Grain of Truth Read online

  Frankie never made deals.

  Ostensibly, this was because Frankie never took a case unless she was certain the person she was representing was innocent. And innocent people didn’t make deals.

  But honestly, that couldn’t be true, at least Elke didn’t believe it. They couldn’t all be innocent. There was no way that the police were arresting the wrong people often enough to keep Frankie paid.

  Considering Frankie had come to work for the CRU, that seemed to prove Elke’s theory. Why else would she be here unless she couldn’t pay her bills? Andrews had told her that he’d brought a defense attorney onto the team because it was considered best practice to have someone who’d worked the other side of the fence in the loop. A proper CRU had both prosecutors and defenders on the team. In this case, though, that meant one of each. Elke and Frankie were the only two lawyers on the team.

  In fact, the entire CRU was just three members. Four if you counted the executive assistant and paralegal Andrews had hired to answer their phones and get their coffee. The lack of staffing only did more to convince Elke that the unit was a publicity stunt. If Andrews had wanted serious work done, he would have hired more people.

  Elke didn’t mind the lack of staff, honestly. A few hardworking people could be just as effective as a larger group. But she was a little annoyed at the addition of Frankie.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t like Frankie. Frankie was fine, as far as it went.

  Elke had never really… well, the thing was the woman annoyed her. Partly, it was her attitude, as if she was better than everyone else, refusing to come the table for deals. But other little things bothered Elke as well. Her disheveled appearance, for instance. What was that all about? Was she trying to send the message that she was so concerned with her job she didn’t have time to put on lipstick or something?

  Not that Elke spent an inordinate amount of time doing her makeup in the morning. She tried to look tidy, though. Put together. She tried to look like a woman that a jury could have confidence in.

  And that name. Frankie? Was that really her name? It made her sound like a twelve-year-old with a wad of bubble gum in her mouth. Elke knew it wasn’t fair to dislike the woman’s name. Frankie could hardly help that. Honestly, Elke was probably testy because of the shambles her life was in right now. Before everything with Felix, she’d never have thought such uncharitable thoughts.

  Of course, if the business with Felix had never happened, then she wouldn’t be in this position anyway. She’d be back in her old job, doing what she was good at.

  But she couldn’t keep thinking about all that. She shook herself and forced herself to smile. “Good morning.”

  “Good morning,” said Frankie. “When I heard you were going to head up the CRU, I was surprised.”

  “Really.” Elke’s voice came out flat.

  “Well, you never really seemed like the type to be interested in exonerating the innocent,” said Frankie.

  Elke nodded. Of course. Whereas this job was right up Frankie’s ally. She’d probably lobbied to be in the unit.

  “But I’m glad you’re here, and I have just piles and piles of cases for us to look into.”

  “Piles?” said Elke. There couldn’t be so many. Frankie was delusional.

  “Yes, but right now, I’ve misplaced a very important file, and I was retracing my steps, trying to find—”

  A little boy zoomed out of one of the rooms, running into Frankie’s legs and cutting her off.

  “Thad!” screamed Frankie. She stumbled, clutching at the files at her chest.

  Elke cringed, expecting them both to go sprawling and the files to fly out everywhere, an explosion of paper.

  But the boy nimbly weaved around them and down the hallway.

  “My son, Thaddeus,” said Frankie to Elke. “Don’t worry. He’s catching the bus. Actually, I probably need to take him down right now. Can you take these?” Frankie handed her armful of files to Elke.

  Elke took them awkwardly. “Wait a minute, where are you—”

  But Frankie was already running down the hall after her little boy.

  Elke looked around for someplace to set down the files. The door the boy had come out of, that was probably Frankie’s office. She went in there. Yeah, Frankie had already moved right in. The desk was covered in photos of the little boy and of Frankie and her husband. There was even a potted plant in the corner.

  Elke dumped the files on the top of the desk, feeling perturbed. She was the head of this unit. She wasn’t a receptacle for files.

  She started out of the room.

  But someone was at the door. The man was tall, wearing a navy blue suit. His gaze swept her perfunctorily before looking over her shoulder to take in the office behind her. “This isn’t your office,” he said.

  “No,” she said. “It’s not. I’m sorry. You are…?”

  “Oh.” He offered his hand. “Detective Iain Hudson.”

  She took his hand. “Nice to meet you, Detective.” He was the third member of her team, the police officer.

  “You’re Ms. Lawrence,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s good to meet you. I don’t know much about your background, but I’m sure your ties to the local police will help us with our work.”

  “But you aren’t in your office,” he said. “I assume you’d take the one on the corner. It’s the largest, and it seems most centrally located.” He looked around. “Of course, we have a bit more space than we need, don’t we?”

  “I was only putting down some files on Frankie’s desk,” said Elke. “Ms. Hart, I mean.”

