Whatever Remains (6 page)

             
“Did you not hear his partner? – he’s kinda cute if you don’t look at him too hard, by the way – Ben’s obliged to tell his captain that he has a personal involvement in this one. He’s not going to. That spells intentional, Jade, plain and simple. Forget the Greens; your bastard has a monopoly on torture.”

             
She made a face. “He wouldn’t do this just to ‘torture’ me. He’s not that cruel.” Jeremy twitched his brows. “He’s not. Besides, it’s not a conflict of interest if we’re not involved.”

             
He waved at the TV with his fork. The reporter was saying, “A place where children came to ride horses; now a place where a little girl has died…”

             
“We’re involved,” he said, “whether we like it or not.”

             
“She didn’t die here,” Jade said to the TV. “This wasn’t the primary crime scene!”

             
A muffled sound issued above their heads: the water cutting on and then off again.

             
“Change the channel,” she said, “before Grace comes down.”

             
Jeremy reached for the remote.

             
On the screen, the night footage and sympathy-inducing shots of Heidi gave way to the studio and the Saturday morning anchors. “We’ll have more on this story at noon,” the male anchor – who looked ten different kinds of plastic and too-tan – said to the camera. “Police are expected to give a statement and our very own Ross Davis will be there to cover it.”

             
“Great,” Jeremy snorted. “Not only is he in our house; now he gets to be on our TV, too. Asshole.”

             
Jade felt her stomach turn over.

Alicia Latham looked better, but not much. Her hair – it was almost burgundy in the daylight – was pulled back with a comb and she’d made a go at makeup, though it didn’t begin to
conceal her puffy eyes. Dressed in jeans and a thick white sweater that gave her an overall shapeless look, flats and carrying a purse big enough to pull double duty as a lunch box, she was the image of what she seemed: a mother. A very sad mother attempting to hold her head up and look strong about this whole thing.

             
Ben sat with the window at his back so the sunlight fell unforgivingly on her face; he wanted to see every tic and every nuance. Beside him, Trey was adding another sugar packet to a cup of coffee and giving her a reassuring smile.

             
“I’m so sorry we have to do this when the trauma’s so fresh,” he said, and Alicia nodded.

             
“I understand,” she said with a tired exhale. “I want you to catch him, so I understand.” A slick glazing came over her eyes and she blinked furiously.

             
“We’ll try to make this as easy as possible,” Trey said.

             
“Mrs. Latham –  ” Ben started, and she cut him off with a useless fluttering of her hand.

             
“Alicia, please,” she requested. “I-I can’t stand for things to be so formal if you’re-you’re looking after…my baby.” She had to dig a crumpled tissue from her purse and compose herself a moment, breathing deeply through her mouth.

             
“Okay, then,” Ben conceded. “Alicia.” She managed a tremulous smile. “We need to know everything about Heidi that might possibly help us with the investigation: school, hobbies, friends, places she liked to go, her level of honesty with you –  ”

             
“Honesty?” She looked affronted.

             
Ben didn’t blink. “Yes, ma’am. We need to know if she could have been hiding anything from you. Boyfriend. Enemies. Grudges. Things like that.”

             
She made a breathy sound that might have been a laugh. “Boyfriend? She was
eleven
.”

             
Ben shrugged.

             
“My sister was all about boys at that age,” Trey said. “We have to ask, ma’am.”

             
She gave them a disapproving look. “Not Heidi,” she said with finality. She offered no other explanation, only that, lips setting in a firm line.

             
The thought of an eleven-year-old being into boys was terrifying. Ben flipped open his notebook. “So no boys. What about the rest?”

             
Alicia twisted up her tissue. She took a deep breath and let it out in a rush; twitched another of those broken smiles. “Such an angel,” she said, voice shaking. “She was such a good girl; a smart girl. She was at the head of her class.” A wan smile started, then collapsed. “She had lots of friends – a busy social life.”

             
Ben had a hard time envisioning Heidi – thin and dark-headed and pale – being the life of the party; parents tended to exaggerate, it was normal. They wanted to celebrate their children in their deaths, making them out to be special in a way that the cops and community would see as relevant, hoping a special child would be one whose killer was found faster. A quick picture of Clara flashed across his mind – her smooth cheek next to his the night before – and he shoved it away before it could trip him up.

             
“She wasn’t having any kind of trouble?”

             
“No. Well…she had detention one day last week, but that was for gum chewing. Can you believe that?
Gum
. But her teachers loved her; she didn’t misbehave.”

             
“No one was bullying her?” Trey asked. “Harassing her?”

             
Alicia shook her head. “No. Why would they?”

             
“Anyone paying her undue attention?” Ben asked, and she blinked. “Lingering? Watching?”

             
Her mouth and eyes turned to circles. “You mean…you mean like a pervert?”

             
He didn’t answer.

             
“I…” She inhaled. “There – there was something.” She winced. “I dunno if I should tell you. I don’t wanna get Jade upset. We’re such good friends.”

             
Jade didn’t really do the whole friend thing, save her boy ballerina, but Ben forced an interested eyebrow jump. “Mrs. Latham” – she opened her mouth to remind him about calling her by her first name, and he spoke over her – “your daughter was murdered. Ms. Donovan getting upset should be the last of your worries.”

             
She bowed her head, cheeks stained with a blush, lashes batting at fresh tears. “I know. God…I know. I just…” She heaved a deep breath. “I noticed…I noticed…well.” She gulped, throat muscles working. “When Jade – oh, I shouldn’t say this…”

             
“You’re fine,” Trey assured. “Just keep going.”

