Ashes of guilt, p.3
Ashes of Guilt, page 3
By the time the day ends, we are told we’ll get an office tomorrow and start official work then. Luke and I head over to Clover Inn, where a woman, thankfully someone I don’t know, checks us in. He repeatedly asked for us to detour to my parents’ house on the way, but I refused. I don’t want to go down the worst part of memory lane right now. The entire town is enough. That house is probably frozen in time, everything exactly the way it is. I don’t know what twenty years does to an empty house, probably more since it’s never been lived in since my grandmother got moved to the retirement home.
I head up to my room and get settled in when I realize I haven’t eaten anything since I was on the road with Luke.
Not wanting room service, I headed out to the convenience store a few blocks away, switching my shorts for a pair of jeans and walking in flip-flops. It was late, and I didn’t expect to run into anybody. I was wrong.
As soon as the little bell announces me, I hesitate at the door for a millisecond. Keep calm, Olivia. Two decades.
The man at the counter is none other than the same hot-headed Jon Warren that was all in the Chief’s face this afternoon. He sees me and his hands, holding a clipboard and a pen, freeze mid-writing. The eye contact is brief but feels just the opposite.
I wish I had ordered the damn room service.
“Olivia Morgan?”
I take two steps in, and the door finally closes. “Hi Jon, how are you?” I force myself to sound light. Relaxed.
“You’re a detective now?” The question isn’t intended to be welcoming. Nothing about this store is welcoming.
“Yes, from the Chicago Police Department. How have you been?” I quickly glance around for other customers, but I’m the only one.
He checks off something on the clipboard and, without looking at me, says, “I don’t know, you tell me. How should I be doing?”
His daughter, Ariel Warren, has been missing for the last two weeks. I wince at the remark.
“I’m sorry about your daughter. We’re doing everything we–”
“Should you be doing this, though?” His voice is angry, but he still refuses to look at me. “How long’ve you been in town anyway?”
My appetite is diminishing by the second.
“I-I just got here today. Why?”
The clipboard lands on the counter with a thud. I try to focus on his baseball cap. I read Branson Bears over and over.
“Can anyone vouch for that? Have any receipts, maybe? Work check-ins?”
I’m mad. And hurt. I was stupid for coming back here.
“What are you trying to say, Jon?”
He folds his arms over the counter and looks me straight in the eyes. “All I’m sayin’ is that you’re back, and things don’t look so good.”
“This has been happening for months; I just got here,” my protest sounds weak. There is hurt in my voice. I barely knew this man, but he’s hated me since day one. “Are you blaming me for the disappearances?”
“It’s my daughter I’m talkin’ about–” He raises his voice slightly. I follow suit.
“And you think I had something to do with her disappearance? I didn’t even know her!”
“I need you to leave. Now.” He busied himself with the damn clipboard again, ending our conversation.
I can’t believe this. I met Ariel Warren only once in high school. She was four years my junior. There was some event in school, I don’t remember, and I signed her and her boyfriend up for it. Not many people liked her. She was pretty hot-headed like her dad.
I yank the door open and storm out. My throat burns, and my hands ball up into fists as I walk down to Clover Inn. I take my time reaching the hotel, cursing the people and the town as I go.
The next day at work, things already seem daunting. I go through the case files a third time and cannot come up with anything. Is this the work of a serial killer? Or an organization?
What is the link between all these people? Or are they just unrelated mishaps, except for Steve Hale?
My chair creaks as I lean back in it. The ‘office’ Luke and I were given was previously a storage room. A few file boxes are still stacked in the corner, collecting dust.
The room is windowless and has only two light fixtures, one of which flickers all the time, so we keep it off. Luke is late today, which is a first for him. I impatiently tap my pen on the desk, waiting for him to show up because I do not want to work alone. As much as I want to solve this case, I want to stay out of trouble even more. Having the FBI work with me is not ideally in my favor.
I was never charged. I was a kid, of course, and the death was accidental. I did good in school and helped out in the community despite being slightly ostracized. The town pushed me out, so I understood that I wouldn’t be welcomed back. Even worse, I have to work closely with Rebecca Lawson, the woman who took me in after my grandmother fell ill. And the woman whose husband I killed. The musty, cold air in the storage room office makes me shiver.
The door opens, and I whip around in my chair, expecting to see Luke, but it’s Walker. I stiffen.
“Nice office you got here,” he looks around, out of place in this damp room.
“It’s all they could do at the last minute.” I clear my throat and stand. We shake hands.
“Really?” He tilts his head at me. “After planning for a week to bring you in?”
I hadn’t thought of that before. It all did seem impromptu. The call, the faxing of the case files…
“How long have you been on this case?”
He pulls a chair and sits down. “I’ve been here for two weeks. Had my attention on the Warren girl before Hale upped and went.”
I think of Jon Warren, and my heart races. What if he laid out all his assumptions about me to Walker? I was done for.
“Have you talked to the friend who reported her missing? Or her father, maybe?”
Walker stares at me for a second. There is a slight smile on his face that seems permanent, like every day is a bright sunny day, and not a speck of trouble ever comes his way.
