Hide (Detective Harriet Foster #1)(19)



There were no parting words of wisdom on that last day before they were driven off to college. He and Am just packed their things, got in the car, and were driven away. And Tom was gone. Phone number disconnected. House sold. He and Am had been on their own at eighteen. He knew Am had tried to find their father, but Bodie had never bothered. Why would he when he could finally breathe?

“You all right there?” Gibson asked.

His question brought Bodie back to the present. “What’s that?”

“Looked like you got lost there for a minute.”

Bodie smiled. “Guess so. Memories are funny that way. I won’t hold you up any longer. I was just curious and wanted to see.”

“No bother. It’s a good house,” Gibson said. “Feel free to stop by anytime.”

Bodie backed up a bit. He wouldn’t be back. “Thanks,” he said, already moving away, but he turned back. “My father set up a workshop in the basement.”

“That right?” Gibson said.

“He made wooden toys—little things.” It was the reason he had given them for spending so much time locked below stairs. There had been toy trains for him, dollhouses for Am, but not enough to account for all his time.

“I’ve never been handy like that. I converted it into a family room for the kids. Pool table, TV, sofas. My daughters spend half their time down there. You ever listen to a bunch of teenage girls giggling and squealing like little magpies? It’s an experience, let me tell you.”

“Right.” Bodie’s eyes swept over the lawn. “Well, good luck with the leaves.”

He could hear Gibson’s rake start its steady scraping behind him as he walked away. Family room, he thought. A pool table and television set, sofas. He picked up his pace.

“And daughters,” he mumbled to himself.





CHAPTER 9


“Not enough to hold him and have it stick, and you all know it,” Griffin announced. “The state’s attorney would have laughed in our faces.” The team had gathered around her to report what they had—or, more importantly, didn’t have.

“So instead, we sit on our hands and let him waltz out of here?” Lonergan said, having just watched Keith and his parents walk out the front door.

“Until we can match that blood to Birch or find that knife with his prints on it? Yeah.” Griffin glanced over at Foster. “What do we have?”

“We have Rosales’s preliminary report from the scene. We have Keith Ainsley’s fuzzy recollections of Sunday night. We have two names from Birch’s parents: Joe Rimmer and Wendy Stroman—her ex-boyfriend and her roommate at school. Since Peggy was living away from the house, her parents couldn’t account for her time day to day, but those two might have a better idea. If we can track her movements, maybe we find a point where she and Ainsley met somewhere.”

“What about Ainsley’s friends from the park?” Griffin asked. “Anybody talk to them?” She got nothing but shaking heads back as a response. “Right. That’s why Ainsley walked. We don’t have our ducks in a row. We have less than nothing.”

“Blood’s not nothing,” Lonergan groused.

Foster turned to him. “But he wasn’t covered in it. If he killed her, he would have been. It would have been under his nails, in his hair, on his shoes, socks.”

Griffin watched the two of them, still clearly assessing their viability as a team. “Right. So stop whining, Lonergan,” she said. “Him walking now gives us time to build a case. If we’d kept him, that would have started the clock on our forty-eight. Smarter not to waste it until we have something more than what we’ve got now.”

“Maybe if we’d sweated him for forty-eight hours, he’d have given something up,” Lonergan pushed back.

Symansky chuckled and straightened his gaudy tie. “Doubt it. His parents were all over that. I’m with the boss. We’d have lost our shot keeping him.”

Detective Tony Bigelow pushed his eyeglasses on top of his head and then swiveled in his chair. “Her and Ainsley being at the same march sounds like it might be something.”

“Maybe, but there were hundreds of people marching along with them,” Foster said.

“Right. She coulda met anybody,” Symansky said. “Those marches are like friggin’ mosh pits.”

Foster consulted her notes. “Otherwise, Birch and Ainsley didn’t go to the same school; they didn’t come from the same neighborhood. I doubt we’ll find friend groups in common. Nothing else seems to connect them.”

“No way I’d let my kid sign on to that fringe mob crap,” Symansky offered, leaning back in his chair. “It’s likely some freak taking an opportunity.”

“Fringe mob?” Detective Vera Li asked, her brows raised. “What happened to free speech? And they’re not entirely wrong on some points.”

“Commies,” Symansky countered. “This is America. They don’t like it, they can leave it.”

Li lobbed a balled-up report sheet at his head, but he snagged it midair and tossed it back to her. “What decade are you in, Al? Are you really advocating for America, love it or leave it?”

He shot Li an impish grin. Apparently, he enjoyed winding her up. “I just don’t like kids wet behind the ears telling me how stuff’s supposed to run. They don’t have the life experience, and they sure as hell don’t know how things work. Give them a couple of decades after the world hits them hard, and then let’s see what they’re willing to march for. That’s my point.”

Tracy Clark's Books