Blood Ties (5 page)

“Can you tell me the rest?” He overlooked my tight smile, intent on memorizing the boldly colored, Native American artwork of Richard Dubois over my right shoulder. Hours, days, months passed. At least he wasn’t pacing, but I didn’t think he’d appreciate me snapping my fi ngers and yelling “Focus.” Instead, I waited, which I rarely do well.

“It’s kind of a blur,” he said fi nally. “When I got into town, I picked her up and took her to my mom’s.”

“Your mom was there?”

“No. She was in Denver.”

“What about your dad?”

“My parents divorced when I was two. Anyway, that afternoon, I took Sam out to the rehab center and while she talked to Shelley, I found the counselor.”

“Why?”

With his back snapped straight, the carefree college stud disappeared. “I told that woman after what she pulled she’d better counsel Sam, too, for free, or else I’d get my father to slap her stupid ass with a lawsuit so fast it’d make 42

her head spin.”

Okay, so I didn’t care for the extreme focus he turned on at will.

Th

at mini-tirade put a new spin on Mr. David LaChance. I took another swig of soda, wetting my cotton mouth. “Did this counselor agree?”

David leaned closer, his eyes bright like small, shiny tacks, his mouth a smirk that curled my innards. “Without question she agreed. You may not like my father, Ms.

Collins, but his name does invoke fear in most people around here.”

More disgust than fear, I wanted to point out, but kept my mouth shut. David resembled his father far more than I’d initially believed. “Samantha wanted the counseling?”

“At

fi rst she wanted to forget the whole thing and go home. She stuck it out for a few days. I think she was dealing with it, but her mom didn’t want her there.” His harsh bark of laughter fi t this new persona. “No big surprise.

Nobody wanted Sam anywhere. About two weeks later, she and Dick had a big fi ght and he kicked her out.”

“Where’d she go?”

“Some dive up on East North Street.”

Th

at surprised me too. Th

e north side of Rapid City

has a bad reputation, deservedly so. I’ve read the police and Social Services reports: stabbings, sexual assaults and child abuse run rampant. Th

e population is largely poor

and Native American; a few college kids and elderly people 43

on fi xed incomes remain among the gangs and transients.

Couple that demographic with the excessive number of casinos, bars, and pawnshops, and the crime rate soars. Most homicides, rapes, robberies — not to mention unsolved drownings — occur within a two-mile radius.

“Alone?” I said skeptically. “She didn’t have any other family or friends to crash with for a while?”

He shook his head. “Th

e only relative that lives here is

her grandma, but she spends the winter in Arizona.”

“What about out-of-town relatives?”

“I’d hoped maybe she took off to stay with her cousin in Lincoln, you know, to get herself together. By the time I talked to Meredith again, it’d been two weeks since anyone’d heard from her.”

Th

e muscles in my shoulders grew tight. Th e next few

questions wouldn’t be easy for me to ask or for him to answer. “Why is it so important for you to fi nd out where Sam was those last two weeks?”

David’s gaze turned murky. “Last time I talked to her, she seemed . . .” He faltered. “Less angry, more . . . smug.

Something had changed.
She’ d
changed. Like she had this great big secret. She swore the next time we got together, she’d explain everything.”

Kevin glanced up sharply.

A sixteen-year-old with a secret. How novel. But most young girls’ secrets weren’t serious enough to get them dead.

“How long did she stay at the place on East North?”

44

“A few days, I guess, she didn’t have much money.

She had a job waiting tables on weekends up at Johnson’s Siding.”

Coincidence her body had been found downstream from where she’d been slinging hash? “Th at’s ten miles out

of town. How’d she get there?”

“Dick bought her a piece-of-shit car when she turned sixteen. But she barely made it to work and back.” David sneered. “You’d think a mechanic would make sure her car ran.”

“So, realistically, she could have earned enough money to live anywhere for a couple of weeks?”

“Doubtful. After the tourists leave, the tips drop way off . She said it was depressing.”

“Was she depressed often?”

“I’d never seen her depressed before any of this happened, and believe me, she had plenty to be depressed about.”

“Would she attempt suicide?”

His face paled. “No, she’s Catholic.”

