“Her dad was a cop,” I say. “She must’ve picked up a few things.”
“Jim, the media in those areas weren’t showing what they were showing here,” Chief Gates says. “But trust me, now that it’s gotten national attention, she’s going to be recognized wherever she goes. Someone will turn her in.”
“I don’t know about that,” I say. “She’ll change her appearance. Probably has already.”
“Still,” Elise says. “She’s recognizable with those eyes. That’s why they’re making her the story of the week. Because of how she looks.”
I look at my hands again.
The chief looks like he hasn’t slept in days. He rubs his eyes. “Jim, Elise, I know it’s disappointing that we were so close and she got away, but I assure you that we’re going to find her.”
Keegan points to me with a thumb. “He’s the one who let her walk away. Let’s face it, we don’t need a PI to find her. Let Sy and me work on it. If you’re willing to pay travel expenses for him, pay them for us instead and we can bring her back.”
Captain Swayze, who hasn’t been in the meetings until now, speaks up. “We can free them up for a few days, Chief. I say let them go.”
I hold my breath, waiting to be fired.
But the chief bristles. “No. We don’t have the manpower or the budget. Too many open cases here. I can’t take two of my Major Crimes detectives out of the rotation.”
Jim clears his throat and looks at me. I brace myself. “Truth is, Dylan found her,” he says. “Nobody else did.”
I seize that. “I’ll find her again, and I promise you that I’ll get justice for Brent.”
Keegan hasn’t given up. “Look, with all due respect, this guy has problems. I’m sorry to say this, Dylan, but I think what happened is that the situation triggered your PTSD.”
“My PTSD is under control,” I say, though I only wish that were true.
“Right. That’s why the army discharged you.”
That slices into me. “Honorably,” I say, though I know everyone knows that.
Keegan takes another tack. “You understand, don’t you, that she stabbed your son five times in places sure to kill him? She had to plan that, research it. Even one of those wounds would have—”
“Stop,” I cut in. Elise’s face is white, and I know that each image he paints in her mind is like a lethal wound to her.
“Detective,” Jim says, “you don’t have to remind us what that girl did.”
“I’m sorry,” Keegan says, “but I want to underscore how urgent this is. For all we know, the Cox girl was working with that kidnapper in Shady Grove. She has to have help or she wouldn’t be hidden so well. They’re making her look like some kind of hero, but you’re telling me she just stumbled onto a girl who’d been kidnapped for two years? Sounds fishy to me. Something’s not adding up.”
“There’s no evidence that she knows him,” I say quickly. “The Shady Grove police have confirmed the kidnapped girl’s story. When Casey was arrested for breaking in the first time, she explained how she learned the girl was with him. They didn’t take it seriously enough. Remember, I was there. Casey broke in to get the girl out. She’d been trying to get her out for days.”
“You defending her?” Captain Swayze accuses.
“Of course I’m not, but you can’t change the facts just because they don’t serve us. She’s calculating, yes, but she doesn’t fit the profile of a psychopath. She risked exposure to save that girl.”
Everyone protests at once, but I raise my voice over theirs. “It’s important that we profile her with a clear head. That’s how I was trained. She is what she is.”
Keegan cuts in before anyone else can. “He’s right.”
Stunned, I turn to him.
“She probably isn’t a psychopath. Maybe she has some deep, obsessive sense of justice. Maybe she thought Brent was doing something unjust, so she was obsessively righting a wrong.”
Everyone takes that in. I stay quiet, suspicious.
“Her mother has OCD off the charts. It probably runs in the family.”
“A genetic link to OCD isn’t settled science,” I clip out, since I’ve already researched that. “Experts disagree on that. And her friends and family didn’t see any signs of mental illness in her.”
“Do you hear this?” Sy asks the chief, speaking for the first time. “He sounds like her defense lawyer. Whose side are you on, Dylan?”
