Whatever Remains (27 page)

             
“’Thanks’ works too, ya know.” Ben pushed his sniffling prisoner up the drive and motioned for Jeremy to follow with a tilt of his head. “Come open my car door.”

             
“Who the hell is that?” Jeremy asked. “Shit, how old is he? What are you – ”

             
Ben fired him a quelling glance that was noticed in the light of the garage security lamp. “I’m taking him in for questioning. The back one,” he said as Jeremy reached for the front passenger door of the Charger. “I figure he’ll be more cooperative in front of the one-way glass.”

             
“Dude, I didn’t…” the kid started and Ben shoved him into the backseat and slammed the door on him, locking the doors with the remote while he walked around to the driver’s side.

             
“I need you to come with me,” he told Jeremy, and was met with an
oh hell right
look. “Just listen. Unless anyone wants Heidi Latham’s case thrown out, we have to keep up the charade that I don’t know any of you.”

             
“And whose fault is that? You never should have taken this case to begin with.”

             
Ben rolled his eyes, but didn’t argue the logic. “Whatever. I need you to follow me into the precinct and feed my captain a line: you’ve been hearing things lately and you still had my card from the other night; you called me out and I found this kid.”

             
“Oh, sure,” Jeremy said with an overdone smile. “Poor little scared me; I needed a big strong man to come protect me. Do you want me to clutch your arm? Swoon?”

             
“I’ll punch your teeth in if you try,” he said levelly. “Just get in your damn rich-boy car.”

             
Jeremy complied, talking over his shoulder. “The sad part is, you actually think I’m attracted to you. That whole asshole older guy thing’s never worked for me, you know.”

             
“Good.”

Jeremy spun a lovely, believable, dramatic tale for Rice, complete with reactionary faces, hand gestures, and sad-puppy
eyes in the appropriate places. And, Ben had to give him credit, all without playing the “I need a big strong man to protect me” card. Maybe the guy had been right about that whole cliché thing…

             
Whatever.

             
“Okay, Robbie,” he said, sliding a peace offering of Coke and chips across the interview room table toward his tow-headed captive. “Now that we’re making progress” – he’d told them that his name was Robbie Bowles and that he was seventeen – “how about you tell me why you’ve freaked the hell out of Jade Donovan and Alicia Latham.”

             
Robbie stared at the Coke and poked out his cheek with his tongue, debating the wisdom of taking a gift from a cop. “Who?” he asked, distracted, as his hand started a creeping reach toward the soda.

             
“The lady who owns the barn you were sneaking around tonight. And her neighbor.”

             
His eyes flipped up; they were a watery, translucent, sickly shade of blue, the kind that always looked bloodshot. “I don’t know them.”

             
“That doesn’t change my question: What were you doing on their properties?”

             
His fingers closed around the Coke and he pulled it toward him, can grinding across the table. He popped the tab. “Am I gonna get arrested? Like, for trespassing, like you said?”

             
Jesus Christ, how many dumb kids did he have to interview for this case? “We’ve been over this. I’m a homicide detective. I don’t care about the trespassing so long as you didn’t kill anyone. You didn’t kill anyone, did you Robbie?”

             
Emphatic head shake and noisy slurp of Coke.

             
“Okay. Good. Now, Ms. Donovan and Mrs. Latham would be within their rights to file charges” – Ben had no idea if that was true; he hadn’t been in uniform in years – “if they decide they feel threatened by you. Are you a threat to them, Robbie?”

             
“No. No way, dude.”

             
“Then what,” his patience was cracking, “the fuck were you doing tonight?”

             
Robbie wrestled a moment longer, took another noisy sip of his soda, then said, “Okay, okay. Fine.” He glanced up from under his blonde fringe with typical teenage irritation. “I was going to see my girlfriend.”

             
“You’re serious? Your girlfriend?”

             
“Uh, yeah.”

             
“I’m spending my night talking to you because of some Romeo and Juliet bullshit?”

             
“You didn’t have to talk to me,” Robbie said, sulking. “Or tackle me,” he added in an undertone.

