Page 7 of Into the Veins
“Does that mean you’re also temporarily lifting your despise for me?” he asked.
She directed them south toward the interstate. The drive to the main office would take at least an hour, depending on traffic, and a knot of anxiety solidified as she accepted it would be against Colson’s nature to let her drive in silence. “I don’t…despise you. I despise your chosen profession, but you happen to be attached to that at the moment, so I guess, yeah, I despise that you were lured into thinking you’re one of the good guys.”
“Well, at least you’re honest.” Colson slid strong hands down the front of his jeans, pressing himself back into the seat. “We’re licensed and required to follow the law same as the sheriff’s department, the FBI, and Seattle PD. So I’m betting you or somebody you know had a run-in with a PI who didn’t quite have the same standards as I do, and you’re holding it against me. Here I thought we were starting to like each other.”
Like? An ache prickled and burned along the back of her neck as Blair accelerated onto the interstate and sped across the sound toward Mercer Island. The toxicity spread down her arms and into her fingers, just as it had the night she’d lost everything, but she wouldn’t break under the pain. Never again. January’s parents had taught her to be strong, to have control of herself and her life, and she’d do whatever it took to make them proud. No. She didn’t like Colson, but she could gain his trust. “Agent Reese isn’t my friend from the bureau. She’s my adoptive sister. We grew up together after her family took me in when I was ten. At the time, I didn’t understand why my parents had been murdered. All I remember is finding them in their bedroom.”
Blair swallowed to counter the thickness in her throat, but the images of blood, pain, and death had already escaped the box she’d kept them in at the back of her mind. “I’ve done my due diligence over the years. My mother ran a prominent hedge-fund, which required a lot of long nights and weekends and phone calls she couldn’t tell us about. I barely saw her, so my dad was the one who was at home with me most of the time. He was police. He taught me how to shoot, how to track a target, had me memorize all the police codes by heart by the time I was five, and recall any given detail at the drop of a hat. But the night they died…” The streetlamp along the highway blurred in her vision. She had to get it together. She was stronger than this. “Turns out, one of my mother’s clients didn’t agree with the way she diversified his stock portfolio. He lost everything. His savings, his retirement, his kids’ college funds—all of it. He’d confronted her about it at the office, threatened her, and had been thrown out by security. When he couldn’t get to her himself, he hired a private investigator to look into the company and into her.” Emotion drained as Blair sat straighter in her seat. “The PI sold her personal information to the client.”
“Her client was the one who killed them?” Colson asked.
She couldn’t read the nuance behind his question. Didn’t want to. Because no matter what angle she looked at her parents’ investigation from, they wouldn’t have died if the son of a bitch private investigator hadn’t been so damn selfish. “Yes, but it wasn’t until I started investigating the case on my own that I discovered the PI had sold him the information for a few hundred extra dollars.”
“That’s awful.” Warmth spread across her knee as Colson reached out, but her first instinct to pull away from his touch stalled. “Did the police catch him? The client?”
“I saw him well enough to give Seattle PD a description at the time.” Her voice softened without her meaning for it to. Sensation blossomed from his hand on her leg and chased back the hurt vying for release. When was the last time she’d let someone comfort her? Touch her? Hold her? Years. Decades. “He stared right at me when I came into the room, the gun still in his hand. I didn’t know it at the time, but he’d already killed them. My dad… He’d gone for the weapon he kept in his safe under the bed to protect us, but he hadn’t been fast enough. The killer had known he was a police officer and made sure to kill him first.”
“But you walked away,” Colson said. “Blair, I’m sorry. I had no idea,”
Why would he? She tugged her knee out from under his hand, and a flood of relief repaired the crack in her armor. “It was a long time ago.”
Her phone’s ring penetrated through the thickening silence inside the vehicle, and Dr. Vanessa Moss’s name scrolled across the screen. “It’s the ME.” Blair compressed the answer button at the lower right of her steering wheel. “Sanders.”
“Sheriff, it looks like that private investigator of yours was right,” Dr. Moss said. “The vipers we removed from the remains weren’t what killed the victim, and I haven’t found any evidence in their digestive tracks or wounds on the body that would lead me to believe they fed from the body. According to the toxicology report, she was poisoned with a heavy dose of strychnine, administered by what looks to be a size eight needle, but that’s not all I discovered during the autopsy.”
“What else did you find?” Blair asked.
Papers rustled through the line. “Everything the witness who discovered the body stated to your deputy this morning has been a lie.”
CHAPTER SIX
Evyn Garder.
