Harvest of Ruins Read online

  Hunter remembered what had happened to Jonah.

  Wondered if Adam had been there.

  “Did you know him?” Dr. Eaton asked.

  “Never struck me as the type to play Russian roulette,” she said.

  “Won’t know what killed him until I get him on the table,” Dr. Eaton repeated. “Any blood’s long since swirled down the drain.”

  Meaning that there may not have been sufficient blood loss to indicate the head wound was the cause of death. They hadn’t found Adam Fields’ clothes, they hadn’t found the gun, and there wasn’t any blood spatter on the walls. That meant that even if Adam had pulled the trigger himself, in that room, someone else had been there to clean up. Someone sophisticated enough to put him in the tub and turn the water on, and they may have been smart enough to use a gun to try to conceal the real cause of death. A gunshot wound was just a gunshot wound, until the doctor said otherwise.

  She watched him shuffle out the door, through the adjoining bedroom, and saw Noah return. He ran his fingers through his hair the way he did when he was frustrated. He saw her watching him, took a breath, lowered his hand, straightened his tie.

  A quick nod at one of the uniforms was all she needed to get him to approach her. After relaying her instructions about the water heater, she turned to her partner. “Remind me why we’re here?”

  “Because we’re dealing with all youth crimes these days.”

  “And this qualifies how?” she asked.

  “Suspicious death of a kid.”

  She made a face at him. “We’ve got the vandalism from a few days ago, not to mention the drug leads we're chasing up. Sagamo High’s been flooded with a new supply.”

  “And this is going to take priority.” Noah shook his head. “It’s a teenager. A local boy. Drugs are just like God and the Tooth Fairy; they don’t really exist until your kid’s stealing money from your wallet to feed their habit, or the junkies are dropping like flies on the sidewalk in front of your house. But this is a body.”

  He was right. All that mattered was that this was a teenager who was dead and shouldn’t be.

  The drug case would have to wait.

  “The doctor can’t be certain about cause of death.”

  “Big surprise.” Noah scowled.

  Hunter wanted to tell him to be careful, his face might freeze that way, but Noah wouldn't have been amused. “What else have we got?”

  “The keystone cops bungled every part of the scene they could get their hands on. I sent Heineman outside, on perimeter duty. Too bad there wasn't an Arctic outpost to send his ass to."

  "He'd still find a way to screw that up somehow.”

  Noah cracked a smile.

  She’d already surveyed the master bedroom, and quickly exited, followed the hall to the main bath, checked it, and proceeded to the other bedroom.

  All the furniture was pushed to the walls, the black and steel desk and shelves containing nothing more than a computer and a few books and boxes. The white carpet didn’t appear to have so much as a speck of dust on it. They were working in a great, white space with almost no details. It was the blandest house she'd ever seen.

  Still, she did a full 360°, pushed the closet door open and confirmed it was also clear.

  As she stepped back out into the hallway, Noah shook his head. “No gun. No bits of brain splattered against a wall. No blood stains.” They walked toward the stairs. “And courtesy of a timed sprinkler system the front and back yards are as wet as the bathtub.”

  “Sprinklers? In October?” This was a year when drought hadn't been an issue. Enough rain had fallen throughout the spring to keep the grass growing steadily, green as the leaves on the trees, and with the arrival of fall the rain had returned.

  The officer Hunter had tasked with checking the hot water heater stopped short, three quarters of the way up the stairs, when he saw them at the landing. Elijah Two-Rivers was tall, fit, with a booming voice that he somehow managed to soften appropriately whenever he was on the job. Hunter rarely visited the bar with her colleagues – not with a daughter waiting for her at home – but when she had stopped in for a few moments, she’d taken note of Elijah. He was the one who kept the party in check, which was why she’d selected him for her assignment. He was a young officer who was going places, and not just because of any affirmative action policy those passed over would blame.

  He looked her straight in the eye. “You’re not going to like it,” he said. “They have a tank and an on-demand system. Damnedest thing…” He shook his head. “If that was the only water running and it wasn’t full pressure it could have been on for hours and the water would still come through hot.”

  Hunter cursed the homeowners silently but thanked the officer. Elijah turned and looked as though he was about to descend to the main floor, but then stopped. “I also looked at the sprinklers outside,” he said.

  Noah frowned. “Why?”

  Elijah glanced at Hunter, then faced Noah as he answered him. “To see where it connected and what time it came on. The timer wasn’t activated.” He glanced back at Hunter. “I just thought you’d like to know.”

  Hunter nodded and thanked him again. She raised an eyebrow as she glanced at her partner. “Remind me. How did this call come in?” They walked down the stairs.

  “Anonymous 911 call from a pay-and-talk cell phone.”

  “And who lives here?”

  Noah flipped back a few pages in his notebook. “William and Eileen Shannon. Neighbors say William’s in finance, and Eileen works at Soldiers' Memorial Hospital in Orillia.”

  “A couple with a lot of money.”

  “And no kids, never mind teenagers.”

  Hunter looked around at the bland walls and carpet, the whiteness interrupted occasionally for steel furniture, or in the case of the couch in the living room, more whiteness rising from the carpet. "Not with a house this clean."

