Thicker Than Water (14 page)

“It's a stupid formality,” Dawn said. “All anyone has to do is ask me if they want to know what happened last night. Why are young people always discounted, as if what we have to say doesn't even matter?”

The blond woman lifted her eyebrows. “That's not true. I'd love to hear what you have to say, Dawn. By all means, speak freely.”

Dawn shrugged. “Well, for one thing, I can tell you exactly what time my mom left the house last night. It was a few minutes after midnight.” From the corner of her eye, she saw Sean in the next room, frowning at her.

Lieutenant Jackson's perfectly arched eyebrows rose. “Are you sure?”

“Sure I'm sure. I heard the car and looked at my clock.”

The woman nodded slowly. “Okay. That helps, it helps a lot. Thank you, Dawn.”

“Whatever.”

Jackson left the kitchen and headed into the garage. Dawn got a soda and paced, wondering if there were any traces of blood or whatever still visible in the trash can, and if there were, whether the sharp-eyed lieutenant would find them.
She wandered upstairs, ignoring Sean's eyes on her, and saw the cops going through her mom's bedroom. They must have already finished with her own, and it felt dirty and contaminated when she walked in and saw her drawers open, her bedcovers askew, her closet door standing wide. Had they been elbow deep in her underwear? she wondered, disgusted.

She closed herself in her room, turned on her stereo and hiked the volume up to a level high enough to drown out any sounds coming from the rest of the house. Then she lay on her bed, closed her eyes and pretended to be alone.

* * *

Sean hadn't missed a thing. Not from the second Dawn had hit his Porsche's brakes but not the clutch and damn near stalled his car in front of her driveway. He hadn't missed the widening of her expressive eyes, and he hadn't missed the way she'd shoved her backpack onto the floor when she thought he wasn't looking.

The cops had missed it, though. He was glad of that.

He had a bad feeling, and he didn't like what he was thinking. He didn't want to think it, but hell, he couldn't help it. Dawn flat out lied to Jax about what time her mother had left the house. He knew damn good and well Julie couldn't have left the house at a few minutes past midnight and been at the door of Harry Blackwood's room fifteen minutes later. No way in hell.

So Dawn had lied.

Or maybe she'd just gotten the time confused. If she'd been half-asleep, he supposed she might have been hazy on the time.

* * *

Later, after Jax relayed what Dawn had told her, Jones seemed pissed. As if maybe Dawn had lied and her mother
knew it. The police had finished their search and left the house. As soon as they were gone, Julie went stomping up the stairs to her kid's bedroom, rapped on the bedroom door and shouted above the throbbing music, “Open up this door, young lady. We need to talk.”

Sean sighed, sensing the kid's angst. She thought her mother was in trouble. That was what was driving her. Hell, he didn't know what the hell Dawn thought she was protecting her mother from, but he was pretty convinced that was exactly what she was doing.

The music stopped. Dawn came out of her bedroom, glanced past her mom down to the foot of the stairs and caught Sean's eyes. He saw the appeal she was sending. God, the kid had eyes that could melt solid granite.

He responded in spite of himself, moving up the stairs to stand beside Jones, even though he knew he was overstepping, big-time. He slid what he hoped was a calming hand over Julie's shoulder.

“Man,” he said. “That was traumatic for
me.
I can't imagine how upsetting it must have been for you two. Having your privacy invaded like that.”

Jones sent him a glare. “Since when are you Mr. Empathy?”

He shrugged. “Empathy, hell. I just hope to hell it's not going to interfere with dinner.”

Julie widened her eyes.
“What?”

“Hey, all I know is I was promised pizza.”

“Me, too,” Dawn said quickly. “It's still in the car. I'll go get it.” Latching on to the excuse, she ran past them both, down the stairs and out the front door.

Jones was looking at Sean as if he'd grown another head.

“I know, I know,” he said. “She lied to the cops.”