             
“Alright,” Ben sighed. “As much as I hate to say this, I’m gonna need an explanation.”

             
If he could be believed, Robbie lived on Iris Lane, in the modest yellow ranch on the other side of the Redding place. His girlfriend, Dina, lived across the street from Canterbury and while he was grounded – which had been for the past two weeks, apparently – he’d been sneaking out of his window and, too afraid of being seen if he walked down the road, he’d taken the path that ran behind the houses, letting himself out through Jade’s gate and walking up the farm drive before ducking across to Dina’s.

             
Jade was going to die when she learned she’d been hiding between hay bales over this dopey kid.

             
“You know the Reddings?” Ben asked.

             
Robbie shrugged. “Yeah. I guess so. I hang out with Jared some – used to. My parents say he’s a ‘bad influence.’”

             
“No shit. Have you seen him lately?”

             
“Not for, like, six months. I went hunting with him and his dad last fall. Me and Jared hung out, like, before school let out last year.”

             
Ben spun the case around in his mind, looking for colors and patterns unseen before. He frowned. “So you’ve been sneaking down that path to see Dina every night for the past twelve days?”

             
“Uh, that’s what I just said.”

             
“Last Friday night?”

             
“Yeah.”

             
“What time Friday?”

             
He shrugged. “Seven, maybe? Dunno. It was before eight, ‘cause my mom was getting ready to watch some stupid show and I knew she wouldn’t hear me leave.” His eyes narrowed, suspicious. “Why?”

             
“Did you see anything? Something on the path? Something unusual. At Jared’s house?”

             
He shook his head.

             
“Not anything? Not even anything that seemed normal? Did you encounter anyone else?”

             
“Nah…” He made a face. “Well, sort of. I saw Mrs. Redding go in the basement door. She’s got pottery classes Friday night and I forgot; she was coming home and, shit, I thought she saw me. If she’d told my mom…but, anyway, she just went inside and didn’t see me.”

             
Ben felt a drop of disappointment in his gut. “And that was it?”

             
“Yeah.”

             
He nodded and pushed his chair back. “Alright. Let’s go.”

             
“Shit!” Robbie sat forward hard. “You’re not, like, gonna arrest me, are you? Can’t I get a lawyer? Or shit, my dad or something? I didn’t even do anything – ”

             
“I’m taking you home, spaz,” Ben said with disgust. “Cool it.”

             
There was a knock on the door and it opened before Ben could reach it. Captain Rice’s face was flushed. “I need to see you in my office.”

             
Warning bells sounded in his head. “I gotta take this kid home.”

             
“Have a uniform do it. You: my office, now.”

18

             
O
n the way through the squad room, Ben pulled up sharp. At the water cooler, Riley’s strong hand on her shoulder in a gesture of comfort, Alicia Latham stood sobbing over a paper cup, a tissue clenched tight in her other fist. As his eyes fell over her, she lifted her head – her eyes were red and veined, spilling with tears – and then ducked it away again with a sharp gasp.

             
“What’s going on?” Ben asked, voice reaching across to Riley. She turned and there was a warning in her gaze. “Did something else happen?”

             
“I’ll explain it,” Rice said, and for the first time in Ben’s entire memory, he touched him; he took a firm grip at his elbow and not-so-gently propelled him forward.

             
The warning bells turned to wailing sirens. “Why do I have the feeling,” Ben said as they stepped into the office and Rice closed them in, “that I’m not going to like this.”

             
“You’re not,” his captain assured. He rounded the desk and settled into his leather swivel chair, motioning to the shitty vinyl one across from him. Ben sat. “You might even like it less than I do.”

             
His complexion, Ben noticed, was verging toward magenta. This wasn’t perturbed. This wasn’t rookie-locked-his-keys-in-his-car annoyed. The tight jaw, the knitted brows: he was furious. Dread rippled through Ben. “What?”

             
“Jade Donovan,” Rice said, and Ben went into a cold sweat. “You have a connection with her?”