             
She nodded and mashed her tissue some more. “When Jade starting bringing that new guy around –  ”

             
Something unnamed and hot went rippling down the back of Ben’s neck. “McMahon?”

             
“Asher,” she said. “Yeah, him. Well, my girls were over at the farm all the time – they love the horses – and when he was there, I…” She blushed again. “Well, I saw him looking at Heidi. Not,” she said in a rush, “in any kinda sick way. But his eyes followed her. It made me a little uncomfortable, actually.”

             
“Mrs. Latham…”

             
Suddenly, she looked exhausted. The corners of her eyes drooped and her mouth twitched in an unconscious way. Her breathing was shallow and pained, and her blinks were uneven.

             
Trey tried to catch his eye with a not-so-subtle wave, no doubt ready to suggest they give her a break; Ben was about to tell him to grow a pair when movement on the other side of the blinds, out in the squad room, captured his attention. Captain Rice – average height, but lean and chiseled with a head of thick iron gray hair – had his suit coat pushed back, hands on his hips, and even with the blinds as a shield, the distaste on his face was plain. Across from him, staring up at him with all the charm of a pit bull, was the last guy Ben wanted within twenty feet of this case.

             
He elbowed Trey hard and shoved to his feet. “Excuse me, Mrs. Latham. Tell Detective Kaiden here anything that could be of help; I have to step out a minute.”

             
“…glory hound!” Ben heard as he slipped out and sealed the door behind him. He knew he was the hound in question, but the allegation was ludicrous.

             
“Neil,” he said, jerking heads his direction. “You here to sweet talk me again?”

             
Behind the Blue Wall, there were cops – detectives even, in Neil Woods’s case – who made careers of petty jackassery, protected by the cop brotherhood, enabled to behave in ways that would have gotten them fired – or shit-kicked – in the corporate world. Woods had never done anything wrong, per se, and he solved cases, so his personality was an unfortunate blight on all units. Rice’s closed-off expression told Ben not to press tensions, though he clearly didn’t want the man in the building either.

             
Woods, maybe five-six, bald, and built like a mini fridge, puffed out his indignant little chest, face turning a lovely shade of lilac. “Child Crimes,” he said, and Ben nodded.

             
“Right. That’s where you work. Good on you for remembering, but last I checked, we don’t share a precinct.”

             
“Haley –  ” Rice warned.

             
“Your murder vic” – Woods was one of those people for which “say it, don’t spray it” had been invented – “is a child, Haley. That spells
Child Crimes
.”

             
“Actually, it spells –  ”

             
“Haley,” Rice said, and Ben knew not to push his luck.

             
With a supreme effort, he took a deep breath and affixed a not-unpleasant non-smile to his face. “Detective Woods,” he said in his most businesslike tone, “while I appreciate your concern over the victim’s age, we don’t appear to be dealing with a child crime at this moment. Just a murder.”

             
“Just a murder,” Rice said under his breath, rolling his eyes. “Yeah.”

             
Woods worked his jaw like he was chewing, but when he opened his mouth, Ben didn’t see any gum wallowing around in it. “Alright, Detective Haley. How often does a child wind up dead because there’s an abuse situation at home gone too far?”

             
“We don’t have any evidence pointing that way yet.”

             
Woods smiled nastily. “We both know how long it takes to gather that kinda evidence.” His smile vanished, twisted and became a snarl. “I should have been notified!”

             
Others in the room were starting to take note, watching with bald curiosity. Hendricks was working on the last scraps of his breakfast at his desk, chewing like a cow with cud, a grease stain on the paper napkin tucked in his collar.

             
“Gents,” Rice said, stepping between them. He didn’t yell or scowl, because he wasn’t the kind of man who had to. He said, quietly, “My office.”

The Greens – Rebecca, the wife of a successful divorce attorney, and her fourteen-year-old daughter, Abby – had committed a sin so often practiced by those with more money than sense. Without any equine knowledge whatsoever, Rebecca had gone out and bought up horses for herself and her daughter under the assumption that the more expensive the horse, the better the horse. This was true, yes, but she hadn’t counted on one key factor: the more expensive the horse, the more intelligent and highly-trained the horse, and the more finesse and skill required to ride the horse. Spending sixty-grand on an imported Dutch gelding hadn’t made Rebecca Green a better rider; if anything, the horse’s grace and sensitivity highlighted his rider’s incompetence.

              Decathlete – “Dec” for short – was a brilliant chestnut with tall white stockings on his hind legs and a perfect, diamond star. He was an even seventeen hands and leggy and springy as Jeremy worked him through a half-pass across the arena, hooves gliding over the sand. Jade had ridden him a few times and loved him; Jeremy did too. Rebecca stood at the rail, hands on hips, duded up in a thousand dollars’ worth of designer riding gear and looking flustered.

             
“He does it for you,” she complained.

             
Jeremy was made to sit a horse; his long legs draped around its barrel and his torso was motionless, long lines of his body following the horse’s movement with seamless ease. He pulled Dec to a neat halt beside his owner. “He takes a light touch; he’s sensitive,” he told Rebecca. He swung his leg over and dismounted the same way he did everything: gracefully. “This time, half-halt as you go through the corner and then let him go. Just taps with the outside spur; don’t press him with your leg the whole time.”