Alone (A Bone Secrets Novel) (18 page)

Eden had a D in chemistry.

How can that be?

Eden got straight As. No exceptions. What the hell was wrong with her chemistry class? He swallowed and studied the rest of her grades. Three Cs and a B. What was going on? They weren’t final grades; they reflected where she stood at the middle of the term. But still… a D? He reached for his cell phone, trying to get a grip on his temper. He knew college wasn’t like high
school and didn’t grade the same, but Eden was sharp. She had the skills to succeed. He dialed her cell.

Why hadn’t she told him she was struggling?

He’d meant to check her grades for weeks, but he’d been wrapped up in the hope for the new job. Maybe he should have looked at them earlier. Was it too late to improve them?

Her phone continued to ring. He held his breath. Voice mail. He hung up.

He stared at the computer screen for another thirty seconds, mind racing. Maybe it was a good thing she hadn’t answered. He was a bit worked up and might not listen well. He glanced at his watch. Seven
P.M.

He sent a text:
CALL ME
.

He blew out a breath and leaned back in his chair. The numbers taunted him from the screen. Two of the Cs were nearly Ds.

Was the divorce upsetting her?

A million questions raced through his mind and he mentally set them aside. He needed to talk with her before he jumped to conclusions. Looking at the calendar, he realized it’d been more than a week since he spoken with his daughter. That wasn’t like her. He’d called a few times but had never reached her. He scrolled through his texts. Two days ago, she’d said she’d call him that evening. He checked his call log for missed calls.

Nothing.

All the texts before that were typical teen. Had to get to class, had to study, out with friends.

No time to talk to Dad.

He tossed his cell on the desk. Was he overreacting? How often did he talk to his uncle when he was at college? Once a month? Maybe?

The grades worried him. That wasn’t like Eden.

Should he text Jennifer? Ask if she’d heard anything? His phone taunted him from the desk. Everybody was a simple click away these days. Even Jennifer. But he was trying to create distance between them, get her adjusted to not hearing from him. Contacting her about every little issue wasn’t going to help. The final divorce papers had arrived this afternoon for him to sign. No doubt Jennifer had received them, too. This was not the best day to get in touch.

If he didn’t hear back from Eden by tomorrow, he’d contact Jennifer.

Decision made. He hated postponing issues, but there was nothing he could fix tonight unless Eden called him.

“Seth? Are you in there?”

The panic in Victoria’s voice from the hallway had Seth out of his seat. She dashed into the office, alarm in her eyes. “What’s wrong?”

The Tori he remembered didn’t raise her voice. And he doubted this new one did either.

“There was a shooting at the memorial for Glory McCarthy.” She rushed her words, her chest heaving.

“What? Just now?”

“Jerry called me. He saw it on the news. He wanted to know if Lacey was there.”

“She went, right?” Seth asked.

“She told me she was going. I’ve tried to call her, and I’ve texted her.” Victoria looked at her phone again. “I haven’t heard back.”

“Did the news say anyone was killed?”

“Just bumps and bruises so far.”

Seth took a deep breath. “That’s good. Let’s see what’s going on.” He sat down and pulled up the website for a local news
station. “There’s a whopping five sentences on their page that says nothing new. And the story was posted ten minutes ago. I don’t think they know much yet.”

“Trinity was going, too.”

Seth looked at her face, leaning close over his shoulder to read the screen. Her pupils were dilated, making her eyes darker than normal. This close he could see every eyelash.

“Why would someone do that? So utterly stupid.” She pressed her lips together and lines formed between her eyebrows. “How many people were there?”

“It says the place was packed, but police caught the gunman. Lots of cops were there just to show support, so that was lucky. Sounds like half of Portland attended.”

Victoria’s phone gave a delicate melody. “Lacey?” she asked into the phone.

Seth heard a female respond on the other end. The lines eased out of Victoria’s face.

“Did you see Trinity?” The lines eased further. “Oh, thank God. What happened?”

Seth’s spine relaxed. The teenager had been through a lot lately. He liked to see Tori’s fondness for the girl.

How would she get along with Eden?

She closed her eyes as she listened, her posture visibly sagging in relief.

