Chapter 28
“So what did you learn from Jamison?” Nikki asked. She was upstairs, getting ready for the day, two dogs lying near her feet, Chloe, still in pajamas, in their bed, with toys and books spread over the rumpled duvet. The little girl looked up at the sight of her dad and lifted her arms.
“Can’t talk about it now,” Pierce said to Nikki before picking up Chloe and then, as she laughed, tossing her back onto the bed.
“Again!” she ordered.
He snatched her up, then gently flipped her onto the bed again.
“Again!” Giggling, she was on her feet, bouncing atop the mattress.
“You’ve started something now,” Nikki observed. Her hair was wet, her reddish curls untamed.
“One more time.” He obliged his daughter, then before she could make any further demands, he headed into the bathroom.
Nikki followed. “Something’s up.”
“I have to go into the station.” He began stripping off his clothes.
“More, Daddy!” came the command from the bedroom.
“I’ll fill you in later,” he said to Nikki, kicking his jeans toward the closet and reaching into the shower. The spray was still cool.
“You were called at home.”
“Later,” he repeated, stepping under the water, sucking in his breath as the cold needles hit his chest.
On the way home, he’d phoned the major hospitals again, but no one matching Naomi’s description had been admitted or come through the ER. He’d also checked with the station as well as the state police. There were no reports of crashed vehicles.
“Why did Jamison call you and what did he say when you got to his house?” she asked again, more insistently.
He’d have to talk to her, but just couldn’t.
Not yet. She’d have too many questions and he didn’t have answers.
Nonetheless he couldn’t put her off forever.
She wouldn’t stand for it. Torn, he adjusted the water temperature and rinsed off.
“What was so important that he called you at home and you raced over to his place?”
“Can’t talk about it now. Potentially a missing person.”
“And it couldn’t wait. Why?”
“Personal connection.” He inwardly cringed. Him being enigmatic would only fire her curiosity. Finally the water was hot and steam was beginning to rise, obscuring Nikki’s image.
“How personal?”
“I said I’d explain later.” He reached for the shampoo bottle, unscrewed the lid, and had to pound the top of the bottle into his fist for the last dab to drop into his hand.
“Does this have anything to do with the homicides?” she asked from the other side of the glass door as he quickly washed his hair. “Was there another one?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“Business. But not the murders.”
“You’re a homicide detective.”
“Nikki, please, I’m trying to shower.”
“I see that!” She didn’t like being put off. He didn’t blame her, but he wasn’t about to break his friend’s confidence. Not until he knew something more. He saw movement through the glass, small and pink.
“Daddy!” Chloe cried happily.
Nikki said, “She wants to shower with you.”
“Not today.” He rinsed his hair, blinked against a bit of soap in his eyes, and saw the blurry image of his wife picking up their daughter. Chloe pressed her hand against the glass. “Daddy!”
More movement. A brown blur. Oh, for the love of God, the new dog was in the bathroom, too.
“Hey, a little privacy!” he yelled as the water, now almost scalding, ran down his back.
“Daddy will be out in a minute, sweetheart,” he heard his wife say, her voice raised to ensure that he could hear over the running water.
“And when he is, he’s going to tell us where he’s been and what he’s been up to so early in the morning.
Come on, you.” He didn’t know if she was talking to Chloe or the shepherd, but she did carry Chloe out of the room, all the while shooing the dog.
Finally, he was left alone with the hot water and his thoughts about Naomi Kittle.
He couldn’t put his finger on it, but something was very wrong there, and it ran deeper than Naomi not coming home when expected.
It had been obvious that Jamison was extremely agitated.
Worried sick. Pierce had been an investigator too long not to pay attention to his instincts and something about Jamison’s explanation about having a second honeymoon to bring another kid into the world seemed off.
Their youngest daughter was eleven, their oldest sixteen.
It seemed odd to want to start out with a new baby now.
Not that it was unheard of, but Naomi worked hard to maintain her home, her children, and her figure.
Pierce knew that she went to the gym often and had already opted for plastic surgery, at least once, maybe twice, and had never shown interest in starting over with an infant
Would she give all that hard work up to get pregnant and have another child?
Stranger things had happened, but Naomi?
Maybe he was making more of it than there was, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he wasn’t getting the full story.
He finished with the shower, toweled off, shaved, then quickly dressed and headed down to the kitchen, where his wife was waiting, arms crossed, hips leaning against the counter.
