Unraveling the Past
He’d been especially cautious around Sullivan. She’d had her fellow officers’ support in her bid for the position of chief, she had their respect. She was also, as far as Ross could tell, a damn fine cop.
But it was past time they all realized he was in charge now.
“I appreciate your input.” He kept his tone mild, not giving away the frustration eating at him. “While I may not have much experience with small-town living, I do know that it’s illegal for a person under the age of twenty-one to purchase or consume alcoholic beverages in the state of Massachusetts. It’s not up to us to interpret the law or decide when and where to enforce it. It’s black and white.”
“A good cop knows there are always shades of gray. sir,” Sullivan added, making the sign of respect sound like anything but.
“Not on my watch. Not in my department. There’s right and there’s wrong.” She didn’t have to agree. She just had to do as he said. “Give anyone eighteen or older the choice to take a Breathalyzer test. If they pass, they’re free to go. The rest get cited.”
“Even your niece?”
He ignored the skepticism in the captain’s husky voice. “She broke the law. She’ll have to face the consequences like everyone else.”
And if that made him the bad guy then so be it. Over the past three months he’d gotten used to playing that role with her. Just as he’d played it with her mother—his younger sister—his entire life. He glanced at Sullivan, noted her disdain for him in the twist of her mouth.
Hell, now he got to be the bad guy at home and at work.
Funny how doing the right thing could be such a pain in the ass.
“It’s quite a coincidence,” Sullivan said, “you showing up right as Evan and I pulled in.”
“I heard the call.”
“Well, aren’t we lucky you just happened to be listening to the police radio at one-thirty in the morning.”
Hard not to listen to it since he’d been driving around looking for Jess after discovering she’d snuck out. Which Sullivan must suspect or else she wouldn’t be taking this little fishing trip. “Glad I could offer my assistance.”
Her mouth flattened. “Come on, Nate,” she called and the kid scrambled to his feet. “Let’s go.”
They walked away. Ross checked on Jess and found her back on her hands and knees.
“Get up.” He crossed to stand over her. Jess, of course, didn’t so much as glance at him. She excelled at doing the opposite of what she should. “I said—” he took a hold of her elbow and tugged “—get up.”
Once on her feet, she pulled away from him, the effect ruined when he had to reach out to keep her from falling flat on her face.
“I have to sit down,” she said. “I don’t feel well.”
And for a moment, Ross got sucked in. Sucked in by her pale face and big eyes, by the trembling of her voice. By how young and scared and…alone she looked.
He gave his head one quick, hard shake. She didn’t need coddling. She needed a swift kick in the ass. It was the only way to get her to straighten out. He was pissed and embarrassed and at the end of his rope with her. Just thinking about what she and Nate had been doing made him want to rail on that boy, shake some sense into her and then send her to a convent for the next twenty years or so.
“You can sit in the back of my squad car,” he told her, taking her by the elbow again and leading her—carefully—back to the path. “And if you puke in there, you’re cleaning it up.”
She stopped, forcing him to halt midstride. “My phone.”
“What about it?”
“I dropped it.” With her free hand she gestured vaguely behind them. “Over there.”
He started walking again, dragging her along. “Too bad.”
She dug in her heels, tried peeling his fingers from her arm. “I have to find it! I need it.”
“Then I guess you shouldn’t have dropped it in the middle of the woods at night.”
“Ow!” Jess cried suddenly. “Uncle Ross, stop. You’re hurting me.”
What the hell? “I’m barely touching—”
“I’m sorry.” She started sobbing. Loudly. Loud enough for everyone in the clearing to hear. “I won’t do it again. Please don’t hurt me.”
“Seriously?” he asked. “You’re going to play games with me now?”
The radio at Ross’s hip crackled to life. “Everything okay, Chief?” Sullivan asked.
With a sigh, Ross unhooked the radio, pressed the button to speak. “Everything’s fine.”
“You sure?” she asked, humor evident in her tone. “You need backup?”
“Negative,” he ground out. “I’ll be there in a minute.” He put it back, never taking his eyes off Jess. “You should join drama club when school starts again. Put those acting skills to good use.”
She lifted a shoulder, her expression smug. “I’m not leaving without my phone.”