I snapped my mouth shut. Catholics expected Protes-tants to accept that statement at face value, for any situation, as a testament of true faith. I never did.

“After what she’d been through? Wouldn’t she at least consider it?”

“No.”

“Julie, you’re getting off track here,” Kevin said.

45

“Not even to make her parents sorry? Make them suff er?” I paused. “Did Sam use drugs?”

David’s guilty eyes darted away when he admitted,

“We smoked pot once or twice.”

“Could she have gotten mixed up with more serious stuff ?”

“No.”

“Did she drink?”

His jaw clenched. “For Chrissake,
no
.”

I had one chance left to test my theory. “Maybe she changed in those two weeks. Maybe you didn’t know her as well as you thought.”

After his deliberate pauses, his vehement denial came swiftly. “I knew her better than anyone. She was upset, yes, but she’d never run away, or kill herself, that much I do know.”

“Th

en why is she dead, David?”

“I don’t know.”

A placating, sympathetic comment arose, and I shoved it aside, hating the hard-nosed bitch act that fi t me like a second skin. I lit another cigarette and considered him through the haze, knowing it hid the turmoil in my eyes.

“Apparently, you don’t know too much.”

He jumped to his feet, looming over me like a Cornhusker linebacker. “You have no right to sit there and make me feel like I did nothing. I gave her as much support as I knew how . . .” His hands squeezed open, then shut in 46

tight fi sts. “It’s not my goddamn fault this happened in the middle of midterms. My Dad told me if I didn’t pass, he’d stop paying my tuition. I couldn’t leave, so I hired
him
.”

He pointed a slender fi nger at Kevin. “A lot of good it did.

Sam is dead. I don’t have a fucking clue where she spent the last two weeks.”

Rage and frustration, unanswered questions, all familiar to me, yet somehow I didn’t feel either the empathy Kevin expected or the sympathy David deserved. I felt like I’d been ambushed.

“David, that’s enough. Sit down.” Kevin shoved his pen into the holder and his chair back.

Kevin didn’t apologize for me. But it wasn’t enough to ease my mind that I’d somehow taken a wrong turn and couldn’t go back.

David’s shoulders slumped, his face a mask of despair.

“Don’t suppose you’re going to help me now?”

His petulant look had zero eff ect. I moved to the window behind Kevin’s desk while he murmured to David and escorted him from the offi

ce. I tuned them out.

Saturday

traffi

c fl owed smoothly alongside the rain

rushing into the street drains. Everything lacked color, the sky and clouds, the wet streets and sidewalks, the dirty gush of water thrown over the curb by passing cars. I exhaled, watching the gray smoke from my lungs dissipate into nothing. Th

e whole lot seemed bleak; a pointless gray, neither black nor blue: the air in the room, the day outside, 47

my present mood.

Few people braved the weather and I wished I hadn’t either. Sensible people were snug in their houses, doing normal, rainy day things. Why was I here subjecting myself to more sorrow?

“Julie?” Kevin’s voice tickled my ear. “I’m sorry.”

I faced him. “If today is ‘piss off your best friend day’, I didn’t get you a card.”

His slight smile didn’t reach his eyes.

“I don’t like this and I don’t appreciate that you’ve suddenly become mute. Tact isn’t my strong suit, you know that.”

“I know.” He gently moved a hank of hair behind my ear; his thumb skated across my cheek. “But the way you asked the questions was good practice for when I convince you to come to work with me.”

Great. Now we were back at another subject I’d been avoiding. But I’m not entirely sure it’s just a professional association Kevin wants. I haven’t found the guts to ask him for clarifi cation, so like everything else in my life, I steer clear of the issue.

“Julie?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m listening. But do the words ‘just listen’

ring any bells with you?”

Kevin hummed “Jingle Bells.”

I slugged him.

“Come on, I’ll admit that you aced the good-cop, 48

bad-cop routine,” he off ered as a truce.

I rolled my eyes. “And yet, somehow the point of that eludes me.”

“And yet,” he said as he tapped my temple, “your pointed, less-than-subtle questions worked because the information he gave you diff ered from what he gave me.”

