LINKED (The Bening Files Book 1) Page 19

  “He probably didn’t mention that he disappeared for ten years, either.”

  Matthew whistled. “Really? What did you do to him when he came back?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s gone that long and you just pick up where you left off?” Matthew shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  “He caught me off guard in Vegas. And we sort of got married.”

  “Sort of?”

  McKenna gave him the abridged version of the events that took place in Las Vegas. She told him everything that had happened between then and now. She’d forgotten how much they used to talk. About his job, how she could improve her marksmanship, even which law enforcement agency she should apply to after college.

  A smile touched his lips. “Seems like Jordan left out a lot of important details in his letter. Like, how married life was treating him.”

  “Write him back and ask him. He'd probably say fair, at best.”

  He laughed then. “I would have loved to be a fly on wall when you told your daddy.”

  She shook her head. That seemed like years ago, instead of twenty-four hours. “What do you think?”

  “About you and Jordan?”

  “No. The disrupted gravesite. Have you been listening to anything I've said?”

  “You sort of lost me with the whole marriage thing. Cass—” He cleared his throat. “Well, she always thought you two would end up together.”

  Apparently, McKenna was the only blind person around.

  “Ah, come on, don't tell me you had no idea.”

  “Not much. Nothing I would have admitted before a few weeks ago.” She slapped her palm onto the table. “Can we focus? What do you think about the gravesite?”

  “I think Jordan’s right to exhume her body. As for any connection to Mrs. Gaidies, I’m afraid I’m no help. Cassidy never mentioned her, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. We spent a lot of years doing our separate things before we started talking again.”

  “That’s it? You don’t have any other thoughts or insights?”

  Matthew shook his head, something sad shadowing his face. “There’s not much else to say.”

  “How about telling me what happened that day? I can read the trial transcripts until I’m eighty and blind.”

  He put his hands over his mouth and nose, creating a pyramid. “I’m sorry. I wish I could help you. I can’t. I can’t go back to the most painful time in my life. I don’t want to. And I don’t want you or Jordan to either. It’s over. This won’t bring her back. It won’t save her.”

  “It could save you.”

  “I didn’t ask to be saved. I've already been here ten years. Go home, McKenna.” He stood and headed for the metal door.

  She jumped out of her chair and raced to stand in front of him, blocking his way. “Doesn’t it bother you?”

  He stopped moving.

  “We didn’t come see you. Or try to get an appeal. We just left you in here and forgot about you. We grieved for the loss, but you didn’t get that opportunity. Doesn’t that bother you?”

  A mask of indifference covered his face. “You’re wasting your time.”

  “Is Jordan wasting his time, too? Because the person that did this is still out there. Maybe he’s repeated the crime and gotten off again.”

  His eyes clouded over with what looked like pity. “McKenna, please.”

  “Where’s the uncle I grew up with? The guy that fought against senseless crime and helped those less fortunate, no matter the cost. The man who worked against every opposition ever thrown his way wouldn’t be okay here.”

  “There are some things I hope you never have to understand.”

  “Does this have anything to do with Birmingham’s visit here two weeks ago?”

  Shock registered on his face for half a second before he covered it up with nonchalance.

  “What is with you and Jordan? I’m not a kid. I was there that day. I know what happened. So stop trying to shield me from something I already know about. I can handle it.”

  “Whoa.” He placed his hands on her shoulders. “You were at the house the day Cassidy died?”

  “I was.” She waited for the questions she knew he must have.

  A loud rap on the door made her jump.

  The guard hollered, “Time’s up, Blaney.”

  “Give me a minute.” Matthew’s gazed lit on the door.

  “Sixty seconds, Blaney, no longer.”

  He stared at her. “You’re going to do this no matter what I say, aren’t you?”

  She really hadn’t thought about it much. “I guess I am. It would be easier with your help.”

  “How does Jordan feel about this?”

  “He wrote to you, didn’t he?” she hedged.