The witness who’d discovered the victim on the Rattlesnake trail this morning had sworn she hadn’t touched the remains, but the crime scene photos and epithelial cells from Rachel Faulkner’s throat revealed the truth. Not only had she lied about touching the body, but she’d moved it closer to the trailhead. Trying to make it easier to find the remains? Out of panic?
Colson had retraced the victim’s steps two days prior to her disappearance, gone through personal records, accessed her social media accounts, and traced her credit card purchases. Nothing linked Rachel Faulkner to the woman who’d discovered the body, but he couldn’t deny the conclusive evidence Seattle’s chief medical examiner presented either. Evyn Garder wasn’t telling them the whole truth about what happened on that trail. He closed the case file and studied the quiet road of mid-eighties homes and yards. “We need to bring in that witness.”
Gravel crunched under the tires as Blair pulled into one of the driveways and shoved her patrol car into Park. She cut the ignition in front of a single-story rambler slowly being overrun by the surrounding pines ringing the small property. The navy-blue siding would’ve blended into the backdrop of the trees if it weren’t for the large bay window with old school, half round panes reflecting the streetlamp back at them. Well-maintained grass stretched toward the sidewalk behind them and highlighted a small waist-high wood fence framing the front yard. The house stood out from neighbors on either side, a sapphire among pale grays and weathered yellows. This wasn’t at all what he’d expected from the King County Sheriff’s home. Maybe something a little less…dramatic, but he had to admit, Blair had already thrown a few surprises his way. Why had he expected anything less?
Heavy exhaustion had set up residence under her eyes long before they’d left Rachel Faulkner’s laptop with the tech team at the main station uptown, and the car’s cabin light only washed what little color she had left from her face. “We’ll make a visit to Evyn Garder’s home in the morning. Until then, we need to work on finding the message the victim’s husband claimed upset her enough to make her put down her phone. For all we know, the witness tried to move the remains in an effort to get help. We don’t have anything to charge her with other than tampering with evidence unless we can tie her directly to the murder.”
Then that was exactly what they’d do.
“Are you sure we’re in the right place?” Colson shouldered out of the vehicle, sinking into the gravel driveway as he studied the houses on either side of the street. “It’s not exactly what I was expecting. First of all, there are no bear traps in the yard and second, your fence posts are clean of your enemies severed heads.”
Blair closed the car door behind her. “That doesn’t sound like someone who’s grateful to not have to hitchhike back to their car tonight.” She crossed in front of her patrol car and hiked up the two steps leading to the front door. A spotlight cut through the night as she inserted the key in the front door deadbolt. She turned back, a faint smile on her lips as she pushed inside and hit the nearest light. “And the severed heads stay in the garage. Don’t want to attract too much attention.”
“Good to know.” Colson followed her through the front, immediately honing in on the wall of white built-ins stretching the length of the main room. A low whistle escaped past his mouth as Blair secured the front door and armed the alarm panel. Dozens—hundreds—of ceramic bowls, mugs, vases, and plates lined the shelves, some stacked on top of others, each with its own unique design. An entire rainbow of color accented the bottoms of the pieces, and the urge to pick up and study every single item singed the nerves in his fingers. Items she’d sculpted. She’d molded these from clay, painted them, given a piece of herself to bring them into existence, and a small part of him wanted—needed—to know what that was like. To create something so…beautiful. Pure. He reached out, careful, and traced the handle of a mug to feel that connection. With her. “Most of these look new.”
Blair brushed against him, her hands stuffed into her back pockets, and an immediate release drained as though she’d left the intense sheriff on the other side of the door. Like she’d been holding her breath until she’d made it home. “I tend to sculpt when I’m stressed or need a break from a case. The work I do…” She shook her head. “There are some things I haven’t been able to forget.”
“The serial investigation.” Colson had read the reports about the sheriff’s involvement, but reading the case file after the fact wouldn’t compare to the horror Blair had personally faced at those scenes. He moved down the line of shelves, studying each sculpture until he was sure he could point any piece out with his eyes closed if asked. He turned to face her. “Do you mind?”
Blair shook her head, her lips parting slightly.
Picking up an oversized soup mug, he smoothed his thumbs along the edge of paint waving halfway up the side of the ceramic, as though the entire bottom half had been dipped in the dark forest-colored paint. Simple. Tasteful. Like the woman whose hands had sculpted the masterpiece itself. He set the mug back into place. “Do you sell them?”
“No. I honestly can’t imagine anyone would want to buy these.” She crossed her arms in front of her, contradicting the intensity she’d held at the scene and during Braydon Caddel’s interview this afternoon. “Up until now, no one has seen them. Not even January.”