She was stubborn. Sneaky. Manipulative. And until she turned eighteen, she was his problem. His responsibility. And he had no idea how to handle her. Damn it.
“You have three minutes.” He held out the flashlight so that it shone up, lighting their faces. She grabbed the bottom but he held on. “At the end of those three minutes, you’re going to accompany me out of these woods willingly and, most important, quietly. Whether or not you’ve found your phone. Understand me?”
“Whatever,” she muttered.
He let go of the flashlight and she staggered back toward where he’d first found her. And it hit him. He’d given in. She needed rules and discipline and to learn how to obey orders and he’d let her get her way because she’d caused a scene. Because it was easier than dealing with the drama she created.
He tapped his fingers against his radio. Glanced toward the clearing. Not that he could see anything other than the faint glow from the fire. He trusted Sullivan had the situation there under control. And was handling it how he wanted it.
“Time’s up,” Ross called. Jess had her head bent as she searched the area by a large evergreen. “Let’s go.”
“That wasn’t three minutes.”
“Sure it was. Come on.” She didn’t move, just held the flashlight so its beam was on the ground, her eyes downcast. Probably plotting other ways she could make his life difficult. “Jess. Now.”
Still staring down, she slowly crouched and reached out her free hand only to snatch it back as if something had snapped at her. Made a sound like she’d been kicked in the stomach.
“Damn it, Jessica,” he growled, picking his way through the thick undergrowth to stand over her. “Don’t make me handcuff you and haul you out of here.”
“Loo—look,” she said in a strangled voice.
He followed her trembling, pointing finger to the end of the beam of light.
And the human skull half-hidden under a fallen log.
CHAPTER TWO
“KATY PERRY, HUH?” Layne asked, her pen poised over her notepad as she took in the petite blonde in front of her. “That really what you’re going with? You don’t want to try something a little more…oh, I don’t know…creative? Like Amelia Earhart or Bette Davis or maybe Carly Simon?”
And by the blank look in the teen’s eyes, she had no idea who any of those women were.
What did they teach kids in school these days?
“My name is Katy Perry,” the girl insisted, lifting her adorable, turned-up nose.
“Have any proof of that?”
She shrugged, a bored expression on her pretty face. “I left my license at home.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I did.” She added a foot stomp to go with her pouty tone. “I don’t even care if you believe me or not. I’m telling the truth. I’m Katy Perry. Katy,” she said, stretching the name out as if speaking to someone who’d recently been hit on the head with a rock. She looked pointedly at Layne’s notebook. “Like…do you need some help spelling it? It’s K-A-T—”
“Thanks, but I think I can sound the rest out.”
Layne wrote the name down and put the notepad into her back pocket. A light breeze blew smoke into her eyes and picked up a few strands of hair that had escaped her ponytail. She smoothed them back. The wood pallets in the fire behind her crackled. Sparks shot into the night sky.
Chances were, the elderly gentlemen who’d called the station to report suspicious activity never would’ve known the kids were partying out here if they hadn’t had flames reaching thirty feet high.
She glanced toward her squad car. Evan, his brown hair cropped close to his head, his dark blue uniform hanging on his thin shoulders, tried to calm down the pudgy brunette who’d been sobbing since they’d pulled into the clearing. Out of the six kids they’d corralled, only two had proof they were eighteen and both had passed the Breathalyzer, leaving the brunette, Nate and the other boy—with longish hair, baggy jeans and a T-shirt advertising the store where it’d been bought—standing in a row illuminated by her car’s headlights. While the girl bawled, the boys wore similar smirks, Nate having found his cocky bluster upon returning to the company of his buddy.
Layne rubbed at the headache brewing behind her temple. Ah, the joys of youth. Rebellion. Recklessness. The certainty that nothing bad could ever happen. And the arrogance to believe that if, by some crazy coincidence you did get busted, an endless supply of smart-ass comments or, better yet, copious tears and hysteria, would get you out of trouble. All you had to do was stick with it long enough to wear down the dumb adult trying to force you to obey their archaic rules.
She and Evan were stuck dealing with two of the little darlings each—while their intrepid leader only had to take care of his niece.