             
This moment had been a long time coming: the admission that he had a daughter. He hadn’t ever anticipated such consequences, though; and there would be consequences. “Yes,” he said, because he’d learned years ago that when you were caught hiding something, it was better to own up than risk getting snared by yet another lie. That, and he’d always been one for the truth. It was his job, after all: the truth. The regrettable, impossible, mind-bending truth. He chased others’, but he’d missed his own hurtling toward him at a hundred miles an hour.

             
Rice fiddled with a stray pen on his blotter. “Her daughter is yours?”

             
“Yes, sir.”

             
He blew out a loud, tired breath. “So you took on a case knowing that your daughter and your – whatever she is – lived at the scene. You questioned them, took down their statements, involved your family in the case” – he wasn’t asking questions, but building – “and you didn’t think you might ought to excuse yourself from the goddamn investigation.”

             
“Captain,” Ben started, “I honestly didn’t think – ”

             
“Don’t feed me that bullshit. You’ve been in this unit twelve years, goddamn it.”

             
He had. He knew better, but that didn’t change anything. “Stan,” he said, “you know I wouldn’t have kept the case if there was even a chance Jade was involved.”

             
Wrong thing to say. “Don’t you think,” Rice said, tone becoming worse than furious, detached and cold. “That we have this protocol for exactly that reason? You can’t know if she was involved. That’s the fucking definition of conflict of interest.

             
“I didn’t expect this from you, Ben,” he continued. “Of all the detectives on my unit…” He shook his head. He sighed. He made heavy eye contact. “I would have let this slide by quietly, if I had it my way. But Alicia Latham’s bawled all across the squad room; every detective here knows. And according to Latham, you’re too ‘distracted’ to do your job properly.”

             
“I’m not distracted,” Ben said. He knew arguing was stupid at this point, but he couldn’t let someone lay that kind of accusation at his feet and ignore it. “Yeah, I should have handed off the case, and, yeah, I should have told you about Jade. But I am not distracted. Sir.”

             
“I don’t think you were,” Rice said. “But that doesn’t matter.”

             
Ben nodded; he waited for anger to fall, but all he felt was a delicious flood of adrenaline leaving his system. He hated this case; he wanted as far from this case as he could get. And that should have scared the hell out of him because he’d never felt that way; he’d never turned away from a murder, not even the gruesome ones. He should have been appalled by his lapse in professionalism, and all he was, instead, was glad. And suddenly dead in his chair now that he’d been cut loose.

             
“What happens now?”

             
“You’ll be suspended without pay for two weeks,” Rice said. “Kaiden will take on the case as lead detective with Woods and Riley assisting.”

              Ben nodded. Trey could handle it. He had Riley, if nothing else. And he could pester Hendricks or one of the others if he needed to.

             
“I need your badge and gun.”

             
He handed over his shield and his service .45; he had a closet full of others at home and wouldn’t miss it. “I’m sorry about this,” he offered, feeling like this whole thing had been ridiculously civil.

             
“Yeah.” Rice made a face like he’d tasted something foul and waved him off. Ben was at the door when he called him back. “Hey. That mug on your desk.”

             
“Clara painted it.”

             
“Think of this as the vacation you won’t ever take for yourself; you can spend some time with her.”

             
Ben twitched a smile.

             
“What?”

             
“My old man’s got nothing on your disappointment.”

             
“Remember that.”

“No way.” Trey was having a minor heart attack in the parking lot. “I can’t…
oh, shit
.”

             
“It’s disturbing,” Ben said, “how much you continue to sound like one of our dumbass kid suspects.”

             
In the flush of light from the overhead lampposts, Trey’s seriousness was comical. Ben was still free floating in a headspace he didn’t understand and couldn’t rally the proper concern that his rookie partner might fuck up this case. “Dude, how am I supposed – ”

             
“You’re a cop; you’re supposed to be dying for an opportunity like this,” Ben reminded. “Most rookies would shoot their partners to be able to take over as lead detective. And you’re out here wetting your pants.”

             
Trey’s brows knitted together. “Well sorry I’m not as cutthroat as you, but I’ve got a case to prove all over again. Scott Redding’s arrest won’t stick!”

             
“So go back over everything, start to finish. Prove he’s your guy all over again.”

