Reclaim: A Recovered Innocence Novel (6 page)

“I haven’t touched it,” she says. “Not even to dust. I just can’t bring myself to go in there.”

“We understand.” Lila rests a hand on Debbie’s shoulder. “Thank you for letting us have a look around.”

Debbie pulls a wad of keys out of her pocket, selects one, and unlocks the door. “I’ve got some things to do in the kitchen.” She tears up a little. “Let me know when you’re finished.” She darts back down the hall without a backward glance.

Lila eyes the door like it’s the entrance to a tomb.

“At least she won’t know if we moved anything since she never goes in there,” I say.

She gives me a look.

“What?”

“I know you’re right and there’s a bigger picture here, but there’s something about what you just said that isn’t right.”

“If you’re doubting my loyalty and commitment just know that it’s not with John Martin. It’s with Carla. I’m not callous. I’m a realist. I feel bad for Debbie, but I don’t give three shits about her worthless husband.”

Turning the knob, I go into the room without waiting for her response. Just like the car, the entire room is covered in a fine layer of dust. Not only has Debbie not been in this room since Martin disappeared, her kids haven’t either. There’s a desk at the far end of the room facing the door. Behind it is a series of file cabinets. Martin was a pig. Candy and fast-food wrappers clutter the desktop and overflow the trash can. He must have chucked his soda bottles as he emptied them across the room because there’s a pile of them in the corner.

“I’ll be surprised if there aren’t any rats or cockroaches in here,” Lila whispers as she closes the door behind us with a shudder. “The rest of the house is so
clean.
”

“Yeah, it’s strange. You’d think she would’ve kept up with the trash. She wasn’t joking that she never comes in here. I can’t see her leaving this room like this if she knew how bad it was.”

“Definitely not.”

I immediately move to the file cabinets. They aren’t labeled. I slip on a pair of latex gloves and try a few of the drawers, but they’re all locked. I glance back at Lila. She’s surveying the room like she doesn’t know what to do.

“Lock the door, will you? Just in case.” I pull out my set of lock picks and examine them, deciding which to try first.

“What are those,” she asks in a stage whisper.

“Lock picks.” I gesture toward the door. “Would you? I don’t want to get caught by one of the kids or Debbie if she suddenly decides she wants to watch us.”

“But won’t it be weird if she tries the door and it’s locked?”

“It’ll be a lot less weird than walking in on me picking these locks.”

Nolan clearly has no problem crossing lines I’m not comfortable with. I hesitate, wondering if I’m this person. If I’m someone who will do
anything
—including breaking the law—for my client. Nolan waits for me to decide. He’s impatient, but not with me. He seems to know himself and is totally fine with bending the rules for a good cause.

How can he be so confident? Maybe because he’s done this before and knows he’ll do it again. It’s part of his job—the lying and the law breaking. It’s not part of mine. I’ve spent my whole life following the rules and trying not to stand out. This would be a huge change of character for me. Is this who I want to be?

And then I think of Carla and the look on her face as she went back to her cell. She’s depending on me. I can’t choke when things get hard. I have to live up to that trust even if it means doing something I’m not comfortable with. My hand moves toward the door. I watch it as though it’s not mine. It’s a traitor’s hand. I flinch at the click of the lock. It’s unusually loud in the quiet, dusty room.

When I look back at Nolan he’s watching me with a knowing half smile. In the dim light filtering in through the half-closed blinds he doesn’t look as confident as I originally thought. Could what he does for his job bother him on some level? Is he just as conflicted as I am about what we’re doing? As soon as I have the thought the look on his face changes to determination as he pulls a slim tool from the pouch in his hand and turns to the file cabinets.

“Why don’t you take a look at the desk,” he says over his shoulder.

The pop of the lock and the subsequent sliding of the file drawer make me glance back at the door, sure that Debbie must’ve heard. After a moment or two I realize that no one is coming in to catch us.

“If you’d be more comfortable hanging out with Debbie or in the car, I’d understand.”

“No. No. It’s okay.” I move toward the desk, curling my lip at the filth. “I just wish I had a pair of gloves.”

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a wad of something. “Here. I always carry two pairs.”

It’s then that I realize he’s already wearing what look like surgical gloves. The wrongness of what we’re doing washes over me again. I force myself to take the gloves and struggle to put them on. Nolan is already flipping through the files by the time I manage to get the gloves on. I want to look over his shoulder and at the same time I know that would be a step too far past my law-breaking threshold.

I eye the desk again. Disgusting. There are dried bits of food and liquids all over everything as though he ate every meal at this desk for years and never cleaned up. I lift a stack of folders and leaf through them. None of them have Carla’s name or anything related to her case on them so I put them back, carefully matching them up again with the blank spot in the dust. A tablet of paper rests next to his computer keyboard. I flip the pages that are folded back forward so I can look through them.