She opened her mouth to deny it, but he held up a hand. “Come on, I know what time you were at that hotel. I was there, too, don't forget. And I know you need to call her on it. But not now, not as pissed off and upset as you are. Besides, it's not like she's the only one who's lying, here.”

She held his gaze. “You telling me how to raise my kid now, MacKenzie?”

“She thinks she's protecting her mother.”

“From what, for God's sake?”

“I don't know.” He shrugged. “I think it's kind of sweet, though God knows she didn't come by
that
from the maternal line.”

“No, no sweetness here.”

“So then her father was sweet?”

“Her father is none of your business. And that wasn't even a very good try.”

He shrugged. “You know, if she loves you that much, you must be doing something right.”

“Flattery won't work, either. I'm not telling you anything. As for Dawn, she lied to a homicide detective.”

“Yeah.” He smiled a little, made his voice wistful. “She's a hell of a kid.”

Jones tried to keep her angry expression and failed. “She is, isn't she?”

He slid an arm around Julie's shoulders and started back down the stairs. Halfway down, he realized what he was doing, walking close to her, their bodies touching, holding her to his side in a way that was more than casually friendly. And she was letting him. It shocked him into stillness, and he jerked his arm away and barely resisted the urge to wipe it on something.

When they reached the bottom, the front door swung open and Dawn came in bearing pizzas. She carried them straight through to the kitchen and dropped them on the table. Sean and Julie followed, and Sean noticed that Dawn's backpack was hanging from one shoulder.

“It's probably cold by now,” Jones complained, reaching into a cupboard for plates.

“Just like your heart, Jones.” Sean winked at Dawn, opened a pizza box and tugged out a slice, ignoring the plates Julie set on the table.

Dawn slung her bag over the back of a chair, then sat down and helped herself to a slice.

“So what did you find on Young today?” he asked Julie in between bites.

Jones wasn't eating. She'd opened a cola and put a slice of pizza onto her plate but hadn't taken a bite yet. “I had Bryan go through the archives and pull everything we had from the original story. Haven't had a chance to go through it yet. You?”

“Got the original autopsy report and the dental records they used to identify him.”

She blinked at him. “How the hell did you—”

“Friends in the right places. Contacts who owe me favors. I collect ‘em like stamps, Jones. I'd give my right arm for a DNA sample, one known to belong to Mordecai Young, to compare with one from the body.”

She thinned her lips, and he knew damn well she had contacts of her own. Not like his, though. Nobody had contacts like his. She was quiet for a moment; then she said, “So they identified him through dental records.”

“Yeah.” He flipped open a folder, running a finger over the
text. “Never even figured out his real name. He'd seen a dentist near the compound a few years before the raid. But there was never DNA confirmation.”

“We had DNA testing in eighty-five,” Jones said. “What the hell were they thinking?”

She was as angry as if it were personal, he thought, surprised. “Jones, there was no known sample of Young's DNA for comparison,” he said. “No known relatives, either. If we had a mom, a sibling, we could run a mitochondrial screen, but no such luck.”

She pulled his file folder across the table, flipping pages. “He was burned beyond recognition.”

“I remember thinking it was pretty goddamn convenient.”

“So what do we do with this? Our tip was anonymous. We have no actual source.”

“We talk to the dentist.”

She held his gaze for a long moment. “You really think Mordecai Young could still be alive?”

He pursed his lips. “I think it's possible, though not very likely.”

A heavy hand knocked on the door, and Jones damn near jumped out of her chair.

“I got it!” Dawn said, jumping up and heading for the door. Julie ran after her, right on her heels.

Sean moved fast, sliding out of his seat, to stand behind Dawn's chair. He quickly unzipped Dawn's backpack and pawed through it, feeling as guilty as hell and yet compelled. The kid was hiding something; he knew it. The way she'd shoved the pack down low and only brought it into the house after the cops left told him that whatever it was, he would find it inside. He kept glancing up, but by now Jones was talking
with the guy at the door—the locksmith, he realized from the conversation.

