Whatever Remains (19 page)

             
They passed beneath a tree and Clara glanced up at the branches. “I think so.”

             
Ahead of them, at the edge of the property, something moved in the underbrush, rattling limbs. Atlas paused, ears pricked, listening.

             
“Clara, baby, did…did Grace tell you a secret? When she came for dinner?”

             
“Yes,” Clara said, automatically. She was still such a baby; still so trusting. “But she said not to tell anyone.”

             
Jade tightened her arms around her girl. “You can tell me. Can’t you?”

             
“Hmm…” Clara thought about it a long moment, then said, “Okay.” 

“You need anything? Coffee? Coke?”

              Jared was methodically chewing all of his nails down to the quick and pulled his pinky from between his teeth long enough to say, “Does my dad know I’m here?”

             
“No.” Ben toed the interrogation room door shut and sipped his own coffee. “You want me to call him? Explain that we’re talking to you about that little girl that got killed down the street?”

             
Thinking seemed to be a painful process for him; his brows knotted across his forehead and his mouth did something fish-like.

             
“You’re an adult,” Ben reminded, sitting opposite him at the wobbly card table. “You don’t need your dad here to answer my questions. Unless, that is, you want your daddy to know you’re in trouble.” He grinned evilly. “Are you in trouble, Jared? Or are you just clearing some stuff up for me?”

             
“C-c-clearing stuff up,” Jared said in a rush. His defiance had abandoned him on the ride to the precinct.

             
Ben nodded. “Good. We’ll talk while my partner looks through your house and then, hopefully” – another bastard smile – “we won’t find anything.”

             
The kid almost looked hopeful about the prospect. Idiot.

             
“Alright. So.” Ben pulled the clear evidence sleeve with Alicia’s backdoor key from his jacket pocket and laid it on the table between them. Jared’s eyes went to it, and his fingers laced together in his lap; he wet his lips, but said nothing. Under the harsh overhead tubes, his hair was dull and muddy, his complexion sallow. “Have you ever seen this before?”

             
“No.”

             
“You wanna think about that before you answer?”

             
“
No
.”

             
Ben sighed for effect, like he was disappointed. “It’s the key to Alicia Latham’s back door. And we pulled your prints off it.”

             
Oh how quickly a spoiled brat became a horror-stricken little shit. Jared was so pale he was almost translucent; he shook his head, hair flopping, eyes rimmed in white. He sucked in a deep breath and said, “Dude, I did not kill that little girl. I swear to God – ”

             
“We’re talking about the key right now.”

             
“But I – ” It was a desperate, pleading look he lifted across the table to Ben. “It’s gotta be like…like, a mistake! Someone musta like, framed me. Put my fingerprints on that key…? I didn’t, man, I swear!”

             
“That’s a cute story,” Ben said. “But all that stuff on TV – mastermind serial killers stealing people’s prints – that’s just TV. No one on your street’s a mastermind of anything, Jared. So how ‘bout you quit yanking me around and tell me what you were doing with that key –  ”

             
There was a rap at the door behind him and Rice poked his head through. He made a disgusted face. “His lawyer’s here.”

             
Ben swore internally. He glanced back at Jared. “I thought we weren’t going to drag your dad into this?”

             
The kid sank down in his chair as low as he could get, bony shoulders poking up at odd angles. “I sent him a text.”

             
“Great.” Ben pushed up from the table and joined his captain out in the hall, gut tight with disappointment. “I had eyes on him the whole time,” he said, thinking of Jared bending low over his sneakers to lace them; he could have fired off a fast message then. “I didn’t think he’d had a chance – ”

             
Rice cut him off with a wave. Now that they were in the hall, out of sight of Jared, there was a thin smile flirting with his impassive face. “Your partner called,” he said. “The techs started their search in the Reddings’ basement, where that sink is the mother mentioned. They swabbed and found blood in the drain.”