I shake my head. “Not a defense attorney. I sound like an investigator helping you prepare the case you’ll turn over to the DA. Do you want a solid case or not?”
“You weren’t hired to help us prepare our case,” Keegan says. “You were hired to bring her back. That’s it.”
The veins in my temple are pulsing. “I’m not a bounty hunter. I’m a cop.”
“You’re neither,” Keegan shouts over me.
“Shut up!” the chief says, and we all turn to him. “Dylan’s perfectly within his charge to investigate and record evidence in this case while he searches for her, and frankly, detectives, I hope you’re more informed than you appear right now. So get off this guy’s back. Dylan got closer to her than you did. Jim, I agree that we need to let him keep working on it, and I appreciate your providing the resources to do that.”
Jim stares at me with those tired eyes. “Dylan, I trust you,” he says. “I want you to stay on.”
“Thank you,” I say. “I won’t let you down.”
Keegan leans back hard in his chair. “Already did.”
“That’s enough,” the chief snaps. “It’s decided. Dylan, let us know what you need. Stay in touch with Keegan and Rollins—share whatever evidence you come across—and if you need anything beyond that, you know how to reach me. This case is a priority to me, and I’ll do whatever I can. Let’s get this done.”
We all say cordial goodbyes. Jim asks me to hang back when they leave so he can pay me and give me more money for my travel expenses. I wait outside Jim’s office while he finishes talking to Gates. When he comes out, he hands me a check.
“I’m glad you’re staying on, Dylan,” he says. “I don’t mind telling you, Keegan rubs me the wrong way. Rollins, he may be a decent guy, but he doesn’t say much. Sometimes I think I smell alcohol on his breath. But Detective Keegan . . . Has he been hard to work with?”
“He’s got a bold personality,” I evade. “But I can work with anybody. It’ll be all right. I think he has a personal stake in finding her.”
He clearly thinks I’m talking about his ego. If he only knew what the real stake is.
“I want you to have everything you need,” he says. “Charter a plane again if you need to. Call me if you need to get a flight. The second you locate her, get there as fast as you can.”
I assure him I will. As I walk out, I wonder again if I should have told Jim the whole truth. Would he believe me? No, of course not. There’s nothing right now that will convince them that the girl whose DNA was at the scene of their son’s murder isn’t a killer. Why would they sympathize with her? And you can’t go making accusations about cops without having a lot of evidence to back them up. I can’t get that evidence unless things stay as they are for now.
As I walk out to my car, I see Keegan pulling out of the parking lot. He gives me a look out his window, and a chill runs down my spine. I shove on my sunglasses and pretend I didn’t see it.
5
DYLAN
The look Keegan gave me as he left Jim Pace’s parking lot gives me a sick feeling. He’s a dangerous man, and if he senses that I’m not on his side or that I don’t buy his story, I’ll be as dead as Brent. When I’m a couple of miles away from the Pace house, I pull over at a Burger King and open my laptop. I sign on to their Wi-Fi and copy the files I’ve compiled about Brent onto the thumb drive Casey sent me weeks ago, the one with all of Brent’s research. Then I delete the files from my email account and hard drive.
I copy the files from that thumb drive onto another. Then I drive
to my bank, rent a safe deposit box, and leave the original thumb drive there. I take the key with me, trying to decide who to give it to. Who can be trusted?
My shrink? I could tell her that if I wind up dead, I want her to get the evidence to the FBI or the state police. But that sounds a little paranoid, like that Mel Gibson character in Conspiracy Theory. I don’t want her thinking my PTSD has escalated to a whole new level.
I could give the key to Hannah, Casey’s sister, but I feel like she already has the evidence. I know she’s sent Casey a package already. It was probably this very drive.
I could give it to the Paces, but I don’t know that they would be able to keep themselves from going to see what’s in there.
There’s no one I can trust enough.
The thought dips me back into depression, but I force myself out. I can’t go there. I have to act. I’ll figure out what to do with the key at some point, but I can’t let it hang me up now.
