Secrets and Lies (9 page)

When she approached the front desk officer she could immediately tell he wasn’t pleased to see her. It was as if she were an interruption to his doughnut eating day—a nice fresh glaze doughnut from what she could tell. She really shouldn’t have ditched breakfast because that doughnut was starting to look tempting.

“I’m here about my mother,” she said before he chuckled. Well, that was rude, and uncalled for, and if that was how they ran the precinct then now she knew how bodies just vanished into thin air.

“You’re a little old for a child abuse case…we don’t really deal with eighteen year olds here.”

She snorted. She knew she had a tendency to pass for anything between sixteen and twenty-two depending on who was looking. There was an older lady who thought she was fourteen, but she attributed that to the glasses the woman had in her hand instead of on her face.

“She’s missing,” she snapped.

“Down the hall to your right,” he dismissed her by shoving the remainder of the doughnut in his mouth. It was like half the doughnut! How could he fit it in his mouth and still have room to chew?

She stood there, looking astonished at the site in front of her. She had seen many men eat before, but never once had they piled food in their mouth as if it were going to magically disappear if they ate it in pieces. She shrugged. He mumbled something garbled.

“I’m sorry; I couldn’t understand you with that half masticated doughnut in your mouth. Chew, swallow and then speak,” she reminded him. Good Lord, where had manners gone to? Vanished, she assumed, like everything else in that precinct seemed to do. She had never disliked cops before, but she was starting to dislike them now. What on earth was her tax dollars helping pay for? If they didn’t want to do their job they should have relinquished the position to somebody who did. There were plenty of people still out of work; she was sure any number of them would be willing to do the job. So far she had encountered cops who wouldn’t even work her mother’s case. She didn’t know much about police work—sure, she had seen a few episodes of CSI New York and Cold Case, but she didn’t know much outside of that. What she had expected, and maybe the television shows had jaded her view of reality, but what she had expected was that somebody would at least make a show of pretending to work her mother’s case.

“I said,” he swallowed the chewed up doughnut. “Down the hall and to your right.”

“Somebody there will help me?”

“Down the hall and to your right,” he repeated before walking away.

Great. What was down the hall and to her right? Another door, another desk, a dead body? She blew out an exasperated breath. Clearly she wasn’t going to find out the answer to her question without going down the hall and to her right so she went, down the hall and to her right. What she found was just a door that led to stairs. “What am I supposed to do now?”

“Are you looking for something, ma’am?”

She jumped, startled by the masculine voice behind her. An officer, she deduced from the uniform, badge and gun…then again, in this place he could have been a stripper in costume. She was starting to wonder if she actually came to the right place. Or maybe she had stepped through the front doors into the Twilight Zone because the experience so far had been so far removed from what she thought it would be, thought it should be, that she was starting to wonder if this really was reality.

“The officer at the front desk told me to come down the hall and go to my right, but he didn’t say where to go after that. I’m here about my mother—”

“Oh,” he cut her off. Did everybody know her already or something? She was sure she hadn’t seen any of them before so why did they all seem to know exactly what she was there for. “If he sent you this way then he must have wanted you to go to MP. That’s up the stairs, third floor, first door. You can’t miss it.”

He walked away before she could ask what MP was. She shrugged. “Up the stairs, third floor, first door,” she repeated. She walked up the stairs, to the third floor and through the first door where a friendly female officer greeted her with a smile. Now, this was the police department she expected. Friendly, helpful…after all wasn’t it the police mantra to protect and serve? Although she gathered there was nothing in that mantra about doing either of those things with kindness and grace.

“I’m here about my mother.”

“I see.” She sighed. “It’s sad when it’s family, but worse when it’s a parent.”

“I know,” Thena shook her head. “You just never expect…in your wildest dreams…that it could ever happen.”

“Yeah, we see this a lot.”

“You do?” Thena shouldn’t have been surprised really. They lost her mother; of course they had lost others. The ME’s office was right in the basement of their building and they couldn’t stop a body from rolling out the front door…her confidence in the police was rapidly diminishing.

“Oh yes. It’s bad all around, but at least when it’s the children you have people who will work harder to find them.”

Thena shook her head. They lost children too? What kind of a place was this?

“I can see you’re upset. Look, I’ll get Chris to help you out. He has a huge caseload, but he’ll definitely give you more time than some of the others.” She waved Chris over to the desk.

Chris was tall, dark chocolate sexy, and built like a man who worked out daily. He was—wow! He was hot. She had a friend she wouldn’t mind introducing to him, except she lived in Washington State most of the year. Still, for a man like that she could make a trip back to Boston for a while. Hannah, the volcanologist, could work from anywhere in the world—she had worked from anywhere in the world.

She mentally told herself to fix her friend up second, find her mother’s body first.

“Her mother’s missing,” the friendly officer said. “Help her out will ya?”

“Gloria…if you weren’t so lovable I’d hate you for this.” He laughed. “Come on over to my desk and I’ll take the report.”

Shouldn’t they already have a report? It wasn’t like she went missing this morning.

She sat down at his window positioned desk. The view of downtown Boston was gloriously beautiful—but then most cities looked beautiful from above. It’s when people got down on the streets and walked around that they realized just how messed up a place could be.

He asked the particulars about weight, height, eye color, etc. Then he looked at her and said, “when is the last time you saw her?”

“Well,” she sighed. “We found her Monday, and she vanished again…I guess Wednesday night; I think.”

“Again? Does she have some kind of dementia?”

“Certainly not,” she gasped. He held up his hand.

