Whatever Remains (2 page)

             
“Cold?” Asher asked.

             
“Little bit.”

             
If she was honest, there was something thrilling about a cold breeze on a date night. It pressed them together, two people seeking shelter against one another. It was a silly thought – one that hadn’t crossed her mind in years – and she chased it away with an internal headshake; she had no room for
anything
silly in her life anymore.

             
The sidewalk curled round the house and joined the drive where it forked; the right branch fed into the drive-under garage at the back of the house, and the other continued down the hill to the parking pad beside the barn. Security lights at the garage and down by the barn – around the arena and over the double front doors – anchored a property black with night and liquid with shifting shadows. It was eerie: long fingers of branches, bowing stalks of pompous grass, rattling of a loose chain somewhere.

             
Asher used his remote to unlock his 4-Runner and Jade stole one last moment to take visual inventory of the farm – what she could see of it – before she left. It was an old habit that she and Jeremy shared, this unending obsession with crossing Is and dotting Ts. Horses, she swore, made a person OCD. She checked that the garage doors were down and the water dish for the cats was full; she checked that the barn doors were open a crack and that the gate leading through the side paddock to the arena was closed; she looked –

             
Something was in her arena. A dog. A thin, lanky, fluffy-tailed thing snuffling along the ground. Not a dog – a
coyote
.

             
“Hey!” She shook her arm loose from Asher’s and took three long strides down the driveway, clapping her hands. “Get! Get outta here!”

             
Asher said, “What?”

             
The coyote lifted its head and went still; she could tell he was staring at her, even all this distance away. There was something else, she saw, something down at its feet: whatever it had been smelling.

             
She took another few steps, smacking her palms together. “Get lost!”

             
“Jade,” Asher said behind her, “what is – shit! Is that a wolf?”

             
Later, she would roll her eyes about him thinking there could possibly be a wolf in Georgia, but for the moment, she was riveted by the uneven shape in the middle of the arena. The coyote went flitting away, more light-footed than any dog, squeezing between the fence boards and disappearing in the woods. But his prey hadn’t stirred. It was too large to be a possum or rabbit, and not the right shape for a deer. His dinner? she wondered. Had he been eating…?

             
“Jade!” Asher called, and his voice sounded far away because she had, to her surprise, gone halfway down the drive and was closing in on the barn at a fast clip. Her pumps rapped against the asphalt, the sound echoing against the trunks of the old oaks that shaded the drive and played havoc on her depth perception as their shadows weaved together. Asher’s flat-soled loafers started down behind her.

             
For reasons she didn’t understand, curiosity had become too big to ignore inside her mind, and she had to know what poor thing lay under the lights on the arena sand. If it was a grisly coyote kill, she’d need to warn Jeremy; she didn’t want Clara seeing it when they went down for night check. If it was still alive – whatever it was – she’d need to put it out of its misery.

             
Her heels went through the turf like aerating spikes when she left the drive, so she walked on her tiptoes; felt the grass slap at her ankles. There was a pedestrian gate that accessed the paddock behind the barn and it squealed as she pushed it open. There was a path – a worn track in the grass where she and Jeremy and their students had passed hundreds of times.

             
Asher caught up to her. “Jade, what’s going on? What if that animal’s still down here?” He sounded more than a little frightened by the prospect. “You’re gonna ruin your shoes.”

             
The arena – 100x200 and filled with natural white sand – gleamed pale and eerie in the lamplight. Her eyes went straight to the center, to what she’d thought must be the coyote’s meal, and her brain registered the image before logic would allow her to believe it.

             
She’d seen this before – the outstretched arms, the sunken hollows of prepubescent hips and chest, the gangly legs curled – so many times in arenas: a child thrown from a horse, gathering their breath before they sat up, bawling over their most recent spill.

             
Only there was no horse.

             
There was an empty stretch of sand, a figure too still to be real, and all she heard was the thunderous leap of her own pulse cutting through the static whisper of the wind.

             
“Is that –  ” Asher started.

             
Jade wet her lips and fought the panicky bile rising in her throat. “Call 9-1-1.”

2

             
W
hy? Why, of all the houses in the county, did it have to be
that
house? Had Ben believed in karma, he’d say this was her way of screwing him over after all this time.

             
Lucky for him, all he believed in was the existence of evil. And numerical statistics. Statistically, it was only a matter of time until evil found its way to 4253 Iris Lane.

             
But, statistics or no, it sucked big ones that he’d been the detective to get the call.

             
He had a 2011 Charger – dark blue and rear wheel drive for police practicality – and the radio knob had snapped off two days before; he couldn’t adjust the volume or turn the thing off. Short of unscrewing the antennae – which he was about ten minutes from pulling over and doing – he was stuck shuffling through channels. “Sympathy for the Devil” seemed too ironic for words, so he flipped to the pop station and settled for some chart-topping British boy band shit that was slightly more tolerable than rap or hipster elevator music garbage. He wanted to turn the damn thing off, but in a way, maybe the noise was a good thing. Maybe collecting his thoughts was a piss-poor idea because once dread took hold of him, he wasn’t sure he could be objective when he arrived at the house on Iris Lane.

