Whatever Remains (34 page)

             
“Yeah.”

             
She led him into an office with two floor-to-ceiling windows that had a picturesque view of the parking deck. The modern glass desk and steel shelves were industrial, and spotless, just like the woman who worked among them. Rachel motioned to an uncomfortable looking chair and went around to her own black leather ergonomic one. “Okay, Detective…?”

             
He couldn’t afford to give her his name. He kept it brusque: “I need to get a better feel for the Lathams’ home life situation.”

             
She blinked. “I’ve never been to her home.”

             
“I don’t mean her house, specifically. During an investigation like this – after a murder – it’s hard to get a sense of the family pre-homicide. It’s helpful to talk to friends and coworkers to get a sense of what was happening in their lives before the murder. Whether they were anxious, afraid, being stalked; whether they had any enemies: stuff like that.”

             
“Ah.” She nodded. Her drawn-on eyebrows snapped together with thought. “Alicia’s a bubbly person. Always bright. Always happy.” Her forehead doubled-up with creases. “Now, I don’t see her regularly, you understand, since we work in different departments. But every time I’ve run into her, she’s been delightful.”

             
“Did you hire her?”

             
“Yes.”

             
“I’m gonna need the name of her previous employer.”

“I’ll bring the car around,” he told Jade and then called Trey as he walked through the parking deck.

              “Ben, dude, this case is – ”

             
“Yeah,” he interrupted. “I figured. But I need you to check something out for me.” A woman pushing a double stroller passed him and she flashed a tight, uncertain smile. “I’ve got a feeling,” he said into the phone and picked up his walk.

             
Trey sighed. “A feeling?” There was a rustling of paper and a sound like chewing. Ben envisioned him eating on the fly at his desk, Woods circling around him, Riley chugging coffee.

             
“Let’s call it intuition.”

             
“Intuition about what?” The kid was fresh out of patience at this point.

             
“Call St. John’s hospital in Knoxville and ask them about Alicia Latham.”

             
“I’m sorry,” Trey said tightly, “I’m investigating
Scott Redding
, remember?”

             
“Vividly, but do yourself a favor and look into Alicia.”

             
“Because of your intuition?”

             
“Because my intuition is never wrong.” And he disconnected the call.

“Are you due for more meds?”

              She’d been due over an hour ago, but she hated the dizzy way the Vicodin spun her head around in circles. The pain, though, in her ribs and head, was fast overwhelming her. She sank down to the edge of her bed, an arm banded tight around her middle, tears building behind her eyes. She’d been trying, for Clara’s sake, to put on a brave face. But she was fast approaching the meltdown point.

             
Ben moved around her room like he belonged there. Taking off his watch and leaving it on her dresser with his wallet and keys. Kicking his shoes off and tucking them beside the door. His jacket was hung on her closet doorknob and she could smell him – dark cologne, deodorant, her own shampoo – on the air.

             
Don’t question it
, she told herself, but wasn’t sure she could help it. She was grateful for his presence, but she wasn’t sure she could stand it if it was temporary. “What are you doing?” she asked.

             
He peeled his threadbare Old Navy t-shirt off over his head, lean planes of muscle in his chest and stomach and shoulders flexing, and tossed it in the direction of her laundry hamper. It missed. He gave her a questioning look as he unbuttoned his jeans. “Whadya mean?” The casual, undressed way he just…belonged there. She almost couldn’t do it, but she dragged some courage through her stinging tears.

             
“You know we can’t do anything tonight, right? You do know I’m out of commission?”

             
He frowned as his jeans hit the floor and he stepped out of them, kicked them toward the hamper. In his boxers, he walked to the bed and sat down on the edge beside her, warm and near and large. She wanted to lean against him. “No offense,” he said, nudging her shoulder with his, “but have you seen your
face
? I’m not rubbing up against
that
tonight.”

             
“Ben,” she groaned, and reached reflexively to touch her sore cheek. Her eyes were blackening by the minute like a raccoon mask. Her lip was split. Her cheek was swollen and purple and held together with a butterfly bandage.

             
“I’m
kidding
.” His arm went around her waist, careful on her tender ribs. “Now what about the meds?”

             
“I need more,” she admitted, swallowing the urge to sob. Her emotions thrashed wildly inside her, and she didn’t know how much longer she could keep the lid on them.

             
Sweetly, domestically, he stood and went to her dresser where the prescription bottle sat. He unscrewed the cap and stood in front of her, waiting until she’d flattened her hand. He shook a single oblong pill into her palm and passed the bottle of Gatorade she’d left beside her jewelry box.

             
“Thanks.” She swallowed it down and fiddled with the Gatorade cap as he returned to his seat.

             
“How long do those take to kick in?”