Department resources or not, Keegan and Rollins are going after her. They have their own resources, which is part of the problem.
At some point, I need to email Casey again so we can compare notes. If I can make her trust me, maybe she’ll tell me where she is.
Yeah, and pigs fly. I know I’m fantasizing now.
My phone chimes as I get to my apartment. I look at the readout and groan. My mother. I consider not picking up, but before the fourth ring, I click Accept. “Hey, Mom.” I know my voice sounds flat.
“You haven’t called me in weeks. I wanted to see if you’re dead.”
“No, Mom, I’m not dead.”
“You would think you’d be in touch more often after being gone for so long. It’s not like you’re busy.”
“Actually, I am,” I say. “I’ve been working.”
“Working? Who hired you?”
I don’t want to go into it. “I’m contracted to help the police department on a case. I’ve been out of town a lot.”
“Do they know about your problem?”
I hate the way she says that word, as though it has quotations around it.
“Yes, Mom. So how are you?”
“I’m fine. Just curious why you can take time to go out of town but not come here.”
I bristle. “You threw me out.”
“I did not throw you out. It was a little fight, that’s all.” Her words are slurred. “I didn’t mean you could never come back.”
I breathe a quiet, bitter laugh. “It was time for me to move on anyway.” I can only think of one reason she would call. She’s made it clear she doesn’t care much about seeing me, and when she does, it disturbs her that I’m not the version of myself that she expects.
“Do you need money, Mom? Is that why you’re calling?”
“No,” she grunts. “I really wanted to know if you’d heard about Brent Pace. Got himself murdered.”
I don’t want to talk to her about Brent even more than I don’t want to talk about myself. “Of course I heard. It happened months ago.”
“All that attention those people paid to that boy, and this happens. Brent must’ve been involved in something shady.”
“He wasn’t.”
“You don’t know. And all those years, judging me, like that kind of thing would only happen to my kid because I’m such a terrible mother. Never them.”
My face gets hot. “Serves them right, huh?”
“I didn’t say that, but now that you have . . .” Her voice trails off, as though she knows deep down that’s a deplorable thing to say. I hope there’s still that much conscience left inside her.
“So your uncle is coming home with his family next weekend. I told him you’d be here if you could drag yourself out of bed.”
I wet my lips, wondering why my mouth feels so dry. “I probably can’t make it. I’m about to leave town again.”
“What’s he gonna think if you’re not here?”
Stomach acid is burning a hole in my gut. “That I had a breakdown and I’m in a straitjacket somewhere?”
“He doesn’t think that.”
“The last phone call I had with him, he told me to snap out of it. Said I was embarrassing the family, that it was time to grow up.”
“He just has high standards.”
My mother’s little brother has never spent a day in service to his country, but he has lots of opinions about those of us who have. “I have high standards too, Mom.” I clear my throat. “I’m sorry, but you shouldn’t have told him I’d be there without asking me. I can’t come.”
I don’t tell her that my shrink has warned me to keep some space between them and me for a while. People who don’t understand PTSD—or any other normal vulnerability—shouldn’t have the power to reverse my progress.
My skin is thick enough to tolerate that ignorance in most people, but it’s harder to stand it in people who are supposed to care.
“What will I tell your dad?”
“Tell him I’ve gotten out of bed.”
“He spent his whole check at the slots. I don’t know how we’ll pay the light bill.”
There it is. I knew it. “How much?”
“One-fifty.”
“Give me the account number. I’ll call Southwestern and pay it.”
“I don’t have it memorized. Just send it to me. I’ll pay it.”
I know better. My parents are both alcoholics. My dad has cirrhosis so bad he vomits blood. They drink away every disability check before bills come due. I could say no, I won’t send it, but then she’d get mean, and I’d spend the next few days obsessing about it instead of thinking about Casey. I finally agree so I can get off the phone.
Sometimes family is a live minefield.
