Phoenix Feather (2 page)

“Uh, no.” He looked up. “I’m going to order ten plates—to go.”

“Planning your breakfast for a week?”

He smiled. “It’s my turn to cook breakfast for the firehouse this morning.”

“Aren’t you cheating?”

“Not if I get back before they wake up.”

Aidan laughed. Her favorite part about working at the diner was the people. They were like puzzles with their odd little quirks and mannerisms. She had always enjoyed pondering what made people tick and where their paths would lead them, such as the girl with purple hair and fishnet tights who sat scrunched up in the corner of a booth scribbling on a napkin. Would she be the next J. K. Rowling or punk rock star? And what brought a fireman in for a catering selection of food rather than confronting the kitchen himself? Was he a lousy cook? Was he trying to put on an image of being a gourmet chef? Aidan enjoyed the speculation, but she never asked.
 

“What’ll it be?”

“Two veggie omelet plates with hash browns and toast, but you don’t have to toast the bread; that much I can do. Three of the French toast plates. Make the eggs omelets too, one country fried steak and eggs…” He looked up from the menu. “Shouldn’t you be writing that down?”

Aidan blinked. “No.” She had no trouble remembering everything. She had an unlimited capacity for knowledge and had acquired quite a bit over the ages. It just was rarely appropriate to use it, such as now when it drew too much curious attention. She prepared to backpedal and grab a pad, but he finished relaying his order.

Aidan went to the kitchen and came back a moment later. “Twenty minutes. Did you want to cheat on the coffee as well?”

He laughed. “I think they’d notice the logo on the sides of the cups.”

“Sorry I can’t give you a whole pot.” She moved to the register and began typing up the check. He handed her several twenty-dollar bills and she counted his change. As he pocketed the remaining cash and receipt, Aidan grabbed a mug from the counter and filled it with coffee.

“On the house,” she said, and handed it to him.

“Thanks...” He glanced at her nametag. “Aidan. I’m Trent.” He flashed her a friendly, and quite attractive, smile.

“You’re welcome, Trent.” She was used to guys flirting with her, guys of all ages; it was part of the job description. She moved to the side to retrieve the napkins and continue folding them. Out of habit, she looked up at the clock after every five napkins.

“Anticipating the morning rush?” Trent asked.

“Actually, I get to leave before it. I set everything up for them, and then I’m off to my other job.”

“Trying to make ends meet?” he guessed with a hint of sympathy in his voice.

Aidan shook her head with a smile. “I don’t need this job, but the owners helped me out a lot during my undergrad years, and I like to give back by helping out in the mornings.”

“What did you study?”

“History.”

Trent took a swig of coffee. “I liked history in school. World history more than U.S. It’s richer.”

Aidan nodded. “Especially with mythology.”

“I particularly enjoyed Norse mythology.”

“Ah yes, the building blocks of standard fantasy.”

Trent smiled, and Aidan felt her cheeks warm.

“What about you?” he asked. “Which mythology is your favorite?”

She pushed the napkins aside and leaned her elbows on the counter. Why not? It wasn’t often she found a complete stranger with similar academic interests. “I would say the pieces of mythologies that are universal.”

Trent quirked a brow in question.

“There are some myths that are essentially the same, though the details might vary geographically and culturally. Dragons, for instance. Legends of them are all over the world, but depending on what hemisphere you’re in, they could either be devils or gods.” Aidan ducked her head to hide a small smile. There were lots of different variations of stories concerning her. The Persians depicted her as being large enough to carry a whale. An adult phoenix was a large bird, but she certainly couldn’t go whale fishing.

Trent set his mug down. “Do you plan to teach?”

“Yes. I’m working on my Masters right now. The education system in America is far from satisfactory.”

He shrugged one shoulder. “Depends on the teacher.”

Aidan grinned. “Exactly.”

Trent chuckled and raised his mug to her. “Good luck then.”

The bell rang and Trent’s order was ready. Aidan retrieved the packed trays and placed them in plastic bags.

“Thank you, Aidan,” he said, and took the bags from her. After a quick glance inside, he nodded in satisfaction. “I’m impressed.” He knotted the handles and headed for the exit. “Have a good one.”

“Don’t forget the pots and pans.”

Trent turned with a hand on the door. “What?”

She leaned over the counter. “Throw all your pots and pans in the sink.”

A smile crept over his face and he nodded. “Thanks.”

Chapter Two

Detective Bryan McCain pressed himself against the wall to let the gurney pass. The alley was a tight fit with four police officers, a medical examiner, two dumpsters, and a dead body crammed into it. It was almost eight o’clock in the morning on Thursday. The manager of the little Korean shop had been taking out yesterday’s trash when he discovered the mid-twenties, white female lying on a pile of garbage between the two dumpsters. Bryan let his eyes drift slowly over the body and the area around her. She wore jeans, a blouse, and tennis shoes; she did not look like a prostitute. Her body lay sprawled out, head facing the wall, waist twisted so her legs leaned the opposite direction. Her clothes were dirty and wrinkled, ripped where she had obvious wounds, but otherwise intact—Bryan would have to hold judgment until a rape kit came back. Her light red hair was matted and her eyes half open, staring into an abyss only the dead could see.

“Cause of death, Casey?” Bryan asked.

The medical examiner leaned over the body and examined the eyes. Tiny pinpoints of red dotted the whites. “Petechial hemorrhaging. That and the bruising around her neck suggest strangulation.” She checked liver temperature. “Time of death between eight and twelve hours ago. She’s almost in full rigor mortis.”

Bryan’s partner, Jess Harris, joined them. Her 5’6” and slight physique masked the spunk that made her a formidable cop on the streets. “Manager says he closed up and went home around eleven o’clock last night. Didn’t hear or see anything out of the ordinary.”