             
“How…shit; none of the work we put in even
counts
at this point, Ben! How can you be so calm about it?”

             
“Because I didn’t do anything wrong.”

             
Trey exploded in a fast jumble of useless arm movements, then quieted. “You got kicked off the case,” he explained like Ben was four. “How much more ‘wrong’ can it get than that?”

             
He
was
calm; this lack of responsibility was doing wonders for his anger issues. “Should I have passed over the case because of the girls? Yeah. I should. But I’ve been working day and night to catch Heidi’s killer, and I caught him. I did everything by the book. Was keeping my girlfriend a secret a bad idea? Sure. But in the grand scheme – in a life sense – I didn’t do anything wrong, no.”

             
Trey blinked. “Oh, so she’s your girlfriend now.”

             
“She’s none of your business. And you’ve got a shit ton of work to do, so I’d suggest worrying about that.”

             
He wiped both hands down his lean face. “Do you even care?” he asked. “You totally screwed me over, man.”

             
Ben gave him a knock on the shoulder. “Life’s all about disappointment. Don’t take it personally, kid, cause I didn’t mean it that way.” He walked to his car and left his partner standing in the dark.

They’d been going out three months when Jade told him she was pregnant. It was one of those blurry relationships: lots of takeout and home cooked dinners, lots of wine, lots of marathon sex, lots of sharing ice cream spoons and trampling all over boundaries. Three months in, he realized she wasn’t the only one knee-deep in quicksand and going under fast. He called her in the middle of the day to hear her laugh; he bought a matching set of china because she liked the pattern in the store window. He learned how to hold his hand flat when feeding a horse and bought an oilskin jacket for those rainy night check walks to the barn. He came to know what hay and clean dust smelled like. She was this lovely little girl setting his world on fire. Three months in, he was waiting for a bomb, just not the one she dropped.

              She was pale as death that night – the night the train derailed and the steel ripped off the frame. Wrapped in a drab black sweater, without makeup, bags beneath her eyes as blue as her irises, she squared off from him across the kitchen island. Before she opened her mouth and told him, the vulnerability in her was the stuff of romance novels: soft swollen lips, pleading eyes, a gentle strength and welcoming heart. “I’m pregnant,” she said, and it was only in retrospect that he understood the courage in her then.

             
She wasn’t a liar, his Jade. And he didn’t think she’d panicked a day in her life. She came to him, ready to bear the consequences of all their blurry wine-soaked tumbling, without leaning on alternatives. She asked him for nothing, only told him. And what did he do?

             
“Are you fucking kidding me?” he hissed, and his voice took corporeal form in the kitchen, darkening the shadows to sinister black and pressing them in around the island.
Pregnant
. He was forty and he’d never wanted children. How could he raise one with a doe-eyed twenty-two-year-old horse trainer? Dark, paranoid fears boiled up in his head. Was this a trap? Women did that all the time; women just like her romanced their way into men’s confidences and snared them.

             
“Did you do it on purpose?” he asked.

             
It had been so fast after that, the rapid fire interrogation of one another. He’d called her stupid; she’d called him heartless. Her flare of pride had been brilliant: white-hot and no less fierce than his own. He’d suggested she get rid of it; she’d suggested he go fuck himself. They’d dueled in the lamplight of her kitchen that night, savaging each other with accusations that could never be recalled. Now, he couldn’t remember half of what they’d said, only the colors and lights and seething tide of fear all around them. He could still taste the acrid burn of unfairness.

             
It had been an imagined unfairness, on his part.

             
That was the thought that slammed into him on his way home in the dark without his badge. While his fellow detectives built photo shrines to their families on their desks and brought leftover lasagna for lunch every day, he’d relegated his own family to one mug to hold his pens and a secret he kept buried. The sad part was, Jade was fine with being pushed aside, and he was the one struggling.

             
He should have been thinking about the case – ways to help Trey from behind the scenes – but instead he was thinking about the mug on his desk, and all of Jade’s shiny pride five years ago.

             
When he got home he packed a bag and left; it wasn’t a home at all, really, just the place he laid his head when no one else would take him.