             
Instead – prepubescent boys singing shrilly about love they could only pretend to understand in the background – he went back to the statistics. They were comforting.

             
Unlike a few choice members of the Homicide unit, Ben had never viewed his job as something finite. There was no clock-in/clock-out; no deserved “me” time, as someone had put it in the break room one day. There were murders, and there were solves, and the cases that unfolded in between were liquid: he worked them, as hard as he could, to the best of his ability, until he had grounds for an arrest, and if that involved all-nighters and bad takeout pizza for three straight months, so be it. He was a perfectionist. He was maybe a little OCD. And he didn’t believe in shutting off his phone or taking two-week vacations just to “get away from it all.” His phone was always on and he was always ready to drop whatever meager scraps of a personal life he had left when a detective was needed on a scene. He’d heard the other guys say – behind his back – that he was long overdue for a meltdown or a burnout. He was a Marine – neither of those things was coming. And his on-the-job attitude was something he was trying to pass along to his new partner.

             
Not always with success.

             
Trey Kaiden rented a room in an old farmhouse owned by two of his high school friends on the other side of the mountain from their newest crime scene. Ben tried to forgive his frat boy lifestyle – he was only twenty-seven and the economic downswing had left all of them scrambling for lodging – but he had certain expectations. When he swung into the crowded gravel drive – Hondas and Toyotas were clustered together under a stand of trees and covered in bird droppings – and didn’t see his partner ready and waiting for him, it sent a surge of annoyance through him. It didn’t help that he was already keyed up about Iris Lane.

             
He blew the horn twice. A moment later, the front door slammed open and Trey jogged down the end of the porch, struggling into a windbreaker, sneakers unlaced.

             
“Jesus,” Ben said to himself.

             
He wasn’t a bad kid: attractive in an easy sort of way, friendly, non-confrontational. He looked like he’d been a popped-collar prep at one point, and had decided to go for “cool” now that he was on the force and didn’t want to be ribbed by the other guys. Women – witnesses and suspects alike – responded well to him, and most men couldn’t find anything too coppish about him that set off their alarm bells. Ben wasn’t sure he’d ever make a great detective, but in Cobb County, he didn’t think that was ever going to be an issue.

             
“I gave you a twenty minute heads up,” he said by way of greeting as Trey fell into the passenger seat and pulled the door shut. “And you didn’t have your shoes tied? You have to be ready faster than that.”

             
“Yeah.” Trey pitched forward in the seat to lace his Nikes as Ben threw the Charger in reverse. “Sorry about that. I had a date.”

             
It wasn’t even nine and the date had already progressed to the state of undress: had to give the guy credit for that.

             
“What’s with this?” Trey gestured toward the radio; he chuckled. “Research for the next time you try to pick up an eighteen-year-old?”

             
Ben toed the gas and heard the thump of the kid’s head hitting the glove box.

             
Trey didn’t respond – he was smart enough to never be indignant – but sat back, changed the station back to classic rock (the Stones were done and Free was on) and asked, “So what’s the case?”

             
This was the part that had caught Ben’s heart in his throat; for a handful of seconds, before the victim’s age had registered in his mind and he’d realized she was too old to be Clara, he’d felt something he never had before. A great sweeping riptide of emotion, spicy and nauseating, had flooded his every nerve, leaving him dumbstruck and breathless on his brother’s patio.
What if it’s her?
he’d thought, and his lungs had seized and he’d choked on cigar smoke. Then “eleven” had struck home and, just as quickly as it had come, the tide went surging back out again, leaving him weak as a baby. In those few, desperate seconds, his very worst fear had been confirmed: he had a weakness. A strong one. Crippling, actually. He’d decided to put it out of his mind…at least until they reached the crime scene.

             
“Eleven-year-old white female,” he said, and heard Trey’s snatch of breath; no cop liked working child murders. “Found on the neighbor’s property. First responders found what looks like a puncture wound, but we won’t know anything till we talk to the medical examiner.”

             
“Shit,” Trey said, voice quavering.

             
“Get the nerves outta your system now,” Ben told him. “Uniforms said the mother’s hysterical and the neighbors are pretty shook up. There’s a pack of Marlboros and a Snickers in the glove box if you need it.”

             
He stole a sideways glance as he drove and saw Trey’s fast grimace of disgust in the dash lights; Ben smiled to himself. So newbie didn’t like the thought of being too rattled to handle the scene – another point in his favor.

             
“What’s the address?”

             
Ben told him.

             
“Iris…Isn’t that a farm? Don’t they give riding lessons there or something?”

             
“How would you know?”

             
“My little sister’s been bugging my mom about learning – she had a flier taped up on her wall. It’s called Castle or something. Cadbury?”

             
“Canterbury,” Ben supplied, and felt Trey’s eyes on him. He didn’t offer to explain.