  "A clean house is a sign of a sick mind," Noah said.

  She smiled.

  At the bottom of the stairs there was a door that presumably went to the garage. It took no more than a second to confirm that, and to verify that there was no vehicle parked inside. Hunter closed the door.

  Noah tapped his fingers against his notebook. “Neighbors say they’re on vacation. Crete.”

  So far they had a naked dead boy in a bathtub, in a house he seemed to have no reason to be in, no murder scene, no witnesses, no certainty about what had killed him and not a whole hell of a lot to go on.

  They were off to a great start.

  INVENTING SHADOWS

  - Dia Frampton -

  News Review

  Hunter sat up straight in her bed before she was even fully awake. More dreams. More beads of sweat dotted her brow, her skin depleted by exhaustion and stress. More thudding of her heart in her chest, like it was pounding out an emergency message in Morse code.

  Another night of staring at the sloped ceiling.

  She reached for the remote on her bedside table, knocked her brush and pricked her finger on the steel bristle. Hunter yanked her hand back as the brush thumped to the floor.

  Of course it missed the small bedside rug and hit the hardwood.

  For a moment, she held her breath. In an old house like this the shadows were long and, late at night, the sounds carried. Even a brush dropped on the floor could wake Audra some nights.

  When the house settled back into stillness, Hunter pushed herself up in bed, turned the bedside lamp on, picked up the brush and replaced it, grabbed the remote and turned the TV on.

  “Welcome to News Review.” The petite, strawberry-blonde anchor delivered her line with a smile. “I’m Ginger Hadley, and today I have Meadow Stansfield with me in the studio.”

  Ginger gestured to Meadow with a broad smile. Meadow, the raven-haired former beauty queen, smiled graciously back.

  Hunter could have sworn Meadow tilted her head just a touch, the way a girl would if she curtsied.

  “Meadow, you’ve
been following the trial of Detective Sergeant Hunter McKenna.”

  “That’s right, Ginger. DS McKenna is charged with homicide-"

  "I'm sorry, Meadow." Ginger smiled unapologetically as she interrupted. "DS McKenna is charged with murder?"

  "Well, it's not a straight murder charge. She's accused of negligence that led to death. The charges came months after the actual shooting-”

  Hunter turned the TV off and sank back down against her pillows. Although she preferred to sleep with one single one, she had a stack of cushions piled up against the metal headboard. It made it easier to lean back on the nights she read to Audra in bed.

  And on the nights when she couldn't sleep.

  There was nothing the commentators could say that she didn’t already know.

  She surveyed the familiar shadows that had been created by a thin stream of moonlight shining through the window into her room. The alcove where the window seat was, and the stand beyond it, with the TV perched on top, bumping against the slope of the ceiling. The dresser against the far wall. The chair dropped in the middle of the floor, clothes hanging off it, waiting for the next time she did laundry to be moved back by the desk beside the dresser.

  Or waiting the next time Audra ran in to her room, banged her head on the chair and started to cry.

  She should think about her daughter. Move the chair.

  Instead, Hunter thought about her dream.

  She didn’t usually remember her dreams. Since the trial, she couldn’t forget them. Vinny haunted her sleep, and when she was awake the events of recent months replayed in her head, like IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE or MIRACLE ON 34th STREET at Christmas.

  So many memories, shadowed by so many regrets.

  ***

  Hunter thought of her current partner, Noah Wilmott, as tall, dark and a hot guy with a hotter head who tried to act cool.

  She thought of her former partner as tall, dark, and still as the earth. Her thoughts drifted back to that night, the day Adam's body had been discovered.

  Her visit.

  Thomas Shepherd was getting out of his car, going through automatic motions as he locked it and turned to walk up the sidewalk to his townhouse. He was halfway to the door before he raised his head and noticed her on the steps. The sight of her made him stop cold.

  There was no greeting, no obligatory sentiment offered that suggested it was good to see her or it had been too long. No genuine sentiment either. He stood there, and stared at her as though he expected her to say something.

  She offered him a smile, the one that made the side of her mouth go crooked but somehow look sad.

  “Is something,” he seemed to struggle for a moment as he searched for words, “wrong with-”

  She waved her hand to silence him, stood up and brushed off her pants. “No. She’s fine.”

  Tom nodded. He didn’t make a second guess.

  “I’ve been working on youth crimes, mostly,” she said. “Trying to find the source of the drugs they’ve got in the high school.”

  “Shut down one supply and they find another.”

  He understood the futility.

  “I got pulled off today.” Her gaze had drifted to the neighbor’s front lawn. Whoever lived there liked frogs. “New case.”

  “What’s that got to do with me, Hunter?”

  She looked back at him. “We found a body this morning. Single gunshot wound to the head.” Hunter paused. “Adam Fields.”

  A car drove by, the headlights highlighting just the tiniest widening of Tom’s eyes when he heard the name. The spray of water shot over the road as the tires hit a puddle, and then the car turned down another street and the sound of the engine faded.