“No,” he says slowly. “I haven’t. The involvement of the FBI isn’t exactly going to be well-received.
To them, I’m a homicide detective, much like yourself. And anyways, Rebecca is counting on you and your partner to do field duty today. The missing persons are the top priority for now. We need to focus on bringing them back.”
“So we’re assuming this is the work of one individual?”
“We aren’t assuming anything yet,” he shakes his head. “There is nothing to indicate that any of the victims knew each other or were involved in any way. Playing solitaire?”
I blink at this last remark. “Sorry, what?”
Walker points to my desk. I had the pictures of the seven missing people laid out.
“Oh,” I move a few to the side. “No, I was just trying to figure out why they were singled out specifically.”
Walker had his hands joined together and was watching me when Luke finally entered.
“Sorry I’m late,” he glances at Walker sitting at my desk. “I figured I should check in with the lab reports on my way here. The hair sample doesn’t match anyone in the Wakefield database, and the punch marks on the dash don’t match the shape of Hale’s hands. So it’s likely he was murdered.”
“Well, then, time to round up the suspects.”
“I’ve asked the state troopers to compile a list of vehicles leaving and entering Wakefield around the time of Steve Hale’s arrival and his murder,” Luke glances at his watch. “Let’s head out and see.”
“Good work,” Walker gets up slowly as Luke leads the way out of the office. “Morgan, what’s your take on this? Do you think the murderer is from out of town? Or is this evidence just circumstantial? I mean, he did drive the car here from somewhere.”
I pause. “That’s possible, but everything else was wiped clean, including the car doors and the pistol. No fingerprints anywhere. It must mean the hair strand came later.” I wasn’t so sure anymore. Was this circumstantial evidence? We didn’t have any other leads.
“I suppose so. Let me know if you find anything else.”
As soon as I reach the car, I give Luke an earful. He could’ve let me in on the plan today instead of having me wait in that clammy room with Walker. He quickly apologized, and I let it drop.
He was just as ambitious as I was, and even more so because this town didn’t shake him like it shook me.
Grabbing the list from the highway patrol office, we begin scouting leads. I open up the cases in my lap and ask him where we should start first.
“How about Ariel Warren? She’s the most recent.”
I hesitate. “Or we start from the beginning, with Cindy Beckett. Went missing two months ago.”
“Unlikely that we’ll find her alive,” he shakes his head. “Priority is getting them back safe and sound, remember?”
“Yes, but finding the perp will prevent more from disappearing, right? It just seems logical.”
Luke gives in, and we head over to the house of Cindy Beckett. She lives, or lived, alone, and we are greeted by a stray, black cat clawing the screen door at the back of the house. All the doors are unlocked.
The stray runs off as soon as we approach the kitchen.
Inside, everything is a mess. The place is torn apart, and judging just by the kitchen itself, no one’s been here in two months. Broken dishes, trash, dust, and god-knows-what caked the floor. Half of the cabinets were falling off their hinges, and the fridge was dented in several places. A pot and kettle were still on the stove, blackened from soot.
In the living room, things are even worse. Peeling wallpaper has been ripped off, the TV smashed in, curtains pulled off the ceiling, and a knife taken to the sofa. Stuffing was scattered all over the floor, and drawers were pulled out, its contents lying about as if thrown across the room.
The stairs were intact, and we went up. Both bedrooms were ransacked. The beds were stripped, and the mattresses were slashed.
The closet in one bedroom was emptied, and the clothes lay ripped and stained on the floor in a heap. The dresser drawers were broken, and the contents shattered and broken, were strewn all over the floor. The nightstands were knocked over, and the lamps were smashed. One lamp was still lodged in the wall where it was thrown.
“Well, they searched the place thoroughly,” Luke mumbles. I shake my head and examine the knife marks on the mattress.
“It could be teenagers or the homeless. This house is well away from the rest of the neighborhood.”
We take pictures and comb through the debris. There’s nothing. I notice the carpet’s been cut up and lifted in several places.
“Someone’s been looking for something.”
Luke bends down, and with a gloved hand, he lifts the carpet as high as it will go. The bare concrete underneath is rough and covered with dust. He goes from one piece of carpet to another, and I head back down to the living room.
Among the debris, there are shattered picture frames. A woman, who I recognize from the photos as Cindy, is standing with her late husband. They had no kids. Another photo shows Cindy from when she was younger, standing among a group. It’s a company party, and I examine the faces one by one until I see James Lawson.
A chill runs down my spine, and my heart drops. I smell smoke.
“Hey, Liv!” I dropped the picture. My hands are shaking. This can’t be.
“Yeah?”
“You need to see this!”
I follow the sound of his voice into the supply closet upstairs. He is crouching with a flashlight pointing to the bare concrete. The piece of carpet covering it had been thrown out.
“Come take a look.” He shines a light on the patch of floor, and a layer of white dust is instantly visible. In the middle of it, there is nothing. The area is the size of a small rectangle.
“You okay?” The flashlight shines on my face for a moment. Up till now, I had been struggling to breathe normally.
“Yeah, it’s just dusty in here.”
“Well, not here.” The light illuminates the clean rectangle again.
“So, there was something here. Did the team already take it?”