“It hasn’t been forty-eight hours and I can’t take the report until forty-eight hours have passed.”

“You,” she took in a deep breath to steady her nerves. “Okay, not you, but somebody in this building lost my mother’s body and I want some answers.”

“Body?” He raised an eyebrow.

“Yes, body.”

“She’s dead.”

“Yes,” she stressed.

“Then what are you doing up here?”

“The guy at the front desk sent me down the hall and to the right, and then the officer I met in the hall told me up the stairs, third floor and first door. So that’s what I’m doing up here.” She could tell from the twitch in his lips that he was trying not to laugh.

“Ma’am, this is missing persons, as in not dead—at least we hope they’re not dead when we find them.”

She shook her head. “So where should I go?”

He shrugged. “Downstairs, homicide. Talk to Captain McGillicudy.”

“Downstairs?”

“Second floor,” he smiled. “The third door on your left will get you into the right department. You’ll need to ask the front desk officer to get the Captain for you.”

She sighed before gathering her handbag from her lap and standing. “Thank you, detective…what was your name?”

“Chris Daniels,” he extended his hand. “And you’re welcome ma’am. I hope you get the answers you’re looking for.”

“Thank you.” She left the third floor, went down to the second floor and asked the front desk officer to see the captain. The captain was already on his way toward the door by the time she looked up.

“Captain, she’s here,” came the terse response of the front desk officer. Were they expecting her? Of course they were. How could they not expect family to show up and inquire about the accidental misplacement of their loved one’s body?

“You’re late,” he snapped. How could she be late when she wasn’t even expected?

“I’m sorry. I was sent up to missing person’s first…” he held up his hand and not so politely told her to stop talking.

“We’ll take my car,” he snapped. “If I hadn’t had to wait for you I could have been there already. Dead bodies don’t just wait you know.”

“Where exactly are they going to go?” He looked at her in a way that told her she should shut up or risk punishment. Well, at least they had found her mother. That was a plus. But why did he need her to go with him. Couldn’t they just bring her back to the morgue?

The ride over had been quiet and tense. The Captain hadn’t uttered two words to her...that is two polite words. He had told her, the moment she tried to speak, that he didn’t want her excuses…he had said that with several expletives in between each word.

When they arrived at the Victorian designed home she saw the mass of officers and medical trucks outside. The good captain had told her to move her feet, so she moved her feet. It wasn’t until she entered the living room and saw the blood soaked carpet that she felt nauseated. Surely this wasn’t about her mother, and it would have been better if he had discussed her case in his office instead of at a crime scene.

“I hate blood and mutilated bodies,” she groaned, placing her hand over her stomach.

“Then why the hell did you become a homicide detective? A cop can’t be squeamish.”

“I’m not a cop.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m not a cop.”

“Then why did you say you were.”

“I didn’t. I started to introduce myself to you down at the station, but you held up your hand, told me you didn’t have time for introduction and to get my…behind, only you used an expletive, in the car. Seeing as though it’s not physically possible for me to get just my behind into the car I assumed you wanted all of me in there. You weren’t up for conversation on the way over here—” He held up his hand again and she stopped talking. Clearly there had been a mistake. She could only imagine he was expecting a new officer to start today…but wouldn’t he know who the officer was…or more like, shouldn’t he know?

“Who the hell are you?” He growled.

“Thena,” she said. “Thena Davis. I wanted to talk to you about my mother’s missing body.” The other detectives on the scene stopped what they were doing and looked over in observation of a situation that was growing tenser by the second. This wasn’t her fault. He told her to get in the car? So she got in the car.

He mumbled several more curses, grabbed her by the arm and bodily forced her out the door and back into his car. This time, instead of putting her in the passenger seat, he made sure he tucked her away in the back like a criminal.

When they arrived at the station he put her in a holding cell, all the while muttering curses about how stupid she was and how he wasn’t letting her leave until somebody came to get her. He had even mentioned pressing charges against her…but then she quickly reminded him that she never said she was a cop and he never gave her a chance to say anything. Her words inspired more curses. He ordered the guard to make her sit for a couple hours and then let her use the phone. Great, she was in lockup and nobody could come rescue her because nobody knew where she was. She couldn’t call a lawyer either. The only saving grace was that they hadn’t actually booked her. She wouldn’t actually have a record.

After two hours of sitting in with the hookers and druggies she finally got her phone call. Boy was she in trouble. Who could she call that she could be sure would answer the phone…would not only answer, but would also drop everything to come get her?

“McGregor Investigations.”

“Janet, this is Thena. Is Thomas there? It’s an emergency.”

“Um…his phone is on the do not disturb setting.”

“Janet, please! I can’t call back.” Panic was starting to set in. This was starting to remind her of the first trip she took by herself. She was eighteen at the time and she flew to visit some friends in New York. Of course she and her friends hadn’t actually coordinated everything and she assumed her friend would pick her up at the gate. Then she found out that nobody could come back to the gate. So she went to baggage claim even though she didn’t have a bag. Despite the airport being empty on the inside it was bumper to bumper traffic on the outside. She had felt sudden panic and fear and she made a collect call to her father. She remembered the operator coming back after trying to put the call through. Thena thought she was going to tell her she couldn’t get through and she went into panic attack mode before the operator calmed her down and told her she was simply trying to tell her the privacy setting on their phone line was going to make it take longer for her to connect the call. She laughed about it a year later. Maybe she would laugh about this too—in ten years. It might take that long for her to get out of here. Then again, they’d probably lose her body too, and her body did not wish to be lost.