Guilty by Association (Judah Black Novels) (12 page)

Sal walked over to look out the window behind me and smiled. “He's not terrible,” Sal said. “Kid's a natural. Mind if I give him some pointers after dinner?”

* * * * *

After dinner, Sal and Hunter played a game of HORSE until it was too dark to see. Even though Sal was clearly better, he almost let Hunter win before absolutely destroying him. A big flood light kicked on just before we fell into total darkness and Sal thought that would be a good time to walk Hunter through a few tips before letting him free throw until he got it right. While Hunter threw a few practice shots, Sal slipped back with his arms crossed and watched, just like one of my gym teachers used to do.

“You need a ride in town tomorrow morning?” Sal asked me without looking over.

“Yeah. To the station.”

He nodded. “I can let you borrow the truck if you want. Just promise not to get a scratch on it. It's not technically mine. It's Chanter's.”

“You related to Chanter?”

“He's my uncle.” Sal turned to steal a glance at me. “Don't tell him I told you about the priest. Father Reed and Chanter don't get along. If he knew Elias was talking to a priest, he might refuse to do the ceremony tomorrow night. He'd make the church bury him. I'm not sure Elias or Valentino care either way but Chanter won't feel he's at peace until he's burned the body the old way.”

“Why would Chanter even care? Elias wasn't in your pack.”

Sal was silent while Hunter tried another free throw and missed. “He was one of us. Maybe he wasn't with us or part of us but he was one of us. I'm not sure that makes sense to you but there it is.”

A sudden chill went through me as I remembered the state Elias' body was in, all twisted and half human. “Thanks for the truck. I'll be good to her.”

“Sure thing,” Sal said and went back to watching Hunter miss his throws. His form was all wrong and Sal had corrected him a hundred times on it already. I think he was just content to let Hunter try. “If you don't mind my asking...What happened to Hunter's father?”

“He died,” I said simply and immediately regretted it when Sal started to say how sorry he was for bringing it up. “Don't be. It was a long time ago. Hunter never knew him. It's why he doesn't know.”

“You going to break it to him?”

I closed my eyes and listened to the sound of the basketball finally making its way through the net. “Tomorrow,” I said. “I need tonight. Just give us tonight.” I don't know why I felt like I needed his permission not to tell Hunter. Maybe I was afraid that, if I didn't, he would. We'd lived for eleven years this way, with this secret eating away at me on the inside. Maybe Hunter had already figured it out. His nose was so sharp. If not, it might drive him even further from me.

“Chanter can help. He's got experience with that sort of thing. Or, I can. I've helped others through it before, too.” There was silence and I longed for crickets or the call of an owl to fill it. “You should come to the ceremony tomorrow night. It'll give you a chance to meet the whole pack. But better you don't wander in on your own or in an official capacity or they're like to chase you away. Tell you what, what time are you going to be done with work?”

That was up in the air and depended largely on how cooperative the computer decided to be, but I answered, “By six.”

“Swing by my place after and we'll go together. Then, you can introduce Hunter to Chanter officially and talk about what to expect. You can see first-hand how we do things and decide if it's for you. If not, we can point you in the direction of someone who can help. I'm sure of it.”

I gave Sal a skeptical frown. “Why are you being so helpful?”

Hunter hit the backboard with his next shot and the ball bounced off of it. Sal caught it and tossed it between his hands. “Because I should have helped Elias more than I did. Because, if someone had helped me the way I'm helping you, maybe things wouldn't be so screwed up on my side of the fence. Also, I have a soft spot for a woman in distress, especially if she's hot.”

He tossed the ball up in perfect form, going for a three pointer. I smiled smugly when the ball spun around the rim and bounced right back out. “Nice try,” I said.

“Can't win if you don't try,” Sal said and went in to fetch his keys.

The next morning, I parked my borrowed truck and dragged myself into the station without making eye contact with anyone. I didn't want to talk and I certainly didn't want to see their surprised faces when I showed up for a second day of work. Since my office was too much of a mess to get anything done, I spent the first part of my day cleaning it. I borrowed a broom from the janitor's closet (which was slightly larger than my office) and got to work clearing out cobwebs and paint chips. It took me three phone calls and some cash under the table but I finally found someone willing to move that broken desk out.