             
“Thirty minutes. Sometimes less.” She took a deep breath. “But that doesn’t mean – ”

             
“Sweetheart,” he said, voice firming, and she glanced over at him. His eyes were chocolate-colored and warm in the lamplight, but no less intense. There was a focus in him, a ferocity that others found frightening. Even Jess had admitted as much. But Jade had never been afraid. She understood big, brown-eyed, ferocious animals; she’d understood them since she was a little girl with a tiny fistful of mane. The thing she knew – the thing people didn’t realize – was that it wasn’t about mastering. It was about coexisting. Bonding. Talking. Ben had proved more challenging than any greenbroke off-the-track Thoroughbred. “I’m not,” he said, and she felt his fingers in her hair, “gonna jump your bones tonight. Alright?”

             
She leaned into his hand. “But you’re spending the night.”

             
“Yeah.”

             
“Without the promise of sex.”

             
“Yeah.”

             
“Why?”

             
His smile, already thin, twitched. “’Cause you look like you got run over by a bus.”

             
“And because you’re suspended.”

             
Ben sighed. “That doesn’t have anything to do with it.”

             
“Doesn’t it?”

             
“
No
. Jade.” His fingers tightened in her hair; he leaned in close to her. “Is this the concussion talking?”

             
She swatted him away from her. “No!”

             
“Then what’s the problem?”

             
“I…” She exhaled, tired to the bone and still ready to cry. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I just…”
Don’t want you here while I’m in this shape
. “I didn’t expect you to stick around this long,” she said to her bare toes.

             
She listened to the rustle of his hair as he scratched at his scalp. The bedframe creaked as he shifted his weight. “Yeah,” he said. “But…” He took a breath and for a moment, Jade imagined he sounded as shaky as she felt. “I’m here.”

             
She turned to look at him, to trace the familiar hard lines of his face with her eyes. She’d long since stopped hoping for words of commitment; “I’m here” sounded almost as sweet as “I love you.” “You’re here,” she said with a wavering smile, eyes swimming.

             
“Come on,” he urged. “You’re ready to fall apart.”

             
And she was. She curled up beside him, inside the cradle of his arm, and was asleep in moments.

He didn’t turn the lamp off right away. For a long time, he laid still, her breath whispering across his chest, the shallow rise and fall of her ribcage touching his arm. In sleep, her face had lost its tension, but none of its horror. With her eyes blacked and lip bisected with an angry split, her ceramic cheek battered, hair spilling across her shoulders, she was as lovely as she was terrifying. His beautiful girl, broken and beat up, fragile as glass under her ivory exterior. He wasn’t too far from taking a shotgun to the horse that had done this. And the son of a bitch
lurking in the woods, too, if he ever found him. He had a visceral, primal need to rectify this, to exact revenge. His girl,
his
girl, lying here with her face purple and her ribs broken. And because it was all he could do, he would lie still and watch her sleep, pretending she’d been on the verge of tears because of the pain, and not because of him.

             
She’d loosed a lot of tears in their sordid history. He didn’t want to think about them. He chose, instead, to think about the box his father had given him the day before. And about her smiles. The moments in which he’d felt like she
wanted
to be his girl.

             
His mind went spinning back, all the way to five years, one week, nine months ago. To a night on the worn leather sofa in the den that smelled like wood smoke and tasted like cognac. And felt like the perfect fit of her body under his. A slow night, half-wrapped in a chenille throw, her nails leaving crescents in his shoulders. Her teeth on his earlobe and her whispered encouragement against his throat. His hands tangled in her hair and the ethereal sense that something important was happening.
That
had been love. The kind that had brought him to her bed again tonight. The kind that had brought them Clara.

             
When this case is over
, he told himself. He brushed a stray piece of hair off her forehead and she murmured something in her sleep.
Then I’ll make it right.

23

B
en was awake when Jeremy went down to feed the horses at six; he heard the back door and a few excited yips from the dog. Jade was still catatonic, curled up at his side, breathing still shallow, but even. In the first pale fingers of light, she looked incredibly young. Trey’s call came in at six-fifteen, and he picked up on the second ring.

             
“What’ve you got?” he asked, and Trey didn’t waste time with the pleasantries.

             
“I – I don’t even know where to start,” he said, sounding half-dazed. “It’s…you’re not gonna believe it.”

             
Ben didn’t want to smile – he didn’t want to be right about this – but he felt one threaten. “Try me.”

             
“Okay.” Deep breath. There was a sound like coffee being swallowed. “I called St. John’s in Knoxville; Alicia was there for two years before she transferred to Kennestone. Her old super wrote her a stellar letter of recommendation and she landed the job here no problem.”

             
Ben didn’t care about that shit. “Uh-huh.”

