Pushed Too Far: A Thriller (3 page)

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“Seems last time the only answer you’d accept was a confession.”

Her lips tightened. “Do you have something to confess?”

“I didn’t kill her, and I don’t know where she’s been all this time. Will that suffice?”

“That’s a start.”

“You want to know where I was the past few hours and who can vouch for me.”

She didn’t answer, just waited for him to go on.

“I’ve been at the fire station all day, plenty of witnesses.”

“And last night?”

“At the fire station late. Then I stopped at the Doghouse for a beer.”

“After that?”

“Home alone, in bed. No witnesses. Not unless you count the Playboy channel.”

Her expression didn’t change.

He’d thrown in the Playboy channel to unnerve her, but it hadn’t been a lie. Cable was as close as he’d gotten to a date in the two and a half years since Kelly declared she needed a break from their marriage. Except for work, it was the closest he’d gotten to a life.

“You didn’t see or hear from Kelly?”

“No.” He thought about last night. Coming home late, tired, maybe a little buzzed. The door swinging open before he’d inserted the key. “But someone might have been in my house.”

Her eyebrows arched. “Did you report the break in?”

“I don’t know if it was a break in. I’m pretty sure I locked the door, but I might have forgotten.”

“Was anything missing?”

“Not that I could tell.”

“I’ll send someone over.”

He shouldn’t have mentioned it. Now he’d given the chief an excuse to poke around in his house. “Since nothing is missing, I don’t think that’s necessary, do you?”

Another arch of the brows. “It will only take a few minutes.”

He’d been right. It was happening again. Kelly was dead, and he was the number one suspect. Everything he’d thought he’d put behind him was replaying like a recurring nightmare.

“It doesn’t have to be so hard, you know.”

He frowned. Now she really was reading his mind. “What are you suggesting? That I turn myself in?”

“Should you?”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“Then help me.”

Out of all the things he expected Val Ryker to say, that wasn’t one. “Help you with what?”

“The other body, the woman we believed was Kelly; we have to figure out who she really was.”

He narrowed his eyes. She seemed serious. “I don’t think I can do a better job of identifying her than DNA can.”

“The type of DNA that was used for identification has some limitations.”

At the time of the trial, the prosecutor, Monica Forbes, had explained to him the ins and outs of mitochondrial DNA. He’d only half listened, never dreaming the body could be anyone but Kelly. “I gave her a funeral. I buried her in my wife’s grave. That’s all I can tell you.”

She took a controlled breath. “I think you can tell me more than that.”

“I didn’t kill her.”

“Then cooperate. The body we found wasn’t Kelly, but mito DNA and the bones themselves indicate it does belong to a female in her family.”

“You looked at her family the first time around. I sat through the trial. Everyone it could have been was already dead.”

“We obviously missed someone.” She searched his eyes, as if the answer might be there.

Suddenly he was aware of every twitch of his face muscles, every shift of his gaze, every movement of his body. He had nothing to hide, yet at the same time, he couldn’t help wondering what she was seeing. “If you’re counting on me to solve this for you, you’re shit out of luck.”

She nodded, although whether that meant she accepted his answer or had plans to approach him in another way remained to be seen.

“We need to exhume the body we thought was Kelly’s. It would be quickest if I could get your permission.”

Digging up those bones shouldn’t bother him. After all, he didn’t even know who they belonged to. But a dull ache seized his chest, and he couldn’t help feeling exhuming those bones was the last detail that made the whole mess real.

Kelly had died all over again.

And once again, he hadn’t been able to save her.

“I know this is tough.”

He shook his head. He didn’t expect her concern, and he didn’t want it. “Where do I sign?”

“I’ll take you to the police station.”

He shook his head. There wasn’t a chance he was getting into a cop car with her. “I have my own ride.” He gestured to Unit One.

“Suit yourself. But I need your signature as soon as possible. I’ll make sure a release form is ready for you at the dispatcher’s window.”

“Fine.”

She stared directly into his eyes, and for a moment, he felt more uncomfortable than he ever had under her interrogations. “Thanks for your help. I appreciate it.”

His help.

Go figure. In the years he’d been married to Kelly, he’d never found a way to help her. And now? He wasn’t sure if he was truly helping her or just harming himself.

He felt himself nod regardless. “I’ll give you whatever you need.”

B
y the time Val had gotten the release form signed by David Lund, obtained a court order, notified the cemetery and gotten the go ahead from church leaders and health department alike, the sun had disappeared behind the bluffs to the west. Pushing the exhumation to first thing the next morning, she went over the evidence Becca had collected from the shore of Lake Loyal. She’d assigned the task to her rookie officer in the interest of being thorough, not because she’d held out much hope the killer dropped a calling card. Now going over the list, she had even less hope.

A faded soda can, a tissue, a shot gun shell, and a collection of Old Milwaukee beer bottles that had probably scattered the lakeshore since Val was a girl. Was it too much to ask for cigarette butts carrying the DNA of Kelly’s murderer?

She put in a call to the state crime lab, requesting they expedite analysis of the items, then had a long teleconference with Monica Forbes in the DA’s office about the original homicide, now officially a Jane Doe, and Kelly’s most recent death.

It was late by the time she loaded two boxes of files from the original case in the trunk of her unmarked Crown Vic. Her watch read close to midnight by the time she made it home.

