Chapter Five
Evidence had gone missing?
Had her father known? Was that why twenty years had gone by without any leads or answers?
Winnie had gone through a fair amount of the boxes connected to the Lila Mercer investigation, but she felt compelled to review the evidence list Adrial had recovered.
There were the big-ticket items, of course.
The bright blue tarp the twenty-year-old had been wrapped in, the chains used to secure the body to the cinder blocks.
Neither had produced much in the way of a lead, as far as she knew, but the expert on the case had passed away.
There was no one for them to consult. “Where is the evidence now? Can we compare this list to the official file and see the difference?”
“Evidence collected during homicide investigations is kept in a secure location. Sometimes the station, other times a storage facility.” Adrial set aside the list on the very same coffee table he’d sat at the night he’d asked her father for permission to marry her.
“Either way, neither of us is getting close to it. We’re not law enforcement, and we don’t have clearance. ”
That wasn’t good enough. There had to be something—anything—in these boxes that would help. And, look, they’d already found a gaping hole in the case. Evidence had gone missing, but none of the papers or media coverage reported it, and the notes her dad had made all seemed to contradict each other.
“You used to work for BHPD, and you work cold cases for a living.” That all-too-familiar weightlessness that accompanied not having something to do, something to focus on, was creeping through her like sludge.
This couldn’t be it. She hadn’t gone through all these boxes and memorized investigation details to only come this far.
“Don’t you have a contact in the department who can help? ”
“Listen, I agreed to bring you the information I have concerning this particular case. Not play detective. And, honestly, I’d be happy never to get involved in this case again.
” His knuckles looked as though they’d burst through the skin as he clutched the box.
“Your dad spent the last twenty years trying to get a lead and ended up nowhere. You don’t want to spend the rest of your life chasing dead ends.
Believe me. No good can come of it. Just…
grieve for your dad and move on, Red. Clean out the house, put it up for sale and go back to Seattle, where you belong. ”
Where she belonged? The words struck harder than he would ever know.
That was the problem, wasn’t it? She wasn’t sure where she belonged anymore.
Seattle had been everything she’d dreamed about as a kid, when she’d fantasized about escaping this messed-up town, but not even the lawyer husband, professionally decorated town house and nights out with college friends had seemed to fit right.
She’d come home out of duty—to take care of her dad’s belongings and arrange the funeral—but there wasn’t an acre of Black Hollow that’d welcomed her with open arms. Least of all the man who’d ripped her heart in half and made her run in the first place.
And she got it. She did. She hadn’t been the right fit for him, either.
She hadn’t been the right fit for her ex-husband.
She hadn’t been the right fit for her dad or for her classmates, who made sure she knew about every single flaw every single day of her miserable childhood.
No one seemed to know what to do with her, and the only person who’d ever accepted her—unconditionally and with a smile—had been taken from her as a teen.
She’d hoped time and circumstances would have gifted her some kind of reset.
Turned out, she still didn’t fit. Not in Seattle, and not in Black Hollow.
But solving this case could change that.
She’d gone through enough of her father’s files and listened to him talk about his cases over the years to know that motive was everything.
If she managed to learn who in Lila Mercer’s life had reason to want her dead, Winnie might be able to create a new suspect pool the police hadn’t considered all those years ago.
The medical examiner’s report. It had to be somewhere in this house.
Her father’s entire case rested on it, and he would’ve made sure to keep a copy.
Bits and pieces from news coverage all those years ago—the few times her dad hadn’t turned off the TV and sent her out of the living room—trickled in from the box of memories she didn’t open too often.
Just a few details. The memory of the eighty-year-old, hacking-up-a-lung newscaster she bet had passed away by now had explained that physical evidence on the body had been preserved due to the below freezing temperatures in Hollow Lake.
To the point it was hard for investigators to tell how long Lila Mercer had been chained below the surface.
There was something else, though. Something that felt important.
Winnie collected the delicate papers from the table and stacked them back into the box.
A gnawing pain pulsed through her right eye.
Damn it. Not now. Not in front of him. If she didn’t catch it in time, she wouldn’t be able to see in the next thirty minutes, but her survival instincts weren’t strong enough to fight her temper.
“Why come here if you weren’t planning on helping me, Adrial?
Was it out of pity? Your way of apologizing for the way we left things? ”
“I don’t pity you.” Adrial moved to grab the box, but she dragged it out of his reach. “I just don’t want you getting involved in something where you end up hurt.”
He almost made it convincing, didn’t he? His concern for her.
“In case you weren’t aware, I can take care of myself.
I’ve been doing it for a while now.” She hauled the box into her chest and turned.