  “I can’t make any promises, McKenna.” Indecision warred with restraint on his face. “I’ll do what I can, on one condition.”

  Finally. “What’s that?”

  “Stay away from Garrett Birmingham.”

  The guard opened the door and began replacing the wrist shackles.

  “Why was he here?”

  Something flickered in his eyes. “Just a friendly chat.”

  “Let’s go.” The guard ushered him forward, using the cuffs as leverage.

  Matthew stopped. “McKenna?”

  The guard gave him a look that could have shattered ice and placed a hand on the baton at his waist. Matthew still didn’t move.

  “Yeah?” The word slipped past the lump in her throat.

  “There wasn’t anything you could have done.”

  Then the guard led him out of the room.

  ###

  Jordan sat in his truck, waiting for Robinson to finish up at the gravesite, phone in hand.

  While Jordan’s stomach was in knots, his head pounding and his heart feeling a little bruised, he wondered if this was what McKenna had experienced when he left.

  Alone. Waiting. Wondering. Hoping. Pretty near crazy with worry.

  Jerk was too simple a term for him. Selfish, ignorant prick summed him up. He may have wrapped his departure in a neat bow, but the truth was still visible. And no amount of wrapping paper or tape would hide it. Protecting McKenna had been the goal, but somewhere in the distance he’d put between them, he’d been shielding himself.

  The phone buzzed and he answered without checking the caller ID. “Bening.”

  “Agent Bening, this is Chelsea. I wanted to run over some of my findings with you. Is this a good time?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “As you know, we’ve taken several castings of tread marks, shoe treads etcetera at each crime scene. What I’ve got are two identical casings of the left foot from two separate scenes that are, at this point, unrelated.”

  He perked up a bit. “What have you got?”

  “The casing from Mr. and Mrs. Gaidies’ home shows a tread similar to that of a Timberland boot, size ten, which carries its tree logo on the outer heel. In this instance, we have both a right and left mold, with the left slightly more indented toward the outer part of the heel. It suggests that the wearer is left handed with little natural arch to his or her foot.”

  “And the other?”

  “Taken at Mr. Dillon’s house after the incident involving a car crash. Only the left print was available, but it was identical and the tree logo was present. I know that’s not a lot to go on at the moment.”

  “It’s a start. Have we defined the weapon used to dismember Mrs. Gaidies’ hands?”

  “That was my next order of business. The object was incredibly sharp, but had a lot of blunt force behind it, like an axe or a large hunting knife. The cutting action was quick and easily sliced through the bone and tendons separating the Ulna and Radius from the Carpals and Dorsal Radio-Carpals. Here again, the angle of the cut suggests the perp was left handed. That’s not all. We recovered trace amounts of Mrs. Gaidies’ DNA inside the Audi that crashed into Mr. Dillon’s house.”

  “Find the guy who cras
hed the car and find our UNSUB?” He said this more to himself, then to Chelsea. Of course, normally, he’d start with the owner of the car. Unease settled deeper in the pit of his stomach.

  “Not a bad place to begin.”

  Needle in a haystack. “Anything else?”

  “That covers it.”

  “Thanks.” He ended the call and then dialed McKenna’s number.

  She picked up after the third ring. “Hey, you.”

  “Where are you?” There was an edge to his voice, he knew. One he didn't bother hiding.

  “I saw the letter Matthew wrote you.” There wasn’t any shame in her voice. “I had to talk to him. I couldn’t do that, say what I needed to say, with your voice in the back of my head telling me the whole thing was a bad idea.”

  He'd thought of it himself, only he wanted to write that letter first. And what would he have said after ten years? Uh, I wasted ten years hiding out, but it’s all good man, because I’m going to fix it. No.

  “Jordan?”

  He cleared his throat. “The coffin was empty, McKenna.”

  An intake of breath. “I-I’m sorry. Do they have any leads?”

  “Not at this point. They'll run the standard tests. Nettles and Robinson are fighting over whose jurisdiction this is.”