             
Ben shrugged. “Yeah, but if he’s dressing deer and turkey and shit in there, then – ”

             
“And,” Rice said, “in one of the cabinets, in a trash bag – bloody clothes. A kid’s clothes. Size ten jeans and t-shirt covered in blood.”

             
Something hot and solid punched at the base of Ben’s throat: victory. “Our vic’s?”

             
“We’ll  know when the lab tests it, but yeah, they’re hers. I’ll start working on an arrest warrant. Hold onto the kid,” he said, “and bring in the father.”

“Far be it from me to suggest anyone see the man voluntarily,” Jeremy said as he forked Alpo into
Keely’s dish on the kitchen floor, “but you need to tell Ben.”

             
Jade sighed and propped a hip against the counter. She’d been afraid of this. “He’s been adamant from the day she was born: Clara is not going to ever get involved in anything work-related.”

             
Jeremy gave the Aussie a pat on the head and stood. The look he shot her told her she was ten kinds of stupid. “I’m sorry, are you setting her up as some drug informant? Um, no. If little Grace was babbling on about who killed her sister, and Clara knows, then your prick of a dick needs to know. The goal here is to catch a murderer, Jade.”

             
She glanced out the windows at the darkening night, the clouds building up low and heavy like boulders over the tree tops. “Why do I live with you again?” she asked.

             
He leaned in and kissed her temple. “’Cause you adore me.”

             
She sighed. “You’re lucky I do.”

13

             
“
I
named her Clara,” Jade said the day she was born, and Ben heaved a sigh of relief that left his lungs empty and shaking. From the moment he’d learned it was a girl – during one of those tense, monosyllabic phone calls throughout which Jade had been sniffling at the very edge of tears – he’d been hoping, praying, that one name in particular wouldn’t make it onto Jade’s list of favorites. He told himself the odds were slim; what were the chances that that particular grouping of letters would catch Jade’s eyes as she trolled through baby name websites? But he’d been afraid; for nine long months he’d flinched every time the thought crossed his mind: what if she named the baby Shelby? But then she’d arrived, and she’d been Clara; she’d had his last name and his eyes and he’d been stuck. At least the name was okay – thank the lord for small favors.

             
Jade didn’t know about Shelby. It had never come up in conversation and Ben had never felt like sharing. There were some youthful transgressions he didn’t feel the need to blame for all that was wrong with his adult life. Jade didn’t need to know about any of it; she didn’t need to hear a story about a Marine back home, brass buttons of his uniform shiny enough for people to see their reflections in them, and a cold empty house waiting for him. She didn’t need to know about Athens and the life he’d left and the reasons he’d transferred to Cobb PD as soon as he was able: so he could be close to his little brother.

             
Shelby was gone before he ever put the ring on her finger. All the while he was writing her letters under a flashlight beam, she was having a laugh about him with whoever she was screwing that day, week, month, year. He’d tried to slice himself off a piece of normal all-American, and it had all been a charade. A pretty parlor trick that had fooled him right up until he’d found a man’s name on the apartment listing alongside hers. That was the way things went. Some guys got silver platter lives…some didn’t. He was fine with that. He’d long ago made his peace.

             
But there was a Clara. And there was a frightened-sounding Jade who wanted to talk to him. And in the middle of an interrogation, he was walking out into the parking lot, breath leaving his lungs in a long white plume of steam, and he was putting his all-business life on hold for the life he’d never asked for.

             
The truck was parked up by the street, away from the cop foot traffic so they’d have some semblance of privacy. It was a black, oily night, a fine mist just getting started, unusually cold for this time of year. Ben turned up his jacket collar and ducked down against the first drops that hit his forehead, crossing the lot in a handful of long strides.

             
Jade stood beneath a black umbrella at the open passenger door; the flash of white he saw kicking off the seat were Clara’s sneakers, he knew. She sat sideways, watching his approach, shielded by one half of her mom’s umbrella. The sight of her face – the smooth white curve of it – did things to his insides. It tempered him.

             
“What’s wrong?” he asked Jade. “I’m in the middle of something.”