“Where are you?” she asked Lacey. “How’s Trinity holding up?”

Victoria opened her eyes, meeting Seth’s gaze. He’d been studying her, taking advantage of the moment.

She listened intently. “Yes, that doesn’t surprise me one bit. Poor thing.”

“Poor thing” wasn’t a good description of Trinity in Seth’s book. He’d seen a scrappy kid, who listened and looked very carefully before she spoke or moved. She seemed to have a good head on her shoulders.

“Have you talked to the police?” She paused. “None of you saw anything?”

A minute later she’d wrapped up the conversation. Seth refreshed the news webpage. No new results.

“She said a fight broke out. It may have possibly started between some teens. Michael hustled them out of the building before the shot was fired.”

“Who’s Michael?” Seth asked.

“A pain in the ass. But he’s actually okay for a reporter.”

“A reporter?” Seth avoided reporters on principle.

“Investigative reporter for
The Oregonian
. He and Lacey go way back. If I’d been at that memorial and someone started shooting, he’s the guy I’d want on my side.”

“A reporter?” Seth repeated.

“Doesn’t seem right, does it? You’ll understand when you meet him.”

“You say that like I’m about to meet him.”

She nodded. “You are. Something about being at the scene of a shooting has Michael’s curiosity piqued about the death of the girls in Forest Park. We’re about to be interviewed.”

“I don’t want to talk to the press.” Seth had learned in his years as a medical examiner to not talk to the press. A press conference was fine, preferably without press questions if possible. But a one-on-one with a reporter about a huge case? That’s how people got fired. Or humiliated in the paper.

“Of course not, no one does. But this guy can find anybody and anything.”

“So it’s not for an article?”

“No. If there’s anyone who can dig up information on those old murders or these new ones, he’s the guy. I think the police have their hands full trying to solve the recent case. And Detective Callahan knows him. The two of them have worked together before. I don’t think it’ll hurt.”

“You called them murders. You don’t think there’s even a possibility they’re suicides?”

She shook her head. “Callahan told me they can’t find anything in the girls’ history for the past weeks that indicates they were thinking of suicide. No good-bye notes, no depression, no giving away of items, no weird statements on Facebook about life or love. All the friends and family the police have interviewed swear up and down that their friends had things in their lives they were looking forward to. Usually someone will say they’d been down or talking about weird topics. Callahan said he’d strongly suspected murder in the first place, considering how that scene was staged. No shoes, remember?”

Seth nodded, remembering the clean bare feet.

“Someone walked away,” she said grimly.

Victoria felt stifled. Lacey had a lovely large home, but stress flowed from the group who’d escaped the shooting an hour earlier. Lacey opened a third bottle of wine for the adults and the tensions slowly dropped along with the wine level. Trinity sipped sparingly at a Sprite; she still looked rattled. Victoria was on her first glass of wine, letting the others use the alcohol to unwind. She preferred to stay on her toes in a group. This crew was just the five who’d attended the service plus herself and Seth. Even though they were relatively close acquaintances, she still wouldn’t risk lowering her guard.

She’d dealt with Michael Brody a few times. Enough to know he was freakishly smart and deceptively casual. She glanced at Seth beside her on Lacey’s couch. He’d taken to Michael right away and vice versa. There were a lot of similarities in the men. Height, stature, intelligence. But Seth’s calm didn’t give her the annoying friction that Michael’s pushy sharpness did.

Right now, some of that pushy sharpness was needed to investigate the history of the dead Forest Park women. Both sets of them. Michael had the nose to do it, and Victoria was all about using him for her own purposes to find some answers. Trinity was under his scrutiny at the moment. Surprisingly, he’d taken a soft tactic with the teen, who gazed at him with a bit of hero worship that made Michael’s fiancée, Jamie, hide a smile.

“I didn’t know Glory,” Trinity repeated. “And I didn’t see anyone at the service I knew except for Dr. Campbell and Jason.”

Michael’s gaze narrowed. “Who is Jason?”

Trinity gave a half-hearted jerk of her shoulder. “I met him through Brooke. He goes to Harrison High School. He was there with some other guys I didn’t recognize.”