6
DYLAN
I’m benching 250 now even though I’ve lost weight since I was discharged, mainly because my shrink thinks I need to focus on every area of health. I didn’t feel like working out at first. I wanted to stay in bed and count ceiling tiles—there are 196 in my bedroom, by the way—but my buddy Dex sort of shamed me into going to the gym with him. Dex is another of the survivors of the IED attack that killed five of the guys with us in the convoy that day. He’s as stubborn as a goat, and he hated the idea of me checking out when I had so much going for me. It’s hard to argue with a double-amputee, nagging you about using the body that was spared.
So I go to the gym when I can, and he pretty much acts as my personal trainer, forcing me to go ten more reps, to go up ten pounds, to sweat more. And I have to admit, it does help clear my head, and it calms the anxiety.
Dex has been diagnosed with PTSD, too, but it seems like he’s up to the challenge. His attitude dwarfs mine.
After we shower up, he asks me what he always asks. “So you want to go get a beer?”
“We can get coffee,” I say, as I always do.
“A beer now and then might actually help you, you know.”
“I’m sure both of my parents said that at one point.”
“One beer does not an alcoholic make.”
“No, but one beer and a bunch of painkillers and anti-depressants and anti-psychotics . . .”
“You don’t take any of that.”
“No, I don’t. Not going to. But everybody thinks I should.”
“So do you sleep?”
“Not much. You?”
He shrugs. “My arm and leg hurt when I try.”
I glance at his remaining leg. “Probably from carrying all the weight.”
“No, not that one. This one.” He kicks up his prosthesis. “Phantom pain. What in blazes are you supposed to do with that?”
“Painkillers, of course.”
“Yeah, those doctors need to be schooled about addiction.”
“I think they are schooled about it,” I say. “But it seems to them like the easiest and least time-consuming treatment. All in the name of compassion.”
I know Dex agrees. He has avoided pills, too, since he got out of the hospital. “But hey, you know what?” he sa
ys. “I heard about this new thing they have, this patch. They put it on your forehead, and it’s supposed to interrupt your brain waves or some such thing. Supposed to help with the nightmares. Dr. Coggins wants me to try it.”
“Do you have to wear it all the time?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t know much about it, but I’ll let you know.”
“Be careful. Sounds a little like a lobotomy.”
He grins. “Yeah, I’ll be sure to avoid that. So coffee. No beer. You want to or not?”
We wind up at Starbucks, and after we get our drinks, I tell him a little about the case I’m working on. Dex wasn’t in Criminal Investigations; he was a medic. But before he joined up he worked as an EMT here in Shreveport and spent a lot of time with cops.
“So I’m impressed, dude. No wonder you seem like you’re doing better.”
“Yeah, it’s gotten my mind off myself.”
“And you might get a real job out of it.”
I’m quiet when he says that.
“What? You don’t think so? When you bring that girl back?”
I sip on my coffee for a minute. “The thing is, the more I dig into this case, the more I think they’re barking up the wrong tree. Just between you and me, man, I don’t think she did it.”
Of course, there’s no thinking to it. I know for a fact that she didn’t, but I can’t just blurt that out.
“You know, that crossed my mind, too, when the news broke about her rescuing that girl. I didn’t know you were on that case, but I thought something didn’t add up about the story. So if she didn’t do it, do you know who did?”
I sip again, letting the liquid burn my throat.
“You gonna tell me?” he asks after a moment. “Or is this one of those things where you’d have to kill me?”
I don’t answer. I glance up at the cash register and consider another cup.
“Okay, dude,” he says finally. “Don’t tell me. But hey, listen, if you need any help with your new gig, don’t forget that I have nothing but time on my hands.”
I give him a long look. I haven’t considered that, but the moment he says it, I realize that I could put him on watching Keegan. Keegan doesn’t know him, might not notice him. I could even pay him some of what the Paces are paying me. He needs the cash. Military disability isn’t going far toward supporting his family.