Pain drilled into her temple. She wanted to press her thumb into the thin skin there to relieve the pressure, but experience and history told her nothing short of caffeine and a dark room would help.
Now. Her grip slipped from the box’s handles a mere foot before she got to the edge of the table.
But it never hit the floor.
“I got it.” Adrial’s voice was right there. Too close. How hadn’t she noticed? The round metal feet of the pleather dining table chair screamed as he pulled it across the linoleum. “Here. Sit down. Where are your rescue meds?”
“In my purse by the front door.” He’d remembered her migraines?
Winnie didn’t give herself more than a couple of seconds to let that sink in.
Of course, he remembered. She’d ruined their prom night because she hadn’t brought her migraine medication with her, and they’d had to leave the dance early.
And forgo the plan she had to give him her virginity. Kind of hard to forget.
Before she had a chance to specify where she kept them in her purse, Adrial was crouched in front of her with her meds in one hand and a glass of water in the other. “Here.”
“Thank you.” She took both and downed the pills.
It’d take a few minutes for them to kick in, but her brain was clear enough to recognize the truth of the matter.
Who the hell would agree to help her with this case?
Who would want to? It’d destroyed her dad’s career in the end.
It’d turned an entire town against him to the point that not a single neighbor or friend had deemed him worthy of showing up at his funeral.
It made sense Adrial didn’t want to get involved.
He’d built a life for himself here. A family.
An agency. A home. Nobody in their right mind would put those at risk, and she had no right to ask him to.
“You don’t have to stay. I can take it from here. ”
“I’ll wait until I’m sure the meds are working.” Straightening, he grabbed for the chair next to hers, pulled it in front of her and took a seat. His knee knocked into hers, jarring her entire nervous system with something to focus on. “Wouldn’t want you to walk into the wall again.”
“That was one time, and it hasn’t happened in a while.
” It happened a month ago. She’d gotten used to the migraines since she was a teen, but they varied in intensity and timing.
Sometimes she could catch them before she lost her vision.
Most of the time, they steamrolled her into burying herself under the blankets and blocking out any hint of light for upward of three hours.
“I meant the case. You don’t owe me anything, and I’m sorry if I made you feel like you did.
I don’t… I don’t want to ruin what you’ve built for yourself here, and I’m sure looking into the Mercer investigation again has brought up a lot of unpleasant memories.
I shouldn’t have asked for your help, but I appreciate you bringing your files all the same. ”
He regarded her with the most unreadable expression. Utterly devoid of any indication of what was going on in that head of his. He hadn’t always been like that, had he? Not with her. There’d been moments when she could read him better than anyone else in her life. But a lot had happened since then.
“You’re not going to stop, are you?” he asked.
“I can’t.” She hadn’t realized how much truth sat in those two little words until right now.
This wasn’t just about giving her father’s life purpose, restoring his reputation or honoring his memory.
It might’ve started that way, but there was more, and it had everything to do with her needing to do something no one else in this town had been able to accomplish.
To prove she was worth something to someone, even if that someone had been dead for twenty years and wouldn’t appreciate her effort.
The tendons down the side of his neck flexed.
Adrial tapped four fingers against the table in a descending rhythm, his full attention on the movement.
“We’ll need to go through these boxes and create a working investigation file.
We won’t get anywhere trying to piece things together with it all spread out like this.
And I’ll reach out to a friend in BHPD. See if I can get access to their notes and reports.
If there are any family members or local witnesses still around, we’ll want to talk to them again. ”
Her rib cage filled with a burning weightlessness, and the pain dwindled to a mere nudge at the side of her head. “You’re going to help me? Why?”
“Because I know what it feels like to go without answers.” He drummed his fingers one more time before shoving to stand.
“I’ll call you when I have the case file and official evidence list. Until then, see if you can organize some of this chaos into something we can use.
Put those research skills of yours to use.
You might find something police overlooked. ”
She didn’t know what going without answers meant for him, but she wasn’t going to turn down his experience as a former detective.
Additionally, there were things in these boxes that surely only Adrial would be able to understand, having worked with her father for those years on the job.
Winnie rose, trailing him to the front door.
She could do this. For her dad. For herself.
And maybe a little bit for Adrial. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me until we have a lead. Cold cases don’t play out like new homicide investigations.
Witnesses and family move away, relationships with the victim change, resources run dry and the case files might be impossible to read.
Not to mention perpetrators get cocky the longer they go without being caught, believing they’ve gotten away with murder.
” Adrial grabbed for the bronze door handle, showcasing bulky muscle and years of dedication.
And his bare left ring finger. “And they’ll do whatever it takes to keep it that way. ”