“You know,” she said conversationally to the blonde, “being a police officer means being able to read people and situations. For example, see that Audi over there? The red one?”
“What about it?” faux-Katy said in a snotty tone that reminded Layne of when her sister Tori had been sixteen. Come to think of it, Tori still used that tone with Layne.
“Well, if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say that car belongs to you.”
“I never said that,” the teenager said quickly.
“No, you didn’t. But this is where my detecting skills come in real handy. You see, a car like that? It has ‘you’ written all over it.” If only because it went so well with the girl’s expensive, dark jeans, silk top—silk, at a bonfire in a quarry—and expertly applied highlights. But really, that silver Princess vanity plate gave it away most. “Which means that, since I’ve already written down the license plate number of every vehicle parked here, all I have to do is plug those numbers into my computer to find out who, exactly each vehicle is registered to. Katy.”
The girl paled, her expression no longer quite so confident that she’d put one over on some stupid cop.
Layne bit back a smile. “You can rejoin your friends.”
She did, but not before glaring at Layne as if she could incinerate her on the spot. Such was one of the consequences of being on the side of law and order.
Evan divided the teens, putting the girls into the back of Layne’s cruiser, the boys in his, then walked toward Layne, his short hair sticking up on the side as if he’d run his fingers through it. Repeatedly.
“I didn’t know someone could cry that much,” he muttered, the fire casting shadows on his round cheeks. “At least not without becoming dehydrated or passing out from lack of oxygen.”
“The human body is capable of many amazing and wondrous feats. Especially when helped along with massive quantities of alcohol.”
“Do you think you should search for the chief? He’s been gone awhile now. Maybe he got lost.”
“It’s been fifteen minutes,” she said. “And how could he be lost? All he has to do is walk toward the lights.”
“Maybe…” Evan ducked his head toward her. “Maybe something happened. You heard his niece scream. Maybe the chief…snapped.”
Layne snorted. “He has too much control to snap. Besides, she’s just messing with him.”
But Evan was completely serious. Nervous. God, had she ever been that young? That earnest?
“How can you tell?” he asked.
“Let me explain it to you, grasshopper. Once, many moons ago, I was a teenage girl myself. Plus I raised my younger sisters who, at one time or another, were also teenage girls.” And thank the dear Lord those years were over. “Believe me, that scream wasn’t real.”
It was a cry for help, though. One she doubted Chief Ross Taylor would heed.
Not her problem, she assured herself. She’d raised her sisters, had taken care of her family. She’d done her time.
“Captain?” Taylor’s voice came through her radio as clearly as if he stood beside her.
“See?” she said to Evan as she unhooked the radio. She lifted it and clicked the talk button. “Yes, Chief?”
“Turn them loose.”
Her jaw dropped. “Excuse me?”
“The kids. Give them a warning and let them go.”
“And here I thought we were going by the precept of the law being black and white.”
“Let. Them. Loose. Have Campbell escort anyone you suspect of drinking home. They are not to drive. Am I clear on that, Captain?”
“Crystal,” she managed to say. As if either she or Evan would let some kid—or anyone else—get behind the wheel after they’d been drinking. “Anything else? Sir.”
“I want Campbell to walk each child to their doors and make sure they are remanded into the custody of their parents. As soon as you’ve given him his orders, get back out here with me. Bring some flares, a blanket and a camera.”
Flares? A blanket and camera? She could feel Evan watching her curiously. She flicked the radio’s button. “Uh, Chief, I’m not sure what you think you and I are going to do with a blanket and a camera—”
He growled. The man literally growled at her. “Get out here. Now.”
Yet one more item to add to his growing list of faults. No sense of humor.
When the radio remained silent for three heartbeats, she clipped it back to her belt. “You heard him,” she told Evan. “We have our orders.”
She helped Evan transfer the girls into his car, the brunette still sniffling. Poor Evan. Layne didn’t envy his job, dealing with four teens and their parents.
But she did thank God—and Chief Taylor—she didn’t have to do it.
She returned to her cruiser for a blanket, flares and the camera she kept in the trunk. Looping the camera’s strap around her neck, she tucked the blanket under her arm, turned on her flashlight and headed back into the woods.