Kevin wasn’t blaming me for my rigid bitch act? If he only knew the pretzel state of my internal organs from what I’d heard today. Or how often I wished I’d turned out soft and gentle, cooing wisdom and compassion like my mother. Fate chuckled deep in my subconscious and then my father’s cold voice told me to stop whining. “How so?”

I said.

“More emotional. When he hired me he provided the basic details and a retainer.” Kevin scowled and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Th

is business about a secret is new.”

“But you knew about Shelley? Why didn’t you tell me?”

His eyes narrowed. “Would it have made a diff erence if I did?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

I broke eye contact and sat down. “It just would have.”

“Julie . . .”

“Goddamn it Kevin, this is hard, okay?”

“I know. I thought you could help. I thought it might help
you
.”

Normally Kevin took my moods in stride and didn’t 49

push. “Is that why I’m here? Because ‘poor Julie’s’ brother was found fl oating in the creek? You need my expert advice on what it’s like
not
to have answers?”

He stared at me in silence.

I shivered in my cashmere sweater. A 2000-gauge wool coat wouldn’t warm me, as the chill went deep, beyond fl esh and muscle to the bone. “It’s not the same situation because there’ll be answers for David. Sixteen-year-old girls do
not
just disappear in a town this size. Someone knows something. Sam was young and tragic and . . .”

“White,” he fi nished. “I never expected prejudice from the champion of racial injustice.” Kevin crouched at my knees, forcing me to meet his eyes. “You’re right, it is a dif-ferent situation, but not because she’s white and the other drowning victims were Lakota.”

“What makes you so sure?”

Kevin’s icy voice cut through my indignation. “Because she didn’t drown. Whoever killed Sam slashed her throat. Slashed it from ear to ear. She bled to death before ending up in the creek.”

Just like Ben
. Th

e words weren’t spoken aloud, but they

hung in the confi nes of the gray offi

ce nevertheless.

I shut my eyes against the ghastly image, pushing my head back until the stucco wall scraped my scalp. Th at one little

diff erence in the cases changed everything. And nothing.

It sickened me; it incensed me, as Kevin knew it would. I didn’t want to get involved; yet I felt the pull. “When did 50

you fi nd out?”

“Sergeant Ritchie Schneider from the police department called with the details right when you walked in.”

“Why?” Kevin’s dad had been a Rapid City cop for years so I knew he was tight with the PD. And, we’d known Ritchie Schneider from our hell-raising days back in high school. Still, the attitude of the RCPD was more like Sheriff Richard’s when it came to investigators in the private sector.

“He knew it was my case and fi gured I deserved to know what I was up against. Th

e FBI was called as a cour-

tesy; at this point everyone still has access to everything, but that could change.”

“Why didn’t you tell David?” My eyes burned beneath my lids and seemed to be glued shut. “Do you think David could’ve killed her? Hired you to cover his tracks?”

I heard his sigh before it crossed my face, sweet, minty, close. “I’d considered it, but he seems to be the only one who gave a damn about her. But remember, we’re not trying to fi nd out who killed her, we’re only trying to fi gure out where she was hiding and why.”

Slowly, I opened my eyes knowing Kevin would be right in my face. I wasn’t disappointed.

His eyes, an intense green, locked on mine and I resisted the urge to squirm. He believes the crap about eyes being windows to the soul and reads me accurately on most days. I didn’t want him delving that deeply into me right now.

51

“What?”

A cocky smile later, he backed off . “You’ll help me, won’t you?”

He knew he had me but I hedged just the same. “It probably won’t make a diff erence.”

“You’ll make a diff erence, I feel it.”

His sweetness left me fl ustered and confused on the outside as harsher feelings roiled inside me. “I don’t know what I can do.”

“You have a history with Shelley. I think she’ll talk to you easier than she would me.”

Ancient history. Th

e weekend kegs and sporadic con-

fi dences from days past didn’t give me the right to infringe on her grief, or her attempts at overcoming her addictions.

“Kevin, I knew Shelley years ago. She probably doesn’t even remember me.”

“Everyone remembers you.”

My knuckles rapped his chest. “Flattery won’t work, slick.”

“What

will?”

“Money, good tequila, a weekend in Cozumel with unlimited sexual favors, you know, the usual.”