Chapter Six
Lila Mercer was still haunting him.
“This everything?” Adrial flipped through Black Hollow PD’s investigation file as his forensic investigator took a seat in his favorite chair across the desk.
“Everything I could find in the ten minutes I was allowed free rein of the records room.” Baxter interlaced his fingers behind his skull, leaning the chair back on two feet as he had a thousand times since they’d opened Cold Hollow Investigations together two years ago.
Neither of them had expected the agency to grow as it had.
With their pasts, they’d been content to work cases no one else would touch to fulfill some sick need of getting closure by proxy, but their work had attracted other investigators and officials with that same need.
Now, they were a team of six with a constant caseload coming not only from Black Hollow, but also clients from all over the state.
“My contact in BHPD is risking their job for this, so I hope it’s worth it. ”
Yet to be determined. Adrial had this entire case file memorized. While he hadn’t come into the investigation until four years after Lila Mercer had been killed, nothing had changed in terms of evidence or leads. “Does your contact happen to be the officer you’ve been dating?”
“We may have gone out a couple times.” Baxter’s Cheshire cat smile made the lines at the corners of his eyes crease.
The smile was fake, a weapon the forensic anthropologist used to disarm, charm and bed unsuspecting partners.
Of which there seemed to be an endless supply.
Hell, Adrial wasn’t sure the man actually remembered how to smile, but they all had their vices in this line of work. “And bought a cat together.”
“Aren’t you allergic to cats?” Better than the time-share Baxter had purchased with one of his flings last year, but at some point his best friend was going to have to stop investing in the bachelor persona and face the fact that the woman he loved wasn’t coming back. Ever.
Baxter shrugged, setting the chair back on all four feet. “What can I say? My love language is gift giving, and she’s always wanted a cat. Paid off for me in the end. Except for the stuffy nose and feeling like I might suffocate every time I step into her apartment.”
Adrial flipped over the first few pages of the file Baxter had conned out of BHPD.
This file—unlike the ones stashed in case-file boxes at Winnie’s house—had been organized and laid out with the first days of the investigation at the front and the years of notes and theories in chronological order.
“What did you promise this contact in return for this favor?”
“Nothing you’ll have to pay up on. Though I might need to use a couple of my vacation days soon.
She wants to see the arches in Utah.” Rubbing the back of his neck, the forensic investigator shifted to the edge of his seat.
Those icy eyes centered on Adrial. “So the famous Winnie Hutton is back in town. How’s that going? ”
The muscles down Adrial’s spine locked in place, one by one.
He didn’t want to talk about Winnie. Didn’t want to think about her.
Though, of course, that was all he’d been doing since he’d left her house yesterday afternoon.
How she’d responded to the barest of touches.
How her smile had lit up something unexpected inside of him and triggered a craving he’d convinced himself he’d never feed again. “You get the other thing I asked for?”
“Bottom of the stack.” Baxter motioned to the files with his chin. “Background check, university transcripts, marriage license, finances, employer records, phone records, mortgage docs, divorce decree. Michal went the whole nine yards on your girl.”
“Divorce?” Adrial couldn’t stop himself from flipping to the signed paperwork and skimming through it.
His body suddenly felt heavier. Winnie had gotten divorced.
Just three months ago. Hell, he hadn’t expected that.
He thought she’d found someone worthy to provide her with the life she’d always wanted.
Someone who would put her needs above his and get her as far from this town as possible, like she’d dreamed of since her mom had died.
Who’d support her in becoming a psychotherapist and do whatever it took to make her happy. Like she deserved.
Adrial’s breath rushed from his chest. In defeat.
Why hadn’t she said anything? He shut down that thought.
Why would she have said anything? They hadn’t spoken in over a decade, and after the way he’d broken their engagement, he hadn’t given her any reason to trust him with that kind of personal information.
From what he could see, her husband—now ex-husband—had been the one to file for divorce.
Citing irreconcilable differences. They’d sold their house in Seattle and split the profits, as well as the credit-card debt under the husband’s name.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars. Hell, the man had saddled her with his poor life choices, forcing Winnie to come back to Black Hollow to pay the price.
Just as Arthur had done in shouldering Winnie down with the Lila Mercer case. Because Adrial had no doubt in his mind his former partner had left that sticky note with Cold Hollow’s name for her, knowing she would feel obligated to go settle his affairs and see her father’s life work through.
Adrial spread everything out across his desk, then scrubbed a hand down his face. Their resident detective Michal had done a hell of a job pulling Winnie’s life together, but any good investigator knew whatever paperwork that told the story of a life would only be a snapshot. “She’s not my girl.”
A muscle tugged behind his rib cage. He’d already burned that bridge, and the truth was, he wasn’t interested in building another one. His heart couldn’t take it.
“Try telling your face that.” Baxter set his elbows against his knees, edging closer to the desk. “From what I can tell, Winnie Hutton is exactly who she’s claiming to be.”
