Whatever Remains (5 page)

             
In an effort to offer even the smallest comfort, Jade said, “Grace is upstairs, sleeping. She can stay the night, if you want.”

             
It was eerie, the detached glazing over Alicia’s eyes. She nodded. “Yeah.” Her voice was almost soundless. “That’d be good.”

             
“Is there…” Jade put her elbows on the table. “Is there anyone I can call for you? Any family? A friend?”

             
“No. There’s no one.” She inhaled sharply, held her breath a moment, and then tears came rushing into her eyes, her shock dissolving back into terrifying bereavement. It was a panicked, unstable kind of grief. Jade didn’t suppose she’d be any better in such circumstances, God forbid. “Oh my God…Oh, Jade.” Her hands darted out, clasping to Jade’s; the palms were damp and tacky, like a child’s. “Someone killed my baby,” she said in a strangled voice. “Someone
killed her
.”

             
“I’m so sorry,” Jade said, because it was all she could say.

             
Outside, somewhere in the night, coyotes started yipping.

4

             
B
ecause there was nothing left to do, and because he was a creature of habit, Ben put in all the necessary paperwork, then turned Trey loose and went home. He ate a ham sandwich – onion roll and lettuce and spicy mustard and ham that was flirting with the line between past-its-prime and inedible – showered, ran a load of colored clothes, decided he could get a solid hour’s sleep if he went to bed right then…and stared at the ceiling until his alarm went off.

             
What the hell?

             
He wasn’t one of those guys who gained or lost weight under stress; he didn’t miss sleep much, either. He’d learned a long time ago to take rest and food when he could, roll with the punches otherwise. He worried about things when he was awake – when he had time – and shoved them aside when he fell into bed.

             
So why was he awake?

             
Because this was
that
case for him: the reckless, wrecking fucking case that every detective had in his jacket, the one that left him edgy and quiet and set other people to whispering about him. At some point, some case was always going to get to a guy; it was inevitable. This, he realized, examining water spots on his ceiling in the dark, was that case. And it had nothing to do with the victim, or the murder itself, but with his two dark-headed girls.

             
His girls
. He hadn’t thought of them in that way in a long time.

             
At six – still a man of routine – he got up without a minute’s sleep, shaved, washed his hair in the sink, dressed (in a suit this time), had a staring contest with the ham that he won, and headed for the precinct.

             
The place was busy with foot traffic: uniforms moving in and out of the building, patrol cars jockeying, teenage delinquents being turned loose. Ben fielded waves and hellos with a nod or two and skipped the breakroom – it was overstuffed with unis after coffee – and went straight for his desk in the squad room. It was tidy: his computer and phone – dust free – a small stack of paperwork in his inbox, the corners of the files lined up with the edge of the desk, a brass plaque with his name, and the one personal item he allowed himself. The coffee mug that held his pens was white and sloppily hand-painted with flowers that looked like fireworks, just big bursts of overlapping colors. It had come from one of those paint-your-own-pottery places, glazed and fired professionally, and on the bottom, handwritten by her mother in thin line Sharpie, was Clara’s message:
Happy Birthday, Daddy!
And the date.

             
Thanks to his solve rate and his rapport with the captain, Ben had a desk by the window; newborn, wan sunlight was filtering through the blinds now, falling in skinny shafts over his desk and Trey’s because the two were pushed face-to-face together. Trey, he noted, was already there, in last night’s clothes and unlaced sneakers, bags under his eyes. Ben figured he had bags too, but he’d at least pressed ice cubes over his.

             
Trey’s desk wasn’t messy, but by contrast, it looked like a landfill. There was too much paper, too many pens, too many Post-Its stuck to the edges of his computer monitor.

             
He glanced up at Ben’s arrival. “So.”

             
“So?”

             
“Press statement this afternoon, right?”

             
Ben nodded. “They’ll probably only talk to me, since I’m the lead, but get some coffee in you before then. You look like shit.”

             
A look of displeased surprise rippled across his face; he still couldn’t come to grips with the fact that no one patted him on the head or kissed his cheek around here. “When?”

             
“They wanna run it at noon, I heard, so probably ten-ish. We need to talk to Alicia Latham before then.”

             
Trey leaned back in his chair, a hint of a satisfied grin tugging the corner of his mouth. “Already on her way in. I called her this morning.”

             
“Good.” Ben switched on his computer. “Set her up in the good interview room and let me know when she gets here.” They would do better to make her feel comfortable, he’d decided, in the room with the windows and the cushy chairs.

             
“Ben?”

             
“Hmm?”

             
“You know I have to ask.”

             
“About?”

             
Trey sighed and leaned his elbows on his desk, pitched forward over their name plaques and encountered a shaft of sunlight that drew too much attention to his eye bags. “Jade Donovan,” he said, and Ben was slammed with the urge to shove him back into his own space. Trey sighed. “I know she’s your business, and none of mine –  ”

             
“How perceptive.”

             
“ – but if we’re going to try to hide this from the captain – and I know we are,” he said when Ben started to interrupt, “then I feel like I at least ought to know, for sure, that she’s not at all relevant to our case. Why lie if I don’t have to? If I know it’s not a big deal that you know her?”

             
In so many words, the kid was right. He was a bad liar; when the captain eventually found out about Ben’s connection to Jade – and he would – and he reamed them out, Trey would get flustered and stammery and then they’d look like they’d been hiding something. But if both of them shrugged, said, “She wasn’t relevant to the case,” and that was that, then what could the captain do? Under his flat face and infinite sighs, Captain Rice was reasonable. It would do nothing but help their case to give Trey the fast and dirty and ease his worries that Jade was somehow a kid-killer in secret.

             
But just the balls of
asking
made Ben want to punch him.

             
“She’s not relevant,” he said, voice tight with restraint. “Leave it alone.”

