Devil's Advocate (The X-Files: Origins #2)(37)
“Ouch.”
“It’s okay, I guess,” said Dana. “My mom says that Dad’s under a huge amount of pressure at work and that this will all pass.”
Ethan gave her a knowing smile. “It’s all good.”
“Yup,” she said, agreeing to the lie because it was easier than deconstructing something they each knew might be beyond their power to put back together again.
“Dad won’t bother us today, though. He’s away for a few days on some classified thing. We have the place to ourselves.” Ethan’s comment was intended to sound offhand, but it was obvious there was a bigger and possibly sadder story that he didn’t want to share. He smiled, but it looked painful, and Dana asked no further questions.
Ethan led her down a short hall and into a room that was clearly a combination library and office. There was a big oak desk, a small fireplace in which an electric space heater had been placed, threadbare old armchairs, and shelves lined with books. Hundreds and hundreds of them. Dana almost gasped when she saw them, and for a few moments she drifted along the walls, looking at the titles. The books were, she discovered, arranged alphabetically by type. There were books on law and police work, books on the history of evidence collection and on modern forensic science, books on a score of other areas of science, ranging from entomology to abnormal psychology. There were also books on astronomy, mathematics, and physics. These nonfiction works filled about half the shelf space, and the rest was entirely given over to fiction, and of those, most were mysteries and detective novels. The works of Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle were prominent, as well as books by Ed McBain, John D. MacDonald, Agatha Christie, and many others, some of whom Dana had heard of, many that were new to her. She wondered who here in the Hale household read those books, or if reading was the one thing that they all shared. Overall, the house felt cold, like a dead battery. Loveless.
It made her want to give Ethan a hug.
She didn’t do that, of course, because so far in her life boys had been friends or tormentors, not prospects. Not like Melissa, who had been caught kissing boys when she was nine.
“It’s in here,” said Ethan, and that pulled her out of her own head. She followed Ethan over to the desk and watched as he pulled a small key from his pocket and fitted it into the lock on the bottom desk drawer. “Uncle Frank doesn’t know that I had a copy made last year.”
“Why’d you do that?”
Ethan shrugged. “Because he made me mad when he said that I couldn’t handle seeing accident and autopsy photos.”
Dana smiled. “Works for me.”
The lock clicked open, and Ethan pulled the drawer out and removed a heavy file that was at least three inches thick and closed by heavy rubber bands.
“Wow,” she said. “When you said he had a file, I thought it was like they show on TV. A couple of pages and some photos.”
“This is the one he keeps at home,” said Ethan as he set the file on the desk. “He said that all the case files combined fill three cardboard boxes. Uncle Frank made a kind of shorthand master file for himself.”
Instead of immediately removing the rubber bands, Ethan took a notepad from the unlocked top drawer and used a pencil to make a detailed and exact sketch of the angles and colors of each rubber band, including how and where they were layered over the others.
“In case he has them set a certain way,” explained Ethan. He removed the rubber bands and laid them on the diagram. “Frank’s very detailed oriented, and he knows that I snoop around sometimes. But he doesn’t give me enough credit.”
“Clearly,” said Dana, impressed. “But didn’t you tell me that you hadn’t looked at this folder before…?”
He grinned. “Maybe I peeked,” he admitted, “but I haven’t had time to really go through it.”
“You’ve looked at his other files, though, right?”
He shrugged but didn’t answer, which was answer enough.
They brought the file over to the pair of leather chairs in front of the fireplace, and he dragged a small coffee table between them and placed the heavy folder on it. He placed his hand flat on the cover, though, and gave her a serious look, brow knitted. “Are you sure you want to see this stuff?”
“What did you say about your uncle not giving you enough credit?”
He winced. “Okay, sorry.”
The folder contained individual case files for each death. They set to work reading the reports. Much of the material was technical, and her progress was bogged down by what Ethan called “cop-ese,” the acronym-filled verbiage used by police. After a few pages, and some interpretation from Ethan, she was able to navigate. DB became “dead body,” EC was “emergency contact,” HP was “highway patrol,” and MVA was “motor vehicle accident.” Some of the acronyms were all too obvious, like JUV and DOA.
When they reached the first folder of photos, Dana braced herself. Saying that she was ready for anything and actually being ready were worlds apart. She had seen pictures of dead people on TV and in the newspapers, but this was different. These were people her own age, and unlike newspaper photos, these were in crisp, clear, brutal full color.
The name on the first folder was Connie Lucas, from Oak Valley High School, which was just over the county line. There was a picture paper-clipped to the outside cover, a school photo that showed a pretty girl with short hair, wearing a blouse with a sunflower pattern, earrings, and a charm necklace on a delicate chain. Dana took a breath and opened the folder.