             
“But get this: her reason for leaving? So she could be near her family in Atlanta.”

             
“But she doesn’t have any family.”

             
“Right. Which I thought was the weird thing, until I heard
this
. Apparently, she wanted to be with her family because of Heidi’s
leukemia
.”

             
He caught himself before he went jacking upright in bed and woke Jade. “What?”

             
“I had the head of HR up there fax me a picture: Heidi with a shaved head holding up a sign asking for donations.”

             
“Did she actually have leukemia? Doc Harding would know – ”

             
“I already talked to him. I swear he almost choked when he heard the question. According to him, Heidi shows none of the scars of having a bone marrow transplant. Except for being a little thin, she was perfectly healthy when she died. He’s running some tests for me, though, under the radar, in case this comes to anything.”

             
Ben took a breath. “So let’s play this out. Alicia pretends Heidi has leukemia. Shaves her head, moves town, and everything. That’s commitment right there.”

             
“She’s a con artist,” Trey proposed. “She plays up Heidi being sick, takes in a bunch of donations, then skips town before anyone can figure out what’s up.”

             
“Where was Heidi supposedly being treated?”

             
“A children’s hospital up there. I already checked: she wasn’t a patient.”

             
“So it was fake.” Something dark and fear-like twisted in his gut. “But she had a decent job. Why resort to grifting?”

             
“For kicks?” Trey asked. “I dunno. Anyway, it gets worse.”

             
“How much worse?”

             
“Before Knoxville, she was in Charlotte. When she left there, Heidi had just been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor.”

             
The black snake in his gut coiled tighter. “Which she never had.”

             
“Yeah. It was the same deal there: Heidi was getting treated at a children’s hospital, not the place where Alicia worked. And again, they had no record of Heidi ever being a patient.”

             
“There were donations there too?”

             
“Yeah. But, just a few thousand dollars.”

             
“Hardly enough to make your kid play sick over.”

             
“She hasn’t done it here, yet. Heidi’s hair was long.” No recent shaves for let’s-beat-cancer photo ops.

             
“No. But Heidi’s
dead
.”

             
“True.”

             
The sky was brightening through the gaps in the curtains, a heavy wet silver. Jade shifted in her sleep with a sigh. On the other end of the line, Ben could hear Trey rapping at something with a pen.

             
“You know that movie,” Trey said, voice careful. “The one with the kid who sees dead people?”

             
Ben snorted. “
The Sixth Sense
?”

             
“Yeah, that one. Remember how…damn, it’s been awhile…remember how there’s that girl whose mom poisoned her?”

             
There was enough light to see his dim reflection in the dressing table mirror now. He looked old, rumpled from sleep and lined around the eyes and tired. “Munchausen’s,” he said, a cold thrill hitting him in the back of the neck. “The parent makes the child sick to get some attention.”

             
“Yeah,” Trey said, sounding breathless. He had a little sister, after all. “You think it could be that?”

             
“I dunno. I’ve never worked a case like that. And Alicia isn’t making Heidi sick; she’s faking it. I’d have to do some research.”

             
“I will,” Trey said.  “But seriously, no sane person fakes a brain tumor and leukemia.”

             
“A grifter might.”

             
“Yeah, well…I just wanted to give you a heads up. Alicia Latham’s a lying freako.”

             
Ben almost smiled. “I appreciate it.”

             
“I’m trying to track down the ex-husband too. To see if he can tell me anything.”

             
“If there is an ex-husband.”

             
“Yeah.”

             
A beat of silence passed, became awkward. “You should share this with the captain,” Ben said, “since I’m not your partner anymore.”

             
“You’re my partner,” Trey said, automatically, and the support felt better than expected. “Not on this case, no, but it’s not like you got fired, man.”

             
“Tell Rice anyway, alright?”

             
“Yeah. I’ll let you know if I learn more.” And the kid hung up amid the sounds of more coffee slurping.

             
In the hollow of his arm, Jade stretched. Tried to, anyway. She gasped as the pain grabbed hold in her ribs and her hand curled into a fist on top of his chest. “Ow,” she breathed with a long exhale.

             
“The second day always hurts like a bitch,” he said, sliding his fingers through her hair. “You alright?”

             
She sighed. “In a sense.”

             
A stripe of light slowly unfurled across the carpet as the sun dug in its climbing spikes and started to get serious. The bird noise swelled on the other side of the window, up high in the cedar trees. Jade drew aimless patterns through his chest hair with a fingertip and he enjoyed the moment…And decided what to tell her. The cop in him said nothing. The man who’d slept beside her all night said he owed her an honest revelation. Her safety won out over both; an informed girl was an alive girl.

             
“Trey called,” he said, and her hair rustled as she tilted her head back and glanced up at his face.