Around noon, Tindall peeked his head in and raised an eyebrow at how I'd arranged the office, placing my personal laptop directly on the floor and curling up next to it to start my research. “Cozy,” he remarked.

“It'll take me a while to find another desk I like. The movers charged me an arm and half a leg to take the old one away.”

He nodded and strode in uninvited. “Doc says they collected the body last night.”

“Did he put a rush job on my tox screen?”

“As ordered.”

“Good.”

He waited a long time, probably expecting me to elaborate on my thoughts. “You know, Black, I've always been kind of skeptical on the magick front. I mean, I've seen a lot of things since I moved out here but real magick isn't one of them and there's a good reason for that. Visions and evidence collected from a séance aren't admissible in court.”

I scrolled through another police report before looking up. “How long have you known Leo Garcia was missing?” His upper lip twitched slightly and I knew I'd hit on something he'd rather let stayed buried. “How many other undocumented kids are missing?”

“Just the three you probably already know about,” he said flatly and then shifted his weight. “It's not like I didn't try, Black. There's no hard evidence the kids ever existed and my superiors don't feel that's where they should be pooling departmental resources, despite my protests. I couldn't keep the cases open to do any damn good so, when the Garcia kid went missing, I thought it was best left to the pack to deal with it.”

I stood and cracked my back. “You didn’t even file a police report when Leo Garcia went missing.”

“How did you even find out about this?”

“That part doesn't matter. What does matter is finding those kids. If this department isn't going to do that, then I will.”

Tindall walked over and closed the door, bolting it shut. “That's what Elias said, too, and you see how well that worked out for him.”

“You knew Elias was looking into the disappearances?” I crossed my office to stand next to Tindall who was resting his forehead against the wall. “And you didn't think to bring that up
yesterday
?”

His head snapped up and he shot me a glare of daggers. “I was told to back off or turn in my badge, Black. If I'd told you about those kids, you would have went off halfcocked, tearing this town apart. The parents are skittish enough that they won't talk to me. If you start poking around, we'll never find their remains.”

“Remains?” I raised my eyebrows. “There's a chance those kids are still alive. Even if they're not, we're not going to continue to look the other way while some monster terrorizes this town. Who the hell does your chief think he is?” I stopped and took a deep breath. Getting upset and taking this out on Tindall wasn't going to help me find those kids and Elias' murderer any faster. I needed info and evidence and I needed it fast. “Tell me everything you know about those missing kids,” I said in a shaky voice.

Tindall told me everything, which wasn't much. In the limited time he'd had to pursue the cases before his superiors got wind of what was happening, he hadn't been able to find any connection between the victims other than that they were unregistered residents. The cases he'd worked had been on victims of different income brackets, different races, from different parts of town. Just like Sal had said, they'd gone missing sometime overnight. The houses hadn’t had any signs of a break-in. “My primary suspects were always the parents in both cases,” he finished. “Rita Greenlee, the troll mother of the first kid, had a history of mental instability. She'd been on and off anti-depressants most of her life.”

“What about the Garcias?” I asked.

Tindall shrugged. “Valentino's some kind of ex-gang banger. Wouldn't surprise me if he lost his temper and took it out on the kid. You know how stressful raising a kid can be.”

I scrolled through the closed Garcia file on my laptop and frowned. “Do you have any kids, Tindall?”

He took a long time to answer so I looked up. Poor Tindall looked like I'd just stabbed him in the gut and twisted the knife. “Used to,” he said, his voice full of tension. “A daughter. She'd be eighteen now.”

“Oh God,” I said, rising. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean...”

“It's not like it's a big secret,” Tindall said with a strained smile. “It's how I wound up here, you know? But I'd rather not talk about it. My wife...We never had what you'd call closure.”

I nodded and continued in a gentler tone. “Valentino doesn't strike me as that kind of guy. He seemed more desperate and frantic when I met him. He'd do anything to get his child back. Wouldn't you?”