  “Right,” said Iain. “Of course it’s her office.” He scrutinized the place, his gaze darting over everything from the desk to the potted plant. Then, sucking in a breath, he stepped back out into the hallway. “I didn’t know we were to choose our own offices.”

  “Well, I suppose you can,” said Elke. “It doesn’t matter. Do you have one you prefer?”

  At that point, Frankie came back up the hallway. Elke noticed that her suit jacket was buttoned crookedly. “It’s not anywhere,” she declared in a distressed voice.

  “What isn’t?” said Elke.

  “The file I was looking for,” said Frankie.

  “You’re missing a file?” said Iain.

  “Yes, I had it right here,” said Frankie. “I thought maybe I took it up to the front, to the desk that looks like it’s for the secretary, but there’s nothing there.” She turned to Elke. “Do we have a secretary?”

  “Executive assistant,” said Elke.

  “Right,” said Frankie.

  “Maybe Thad took the file?” said Iain.

  Elke groaned inwardly. That was the last thing they needed. A little boy going through sensitive police documentation. She was going to have to speak to Frankie about having her son in the office, even if it was only for a short time before the bus came. Frankie would have to wait downstairs—

  But Frankie was looking at Iain with a wide, frightened expression on her face. “What do you know about Thad?”

  Elke furrowed her brow. Iain didn’t know about the little boy, then?

  “He’s your son?” said Iain. “Maybe six or eight years old?”

  “Yes,” said Frankie, looking even more worried. “Why would you—”

  “He’s left his signature on the wall there.” Iain pointed behind Frankie’s desk where Elke could now see the words Thad was here written in blue crayon.

  “Oh, hell!” Frankie put her hand to her forehead. She turned to Elke. “It’ll wash right off, I swear.” Then she turned back to Iain. “But how did you know, just from that?”

  “Fairly obvious that it was recent,” he said. “They scrubbed this place down over the weekend. I assumed that a child had written it, because of the crayon and the height. I guessed his age based on the height as well. And it seemed most likely that a child in your office would be your son.”

  “That’s…” Frankie shook her head. “That’s amazing
. You really are a detective.”

  Yeah, he was Sherlock Holmes, Elke thought. Wonderful. But this was all besides the point. “Your son didn’t take the file with him, did he?” said Elke.

  “Oh, he didn’t have the file, I’m sure of that,” said Frankie. “I’d never let him near them. If he saw the crime scene photos, he’d be traumatized.”

  Elke folded her arms over her chest.

  “He didn’t have the file,” Frankie insisted. “I’m sure it’ll turn up.”

  * * *

  In fact, the file did turn up. In the restroom, on the sink. Elke found it when she went in to wash her hands before lunch.

  None of them got any actual work done that day. Frankie seemed to be in some sort of organizational flurry, and Elke and Iain only managed to accomplish getting their offices set up.

  Their executive assistant, Amos Bradley, arrived at eight o’clock sharp, and he brought donuts. He was young and attractive, and wore a tailored green suit with a lime green collared shirt and matching tie. Amos had a bubbly personality, and she liked him right away.

  After work, she drove home to her house, and for some reason, it all seemed different when she walked inside.

  Maybe it was because the place was such a mess. In the wake of everything, she’d hardly felt like cleaning, so her sink was piled high with dishes and her living room was scattered with clothing. She hadn’t been sleeping in her bedroom since finding out about Felix. Somehow, being in that bed was too much of a reminder for her to handle. So, she’d taken to sleeping on the couch instead.

  It wasn’t as if she didn’t have other bedrooms. Two other bedrooms, in fact. This three-bedroom house had been purchased with the express purpose of starting a family. She and Felix were waiting for the right time, and then they were going to try. The other bedrooms were slated to belong to their adorable little boy and girl (or two girls or two boys) who they would someday create.

  Currently, the rooms were bland guest rooms with framed Monet prints on the walls. There was no visual hint of the children they were supposed to eventually belong to.

  But Elke knew what the rooms were for. And for that reason, she couldn’t sleep in there either.

  Because there was to be no having babies with Felix Weaver. There was to be no future with him at all. At least she’d never taken his name when they got married. That would have been truly unbearable. But no, she’d always liked her last name and she didn’t want to change it. So, that was a relief, anyway. One tiny oasis of relief in a desert of awfulness.

  Elke looked around the house, and she suddenly didn’t want to be there at all.

  She paused to throw on a pair of jeans and a sweater and then she went right back out the door. She got back in her car and drove around.

  She wasn’t going anywhere. She ended up on a loop throughout the housing development, looking at the backyards of all her neighbors, seeing that they had swing sets and trampolines and pools. They had children. She didn’t.

  She didn’t know if she ever would now. She wasn’t young anymore. She was older than thirty, and she wasn’t sure there was time to get over Felix and meet someone new and form a relationship and have babies. She’d always wanted to be a mother, but maybe it wasn’t something that she was going to be able to do now. Maybe that door was closed to her.

  She banged her hand against the steering wheel.