Behind me, Nolan closes a file drawer and opens a new one. I turn my attention back to the tablet. Martin’s handwriting is as messy as his work space. On the fourth page in I’m able to decipher a word that looks like
Ruiz
, Carla’s last name.

“I think I’ve got something here,” I tell Nolan.

“Take a picture with your phone and move on. We don’t have a lot of time.”

I snap pics of the page and several more after that, then fold the pages back the way they were and put the tablet back. There’s another scrap of paper with Diego’s name on it half wadded up. I smooth it out and take a picture of it before crumpling it up again. The interior of the desk yields absolutely nothing except an old-fashioned phone book—the kind my parents used to keep our relatives’ addresses and phone numbers in. I photograph every page, having no idea if any of it is even relevant to what we’re looking for.

“What about the computer?” I ask.

He looks up from the file he’s taking pictures of. “Jiggle the mouse. See if it comes to life.”

I do as he says and am shocked that the screen lights up. There’s no password to get into it. I minimize the Word doc Martin had open for a summation he was writing for another case and check out the desktop, looking for something with Carla’s name on it.

Nolan bumps my hip. I look down to find him holding out a thumb drive to me. “Download anything that looks important. Start with his emails if you can.”

Another threshold to cross. I try not to think about it as I take the flash drive, at the same time ignoring how prepared for theft Nolan is. Armed with the little gadget I turn back to the computer. There’s an Outlook icon on the desktop. I click it and am shocked that it’s not password-protected. I make a note to firm up my own security. I bet Nolan could help me with that.

I type Carla’s name into the search box first for his incoming mail, then his outgoing mail and trash folder. As quickly as I can I highlight everything and send a copy of it all to the thumb drive. I close out of that program and send the file marked
RUIZ
on the desktop to the flash drive without even opening it. We’re running out of time. I can almost hear a clock counting down the minutes until Debbie comes in and catches us.

There’s another folder with a number instead of a name. I send that and just about everything else to the USB drive without even knowing if it’s relevant. When I’m done I pull out the stick and bring the summation back up again. I blow on the dust on a stack of books next to the computer so it scatters across the keyboard, disguising the fact that the computer was tampered with.

“Nice,” Nolan says in approval. “Good thinking.”

I’m not proud that I thought to cover my tracks. Quite the opposite.

“If you’re done there take some pictures of the room—close-ups of things and the whole room in general.”

I do as he says and take a picture of the whole desk. I go around the room snapping things here and there. I have no idea what’s important and what’s not. I’m getting a really icked-out feeling the longer we’re in here, and it’s not just because of the filth. It’s almost like we’re being watched. I wrap my arms around me on a shiver.

“Are you all right?” he asks.

“I don’t know. I feel weird. Like someone’s watching us.”

His head comes up from the drawer he was looking through. He closes it and starts to wander the room, checking out objects here and there. He pulls out a small flashlight and switches it on to examine the ceiling vent, then moves on to the bust of President Kennedy in the corner.

“Son of a bitch,” he whispers. Lifting the bust from its resting place, he flips it over. “Hello there.” He reaches into the neck and pulls out a small black box with a wire and small circular thing attached. “Gotcha.” He lifts a small chip from the box and puts it in his pocket. From his other pocket he pulls a similar card and inserts it into the box, then puts the whole contraption back inside the bust the way he found it and sets it back on the pedestal. He keeps his hand over JFK’s eyes.

He looks up at me and whispers, “Good work. Always follow your instincts. Can you get the door? Time to go.”

He’s so calm it’s almost spooky. I have no idea what happened other than we were indeed being watched and possibly recorded. I’m totally on board with getting the hell out of here. I unlock the door and check down the hall.

“All clear,” I whisper.

He slides his hand off the eyes of the bust, staying just out of range of the camera, and slips out the door after me. I pull my gloves off like he’s doing. He takes both pairs and stuffs them in his pocket.

“Let’s go find Debbie and say goodbye.”

We get to the end of the hall just as Debbie comes out of the kitchen toward us. An explosion of panic goes off inside me. Was she the one watching us look through her husband’s office? Or was the timing just coincidental? If it wasn’t her, who was it?

“We just got a call about another case and have to go,” Nolan tells her smoothly. He holds his hand out to her. “Thank you for letting us have a look around your husband’s office.”

“Did you find anything useful?” she asks.

“We’ll be in touch if we have any news about your husband.” He grips my arm and tows me toward the door.

“Thank you for the milk and cookies,” I manage to mumble. I’m so freaked out I’m shaking.

Nolan’s hand moves up my arm to my back as we go down the front walk. I look over my and Nolan’s shoulders to find Debbie standing in the doorway, frowning after us.

“Damn it,” Nolan spits out as he opens the car door for me.

“What the hell happened back there?”

“We almost got fucked. And not in a good way. Are you okay?”

