Heartbreak Bay (Stillhouse Lake #5) - Rachel Caine Page 0,11

For a second I feel perilously dizzy, and I find my hand pressed to my stomach. I don’t know if I’m trying to soothe myself, or the child still hidden deep in there.

“You okay?” Winston asks.

“Sure,” I lie. “Call me when you get ready to proceed.”

“Gonna be a while,” he warns me. “I got two suspicious deaths came in earlier this afternoon.”

I meet his gaze and hold it. “Those cases can wait.”

He pauses for a second before he says, without a flicker, “Okay. You sure you want to observe the autopsies? Pretty tough. I could just get you the report.”

Somebody needs to be a witness, I think. These two girls died alone, not even their momma by their side. Alone, cold, terrified. The least I can do is stand that lonely watch. “I’ll be there,” I say. “Call me when you’re ready to start.”

Winston nods. The deputy climbs out of his car and says, “I’ll secure the scene. Y’all want the pond searched?”

“If there’s so much as a tadpole in there, I want it,” I tell him. “You’re here until relief comes. Don’t leave for nothing.”

He nods, miserable, cold, and unhappy as hell, but he knows better than to cross me on this. Or should.

I head down the road while Winston loads the two limp bodies, still in car seats, into the coroner’s van. Once I’m in my car with the door safely shut, I just sit and shake and breathe for a while. It feels like I’m decompressing after walking on the bottom of a very deep sea. I find myself sucking in short, shallow gasps, and force them slower. My hands are too tight on the wheel.

I need to go to Sheryl Lansdowne’s address in Valerie. Someone will be waiting there, I hope—a husband, a father, a mother. Not that I’m looking forward to breaking the worst news of their lives. Fact is, every day in this job I see people at their lowest points, but nothing’s as difficult as delivering news of a death.

Like attending the autopsy, it isn’t something I can turn away from. Not and stay the person I want to be.

I put the car in gear and go.

4

GWEN

I get home again before dawn, but not before Sam’s up; I hear him in the shower as I enter. I dump my purse and coat and move off down the hall; I check the kids and find them still sleeping soundly before I get to my office. Kez’s unease haunts me, and however tired I am, I can’t lay myself down and catch an extra half hour. I can’t keep Lanny from taking stupid risks, but maybe if I can help ease Kezia’s burden, even a little, that will make me feel less helpless.

I open my laptop and log in to the office’s mainframe. One of the less-than-comfortable perks of my job is the ability to trace cell tower pings on a number, and sometimes, sometimes, trace the movements. It’s only quasi-legal, one of those services that’s a loophole if you know which buttons to push. It’s an open back door for people like me if they know how to navigate it.

Kezia’s sent me a written transcript and an audio file. I transfer both to my laptop and pull them up. I read as I listen.

“911, what is your emergency?” It’s a marvel to me how most emergency operators sound bored and impatient. Male or female—and this one is a deeper male voice—they share a detachment I sometimes envy. “Hello?”

The second voice is fainter, but I think that it, too, has a deeper timbre. Male? I think. “Y’all need to send somebody out to Crease Road and Fire Road Twelve,” he says. “Something’s goin’ on up there.” The most important impression I have is that the accent is fake. Very fake. Definitely a bad actor’s version of the rural South. Not even Vee Crockett—with the most backwoods accent I know—would sound like that.

“What’s going on, sir?” The operator sounds like he couldn’t possibly care less. But at least he’s asking.

“There’s a car up in there stopped. I heard a scream. Woman driving out here alone, bad things can happen. You’d best send someone.” I tense up. The caller hasn’t said anything about a woman until now. A scream, yes. But still, it seems off the way he phrases it. So does the tone . . . almost flat, which seems odd.

“Sir, can you describe the car, or the driver—” Maybe the operator’s picked up on it,