  “Wow. I, uh, I'm having a hard time picturing either one of them fighting. You do mean actual arguing, right?” She gave a tight laugh.

  “Yeah.” Jordan cleared his throat, again. The least of his problems was the foul mood his boss had been in all day. “I would have come with you, if you had asked me.”

  “I needed to do it alone. And you needed to be there.”

  She was right.

  “We are quite the pair.”

  “It's really empty?” She sounded weary, as if she'd been up for days on end.

  “Yeah.” He managed to keep his voice even. This was bad, but it could reopen her case. Bad, because it didn't make any sense. “It can't be related to her death. If you'd gotten away with a crime for ten years, would you suddenly air it out again?”

  “No, but we're obviously not talking about a sane person, either. You have to think about the possibility that whoever dug it up wasn’t involved in the actual murder. Seems the most likely.”

  “Maybe.”

  “How recent do they think the scene is?”

  “They believe the robbery occurred within the last two weeks.” Even to his own ears, his voice sounded flat. Sometime after Rupert delivered his flowers, if the other man had told the truth.

  “Robbery? Come on, grave diggers aren't usually after bodies.”

  He tapped the edge of his steering wheel with his forefinger. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?” A little bit of anger bubbled up. At himself or McKenna, he wasn’t sure. “How is it that we spent an entire summer together and I never saw you cry? You just went on like normal.”

  Silence. For a moment, he thought she might hang up.

  “I didn’t know what else to do. I meant to speak up, but I watched the lawyers throw your words around like they were nothing. I watched them bury Matthew under the supposed evidence. And every word you said made it worse. They weren't looking for the truth, Jordan. They were looking for evidence, however small, to prove he'd done it.”

  He thought he heard a sniffle. And just like that, his anger faded away.

  “He'd been a cop for over fifteen years, a homicide detective for ten. If he'd wanted to kill her, he could have gotten away with it.” McKenna said.

  “That's why the judicial system has that thing they call premeditated murder and it comes with a longer sentence.” He ran a hand through his hair and hopped out of his truck. Every inch of him hated this conversation. Why couldn’t they be face-to-face for this? So he could gauge her reactions.

  “I'm not saying I don't agree with you, McKenna. I just don't think that particular angle has any merit, nor would it hold up in court.” It would end up the same, with the judge and jury arguing that Matthew simply hadn't had enough time to cover his tracks.

  “I've read the trial transcripts. I know she was alive when you got there.”

  Even now, the crunch of gravel under his shoes and the silence of the air around him, came back like the whole thing happened yesterday. It had been hot for April, with a few days into the nineties. That day had been one of them.

  She cleared her throat. “Maybe, if I had said something about what I saw that day, Matthew wouldn't be where he is.”

  “I don't think we should talk about this while you're driving.”

  “There are lots of reasons we haven’t been talking about it. Jordan, please.” The desperation in her voice hit him in the gut. The irony of the situation wasn't lost on him. McKenna knew him better than anybody. She knew her anxiety would work far better than demands. Like he knew, that anxiety was real. He could try to alleviate it or do nothing.

  With McKenna, he'd never had a choice.

  It didn't mean he wanted to go down memory lane.

  He took a breath of the stale air around him. “From what I could tell, I was the first one on the scene.”

  He hadn't wanted to go to lunch with his mom. Not that particular day.

  He had a five-page paper due on crimes in social classes that he hadn't started and a psychology exam. But he'd promised, so here he was, pulling his Charger into the driveway, trying not to blow up a million dust particles that he'd later have to wash from the car's surface.

  After opening the door, he peeled himself from the sticky leather seats, courtesy of the air conditioning he'd had yet to fix. The outside of the car was a dream. Classic red with black racing stripes and red leather interior. The motor still needed some kinks worked out. Especially, if McKenna actually forced him to pay up on their bet. He shuddered at the thought of driving her busted Bonneville around for a semester.

  A deal's, a deal.

  Maybe his mom would let him borrow her Jeep.