  Tom hadn’t moved since she’d said the name. He stood and watched her. Whatever he thought about Adam’s death, it was buried deep. It’s the way things had always been with Tom. She’d spent their entire partnership digging through layers, never sure if she’d ever really broken through to him. They could stand face to face, could even talk about work and their lives, yet she’d always felt the gulf between them.

  He moved past her on the sidewalk, and rifled through his pockets. She turned, lifted her hand to reach out to him, then let it drop by her side.

  “I was hoping you could help me.”

  Tom swung around to face her. “Me?”

  “You know Adam.”

  “Knew him. It’s been years.”

  She looked him in the eye. “But you knew his friends, too.”

  His breath seemed to catch in his throat. Tom made a funny sound, then coughed. “What’s this got to do with me, Hunter?”

  “Remember when we went to your house, after your divorce?” She knew he did, knew it was something he couldn’t forget, so she pressed on. “When you talked to your daughter about the neighbor’s cat? You never told Evelyn the cat had been drowned.”

  His forehead creased. “What’s that got to do with Adam being shot?”

  “Maybe nothing. I just always thought it was odd, drowning the cat first, then hanging it with a skipping rope.”

  “Overkill,” he said with a shrug.

  “You seemed convinced you knew who did it.”

  Her eyes searched his for answers, but he looked away. “We never caught anyone.”

  “But that girl, you thought-”

  “Hunter,” Tom lifted his hand, “what’s this got to do with Adam?”

  "What about what they did to Jonah?"

  The lines around his eyes hardened. "What about it?"

  “Ivy Dorn. You… you suspected her of doing some pretty awful things, didn't you?”

  “Hunter, what’s this got to do with Adam’s death?”

  “I want to talk to Evelyn.”

  If she’d thought his eyes would pop out of his head or a refusal would burst from his lips before he had time to think about his answer, she was mistaken. She’d only once seen Tom lose control, the day he’d talked to Evelyn about the dead cat. Tonight, standing in front of her just minutes before midnight, he didn’t even react.

  “Then you should be talking to Rose,” he said as he turned, inserted the key in the lock and with one swift motion had the door open and was inside before she could even react. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  ***

  She knew it was futile, but she couldn’t help wondering if things would be different if she’d never gone to see Tom that night.

  Hunter turned over, wrapped her arm under her pillow and pulled it to her as fear gave way to exhaustion and sleep reclaimed her once more. Hunter was pulled back into the dreams, with the peculiar awareness one sometimes has, of being asleep and being powerless to change the scenes in your mind. Hunter knew who she was, and yet she knew in her dream she was Vinny.

  She was Vinny.

  Vinny, the day after Adam’s body had been found.

  ***

  There were times Vinny felt all the color had been sucked from the world. As she walked toward the school to serve her daily sentence she did not see the green of the leaves or grass, or hear the chirp of birds. The bright light that cut through the sky seemed to have pierced clouds of gray.

  She knew they weren’t gray, but rather white puffy blobs against the blue of an almost-summer day. Vinny had heard of being snow blind, and wondered if there was such a thing as sunblind. If it was possible for a day to be so bright it dried out the color.

  Not that it mattered. Perhaps it was a trick of the mind, necessary for survival. Better to think of the world as dismal shades of gray instead of vibrant, lively and lovely, something to mourn while she watched the clock during class.

  Perhaps it was best not to think at all.

  As she walked up to the old, three-story brick building she sensed the other students felt as she did. Their faces were somber and the smileless eyes stared away at nothingness.

  It wasn’t until she’d passed several solemn groups that she realized the flag had been lowered.

  “Oh, Evelyn, isn’t it just
awful?”

  Vinny turned to face the sound of the voice. The words had been choked out in pieces, and Heather Whitby had embraced her before she realized who’d even spoken. “I can’t believe it.”

  She offered Heather a light, 'There there,' pat on the shoulder and pulled back. She had no idea what Heather couldn’t believe.

  “I remember when we were all at each other’s parties when we were just little kids…” Heather choked on a sob. One of her other friends came over and put her arm around her. The girl, whose name was Terri, shook her head as she looked at Vinny with sad, puppy dog eyes. Her straight hair didn’t fall from place with the motion.

  “I can’t believe they’re making us go to class today,” she said. The enormous eyes had filled with tears.

  Vinny looked around. That’s when she realized the faces outside the school were gray. Everyone looked like they’d lost their color from some sort of shock. The girls cried and clung to each other while the boys tightened fists and stared at walls or feet.

  The bell rang, and one by one, they gradually filed inside.

  Was she the only one who didn’t know what was going on?

  She felt as though she was floating down the hallway. It wasn’t the sensation of elation that buoyed her, but the sense of being disconnected from her surroundings, the greater sense that things outside her knowledge and beyond her control were now influencing her life. It felt as though her heart had stopped beating, as though she was involuntarily holding her breath, the words spoken around her muffled by some unseen barrier.

  Hunter, even inside the dream and somehow aware she was dreaming of these things through Vinny's eyes, felt nauseous.

  Vinny felt as though she’d fallen out of frequency with the world.

  Hunter knew what she meant.

  “Can’t believe Adam…”

  Couldn’t believe Adam what? Vinny turned in the direction of the voices. A group of girls whispered, glanced over their shoulders.