Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
My mind was spinning with all the new information that had come to light over the past day. I glanced at the clock on my nightstand and mentally corrected myself. Everything that had happened yesterday.
Not only had Kenna and I successfully moved all of my belongings into my new room, but her suggestion that I figure out what it was that Rogue wanted every time he ran away had directly led to finding Lexi’s body in the river, which had directly led to Gracie showing up at the bar and getting wasted, which had in turn led to me sitting in my car with Gracie in the passenger seat telling me about the autopsy report that even she wasn’t supposed to know about yet.
Lying in bed with Rogue curled up beside me, fast asleep, I held my phone up as I read another article about bone boreholes.
Clear signs of medical expertise, that was what holes in her bones meant.
I didn’t have enough expertise in the field of drilling into bones to know why someone else might want to, but the one thing I did know was that this was no longer a cold case.
Other investigators would become involved now, and there was no good reason for me to be looking at medical studies and definitions at two o’clock in the morning.
Still, I couldn’t help myself. Even if it meant wasting my time doing something I was certain the detective assigned to the case would also be doing soon enough.
As my eyes fluttered closed and open again, I glanced down at the dog curled up beside me and finally admitted to myself the truth about why I could not let this go. I had a personal connection to the case now and I needed to see it through to the end.
The next morning the bell on the door jingled as Rogue and I entered the pet store for the third time that week. Rogue scrambled against the concrete floor in excitement, his nails clacking against the ground.
“Focus,” I said, reaching into my pocket and pulling a bit of lamb lung out to draw his attention back to me. His head whipped around and then he was on me, shoving his head into my hand and slobbering all over it as he snatched up his treat.
“Rogue!” Effy called out in delight from where she was standing on a ladder, dusting the top shelves of the cat food section. I used another bit of lamb lung to lure Rogue away from the buffet of open dog biscuit bins and toward the scale instead.
“Down half a pound,” I said, giving him an approving look and the promised treat. “Good boy.”
“Are you guys in for anything in particular?” Effy asked as she climbed down from the ladder to give Rogue all the love and attention he was so clearly deprived of from spending all his time with me. I rolled my eyes at his oh-woe-is-me act.
“Yeah, actually, could you let me know what I got last time?” I asked, feigning ignorance despite the fact that I had been in only a few days before.
“Sure!” Effy said and moved to the register, looking at me expectantly. I rattled off the phone number from Rogue’s old collar and watched the customer-facing screen as she typed it in.
“Whoops, wrong number. Let’s try another one,” I said, pretending I didn’t recognize the name on the screen. Even though I had partially expected it, seeing the name caused my heart to sink.
I rattled off my own phone number to her and let her scroll through my purchase history to find the correct dog food for Rogue.
Then, I bought the big bag and hauled it out to my car, Rogue happily trotting along beside me.
His kinked tail waved back and forth, unaware of the information I’d just confirmed.
That he had belonged to her, long before he had belonged to me.
I’d known from the start that the shape of his tail was only the most obvious symbol of everything he’d gone through. My poor boy. I couldn’t even imagine the things that he had seen, the strength it must have taken to keep going back to the river’s edge time and time again.
There was no doubt in my mind about what was triggering Rogue, now.
I’d noticed the pattern, and now I had the proof.
The good Samaritan who had come up behind the homeless man, the way Trick had come up behind me while Rogue was in the back of the car, and the way Dr. Lombardi had stood behind Hadley at the blood drive all mirrored a traumatizing scenario in Rogue’s past where one person loomed over another, ready to attack.
Lexi’s autopsy results confirmed that she had been struck from behind, according to Gracie, and Rogue had known that she was in that river.
He had spent the past seven years returning to her side over and over again, terrified of the water but refusing to give up.
He had been passed from home to home because no one would listen, because he didn’t have the kind of voice that people knew how to listen to.
And now I owed it to him, to both of them, to bring her killer to justice.
I left the massive bag of kibble in the trunk of my car as I guided Rogue back into the house, preoccupied with thoughts of Lexi’s case.
Unclipping his leash, I watched as he made a beeline for his water bowl and realized I wasn’t alone.