Whatever had happened must be big for “there’s right and there’s wrong” Chief Taylor to let those kids go with a warning. Or maybe Evan had it right. Maybe spending so much time in a town so small it didn’t even have a Starbucks, combined with his niece’s wild ways and running a department of officers who didn’t want him there, had finally gotten to Taylor and he’d cracked. At least enough to dislodge that stick he had up his ass.
Or maybe he decided to listen to her good sense on this one.
And that was as likely as Layne handing in her badge to follow in her father’s footsteps. Or, even more impossible, her mother’s.
Okay, maybe there had been plenty of times when she’d thought Chief Gorham should’ve been less…flexible…with the law. It was a danger having kids partying and then getting behind the wheel of whatever car mommy and daddy had bought for them.
So, no, she couldn’t honestly say she didn’t back Chief Taylor. She just wouldn’t. Say it, that was. To him or anyone else. Not when she should be the one calling the shots, not some hotshot detective from Boston.
Twigs and dead leaves crunched under her boots as she approached the spot where she’d left the chief and his niece. Still a good fifty yards away, she heard them before she saw the glow of the chief’s flashlight.
“—found it in the first place,” the girl was saying, her words not quite as slurred as they’d been earlier.
“For the last time, you’re not getting a reward,” Taylor said gruffly. Impatiently. “Drop it.”
“You suck,” the girl snapped but underneath the bite in her tone, Layne heard the threat of tears. And wouldn’t it be interesting to see how Taylor handled an angry, drunk, weeping teenager?
But he didn’t handle it. He didn’t make any response at all. No attempt to either reprimand or soothe the girl. He continued searching the ground by the end of a fallen tree as if his niece hadn’t even spoken. As if she wasn’t even there.
No chance of this guy winning Uncle of the Year.
He must’ve heard Layne’s approach because he turned, the light from his flashlight skimming over her before he lowered it. “We have a situation.”
“I gathered.” She stepped over a rock and handed him the flares. “What’s up?”
He aimed his flashlight so the beam hit the ground at the end of the log. Illuminating a dirt-encrusted skull.
Layne’s eyes widened. “Yes, I’d say that is definitely a situation.” And not what she’d expected. Not in Mystic Point.
She knelt next to the skull, discerned it was human and, as far as she could tell in the dark, very real. Chills broke out on her forearms. “How’d you even see it?”
“Jess stumbled upon it looking for her phone.”
“Which he’s holding hostage,” the girl—Jess—said, slouched on the far end of the log.
Taylor didn’t even glance her way. “Not the time, Jessica.”
Layne pulled her cell phone from her pocket. “I’ll contact the state forensics lab…have them send a team out here.”
“Already have one on the way. I’ve also contacted all available officers. We’ll get some lights out here and start a search for the rest of the remains.”
“I’m not staying while you hunt for more bones.” Jess wrapped her arms around her legs, her entire body shaking. “I want to go.”
“We will,” Taylor said. “Soon.”
“I’m cold,” Jess whined in a tone guaranteed to make dogs howl. “And I don’t feel good.”
Taylor’s jaw moved, as if he was grinding his teeth to powder. “Then I guess you shouldn’t have been drinking.” But he took the blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders. Surprise, surprise. Maybe he wasn’t a heartless cyborg after all.
Jess shrugged him off, the blanket sliding to the ground. “I want to go home.” Her voice cracked on the last word, her eyes shimmered with tears she tried to blink back. “Could you tell him to let me go home?” she asked Layne. “Please?”
Layne couldn’t help it, though Jess had no one else to blame for the vomit on her clothes, the dirt in her hair, the drying blood on her knees—Layne’s heart went out to the kid. She seemed so…lost.
Layne remembered that feeling entirely too well.
“I’m sure the chief will get you home as soon as he’s finished here,” Layne said, having no idea if that was true or not. God knew the new chief was an enigma. A frustrating one.
Jess’s smirk was more sad than cocky as she laid her cheek on her knees. “Yeah, right.”
Layne inclined her head meaningfully at Taylor then walked away, stopping next to a scraggly pine tree.
“Another problem, Captain?” he asked in the flat Boston accent that grated on her last nerve.