             
“Are they reinstating you?” she asked, tone teasing.

             
“I asked him to do some digging on Alicia.”

             
Her hand stilled, one finger wound in his chest hair, breath catching. “What for?” A note of fear shivered through her voice, and he hated doing this, shattering her illusions, bringing a new fear into her quiet world of Jeremy and Clara and the horses.

             
“I had him do a little digging on Alicia for me,” he said. And told her about the two previous hospitals, and Heidi’s feigned illnesses.

             
For a moment, Jade didn’t breathe, then she sucked in a deep breath that left her gasping as it pulled at her ribs. “Why…
why
would she do that? What would possess a person to tell that kind of a lie? You’re sure?” She pushed up on her elbow, staring down into his face, eyes pleading with him. “You’re sure Heidi wasn’t really sick? Maybe your medical examiner wasn’t looking for those things.”

             
“Doctor Harding peeled down her face and opened her skull,” Ben said, feeling cruel. Shock blanked her face. “He looked at her bones. If she’d had a tumor, or even had surgery – a bone marrow transplant – there would have been scars. She was never sick.”

             
Her eyes dropped to his chest and she scowled. “So Alicia shaved her daughter’s head, told her to lie…and for what?” Her gaze came back to his face, sparking with anger. “What could that have been worth?”

             
“I don’t know. I’m hoping my Boy Wonder can figure that out.”

             
A new horror dawned for her. “You’re not saying…you don’t think
Alicia
killed Heidi?”

             
“I dunno what I think. But I’m telling you all this because I want you to be on your guard. There’s no such thing as too much information.”

Too much information: was that the thing pushing up the back of her throat and trying to strangle her? Was it an overabundance of knowledge about Alicia Latham’s bizarre past that left Jade breathless as she walked down the drive to the barn? Most likely. But she was going to blame it on the cracked ribs.

              The morning was thick with low-pressing clouds, cool, the air damp and chill and promising evening rain. It wasn’t helping her feel more productive. Breakfast had been Eggos she’d dug from the back of the freezer. Makeup seemed pointless, so she’d forgone it. She’d braided her hair and pulled on clean jeans and sweater, boots and favorite fleece jacket, and that was about as ready for the day as she could force herself to be. Ben was roped into a tea party with Clara and she was on her way to the barn, braced for Jeremy’s command that she go back to the house.

             
He was riding. Keely met her at the front of the barn – it was empty save for cats, the stalls clean, smelling of sweet hay and dusty shavings – and the Aussie walked alongside her through the back doors and down the trail to the arena.

             
Jeremy – elegant and refined on any horse – was straight from
Swan Lake
on his Rosie. He was endlessly patient, and got along well with mares because of it. Rosie had been a hot, unsettled three-year-old, but now, at seven, thanks to his consistent coaching, was a solid, mature mount on her way up the levels. She had Grand Prix potential in her elastic trot; Florida show circuit success in the staccato strike of her pirouettes. Jade leaned against the rail and watched Jeremy sit effortlessly through a transition from extended trot, to collected trot, to a leaping collected canter. A smile tugged at her lips and the awful clawing in her throat eased; her tension melted.

             
She recognized the pattern of fourth level test two, and settled in to watch. They put on a show – Rosie and Remy – and when he reined the mare to a smart halt and saluted an imaginary judge, Jade stuck two fingers in her mouth and whistled.

             
“Seventy,” she called as he walked toward her. “At the very least. Seventy-two, or four even.”

             
“How optimistic of you,” he said, pulling Rosie up at the rail and patting her neck. He wasn’t wearing a helmet and the breeze toyed with his hair the same way it lifted Rosie’s black mane. Not so much as a dot of sweat beaded his brow. Rosie hung her head over the fence and nudged at Jade’s coat pocket.

             
“I don’t have anything, pretty girl.” She stroked the mare’s nose and glanced up at her friend. “You know how you get all up in my business?” she asked with a grin.

             
Jeremy made a face. “I’d call it ‘guiding.’ Guiding with love, even.”

             
“Uh-huh, yeah, well, turnabout’s fair play,
hombre
. You,” she said, mimicking his mom-face, “should be packing your bags for the winter show circuit.”

             
“And you should be putting concealer on with a trowel to cover up that Lone Ranger mask you’ve got going on.”

             
“Ha.” She lifted her nose in haughty defiance and he snorted. “Ben says I look lovely.”

             
“I know for a fact ‘lovely’ isn’t in that man’s vocabulary.”

             
“Remy,” she said, straightening Rosie’s noseband. Lone Ranger mask and all, Jeremy squirmed at the glance she fired up at him. “You’re too talented to be stuck here in Kennesaw. You’re too good. If you stay here with us, you’ll never get the career you deserve.”