             
Her lips pressed together in the pale oval of her face. She was in a brown fleece jacket with the hood up, breeches and short boots. She’d come straight from the barn without showering. “I’m not trying to pull you away from your case,” she said in what sounded a lot like a strain at politeness. “But Clara and I had a conversation today that I think you need to hear.”

             
Alarms starting pinging in his head, but he glanced at Clara –  swinging her legs, tiny and innocent – and made himself ask, “What?”

             
The drizzle was fast turning into rain. Clara tipped her face up and said, “Mommy and I talked about secrets.”

             
“Secrets?”

             
Jade leaned down. “Swing your legs in, sweetie, and let me talk to Daddy for a minute.” When she complied, and the door was shut, Jade turned to him and the streetlamp caught a flare of something a lot like fear in her pretty blue eyes. “I had to bring her,” she said. “I know I can’t tell you what she said – because of hearsay. I know it wouldn’t be admissible if it came from me.”

             
He flashed back on a conversation with Trey, to his own fury at the thought of dragging Clara into this case. The notion had seemed absurd then, but now, he could tell that’s exactly what Jade was here to do.

             
He felt his jaw locking up. “
What
?”

             
Jade looked about as happy as he felt. “The other night, when we had Alicia and Grace over for dinner, I went up to Clara’s room and walked in on her talking to Grace. I didn’t think too much of it at the time, but today…” She shook her head. “You need to talk to Clara. Like, officially.”

             
Ben took a deep breath, and then another. Neither helped. “Do you hear yourself? What you’re asking me to do?”

             
“Ben, I’m – ”

             
“Wanting me to treat my daughter like a witness?”

             
“No. I want you to catch whoever the hell is murdering children on my street. And if Clara knows something that could help you, I think you should listen to her.”

             
He jammed his hands in his pockets to keep them still. “I’m close to making an arrest tonight. I don’t need whatever Clara has to say.”

             
Her glare was murderous. “
Ben
. Shut up and listen to me for a second. I know that’s impossible, but
try
.” When he didn’t respond, only matched her stare, she continued. “That’s great you’ve got somebody. I hope he’s your guy. But this afternoon, Clara trusted me enough – and she had the good sense enough – to tell me what Grace told her. I want her to come to me when she’s unsure about something; I want to reward her for that, not brush her off to the side. You’re a cop – it’s your job to collect all the info about a case you can – and I want her to know that too. So can you please, for once in your life, humor both of us here? It’ll only take five minutes.”

             
He didn’t need this; he so did not need this. If he walked them through the precinct to his desk, if he took Clara’s statement down on yellow legal paper, if he played that charade…He felt like he’d been asked to march his family through a war zone. If one person spotted them…If one too-curious detective got to thinking about that flower mug on his desk and started connecting dots…

             
Jade read his mind; she was good at that. “No one knows who we are to you,” she said on a sigh. “Unless you’ve got some big picture on your desk or something” – there might have been a note of hope in her voice – “then we’re just the Lathams’ neighbors. Your job’s not in trouble.”

             
Guilt streaked through him before he could clamp down on it. “This has shit-all to do with my job.” She lifted her brows. “Clara’s four. I don’t want to put her through this.”

             
“She is four, which means she’s extremely adaptable. She’ll think this is some super cool adventure, going into the police station. Trust me, this past week, Clara hasn’t been the traumatized one.”

             
It had been Jade, he realized, looking into her shadowy eyes beneath the umbrella. She’d been running the what-if scenarios the same way he had. They’d both stared at their ceilings, thanking God it wasn’t their little girl in a morgue drawer.

             
He blew out a loud breath and felt his shoulders sag: he was caving. “She’ll have to talk to Trey. I can’t risk putting my name on a statement if word of us ever got out.”

             
She gave a tight nod. “Fine.”

             
Ben opened the truck door and braced a hand along the roof, shielding Clara from the rain. Guilt tweaked again because he hadn’t greeted her before. “Hey, sweetheart. How’s my pretty girl?”