Adrial reviewed the rest of the documents that spelled out what Winnie had been up to for the past ten years.
None of it explained her sudden interest in investigating the Lila Mercer case.
Maybe she’d been telling the truth after all.
Just wanting to close out her father’s life like the good daughter she’d always been. “No red flags?”
“None. If she’s here for anything more than selling off her father’s assets, Michal didn’t find it.” Baxter hiked one ankle over his knee. “Tell me about this old case she’s having you look into.”
“You read the file?” Adrial went straight for the evidence list. He’d managed to take a photo of the catalog he and Winnie had found stashed in that first box before her migraine had attacked.
Old habits had kicked in instantly when he’d caught her squeezing her eyes tight, and surprisingly, she’d let him take care of her for those few minutes.
And it’d… It’d felt good. To have a purpose.
Someone to care for after all this time.
That’d always been the plan. Make detective, settle down with the woman he loved, start a family.
He’d had everything he’d wanted. Until he didn’t.
But the need was still there. Slowly eating him alive from the inside, and now Winnie was back in town, and he… He didn’t know what to do with that.
“Most of it.” The forensic investigator tipped his head back and forth a few times. “I got…distracted.”
Pulling up the photo on his phone, Adrial set both lists side by side.
The tarp the body had been wrapped in. The chains that’d failed to keep the remains under water.
The victim’s clothing. They all lined up.
But there were inconsistencies in BHPD’s file.
There was only one person who would’ve had that kind of authority.
The investigating detective. Arthur Hutton.
But why? Why spend almost an entire career as the town’s chief of police—almost half of the man’s life—working a case with faulty information?
Or leave out information altogether. “Let me guess. By the cat.”
“Something like that.” There was that smile again, the one Baxter used to convince everyone around him he didn’t have a care in the world.
One of these days that smile wouldn’t be enough.
“Twenty-year-old nurse found beaten up and chained down in the middle of Hollow Lake some twenty years ago. Took a ME coming in from Seattle to identify her. Her teeth had been pulled and the tips of her fingers cut off.”
Adrial nodded, setting himself back in the chair.
He reached out and shifted one of the crime scene photos parallel with the edge of his desk.
An image that had burned itself into his brain that first day he’d been partnered with Arthur.
“Lila Mercer was a local who lived alone, never married, never had any kids. According to neighbors and coworkers, she’d kept to herself.
Didn’t have any family, from what we could find.
Her parents had died in that big car accident, and she was an only child.
Her boss said she always arrived on time for her shift, never complained about her duties and got along with everyone she came into contact with. ”
Baxter seemed to consider that. “No confrontations with patients or the people she worked with?”
“None. She went as far to cover for other nurses when they needed it, worked upward of sixty hours a week sometimes.” Adrial tapped four fingers on the surface of his desk, a habit he couldn’t seem to kick when coming at a case like this.
Dead end after dead end. “She didn’t have time for confrontations or relationships. ”
Baxter shifted, that telltale divot between his eyebrows.
“So she was a loner. But obviously someone wanted her dead, and the way she was beaten makes me think it was personal. Most of the damage I’ve seen in the medical examiner’s report was focused on her face and head.
Whoever killed her could’ve put their effort there to derail identification, but it feels more like anger. Like someone snapped.”
It was possible and had been one of Adrial’s more promising theories, but without evidence of a relationship or DNA left behind by the attacker, they had nothing new to go off of.
“At first, Arthur thought it might’ve been an act of random violence.
Maybe she ran into someone on her way home from work or tried to stop some kind of altercation.
” He forced himself to look at the victim’s face.
“But a thorough search of the route she took from the clinic home never provided evidence of a struggle, and there were no reports of fights or hit-and-runs that night.”
Baxter set his face in one palm. “You look at the ex?”
“High school boyfriend moved back east for school, leaving her here. Phone records didn’t give any indication she’d started seeing someone else.
Neither her fingertips nor her teeth were recovered, either, and the ME couldn’t get a good sample from her wounds to determine if the killer left behind DNA.
” Adrial tapped the old records he’d reviewed a thousand times over the years, always pulling him back into the case despite his determination to let it go.
“But we found something interesting in her financials. There was a charge on her credit card for two hundred dollars, well above her usual spending, at a doctor’s office a few towns over two months before Lila was murdered. ”
A light blazed behind Baxter’s eyes. “That is interesting. I’m assuming BHPD talked to the doctor?”
“That was where the investigation stalled.” And the trail had run dry.
Adrial tossed one of the crime scene photos back onto the pile, succumbing to the disappointment that talking this through had failed to reveal anything new.
He was right back where he didn’t want to be—faced with an unsolvable case and the woman he’d tried to protect from discovering the truth.
“The clinic burned down a couple weeks before Lila Mercer was killed. The doctor she saw—and their records—burned with it.”
Baxter’s low whistle filled the office. “So what’s the plan then?”
He leaned forward in his office chair. “The same place we always do when working a cold case. We start with exhuming the body.”