             
“But if Rice asks –  ”

             
“Rice isn’t going to ask.” Ben shot him a glare unmistakable in its aggression. “Her name is Donovan, not Haley, and all she did was find the body. When, in the history of any investigation, has the finder of the body been pertinent to the case?
When
?”

             
Trey sat back, expression apologetic, but undeterred. “Jade’s more than that,” he said quietly. “She’s Alicia’s friend and neighbor. Their kids played together. Jade might know something. And, Ben, God forbid, but what if we needed to talk to Clara –  ”

             
“
Don’t
.”

             
“Kids tell each other stuff; I know she’s only four, but if Heidi said something to her –  ”

             
Ben slapped his palm down on the edge of his desk, the sound bouncing against the bare block walls around them. Two other detectives jerked their heads up; Trey’s face went white. “You will not,” Ben said through his teeth, voice just audible, “
ever
suggest dragging my kid into this. Not ever again. Do you understand me?”

             
Trey held his gaze a long moment, defiant even in his silence, but finally nodded and glanced away.

             
“Boys!” Someone – Detective Hendricks, if the twang to his voice was anything to go by – shouted across the squad room to them. “Makin’ a breakfast run. You want anything?”

             
“No,” Ben and Trey said in unison, and turned to their computers.

There was nothing more grounding than the barn. The smells of hay and wood shavings and horse; the soft sounds of shifting hooves and swishing tails, the deep-throated whickers in response to the feed hitting the buckets. Amid the rising pockets of mist, dew on her boots, sunlight the hazy, pale stuff of just-after-dawn, Jade found peace every morning in the stea
diness of routine and the brown eyes of their horses.

             
The barn was a marvel, one that only a horse person could see. Eight box stalls flanked the center concrete aisle, brass nameplates affixed to the swinging door of each. There was a small office, a tack room with laundry sink and hot water heater, Dutch doors for the warm months, and a hayloft soaring overhead, bits of hay raining down as the cats hunted for mice.

             
But this morning, there was a fluttering strip of yellow crime scene tape snagged on the arena fence. It grabbed her eye as she was pouring Merry’s feed; the wind caught it and it snapped up, curling like a wayward length of ribbon, reminding her that the peace of her little world had been shattered.

             
Long after Ben and his partner had left, after Heidi’s body had been loaded and carted away, the crime scene crew had stayed, photographing, cataloguing, swabbing and speculating. She’d watched it on TV so many times – the process of preserving a scene so that it could be gone over dozens of times back at the lab – but seeing it unfold in her own backyard had been nightmarish. All night she’d lain awake, thinking
it could have happened to me, to my baby
, over and over, leaving her awash with guilt for such selfishness.

             
She turned the horses out, watching at the fence a moment as they trotted over the dewy grass, heading up the hill to their favorite grazing spots. On her way back to the house, she pulled down the yellow tape, rolled it up and crammed it in the barn trash can.

             
The smell of eggs hit her full in the face when she stepped through the back door, reminding her she’d skipped dinner the night before. Jeremy was at the stove, sprinkling diced tomatoes over their omelets, his Australian Shepherd, Keely, stretched out behind him on the tile, her red and white coat fanned around her. The TV mounted on the wall above the table was on and he motioned to it with his spatula as she entered. “We made the news.”

             
“Shit,” she said as she shucked her boots at the door and went to the table. She stayed on her feet, hands braced on the top; Keely rose and came to snuffle at her jacket pocket, looking for a stray horse cookie. Jade gave her an absent pat on the head and watched the screen.

             
The camera was panning back from a night shot of the house – last night – the windows blazing, blue lights throwing distorted shadows across the tree trunks as a patrol car came over the crest in the drive and headed for the main road. A female reporter was doing a voiceover: “This is the home where, last night, police were called to the scene of a murder.” Her voice was tinged with the right amount of gravity, adding inflections on the more sinister words. “Eleven-year-old Heidi Latham was found dead on this horse farm, mere yards from her own home…”

             
“Almost all our lessons for the day called to cancel,” Jeremy said, disgusted. “
We
didn’t murder her, people.”

             
“It’s the farm, not us,” she said, watching a school photo of Heidi fill the screen; then there was a shot of Heidi with her mother and sister. “A dead kid turns up somewhere, are you gonna want to take your kid there?”

             
He didn’t answer, plating their omelets with a flourish. He was dressed for a day of teaching: coffee-colored riding breeches, black silk knee socks and Adidas sandals, black muscle shirt tucked in behind his belt buckle. Jeremy should have been modeling male riding clothes for Dover; he was made for them. Tall, thin, athletic in a lithe, dancer-like way; the precise, elegant lines of his face were made all the more striking by dark hair, eyes, and brows he swore he didn’t wax, but probably did. In a sea of male equestrians sporting bald spots, spare tires, sagging chins and square asses, Jeremy was a thing of beauty. And one hell of a trainer. And only twenty-eight. If it hadn’t been for her, and this farm, and his loyalty to both, he would have been in Palm Beach, working with Olympians and hoping to end up at that level himself someday. Instead, he was setting her breakfast down in front of her and making a face.

             
“That didn’t bother the Greens. They’re still trailering in.”

             
“To torture you?”

             
“It’s such fun, you know.” He sat down at the head of the table, his usual seat, shoveled in a too-big bite and talked around it, cutting her a sideways look. “Speaking of fun – you should eat; you’re wasting away – why is Tall, Dark and Loathsome working this case?”

             
Jade sat, and sighed, and dutifully took a bite of her omelet; it was heavenly stuff, with cheese and tomatoes and mixed with a little heavy cream. The boy could cook. “Detectives get assigned cases; they don’t pick them,” she said. “I figure he doesn’t want to be working this one.”