             
She had her arms folded and gave him the dubious look from Rosewood the night before. “Mommy said I have to tell you Grace’s secret.”

             
Gooseflesh prickled up the back of his neck.
Secret
. Nothing that girl kept secret was anything less than horrifying at this point. “Because of what happened to Heidi,” he said gently, “it’s important for me to know if anything scary was happening to Grace. You aren’t breaking her trust, love; you’re helping me find out who hurt Heidi. Understand?”

             
Her nod was slow in coming, and he wasn’t sure she had a firm grasp on the concept. Jesus, she was only four. Almost five. Too young.

             
“Now,” he explained, “you’ll have to tell the secret to my partner, Detective Kaiden, okay? The other policemen can’t know I’m your daddy or Grace’s secret won’t help us.”

             
Her nose scrunched up. “Why not?”

             
“It’s complicated,” he said with a sigh. “I’ll explain it to you someday. But for right now, I need you to be a really big girl and talk to Detective Kaiden. And then I’ll come walk you and Mommy to the car, okay?”

             
He held out his hand and she put hers in it. Jade took her from him, pulled her against her side under the umbrella and they led the way up to the precinct door. Ben was slapped with an impulse that almost blew his cover. He had a sudden urge to scoop Clara up and hold her on his hip like when she’d been a toddler; he wanted to slip an arm around Jade’s waist and hold onto both of them, shield them, protect them. Ironically, it wasn’t the case that saved him from doing it; it was the knowledge that he had no right to take that role with either of them that kept his hands in his pockets. He’d pushed them away and pushed them away; he couldn’t pull them in close now.

             
He held the door for them. Jade folded up her umbrella and left it in the airlock. “Wait here,” he told her, and went in search of Trey. He cast one glance over his shoulder as he left, just to torture himself. They looked brave, his girls, one a miniature of the other. Under their white faces and trembling, linked fingers, they were very brave. They had to be, to live with what he’d done to them.

**

Trey was having an unsuccessful go at Scott Redding. Having his lawyer present wasn’t helping their cause. Ben rapped on the one-way glass and Trey pushed back from the table with a defeated look.

              “Never let them see you like that,” Ben said when he’d joined him in the hall and closed the door. “You need to look like the most satisfied bastard on the planet the whole time; like you’ve got everything the DA needs to put him away for life.”

             
“I’m not even interrogating him,” Trey complained, wiping a hand down his face; he needed a shave. “His lawyer says, ‘Don’t answer that,’ every damn time I ask a question.”

             
“That’s his job. You do yours and let him do his.” He propped a hand against the wall and dropped his voice. “Lemme have a go at Scott for a while. I’ve got…a favor to ask you.”

             
“Favor?” It was the first time Ben had asked for such. “You mean you would owe me?”

             
Ben rolled his eyes. “That’s usually what ‘favor’ means, doesn’t it?”

             
“Well, yeah, but…”

             
“Can you or can you not?” Ben snapped, and Trey shook off some of his fatigue, shoulders pulling square.

             
“Yeah. Definitely.”

             
In a tight whisper – falling silent every time someone came down the hall – Ben explained about Jade and Clara. Trey’s eyes were big as half dollars by the time he was done.

             
“Dude – ” He checked his volume. “You want me to take her statement down officially? Couldn’t this get…you know…messy for you?”

             
“It could. Which is why I want you to take the statement, instead of me.”

             
“Yeah, but she’s a kid. Wouldn’t this fall under the Child Crimes part of the case?”

             
“Fuck Child Crimes. This is a murder, not an episode of
SVU
. If what Clara knows pertains to this case at all, it needs taking down by a homicide detective. Can you do that for me?”

             
On some level – deep down where he wasn’t riled – Ben appreciated the seriousness with which his partner nodded. “I won’t make it hard for her. I swear.”

             
“I’d appreciate that,” Ben said through his teeth.

             
Either Trey didn’t understand the restraint it was taking not to take him by the shirtfront and shake him for emphasis, or he was choosing to ignore it. “I’ll go right now,” he said, ducking around Ben.