             
By the time they’d navigated the side streets off Burnt Hickory – at least four deer streaking in front of the car in the headlights, diving into the national park grounds – Trey had managed to tie both shoes and was watching out the window like an excited puppy. They had to drive past the victim’s house on the way into the farm and Ben took note: a brown ranch with a yard in need of a makeover, lights blazing in the windows. And then the sign for Canterbury Farm reared up on his left, stacked stone and stucco with a solar light that illuminated the glossy stylized lettering. There was an open gate, and black board fence flanking a drive shaded by oaks that bore scars from the Civil War. In the daylight, it was picturesque; at night, it looked like the entrance to some medieval house of torture, and in a way, he supposed that’s what it was. For him.

             
“Nice place,” Trey observed as they swept up the slow curve toward the house. It stood – flat-roofed and glittering with lit windows – on a hill landscaped to perfection, more solar lights giving glimpses of manicured beds and trees, a swingset in the front yard for Clara. It was midcentury – brick and dark wood siding, too many windows and two-story on the back half, flanked by skinny cedars at the north and south ends.

             
Ben knew it well: the feel – polished brick and wood and leather – the taste of the air and the smell of things cooking undercut by furniture polish. He knew what the view from the living room back toward the barn looked like, the gentle roll of pasture. He knew which stairs creaked. He knew the dry warmth of the sunken family room when a fire was roaring on the stone hearth and snow flurries were swirling past the windows. Even if he hadn’t been there often, the place had stamped itself across his senses, an image of what might have been, like an alternate reality he got to step inside every few months.

             
Why?
he thought again.
Of all the houses, why did it have to be this one?

There was a small crowd down by the barn, just within reach of the arena lights, the civilians clustered tightly together, apart from the bright blue tarp that shielded the corpse. Techs in dark uniforms were moving over the sand, throwing long, distorted shadows, placing markers and taking pictures; their camera flashes seemed almost alien from a distance. Ben had been at this so long that the thought of a body sprawled and waiting for him didn’t touch his nerves; it was the thought of who might be standing at the fence that tightened his gut and flexed his fingers. In the detached, professional part of his brain, he took stock of the white medical examiner’s and CSI’s vans and the white-and-blue patrol car, the two uniforms walking up to meet them.

              “Detectives,” one of them called, and Ben recognized him as Ortiz by voice alone, which meant the other was his partner, Myers. “Doctor Harding,” he said of the county ME, “has already examined the body. He’s waiting to give you an overview and the CSIs are doing their thing.”

             
“Good.” Ben paused beneath the inky shadow of an oak. Ortiz and Myers drew to a halt in front of them and it was too dark to make out their faces. “Who found the body?”

             
“Farm owner,” Myers said, and Ben cursed inwardly. “Jade Donovan. She was leaving the house around eight – with one of the other witnesses, Asher McMahon, on a date or something – when they saw the body and went down to see what it was. McMahon was the one who called 9-1-1.”

             
Ben blinked, then nodded, though they couldn’t see him. “Who’s down there?”

             
“Donovan and McMahon,” Ortiz said. “A second farm owner – Carver – and the vic’s mother, Alicia Latham.”

             
The mother: that was a pleasant thought.

             
“She’s in bad shape?” Trey asked.

             
Myers snorted. “What do you think?”

             
“Try not to say anything that stupid when we get down there,” Ben chastised. To the uniforms, he said, “Thanks,” and started toward the barn. When they left the shadows, and there was enough ambient light to see, he scribbled names in his pad: McMahon, Carver, Latham, and then Jade – just Jade.

             
Dr. Harding met them at the gate. “Detective Haley.” He was a man of few words: nothing but the essentials. Ben liked him.

             
“Doc. Do you mind walking my partner through it while I talk to the witnesses?”

             
Harding flicked a glance toward the bystanders; a woman, obviously the mother, was weeping in great shuddering sobs, murmuring, “My baby,” over and over; someone held her, and Ben figured he knew who. He lifted one shoulder in what might have been a shrug. “Good luck with that.” He flicked his fingers. “Come along, Kaiden. I’ve got vomit to show you.”

             
“Thanks,” Trey muttered as he climbed over the fence.

             
In truth, Ben would have rather
licked
the vomit than do what he was about to. But it was important he not allow himself to be swayed by personal discomfort; this case had to be worked like any other, despite whose arena in which their body had been found. And he wanted to question the mother while she was still raw; he wanted to get a sense of her true reaction to the loss of her child before she had a chance to compose herself and started thinking about what she should say rather than what she couldn’t keep from saying. It was a cruel truth: in child murders, the parents were always under suspicion. When it came to passionate crimes, no one was more passionate than a parent.

             
His witnesses were at the rail, the fence between them and the body, where the light was just strong enough to cast long black shadows down their faces. The mother was obvious: pinned-up hair and baggy sweats, shattered breathing, heaving sobs, thin fingers clenched round the arm supporting her. She was the picture of every grieving mother he’d come across; it was the girl – the woman – holding her that sent gooseflesh down his spine.