Though it was past midnight he was, as always, clean-shaven, his flat stomach a testament to his refusal to indulge when one of their coworkers brought in doughnuts. His dark blond hair was clipped close to the sides and back of his head, the top just long enough to start to curl. He had a high forehead, thick eyebrows and eyes the color of fog over the water.
The private, female part of her admitted he was attractive—in an earthy, overtly male way.
The cop in her resented the hell out of him for it.
“If you want to run her home,” she said quietly, “I can get things moving here.”
“She doesn’t want to go home—to the house we’re renting. She wants to go back to Boston.”
“Oh.” She had nothing else to add to that. Didn’t want to get involved in his family problems. “Still, I have this under control if you want to get her out of here.”
“You ever handle a case like this?”
She rolled her shoulders back like a fighter preparing to enter the ring. “Not exactly like this. No.”
“You get a lot of missing persons’ cases in Mystic Point?”
“People don’t go missing from Mystic Point.” Although plenty of them left. “But this isn’t some Utopia. We have our share of crime, including battery, burglary, rape and occasionally, murder. All of which I have investigated.”
“Still, I think I’ll take the lead on this one.”
And then he walked away.
Layne curled her fingers into her palms and followed, her steps jerky, the camera bouncing against her chest. “Is it because I’m a woman?” she called.
He picked up a flare, lit it then stuck it in the ground, his back to her the entire time. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”
She stopped behind him, her fists on her hips. “You want specific, sir, how about this. Is the reason you’re not handing this case over to me—the only detective on third shift, your second-in-command and the person who should be assigned it—because I don’t have a penis?”
“He’s a total misogynist,” Jess said with the exaggerated seriousness only the inebriated could pull off.
They both ignored her.
Taylor straightened slowly, the flare casting an orange glow over the hard lines of his face. “Tread carefully, Captain, or you might overstep.”
But she’d never been one to play it safe. Bad enough he’d come into her town and taken the position she was meant to have, now he wanted to screw with how she did her job?
“I don’t think it’s overstepping to clear the air, Chief. So let’s lay it on the line, right here, right now. You have something against having a woman on your force? Or maybe it’s just me you have a problem with?”
Lights flashed, bounced off the trees as a car drove toward the quarry but Taylor didn’t take his attention off her. She wanted to say having his cool gray eyes watching her so intently didn’t unnerve her but she’d never been a good liar.
“The decisions I make as chief aren’t personal.” She didn’t doubt he used that placid tone because it made her seem out of control in comparison. “I assign cases based on experience and expertise.” He stepped closer. “You don’t have to like how I run this police department,” he added softly. “You don’t even have to agree with me, but if you feel the need to question every decision I make, perhaps the Mystic Point Police Department is no longer the right place for you.”
Her vision blurred, her throat burned. “Is that your oh-so-subtle way of threatening my job?”
He moved closer, so close she picked up a hint of his spicy aftershave, felt the warmth from his big body. “For over a month you’ve fought me, skated the line of insubordination—”
“Hey now—”
“And have generally been nothing but a pain in my ass.” How he kept any and all emotion from his voice, she had no idea. But she almost respected him for his control. Almost. “Now, you can continue along that path and force me to take action. Or you can accept that I’m now in charge and start working with me. So, no, I’m not making threats against your job.” He tipped his head close to hers, his breath caressing her cheek. “I’m giving you the choice of what happens next.”
* * *
BY 5:00 A.M., ROSS’S EYES were gritty, his fingers tingling with cold and his head aching. He walked toward his cruiser, the rising sun’s rays reflecting off the large rocks surrounding the water, turning the sky pink and gold. The damp air smelled of burned wood and dirt.
Once the forensics unit from the state had arrived on scene around 2:00 a.m., Ross had coordinated the search for more remains. It hadn’t taken long and by three, they’d found badly decomposed bones near the area where Jess had discovered the skull.
Now, the remains were on their way to the state’s lab for testing while Campbell and Patrick Forbes, one of the department’s part-time officers, packed up the spotlights. Sergeant James Meade, a middle-aged man with thinning hair and a perpetual jovial expression that hid what Ross had already deduced was a keen cop’s mind, stood talking with Sullivan by the still-smoldering ashes of last night’s fire.