Bryan moved around to get a view from a different angle. He was twenty-nine, and this was not where he had imagined his life would end up. When he had first wanted to become a cop and majored in criminology, he’d had this delusion that he would become a hero and help make the world a better place. Time and experience shattered that. He didn’t make a difference in the world; he just cleaned up its messes.

“What are the other marks?” he asked. “They don’t look like knife wounds.”

Casey lifted a shirtsleeve. “They appear to be burns.”

“Like she was in a fire?” Jess asked.

“No. These are isolated, inflicted. I’ll be able to tell you more at the autopsy.”

“Any chance she has ID on her?” Bryan asked.

Casey felt the jean pockets and around the body. “Wait, here we go.” She lifted the girl slightly and found a purse underneath her.

Jess reached in and grabbed it. She pulled two cards out. “Jenny Rosland,” she read, and held up the picture IDs for Bryan to see. “Driver’s license, and Student ID for Seattle U.”

Bryan wrote the name and address in his notebook.

Jess sifted through the purse. “No cash, but credit cards are still here. Cell phone, car keys to a Honda. I’ll see if I can find the car in the area.”

Bryan nodded. “No apparent rape. It doesn’t appear to be a robbery either. So what happened?” Finding the answer to that question was what kept him up late at night. He went off to help uniformed officers canvas the neighborhood, but no one saw anything. Jess returned after searching a five-block radius, but no car matched the set of keys.

“Let’s go by our vic’s apartment,” she said, and then waved at Casey. “Call when you’re ready to autopsy?”

The M.E. nodded. “I’ll try to make it soon.”

Bryan and Jess headed out to the victim’s address, located at one of those large apartment developments. No one answered the door, so they went around to the office to speak to the complex manager. The guy was a middle-aged accountant type who was all too willing to help and didn’t even bother asking about search warrants. He confirmed that Miss Rosland lived alone, and gave them the key to her unit. They asked him to find the rental paperwork and meet them over there.

Bryan and Jess headed back and let themselves in to the one-bedroom apartment. The place showed no signs of a struggle. Jenny’s taste in decor was eclectic. She had two dark red couches, stringed dragonfly lights wrapped around a small computer desk, and a bar-height dining table in the kitchen with bright blue and green spotted placemats. The two detectives branched off to look around.

“There are a few pictures here with different guys in them,” Jess said, peering at frames on the wall. “But none that really stand out as a boyfriend.”

“How can you tell?” Bryan asked.

She gave him a wry look. “No one’s acting overly affectionate in any of them; not one guy is in more pictures than the rest. If she had a boyfriend, it would show.”

“Maybe we’re looking for an ex.” Bryan stopped at a row of picture frames on top of a short bookcase. He picked up one of Jenny from a Fourth of July party. She was smiling and wearing one of those antenna headbands with red, white, and blue tinsel bouquets mimicking fireworks. Bryan remembered with a pang of guilt how he had missed the last two Fourth of July barbecues with his brother and friends. He had been buried in work.

“Maybe it was a date gone bad,” Jess said. She moved to the desk and started going through the single drawer. Jess, like Bryan, was devoted to work at the expense of much of a personal life. She had never married and rarely went on dates. She did have a sister and brother-in-law with two kids, whom she adored and spent nearly every day off with. When was the last time he spent a day off with other people? He liked to go to the gym, but he didn’t talk to anyone, and mostly he stayed home and pored over open case files.

The manager appeared in the open door and held up a copy of Jenny’s paperwork.

Bryan took it and looked it over. “She’s lived here two years? Was she a good tenant?”

The manager nodded. “Always paid rent on time.”

“Any problems with neighbors? Complaints?” Jess asked.

“There was a parking issue last year, but those people moved out three months ago.”

“Is her car here?” Bryan asked.

The guy paused. “Uh, no.” He frowned. “I haven’t seen it since this past weekend. Come to think of it, haven’t seen Miss Rosland since then either.”

Bryan and Jess exchanged a look. “You ever see any guys around?” he asked.

“I don’t pay that close of attention. I just know she was a nice girl who liked to hand-deliver her rent payments.”

“Why did she like to hand-deliver them?” Jess asked.

The manager smiled at his thought. “She joked once that it was her OCD.” His smile faded just as quickly. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay, thanks.” Bryan flipped the folder closed. “We’ll be in touch if we need anything.”

The manager nodded and made his way out.

Bryan tapped the edge of the file against his palm. “So where’s she been the past few days?”

“You handle putting an APB out on the car from the info on the rental agreement,” Jess said. “It’s my turn for notification.”

Bryan didn’t argue. Notifying next of kin was one of the worst parts of the job. Another was digging into a life that no longer existed. Sometimes that bothered him the most, especially if he found a commonality with the victims, something they would never get to do that he hadn’t done either. He still had the chance, but usually work took precedence. He kept working while that list kept growing until he felt he was wasting his life while these people were unjustly robbed of theirs.

His cell phone beeped with a text message. “CSU is just about finished gathering the evidence at the alley. They’re heading back to the station,” he read.

Jess nodded. She had found an address book in the desk, which she tucked under her arm. “Let’s go.”

Back at the precinct’s homicide division, Bryan sat at his desk amidst the hustle and bustle of the bullpen and went over the results of the dump on Jenny Rosland’s cell phone. Jess had gone to observe the autopsy after the family had come down for positive identification. Bryan looked over the calls and saw nothing that suggested stalker, harassment, or, as Jess had pointed out earlier, a boyfriend. Calls to and from the cell phone were pretty regular: place of employment, family, friends, and pizza joint.

Jess came in and dropped a folder on his desk. “M.E.’s report. Casey said not all the burn marks were fresh, that the victim had been held captive for at least three days. Lividity confirms she was killed somewhere else and dumped in that alley.”