Both Kenna and Gracie were looking over at me from where they were sitting on the couch in the living room.
Gracie had a full cup of tea in her hands and Kenna’s empty cup sat on the coffee table. Gracie met my gaze and looked a little green. She was probably suffering a fairly brutal hangover on top of her renewed grief.
“Hey, how are you feeling?” I asked as gently as I could manage while the echo of her words rattled around in the back of my mind.
“Awful,” Gracie said hanging her head. Part of me wanted to stay mad at her, but she looked so miserable that it was impossible. Besides, she had just found out that her cousin’s remains had been discovered and that Lexi’s body had been brutalized in her final moments.
“I can see that,” I said, moving to sit in the recliner and leaning forward to rest my elbows on my knees. “Do you remember what you told me last night?”
“What I told—oh God,” Gracie’s head snapped up and she looked directly at me with absolute horror. “I am so sorry, Hale. You were just trying to get me home safe and you didn’t deserve any of that.”
“Whoa, hey,” I said, leaning forward a little more and reaching a hand out to reassure her. “That’s not what I meant. You were grieving, no apology necessary.”
“No, it is necessary,” Gracie said, squeezing my hand back before letting go. “I was a mess last night, but that’s no excuse for how I treated you. Both of you.”
“I just wish you had come to me instead of going off to drink yourself stupid when you got the news,” Kenna told her, crossing her arms. Kenna did know, then, why Gracie was such a wreck last night.
She knew about Lexi’s remains being discovered, at least. I couldn’t help but wonder how she was handling that after spending so much time trying to find Lexi and being convinced that she’d disappeared on Good Dog Trail.
“I couldn’t,” Gracie shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut. “It was too much. I just wanted to forget.”
“You can’t forget,” I told her, feeling the truth of those words deep in my bones. “All you can do is fight to balance the scales.”
“I’ve been trying to figure out what happened to Lexi for seven years,” Kenna said, shaking her head and using a tone that made it clear she’d lost hope of finding the truth.
“Nothing I did ever led to finding her, but we know now. She went out hiking on Good Dog Trail and fell into the river. There are no scales to balance here.”
“That’s not quite true,” Gracie winced at her own words and then glanced at me before pressing her lips tightly together and looking away.
“What?” Kenna asked. “What does Hale know that I don’t?”
“I’m not supposed to say, I shouldn’t have said it to her, but I was a mess and?—”
“Just tell her,” I said, cutting off Gracie’s ramblings. Kenna deserved the truth, and if we didn’t tell her then she would go searching for answers herself, and with everything I knew about Kenna I had no doubt she would find them.
“Lexi had blunt force trauma to the back of her head,” Gracie whispered. “And signs of post-mortem mutilation.”
“Someone was there,” Kenna said in the quiet that stretched out between the three of us after Gracie’s words, a look of passion in her eyes that I realized I’d never seen before, except maybe the day she “interrogated” me.
It appeared to have possessed her as she stood up and slammed her fist into the palm of her hand for emphasis as she spoke.
“Someone killed her, and they’ve gotten away with it all these years. ”
“Exactly. No one else knows that Lexi’s body was found aside from the police, the head coroner, and us,” I said, and Kenna nodded along like she was already on the same page.
“Her killer has no idea,” she said. “This is my chance to figure out what happened before they realize they’re about to be caught. To bring justice to Lexi once and for all.”
“This is our chance,” I corrected her, and Kenna gave me a confused look. “Even the best detectives work with partners for a reason. I know you probably feel responsible for solving Lexi’s case yourself, but you aren’t the only one who is invested. If we do this, we do it together.”
I turned to look at Gracie, eyebrows raised. I would look into Lexi’s death with or without her permission, but her approval would mean the difference between working out in the open and sneaking around behind everyone’s back to solve the case, and I know which one I preferred by far.
“Whoever it is, they can’t continue to get away with this,” Gracie agreed, her voice softer.
More cautious. But still filled with the same flinty determination that Kenna and I had.
Between her private investigator experience, Gracie’s ME connections, and my training as an agent there was no doubt in my mind that we were the right people for the job.