appeared to be in the process of freezing, in some places where the earth dipped water had pooled. The ground on the sides of the small hills was soggy.

It was fall, and in the mountains that meant winter weather wasn’t far away.

There were more patches of snow between some of the trees, but they were sporadically scattered, with no rhyme or reason that she could determine.

Nolan had said something to her, but she hadn’t heard him.

“What?” she said, just as she put her right foot down and it began to sink into the earth.

Nolan turned and grabbed her arm, giving her enough leverage with her left foot to pull the right one free.

“I said to watch out for the hole.”

“Sorry.”

She looked down at her mud-caked shoe.

“You’re going to need some boots,” Nolan said.

She felt her face grow warm. “I have boots. I just haven’t had a chance to unpack anything.”