“Well?” she said as he found his jacket on a hook by the back door, then returned to the family room to pick up Chloe from the floor where she sat between the two dogs.
He kissed her mop of curls and said, “I’ll see you later, Princess. ”
“Work?” Nikki asked.
“Yep. But I’ll be back.”
“When?”
“Don’t know.” He saw Nikki’s suspicion in the arch of one eyebrow. “After work. It could be a while.”
He gave Chloe a raspberry on her belly, and she chortled. “Daddy, no!”
“Okay. Later.” He set her down and glanced up at Nikki. The look she gave him said more clearly than words: You’re so full of BS.
He started for the door again. “I’ve gotta run.”
“No coffee?”
They always had coffee together. It was their morning ritual and, once in a while, the only time they talked during the day, or at least until late in the evening. Not today. “I’ll grab a cup at the station.”
“You’d tell me if there was a break in the case.” It wasn’t a question.
“We have a deal,” he said.
“I was just going to remind you of that.”
“It’s still on.” He slid one arm through his jacket. “Tonight,” he promised. “We’ll talk tonight.”
“I’m holding you to it, Detective.”
He thought she might be teasing, but the look on her face convinced him that she was just this side of being really pissed and calling him out.
At the station, Reed stopped for a cup of coffee in the break room.
Several cops had gathered, talking, laughing, grabbing coffee, and getting ready for their shifts.
As quiet as the station could be at night, at this time in the morning, it was alive with the thud of boots, the clang of lockers being closed, and the ever-present hum of conversation.
Cell phones jangled their individual tunes, while the distinctive ring of desk phones punctuated the air.
He checked Jamison’s office, but the door was closed, inside dark.
Once at his desk, Reed scrolled through his e-mails and stopped short when he saw the lab report he’d been waiting for: blood analysis on the stones left at the murder scenes.
And not just the blood from the Huber homicide, but from the Greenlee and LaRoux scenes as well.
There was a short note from the technician explaining about the delay due to a problem with equipment, but now that it had been fixed, she had processed the blood from all the rocks found at the three scenes.
The blood in each case was identical. Not from the victims. And only partially human.
“Partially?” he said aloud. Someone had made a concoction of equal parts human, caprine, and bovine blood.
And the human blood came from an unknown female.
His stomach knotted.
Another victim?
One they had not yet discovered?
He and the department had worked on the premise that Billy Huber was the first victim, though there had been conjecture that there could be others, but, until this report, there was no real evidence or indication that there had been others.
As he was looking at the report, Sol pushed open the door. “Mornin’,” she said, dropping her backpack onto the file cabinet.
“Morning. Report on the blood came in.”
“Finally.”
“Take a look.”
She peered over his shoulder. “A mixture. Human. Goat. Cow.”
“Yeah.”
“What’s that mean?” she wondered aloud as she read the rest of the information.
“Don’t know. What do you think?”
She settled into her desk chair, and he expected her to type in the information and do some sort of Internet search. Instead she said, “Sacrifice.”
He looked at her.
“Animals used for sacrifice,” she elucidated.
“And human,” he reminded her.
“I’m just sayin’.”
He thought about it. “So you think the numbers carved onto the rocks have something to do with … what? Some kind of satanic ritual?”
“Not necessarily satanic, but maybe.” She shrugged. “I’m just spitballin’ here, but what else you got?”
“Not much,” he admitted, as his phone rang and Jamison Kittle’s name and number appeared on the screen. “Yeah?” he answered, hoping beyond hope that his friend was calling to say that Naomi had come home or been located. “You hear from her?”
“No.” A long pause. “I’m going quietly out of my mind.”
“I bet.”
“I think … shit. I think I have to, we have to make it official. Start looking. I mean. Jesus,” he whispered, and it was somewhere between a prayer and a curse.
“I don’t know what to think,” he admitted.
“Don’t know what to do.” He sounded befuddled.
Worried. So unlike the confident, ambitious Jamison Kittle that Reed knew.
“I’ll do whatever you think best,” Reed said, but he was already forming a plan.
“Give me an hour to pull myself together. The girls … they’re okay. I talked to Roxanne, and she knows that Naomi’s missing, but she’s keeping it from the kids. For now. I, um, I just don’t want to worry them unnecessarily, you know.”
“Right.”
“If we could keep this within the department, away from the press?”