“We have a few questions for Mrs. Harrelson,” she replied instead, wishing she could bend that rule just once.
“Oh, dearie,” Martha replied, quickly wiping another tear from the corner of her eye with her fingers. “Poor Shelley, she never recovered after losing Rose, and then Elroy. She had a stroke a few months after Elroy passed. I’m not sure she’s going to be much help, that poor lamb.”
“Do you know where she is?” Elliot asked.
“Yes, and I try to visit every chance I have, but it’s far, you know. I can’t drive like I used to.” She must have noticed the look on Elliot’s face, because she quickly added. “It’s called the, um, Glen Valley Commons or something like that, over in Redding. It’s one of those nursing homes run by the state. Terrible place if you were to ask me.”
All leads had seemed to disintegrate in Rose’s disappearance case, yet Kay knew she had to find out what had happened fourteen years ago before she could catch Rose’s killer. With Shelley in assisted living, she couldn’t hope for much, but any hint, any piece of information might prove valuable. The detective who’d investigated the kidnapping had been sloppy, but the mother might still remember something useful.
She thanked Martha for her help and turned to leave, but the woman seemed to have something else to say, because she grabbed Kay’s sleeve.
“You know,” she said, lowering her voice as if afraid of being overheard, “I never understood how something like that could happen. Shelley and Elroy were both at home when their daughter was taken, yet the police accused them, instead of looking at other people who came to the house and knew their way around.” She smiled, her watery eyes sparkling. “I watch crime shows on TV, all day really. Nothing else better to do.” Kay nodded with a smile, but Martha still held on. “There were other people who came here. Me, of course, but I didn’t take her,” she clarified with a quick scoff. “Elroy’s work buddies. Rose’s nanny is dead now—ovarian cancer, I heard—but she vanished right around the time the girl was taken. Her mother said she’d moved to South America somewhere around that time. There were others, though. Have you spoken with any of them? Has anyone?”
8Preliminary
“Redding is about an hour away,” Elliot said, but Kay was quick to interrupt.
“Not if I drive.” She flashed a quick glance his way, amusement gleaming in her hazel eyes.
I bet, he thought, because the woman holding the wheel drove the speed of a prairie fire with a tail wind. Whatever distance they needed to go, she’d take it as a personal challenge and get there in half the time.
He hid the smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, afraid she might see right through it. Perceptive, bright as a new penny, and beautiful too. One heck of a cop, instincts rock solid, doubled by all that science she wielded around like loaded six shooters, reading people’s emotions, anticipating what they’d say and do, and never being wrong.
His smile widened, but he kept his face turned away from her, pretending to look at the edge of the thick woods lining the road, patches of it still green in needles of pine and fir, while others were bare, where oaks and maples had shed their foliage, littering the moist ground in fire colors. He deliberately avoided her two-second scrutiny, because that’s how long it would take her to read his thoughts like an open book.
He welcomed the possibility to learn from one of the best profilers in the FBI. Through some sudden and favorable twist of fate, one of the country’s top-notch criminalists had returned to her hometown and had decided to stay, becoming his partner. As far as career fortune went, he couldn’t’ve asked for more.
What a load of sundried manure.
Who was he kidding? Learning how to profile a perp or study victimology wasn’t the only reason he lingered after shift end, building the nerve to ask her out to dinner. But the last time he’d mixed business with pleasure and had fallen for his partner, it ended so badly he had to leave Texas. Now every time winter drew closer, he remembered the oath he’d taken that day. Never again.
His smile waned.
She caught the shift in his thoughts uncannily, like she seemed to do everything, without even taking her eyes off the road.
“What’s wrong?” she asked casually, and he had to swallow a curse.
“Even with your driving, Redding’s a three-hour trip, with the time we’ll spend there. Let’s drop by Dr. Whitmore’s first.”
“Yup,” she acknowledged, glancing at him again just as briefly. Then, without a word, she took the next exit and turned left.
He hadn’t fooled her for one moment.
Busying himself with the water bottle nestled in the door panel, he unscrewed the cap and drank thirstily about half of it. By the time he slid the bottle back, Kay was pulling in front of the county morgue. At the far end of the parking lot, a news van waited with its engine running.
They rushed inside, unwilling to answer any questions from the media. He held the door for Kay, and she walked in without any hesitation or any indication she wasn’t one hundred percent comfortable visiting Doc Whitmore’s turf. The place was kept chilly, for obvious reasons, and the air was loaded with the heavy stench of death and chemicals, their mixed odors more bothersome than usual.
“Hey, Doc,” Kay greeted the medical examiner.
Dressed in a long white lab coat and wearing a headband with LED lights and magnifying lenses, he was standing next to one of the autopsy tables, where Rose’s body lay, the slash across her throat gaping and discolored in the absence of blood. When he heard Kay’s voice, he turned and smiled widely, visibly pleased to see her, then greeted Elliot with a polite nod. He pushed up his headband, exposing his thin-rimmed glasses and tired