He wraps his arms around me and rubs up and down my back. I curl into his embrace, tucking my arms between us. I like the way his arms feel around me way too much, but I’m past caring about keeping him at a distance. There are more important things going on. I look back at the house, but the door is now closed and Debbie is gone.

“The good thing is that the camera wasn’t on a live feed.” He tightens his embrace and I snuggle deeper into it. “We should be okay. I think.”

“What do you mean
you think
?”

“I’ve got the SD card. Hey, you’re okay.” He kisses the top of my head. “I’ve got you.”

“We shouldn’t have gone into that office. It was wrong.”

“It’s what I do.”

“I don’t like what you do.”

“Sometimes I don’t like it either. Especially when I screw up. Damn it. I should’ve checked for cameras when we first went into the room. I hope it was the only one.”

I groan. “Don’t say that.”

“It probably was the only one.” He looks up and down the street. “We need to get out of here. Give me your keys.”

I hand them over and he helps me into the car. It doesn’t occur to me until we’ve pulled away from the curb that I did indeed let him take charge and it doesn’t feel weird or frightening. It feels…comfortable. Safe. I don’t look too hard at that or at how reassuring it is to have him next to me in the car right now. He handles my car with ease and competence.

“Do you have the USB cable for your phone?” he asks.

His question confuses me for a second and then I remember the photos I took. “Yeah.”

He takes an unfamiliar series of turns and I realize he’s taking me to his apartment. Of course. I drove. He’ll probably upload the pictures from my phone and send me on my way. That’s good. The way I’m feeling I’m not so sure it’s a good idea that we’re alone. This is what I wanted. So why do I suddenly feel abandoned?

“Are you hungry? Do you want to grab some food?”

He glances at me sharply. I don’t know where his head was at, but my questions seem to throw him.

“I’m hungry and I want to know what’s on the SD card you pulled from the camera,” I explain.

Some of my anxiety about being alone must’ve come through my voice because he takes my hand, prying it away from the other one where it was all twisted up.

He gives it a squeeze. “Yeah. Debbie’s cookies aren’t sitting real well with me either. How about In-N-Out?”

The familiar red-and-yellow sign is lit up in the distance.

“Sounds good.”

He maneuvers the car into the right lane and turns into the drive-thru. We give our order to the employee who’s going car-to-car to make the long line go faster, and he punches it into the tablet he’s holding. Nolan eases the car forward and rolls the window back up.

“You okay? I know you weren’t very comfortable with what we did back there.”

“
Not comfortable
is putting it mildly. I’ve never ever broken the law before.”

“Never? Not even once?”

“No. Not even a traffic ticket.”

“You’re kidding.”

I shake my head. “I’m not.”

“Wow. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who was such a straight arrow.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“Don’t get me wrong. I think it’s cool. I’ve just never met anyone who hasn’t messed up at least once.” He shifts in his seat, propping his elbow on the door and rubbing his chin. “What I do must seem really bad to you. Are you looking at me differently now?”

“A little. Yes.”

“And not in a good way.”

I shake my head again.

“Damn. I’d say I’m sorry, but I’m likely to do something that skates the line between legal and illegal again. Probably more than once before we’re through here. Are you going to be okay with that? ’Cause if not then maybe we should think about you not coming with me while I’m investigating this case.”

“I don’t know. I’m not really sure I’m okay with what
I
did today. I stole from a man. I looked through his things.”

“Technically you didn’t steal. Neither of us did. We copied things and took photos, but we didn’t take anything. Debbie let us into that office. There was no breaking and entering. And I did replace the SD card in the camera with a blank one so again technically nothing was taken. Just switched out.”

“That is a mighty thin line you walk.”

“I can live with it. Can you?”

“I don’t know. I’m struggling with it. I know what you’re saying is true. Everything is there exactly like it was before we walked in except for the SD card.
Technically.
I’ve never had to add a qualifier like that to anything I’ve ever done. It feels weird.”

“Maybe we should concentrate on what each of us does. Separately. We can meet up later and compare notes.”

He’s giving me an out. The thing is, I’m not sure I want it. This case is my responsibility.
Carla’s
my responsibility. Not that Nolan wouldn’t give me all the information he discovers; it would just be secondhand. I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that either. The control freak in me doesn’t like that idea at all.

I can’t have it both ways. Either I let Nolan do his job separately from me like he said, or I go with him and maybe do things that redefine my morality. Which to choose?

“I was planning on going to that motel tomorrow,” he says, cutting into my thoughts. “Maybe talk to some of the local girls to see if they remember Carla. It’s been a while so it’s doubtful. Prostitutes don’t have long lives. That’s probably something you shouldn’t do with me—I plan to pick them up like I’m a john, and it would be odd to have another woman in the car with me. You could visit Diego’s grave like you promised Carla.”