The windows were dark, not even the Christmas lights twinkling, when she pulled into the garage next to the bright green Ford Focus. When Grace had turned sixteen last summer, she’d adopted the tiny vehicle as her car, since the PD provided one for Val, and she was pretty self-sufficient, driving herself where she needed to go. But Val wasn’t ready to give up eating dinner together and tucking her niece in.

Tonight she’d missed both.

She climbed out, and after closing the door behind her as quietly as possible, circled to the trunk. It took three tries before she could get her numb fingers to hold onto the handle of the first Jane Doe file box. Using her thigh to help support the weight, she managed to wrestle it through the door and reach the kitchen table. The second box would have to wait.

She’d started a pot of coffee and spread the first folder open on the table when she heard the shuffle of slippers descend the stairs.

Tucking her hand under the table, she turned a smile on Grace. “Sorry to wake you.”

“I was awake.”

“This late? Physics get the better of you?”

“Finished before the six o’clock news.”

She supposed her television viewing choice explained the teenager ‘s inability to sleep. Even though she’d told her niece the situation over the phone, seeing the news report, complete with the kind of sensationalism that sold advertising spots, had obviously upset her. “I wish you hadn’t watched.”

Grace padded to the table. In shapeless blue plaid flannel and her long blond hair in a braid, she looked every bit as young as she’d been when she came to live with Val three years ago, at the age of thirteen. But the girl had always understood things way beyond her years, and as much baby fat as still rounded her features, her gray eyes felt much older.

She slid into a chair. “Can I help?”

Val flipped the file folder closed. “Not a good idea.”

“You can’t protect me forever, Aunt Val.”

“Not forever maybe, but I can tonight.”

“Was he innocent after all?”

Val shook her head. “We made a mistake about the victim’s identity. That doesn’t mean he’s innocent.”

“But you can’t keep him in prison if he was convicted for killing someone he didn’t kill.”

Sometimes she wished Grace wasn’t such a star student. “We’ll find out who she was.”

“How?”

“Don’t know yet, but I’ll figure it out. Did you feed the horses?”

She tilted her chin down, shooting Val a classic under the brow stare. “I always feed the horses.”

“Yes, you do.” Grace was more responsible than any teen should be, and although that fact made Val proud, it also worried her at times. “Feeding time is going to feel extra early tomorrow, if you don’t get back to bed.”

“I want to help you.”

“You can’t help with this, sweetie.”

“Can’t I look through transcripts or interviews? I don’t have to look at the gross stuff.”

Val looked at the files on the table, dozens more in the boxes. She hated the thought of Grace being tangled up in any of this ugliness, but maybe she could find some relatively innocuous evidence for her to review. Her only other option was to haul this stuff into her office and shut the door, but since she couldn’t grip the box well enough to carry it up the stairs, that clearly wasn’t going to happen.

She shifted through the folders, finally plucked one containing interviews that shouldn’t be too upsetting, and slid it to Grace. “I’ll let you help, but only if you sleep in tomorrow and let me feed.”

“You don’t have—”

“I want to. And I have to get up early anyway. You help me, I help you. Deal?”

“Deal.”

She took her hand off the folder. “If there’s anything in there you have questions about, let me know. Anything.”

She shot Val a grin. “Whatever you say, Chief.”

They worked for two hours, reading interviews, looking for leads that hadn’t been followed, combing forensic reports. Finally Grace couldn’t hide her yawns, gave in to Val’s badgering and went to bed.

Val brewed another pot of coffee and took yet another look over files that she’d memorized the first time, searching for answers she knew weren’t there. Thoughts of her conversation with David Lund flitted around the corners of her mind.

He’d been defensive when she first approached him, much like he’d been the first time he’d topped her suspect list. But while they talked, she’d sensed a change. A cautious opening she hadn’t expected, a willingness to help.

She’d sent Pete to his house to dust for prints and take a look around. Reportedly Lund had cooperated, although the search had turned up no prints beyond his own and nothing suspicious in the house.

She had to admit, she was relieved.

Val liked to tell herself that she felt sorry for the guy, for the hell she’d put him through in the investigation of Kelly’s first death. But that wasn’t all of what she felt for David Lund. The rest, she couldn’t let herself think about.

Today, he’d tried to make her back off with his reference to watching the Playboy Channel, but she figured that alibi was probably true. Lake Loyal was a small town. If he’d gone on a date since Kelly’s death, she probably would have heard about it.

She had to wonder if he was aware of her lack of dating, too.

Stupid.

She shook her head, trying to banish those thoughts. She had a homicide to deal with, maybe two. She had a niece and four horses to provide for and Christmas coming up fast. Not to mention her other problems.

But among all these concerns, only one had a window that would slam shut in less than forty-eight hours.

She opened a file holding crime scene photos and scanned them one by one. Pictures of charred bone, the rusty old barrel normally used to burn garbage, the dairy farm just down the road from Val’s little horse stable.

She flipped to the images of the house where Kelly Lund had grown up. The two-story white clapboard structure was normal enough for this area. Only the locks on the outsides of the bedroom doors and the rings embedded in basement concrete suggested Kelly’s upbringing was a bit different from most farm girls.

When her eyes finally refused to stay open, she folded her arms on the table top and laid her head down as she’d done more than once while working an urgent case.

Though none had been as urgent as this.

Dawn came early and without her getting more than two hours sleep. Her hand was worse, her fingers difficult to move as well as numb, the weakness stealing up her arm. To improve, she needed rest and time and luck, all of which were out of her grasp at the moment.