His hand closed around something heavy that was wrapped in a towel. He looked down fast, moving the towel aside to get a look at what it hid. Then he saw it: the dark-stained blade of a knife.

“Jesus,” he muttered. Looking up again, he knew he had to decide what to do, and decide fast. He was out of time.

He closed his hand around the towel-shrouded weapon and pulled it out, turning quickly to tuck it into his own briefcase.

M
en in gray work suits, their names embroidered on pocket patches, were wielding screwdrivers and power drills. Dawn had scurried off to her bedroom with her backpack over her shoulder and a slice of cold pizza in hand, probably to escape the noise. Julie wanted to question Sean some more about his information on Mordecai Young, the ghost from her past, but it seemed fate was conspiring against her. He was already on his feet, saying he had to leave. Julie found herself wanting him to stay and needing to justify that to herself.

“I know it's noisy here, MacKenzie,” she said at the door. “But we haven't finished discussing the Young story.”

“It's not much of a story yet. We still don't know if he's alive. When we do,
then
we'll have a story.” He chucked her under the chin. “Hey, don't look so worried. If he's alive, I'll find out.”

She didn't have a single doubt in her mind that he would. He was good, good at digging into people's pasts, unearthing their most deeply buried secrets. It was a gift that could destroy her—and yet it was also one she needed right now. If there were any chance in hell Mordecai Young was alive, she had to know. She had to. And she knew Sean MacKenzie would find the truth even if no one else could.

The challenge would be to keep him from finding out too much.

“Don't look so sad, Jones. You'll get to see me again tomorrow.”

She looked up fast, caught on and smirked at him. “That's way too soon, MacKenzie.”

“Oh, please. Don't try to pretend you aren't wishing I'd stay.” He kept the teasing expression as he headed for the door, but there was something behind it. Something probing and searching, questions and speculation, behind those dark eyes.

“In your dreams.” He was a little too close to the truth. Though certainly not for the reasons his teasing suggested.

“That's a distinct possibility, Jones.” For a second their eyes locked, but then he dragged his gaze away and cleared his throat. “I oughtta say good-night to the kid before I go.”

“You'd never get past the homework, headphones, telephone and Instant Messenger. But I'll pass it along.”

Nodding, he stepped through the open front door, avoiding the man who knelt on the floor working on it. Julie went outside with him, walked with him to his car.

He opened the driver's door and slid his briefcase into the passenger seat.

“It was nice, what you did for Dawn today. Not just picking her up for me, but…letting her drive your car.”

He turned to face her, standing beside the car, its open door between them. “I know it's a shock to your system, Jones, but I'm a nice guy.”

“Well, you're nice to Dawnie, anyway. I appreciate it.”

“De nada.”
He got behind the wheel, started to close the door.

“You, um…you did all right today. On the air, I mean.”

He looked up at her. “And the shocks just keep on coming,” he said. “You expected me to stink on ice, right?”

“Frankly, yeah. I did. But…you were right. This can work for us. We seem to have some kind of…chemistry.”

“She finally admits it.”

“I think it's more you than me, really. You seem to work well with women.”

“Women love me. You're the exception, not the rule, Jones. In case you haven't noticed, I'm charming as hell.”

She laughed a little. “Charming? That's what they call it?” He made a face, but she quickly steered the conversation back to the subject at hand. “I don't know, maybe I'm a fluke. Dawn seems to like you. So does Lieutenant Jackson, for that matter.”

He waited, watching her, saying nothing, damn him. And he had to know what she was getting at here. Nope, he wouldn't give. Not an inch. He was going to make her come out and ask.

She cleared her throat. “Are you and she…is it just a working relationship?”

He pursed his lips, put on his sunglasses. “I'll see you tomorrow at work, Jones.” He closed the door, vanishing behind the darkly tinted glass. The engine roared, and the little car backed out of the driveway, turned forty-five degrees, then rolled forward again, its motions short and sharp and fast.