“Were they standing toward the back?” asked Michael. “Back where the noise started coming from?”

Trinity wrinkled her nose. “Kind of near the entry doors. It was so squished in there. I only saw him for a moment before we moved over to where you guys stood. He could have been anywhere by the time the fight started.”

“What’s his last name?” asked Seth.

“I have no idea. I do have his phone number. We text sometimes. Well, he’s texted me to ask how Brooke is doing.”

Victoria’s heart softened at the crack in Trinity’s voice as she said Brooke’s name. Victoria knew the doctors were guarded
about the teen’s prognosis. Her brain had been oxygen starved; there was no way to assess the damage yet.

Trinity passed her phone to Seth, who thumbed through her contacts.

“You don’t think he’s involved in the shooting, do you?” she asked Michael.

“I don’t know. Police haven’t released the name of the shooter, but rumors say they arrested a teenager. I have someone looking into it,” he said.

Victoria glanced at Lacey, who gave a small eye roll. Michael had a tendency to break the rules and push the boundaries of the law where he saw fit. No doubt his “someone” was a cop buddy or a person who shouldn’t be passing information to a reporter.

Trinity looked tired. Her foster mom sat beside her, occasionally patting her back or holding her hand. Katy knew how to manage teen girls. Victoria gave a small prayer of thanks for her own adoptive parents. Birth was a gamble. You never knew what kind of parents you’d end up with. She’d been lucky, and it appeared Trinity was in good hands after her rotten first decade.

Michael’s hawk-like gaze turned to Victoria. “Tell me again what happened at your break-in.”

“All three skulls were taken. I was in the middle of inventorying everything when this occurred, and now I’ll have to go through it again and make certain nothing else is missing.”

“Lacey mentioned the remains had been mixed together. How can you tell what belongs to who?”

“Skeletal remains are immediately printed with their case number. Every piece. Sadly they used pencil back then, so some of the numbers are nearly illegible or completely missing. I’d touched up several but not all. I’m making an educated guess at the rest.”

“So they may not be completely right,” he stated.

“I’m getting it as close as I can.” The question didn’t bother her. No one else would be able to solve the puzzle of the missing pieces better than her. She had faith in her abilities. She may not be perfectly accurate, but show her someone who could do better.

“If anyone can figure it out, Tori can,” Seth added. He reached out and squeezed her hand. He’d tensed slightly during Michael’s questioning, a defensive tone now in his voice.

Michael turned his probing gaze Seth’s way. He met it with utter calm. “You’ve worked with her for less than a week.”

“I know her reputation. She’s one of the best in the country. And I know her character.” His spine straightened another inch, his molars clenched.

His hand tightened around Victoria’s. When he’d taken it, she’d felt a calming warmth flow from his touch. It’d felt normal. It hadn’t felt like he’d been absent for nearly eighteen years. It’d seemed completely natural for him to touch her in reassurance, and for it to work.

Victoria struggled to remember sitting next to Rory and holding his hand, but the memories were surprisingly far away for a marriage of five years. She’d filed Rory and their life together into a mental box and firmly closed the lid. She’d thought she’d done the same with Seth, but suddenly it was all back at the surface. How had eighteen years vanished?

She blinked and realized Michael was looking at her expectantly, the echo of a question lingering in the room. She’d heard nothing.

“I’m sorry, what?”

His lips turned up in amusement. “How long were you out of the room?”

“It couldn’t have been more than thirty minutes. I’d taken a break and got something to eat, and I was on my way back to the lab when the alarm went off.”

“Which was caused by the door opening. Could he have heard you coming back and decided to leave?”

“He could have easily heard my shoes. Everything echoes in those hallways.”

“I wonder if he’d planned to do more damage or if you interrupted him.” Seth rubbed at his chin, a thoughtful look in his eye.

Victoria nodded.

“I still can’t believe no one else has come forward during these years to claim the other women. They must have parents or even children who wondered what happened to them,” said Seth. “How can a family member simply accept that a sister or mother vanished? Maybe the children were told their mothers had died.”

“I was adopted,” said Victoria. “If I hadn’t grown up knowing my mother was dead, I would have searched.”