Luke shakes his head and stands up. “Nothing’s been submitted as evidence for Beckett. Looks like the size of paper, if you ask me. Maybe some documents?”
I freeze. Something doesn’t feel right.
“So this place was ransacked, and some papers were taken. But how does that connect to Ariel Warren, the Thompson brothers, or Steve Hale? None of them knew each other.”
Except…. I knew them.
Chapter Six
W hen Luke explained what we found, nobody in the room looked too happy. Rebecca stood at the back with her arms folded, giving us no feedback on our hunch.
Or my hunch. It took a while to explain everything to Luke, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell him exactly how James Lawson died.
What we found did shift our perspective on the case. It changed the game, really. They weren’t unrelated disappearances. All of them knew James Lawson. I sit uncomfortably in the chair next to the board at the front of the briefing room. The lights are out so that the board can be seen clearly, filling the room with grayish light. The occasional bouts of silence between Luke’s presentation of the findings are deafening.
“Thank you, Detective Reed. We’ll look into this; however, I’m not exactly convinced that this is the angle we should be taking. It has been twenty years, after all–”
I feel trapped in a time loop.
“–and what motive could there possibly be against a dead man?”
I shudder at how Rebecca mentions her own husband like this. My palms feel sweaty, and I feel the weight of everyone’s eyes in the room.
“Excuse me, Chief,” I get up on wobbly legs. ”But this cannot be a coincidence. We have missing men and women from different backgrounds, with different ages, and different social circles.”
I gaze at the room, hoping to see some agreement. There are only blank expressions looking at me amidst one nodding head.
Walker’s.
I continued. “Cindy Beckett was his assistant for years until his death. She switched jobs after that. The Thompson brothers were sons of James’ ex-business partner Richard Thompson, with one brother found dead and one still missing. Dr. Hampton knows practically everyone, but he’s also a stock enthusiast. He’s been investing in local Wakefield businesses for years. I checked his records, and he also bought stocks in Lawson’s company…”
I was trying my very best to sound professional, but I felt like the elephant in the room. I knew all of them. What if I’m the angle they go after?
Agent Walker raised a hand, so I motioned for him to speak. “So,” all I could see was the smirk, “that is one possible connection. But what about Steve Hale? He just got to Wakefield, I mean. And Ariel Warren? She’s just a kid. What does Lawson’s company have to do with her?”
Murmurs begin to echo in the room. “This is just grasping at straws, if you ask me, Detective. A link has to actually link all the victims together. Make clear the motive of the murderer.”
Murderer. The word echoes.
My head spun. The whispers grew louder. The room suddenly felt suffocating. How long have we been in here? Oh, God, did someone just point at me? It’s too dark to see.
Murderer. I look at Rebecca all the way at the back of the room, and for a split second, she’s covered in smoke. It’s hard to breathe, and I’m almost panicking now. A few people stand up and are talking over each other, but I can’t make out what they’re saying.
All I think of is Lawson. Dead. Killed. By me. The murderer.
The room is suddenly coated in black ash, and I start scraping my feet on the floor to push it back, the dust, the ash.
“Olivia,” I hear someone whisper, and I panic even more. They’re gonna get me. “Hey, Liv.”
Vanessa?
A hand grips my arm, and I jump out of my chair. It falls back. There is silence.
“S-sorry, I need some air,” I say to the dozens of questioning eyes. The lights come on, and I squint at the ground as I move to the door.
Outside, I don’t stop. I brisk-walk all the way to the storage room at the back of the building and shut the door behind me.
I am breathing heavily, but no air is getting to my lungs. My desk is plastered with pictures and case files, and I push them all onto the floor. Leaning on the desk, I try to calm myself. It was an accident. Why can’t they accept that? Why can’t I accept that?
The door clicks open, and I quickly shift, sitting on the desk and folding my arms. My hands are trembling.
“Olivia, are you alright?” It’s Rebecca. I feel the panic rising up again. She slowly walks up to my desk, where I’m still nodding.
“Work can get to us sometimes. I know it’s not easy,” she stands in front of me now. I don’t know where to look.
I ruined her life. I killed her husband. Drove her son away. I started this. And now these people? The Thompson brothers, Ariel Warren, Cindy? They did nothing wrong.
I hid my face in my hands.
“It’s not your fault, Olivia,” her voice is soft. “I know your mind’s trailing back to the accident, but it’s not your fault. And it’s not relevant to this case.”
But it was. It’s the link.
She holds my folded arms gently. I am suddenly eight again, and she is screaming at me.
What did you do?
I gasp. Rebecca is startled and lets go. “Do you need some time off?”
She steps back and regains her official stance. I shake my head and mumble, “No, Chief. Thanks, but I’m fine.”
It dawns on me that I won’t be able to convince her. I know there is more to this than meets the eye. And I’ll be damned if I don’t find out.
When Rebecca walks out, I pick up all the papers and photographs and line them up on my table.
Cindy Beckett stares up at me, and I quickly scribble ‘missing documents’ on a sticky note and place it over her photograph. Then I’m halfway through the financial papers on the Thompson brothers when Luke bursts through the door.