She stood there for a moment, watching him go. So he didn't want her poking around in his private life? Well, good, then it shouldn't be too much of a surprise to him when she refused to let him poke around in hers.

“Evening, Julie!”

She turned at the friendly, familiar voice from next door and spotted Rodney White standing near his mailbox. He wore tan dress pants that were a size too big, hitched up high on his waist and held in place by a belt. His plaid flannel shirt was tucked in, and he wore a denim jacket, unbuttoned, over it. No hat, and his white hair was like a crop of overripe cattails in the fall—out of control, white tufts. He sent her a wave, and she waved back. “Evening, Rodney.”

“Everything all right?” he asked. He was pushing seventy, and lately his body seemed to be shrinking away from underneath his skin. He'd been her neighbor for five years now, and he'd sort of adopted her and Dawnie as his unofficial family. “I saw the police there earlier, and now the locksmiths. You didn't have a break-in, did you?”

“Nothing so dramatic as that,” she said. “The police came about a story I'm working on, and I'm having the locks changed because I lost my keys.”

He smiled, seemingly relieved. “That's good. I gotta tell you, my imagination has been working overtime, what with seeing Dawnie leave in that fancy car earlier, with your friend there. Then I saw you on the air tonight and recognized him. MacKenzie, right?”

“Yeah. What did you think?”

He grinned and shook his head. “You two are like gasoline and a book of matches.”

“Is that a good thing?”

“So far.” He shrugged. “Who was that other fella hanging around before MacKenzie came and picked up Dawn?

“Other fella?”

“He was at your door, noontime or so. Just a bit before Dawnie came home. Don't know why anyone would expect to find you home that time of day. Probably a salesman.”

She walked closer to Rodney. “Probably,” she agreed. “Did you get a look at him?”

He pursed his lips, shook his head. “Wore a hat, sunglasses. You know, men don't wear hats the way they used to. There was a time a man didn't consider himself fully dressed without a nice hat. Women, too.” He sighed deeply. “I miss that.”

“I love a good hat,” she said, agreeing, forcing herself not to bark out a series of questions and scare the old man half to death. It was probably nothing, just a salesman or someone taking a survey, some nonsense like that. “Did you happen to see what kind of car he was driving?”

“Well now, that's odd, now that I think of it.”

“What is?”

Rodney rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I didn't see a car. Not in the driveway, not parked alongside the road, either. Hmm.” He scratched his head.

“And he didn't come to your house?”

“No, but that don't mean much. Salesmen take one look at my place and know I'd make a poor target. Your place, on the other hand…”

“You have a perfectly beautiful home, Rodney.” Julie found his tiny cottage charming, even if its builders had intended it as a weekend camp rather than a year-round residence.

“That's sweet of you to say,” he said. “It's home, that's what matters.” He turned and started back up the driveway as he
said it. “Tell Dawnie I'm making a big batch of peanut butter chocolate chip tonight. I'll save a dozen aside for you.”

“Oh, God, Rodney, you're going to make us fat.”

He glanced back at her. “Well, if you'd rather I didn't…”

“Are you kidding? We'll smell them from next door and come knock your door down if you hold out on us.”

He smiled broadly. “Then I'll save you some. You have a nice evening, now, Julie. Give Dawnie a hug for me.”

“I will. Good night, Rodney.”

* * *

“I know it's short notice,” Sean said, handing the towel-wrapped item to his friend, Freddy Drummond, who looked like more like a surfer dude than a scientist. Sun-bleached hair and a dark tan, pale brows and lashes. The guy tended to make woman look past Sean as if he wasn't there, which was why Sean preferred not to socialize with him too often.

“Hey, don't think I won't be charging my short-notice rates,” Freddy said. He took the item, peeling away the towel to look at the blade. Then he lifted his gaze to Sean's again. “Is that blood?”