  Feet crunching across the gravel toward the white picket fence and the front walk beyond, he noted the eerie silence around him. The lack of movement in the surrounding trees. His mother's bird feeders, usually rampant with life, empty. No humming birds or bees busy at the acres of flowering bushes and shrubs.

  The scent hit him before he opened the fence. A metallic odor assaulted his nostrils and hung in the air causing his stomach to twist and the hair at the back of his neck to stand on end. A faint trace of gunpowder hung in the air.

  His mom hated guns. The thought propelled him through the fence and stopped him cold before he could enter completely. A twisted heap of limbs in his mom's clothing lay on the sidewalk. Red splattered the white walkway.

  His mind ceased working, but his legs carried him in her direction anyway. “Mom?”

  She didn't move. Somehow, he was on his knees, beside her. Both her right arm and leg were pinned behind her back at angles that didn't take a doctor to tell him they were broken, the tissue around the joints busted and bloody.

  He knew not to move her and fought against the instinct to haul her off the ground, into his car and to the nearest hospital. A list of possible injuries ran through his mind.

  His hand shook as he placed two fingers near the base of her neck. A sluggish beat met his fingers. Along with the shallow rise and fall of her chest.

  “Mom?” Her image swam in front of him. The circle of red extending around her, penetrated his mind. A hole in her dark shirt, near her stomach, caught his eye. Dark tissue filled the area of the missing cloth and pale skin circled that.

  No. No. He ripped his shirt from his body and pressed it over the wound.

  “Jordan?” Her eyes fluttered open and she moved her head to look up at him. Gashes covered the right side of her face, one more than two inches long, along her brow.

  “Mom. What happened?” Had to stay calm. His stomach heaved, but he fought it back.

  “Fell.” Her voice was almost breathless, a tiny trail of blood coming from the corner of her mouth.


  He glanced around the house. Saw no one, but he could have sworn he felt eyes on him. Help. He needed help. He couldn't breathe. Couldn't think.

  “Up.” She tried to point with the hand pinned behind her back. A grimace covered her face.

  “Don't try to move. We're--we're gonna get help.”

  Help. Yes, they needed help.

  She tried to move again, this time with her free hand. Following her direction, he looked up. The third story window stood ajar, one of the panes broken, the other all the way open. The screen lay a few feet away from them, bent at an odd angle.

  A black gun sat nestled in the grass inches away.

  The sense of being watched washed over him again. He broke out in a sweat that had nothing to do with the heat.

  He couldn’t leave her.

  “Tell me where it hurts.”

  A cold, clammy hand, hers, touched his face. “Promise,” she gulped. “You'll smile more.”

  “Cass?” A strangled sounding voice said.

  He hadn't heard a car pull up, but heavy footsteps pounded the pavement anyway. Matthew's body skidding to a stop next to them, the knees of his pants instantly covered in red.

  Relief flooded through him. He wasn't alone in this.

  Matthew took in the same scene Jordan had, only putting the puzzle together a lot quicker, it seemed. He brushed a strand of hair away from her face. “Cass, baby, can you hear me?”

  The sluggish movements of her eyes and the pale tint of her skin didn't reassure either of them. “I'm going to get help. Jordan's going to stay with you. Everything's going to be fine.” When his gaze landed on Jordan, it said exactly the opposite. “Keep pressure on that wound.” Then he disappeared into the house.

  “The ambulance will be here soon. Just stay with me.” He grabbed her hand and willed some of his heat to go into it.

  Her mouth moved, but no words came out, so he leaned closer, his ear near her mouth.

  “He. Pushed. Me.” Each word sounded painful.

  “Who?”

  Nothing. “Love you.”

  He sat up. His face was wet. “Stay with me. Don't you dare say any goodbyes.” But her eyes were already glassy and far away.

  Matthew crashed down next to them, his movements on autopilot as he began CPR. Jordan held her hand and felt her slip away, unable to stop it. Meanwhile, the other man continued compressions as if he could save her by sheer force of will. He rambled, the words not making sense to Jordan.