He walked over to the window and gave the desert outside a good, long stare before he cleared his throat. “Teagan Summers came to me. She was a mess, poor woman. She'd pulled her whole life savings and shoved it across the table at me, begging me to find her daughter.” Tindall turned away from the window, his expression pained. “She's where you'll want to start. This...monster...It isn't finished doing whatever it's doing. My hands are tied with miles of red tape and political bullshit. The chief doesn't want me on this. Hell, he doesn't even want me to help you. But dammit, Black, no parent should ever have to put an empty coffin in the ground. Not one. If you can find these kids or what's left of 'em, I'll risk my badge on it. All I ever found was dead ends and closed doors.”

I smiled and nodded. Whatever negative opinion I'd formed of Tindall on our first day together was gone. He wasn't a burnt out cop who didn't care anymore. His problem was that he had cared too much. He was me in twenty years if I wasn't careful. “I'm sure as hell going to try. You stay out of it, though, unless I need you. Understand?”

He put a hand on my shoulder. I hadn't figured Tindall would be a touchy-feely kind of person, so the contact probably meant I should pay attention. I turned back to him before I opened the door. “The Summers are fae but even for fae they're peculiar. You want I should tag along? Maybe I rub werewolves the wrong way but I can deal with fae.”

I cracked a small smile. “Thanks, but this isn't my first rodeo, detective. Go and get your special at the diner. I'll go talk to the Summers. Your badge is safer that way.”

* * * * *

Donald and Teagan Summers lived on Fae Boulevard with most of the other fae. Their house was a pleasant, well-kept two story place, probably left over from Paint Rock's days as a public town where anyone could live. It had gray-green shutters, a rock garden and a pretty little fountain with kissing mermaids in the front. I heard them shuffling around inside when I rang the doorbell and hoped they weren't concealing evidence of some kind.

The door cracked open and a middle aged man with a streak of silver in his hair looked out at me. He had a look about him that said he was in some kind of professional work. You know, the doctor or lawyer look, though he wasn't wearing the clothes that went along with either. He was in a battered and sweat stained white t-shirt and a pair of cut offs.

“Help ya, lass?” Now, I was a linguistics major in college and my favorite thing to study was accents and regionalisms. I prided myself in being able to identify accents that most people mix up like Scottish, Irish and Welsh. The one he spoke with rested comfortably somewhere between all three.

I showed him by BSI badge and his eyes got as wide as teacups. “I'm Special Agent Judah Black with BSI. I was wondering if you had a minute to talk.”

“I've naught to say about it,” he said and started to shut the door on me.

I wedged my foot into the opening and it took the full brunt of his hurry to get away. Nothing broke but it definitely hurt. I gritted my teeth and forced myself through the pain. “I know Marian is missing.” He paused for just a brief second, long enough for me to choke out one or two things that might convince him to talk to me. “I just want to find her. I'll keep it off the record. You have my word.”

He opened the door just a little wider and gave me a skeptical look. “You know what it means to give your word to my kind? Don't do it lightly, lass.”

“I'm a mother,” I told him. “I don't treat any crime involving children lightly.”

Finally, he opened the door the rest of the way and stood off to the side. “Come in, then, but be quick about it. Don't let no one see you.”

The inside décor matched the outside: pleasant and eclectic but still inexpensively betraying a watered down sense of old, country style. The man, who I'd gathered must be Donald Summers, ushered me to a sofa and offered me a beer that I turned down. I might be willing to give him my word and risk the wrath of a faerie but I wasn't willing to go into debt against one. Only when I'd turned him down three times did he sink down into the easy chair next to the sofa. “She's dead,” he said in a distant tone. “What took her's asked no ransom so either she's dead or I wish she were.”

I frowned. “Mr. Summers, Marian doesn't have a file with BSI, is that correct?”

“I had identity documents pending. See, she was an illegal baby. I know she was but Teagan and I were trying to do the right thing, pay our fine and move on with life. We were so happy and then this...” He started to sob dry tears into his hand. “Sorry, lass,” he offered after a few minutes. “It was BSI, wasn't it? This is what we get for trying to go straight. I should have known that wouldn't be enough.”