“That's what you're supposed to tell me.”

He nodded. “What else?”

Sean almost backed down. The goddamn guilt—an emotion he was unused to—was swamping him. He hadn't had a chance to tip Dawn off that he'd taken the knife from her bag before he'd left. He'd tried calling ten times since, but the line had been busy. Kids and the freaking Internet were a menace. He could have tried the cell, but Julie would have answered that for sure, and she would be damn suspicious of him if he told her he wanted to speak to her sixteen-year-old daughter. He would just have to keep trying. Too bad he didn't know the kid's e-mail address.

He tried to force down the guilt. He was a reporter. Finding the truth was what he did best, and it wasn't as if he could stop himself from digging. Dammit, he was allergic to secrets—when he saw one, it was almost a compulsion to dig until he found the truth. It was Jones's own fault for forcing this. She should know better than to try to keep secrets from him. “I need to know whose blood it is,” he told his friend. “Whose prints are on the knife, anything else you can find.”

Freddy frowned. “You know I won't be able to tell you much—not without blood and prints for comparison.”

“Yeah, I know the drill. I don't have anything on the probable victim yet. I'll get that to you by tomorrow. Meanwhile…” He pulled a gallon-size zipper bag from his briefcase. Inside it two were smaller bags, containing the two soft drink cans he'd taken from Julie's kitchen table tonight. Each was labeled with a number. Not a name in sight.

Freddy took the larger bag. “These are samples from the suspects, I take it?”

“These are samples from two people I hope to rule out as suspects. There should be a good set of prints on each can to compare to any you might find on the knife. I need to know what the cops are going to find on this blade before I decide whether to turn it in. And I need this fast, pal.”

Freddy's brows rose. “Sounds like this one's personal, MacKenzie. These two nonsuspects friends of yours?”

He thought on that for a moment. “The kid's starting to be, I think. Her mother can't stand me. And it's mutual. She's my goddamned worst enemy. But she's
my
enemy, you know? I don't like some other SOB messing with her.” He sighed. “Listen, Fred, this is—”

“Strictly confidential. Jesus, MacKenzie, you hand me a bloody knife, that kind of goes without saying.”

Sean nodded. His jaw was tight, and he kept fighting the urge to reach out and snatch the blade and the zipper bag back. But he had to know. He had to know what the hell Julie Jones and her daughter were trying so hard to hide.

* * *

Dawn didn't stash the backpack in her locker. Hell, it would be just her luck there would be an unannounced locker search if she did. She kept it with her, and she wrestled with what to do with that bloody knife. The walk home would have been perfect—if her mother hadn't suddenly decided she needed to be dropped off at school in the morning and picked up again in the afternoon. She'd phoned Kayla's mom last night and asked her to pick Dawn up after school today. Which would give Dawn no time to ditch the weapon.

“I have to give your mom the slip tonight,” she told her friend as they hurried from American History to Biology Lab. “I need to walk home.”

“How come?”

Dawn glanced quickly at Kayla. She trusted her friend more than anyone in the world. And yet…something made her keep quiet. “I need to get rid of something. In the lake. And I can't tell you what it is. I need you to trust me on this.”

Kayla started to smile, but it died when she saw that Dawn wasn't doing the same. “Jesus, you're scaring me.”

“I'm scaring myself. But I gotta do this. You gonna help me?”

Kayla nodded. “Sure. I can tell my mom you got sick and went home early. But she'll probably check with your mom.” She tipped her head. “Besides, maybe you shouldn't walk home alone.”

“I've been walking home alone forever.”

“Yeah, but all of the sudden your mom wants you riding with someone.” She narrowed her eyes. “What's up with that, Dawn?”

“I don't know. Something. I know it's something.”

“Then maybe you shouldn't go alone.”

“I don't know what else to do. Mom isn't gonna let me out of her sight once she gets home. Not the way she's been acting lately.”