  Damn Felix! Damn him for ruining everything. How could he have done this to her?

  But he hadn’t done it to her, not exactly. What she meant was, it hadn’t been malicious. Hell, Felix probably told himself that he was doing it for her. Men were always telling themselves little lies like that to convince themselves that their misdeeds were okay. He thought he was providing for her. He thought he was giving her the life she wanted.

  Suddenly, she couldn’t bear being in the neighborhood anymore. She didn’t want to see the expensive houses or the immaculate back yards. She didn’t belong here, anyway. She’d gotten here with Felix’s ill-gotten gains. She wanted out of all of it.

  She drove, and found herself driving back to Haven Hills, back to the downtown area. Haven Hills had lately undergone a successful gentrification, the “bad” neighborhoods of five years ago now turned into hipster loft apartments for young professionals. Some of the “bad” neighborhoods remained, of course, or Haven Hills wouldn’t have the crime problem that it did. The odd part of it all now was that from one street to another, the tenor of the city changed. She drove past whole food health stores and then turned the corner to find men standing on the corner of the sidewalk, bottles wrapped in brown paper hanging at their sides.

  But even with the juxtapositions of rich and poor, she found herself feeling more at ease on these streets.

  Maybe Bernadette had been right after all. Maybe she did need a fresh start.

  In the end, though, she had no choice but to drive back to her house in Gathopolis. Back to the memories of Felix and the future they would never have together. The worst thing, she decided, wasn’t that he had betrayed her or that he had lied to her or that she had been stupid enough to believe him. The worst thing was that she missed him so very, very much.

  * * *

  Amos Bradley realized he’d forgotten to lock up the CRU office when he was halfway across the parking lot and almost to his car.

  Damn it. He’d never had that kind of responsibility before. He’d always been someone insignificant at any of his other jobs. This was different, and he was glad he was moving up in the world. It was one thing going right in his life, when everything else seemed like crap.

  But man, he hoped he didn’t mess it up.

  He turned around, dashed back into the building, and took the elevator back upstairs.

  Once back at the floor, he secured the door. It didn’t look as if anything had happened in the short time the place had been unlocked and empty, thank God. He was going to have to make sure that this never happened again. He’d set a recurring alarm on his phone to remind him to lock the door.

  He got his phone out and started back toward the elevator.

  His phone rang in his hands.

  He jumped.

  Jesus.

  He answered the phone. “Hello?”

  “Hey, Amos, it’s Tom,” said a voice on the other end. “You want to come out to the Rainbow?”

  “Like now?”

  “Yes, now,” said Tom. “Haven’t you been watching the news? If you stay late at the Rainbow, you end up strangled and doused in bleach in your trunk.”

  “You’re talking about that serial killer,” said Amos. “What are they calling him?”

  “The Haven Hills Ripper,” said Tom. “Only kills pretty gay boys like us. So, if we want to get our drink on, we better do it before eight. What do you say?”

  “I don’t know. I just got off work,” said Amos.

  “Oh, right, your new job,” said Tom. “First day, yeah? Come out and celebrate.”

  Amos got on the elevator. He wasn’t much in a celebratory mood, honestly. “If gay guys are really getting taken out of the Rainbow and killed, maybe we should stay clear entirely.”

  “Seriously? You’re saying no?”

  “I just think going to the bar where some killer called the Ripper is stalking victims is kind of like jumping in a van, heading to Camp Crystal Lake, and then proceeding to have wild sex.”

  Tom laughed. “Oh, come on, live a little.”

  “Another night.”

  “You’re still sad about Paul, aren’t you? You need to get over that jackass.”

  “I’ll talk to you later, Tom,” said Amos, hanging up. Yeah, it was good not to go to the bar. He had a real, grownup job now, and he couldn’t be gallivanting around to bars all night.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Trevor is guilty of selling drugs to Amelia,” Frankie was saying from the front of the conference room, scattered file folders lying on the table in front of her, “but he’s not guilty of murder. I think it’s fairly ob
vious that the time line doesn’t match up.”

  Elke stood up. “Let me just stop you right there.”

  Frankie shot Elke a frustrated look. “You’re rejecting this one too? But I haven’t even explained the nuts and bolts of the case.”

  “It’s the way you started off,” said Elke. “Trevor is a drug dealer. Didn’t I just tell you that DA Andrews was very clear to me that our first case should be the right kind of case?”

  “The right kind of case is the one in which the client is innocent,” said Frankie.

  “They aren’t our clients,” said Elke, folding her arms over her chest.

  Frankie flushed. “Oh, I’m sorry, I just… old habits.”

  “Well, I appreciate that you’re passionate about this, and that you feel an idealistic crusade to right wrongs. That’s all well and good. But we live in the real world, and in the real world—”

  “What?” said Frankie. “In the real world, if you’re a drug dealer, you don’t matter?”

  Elke sighed. “I’m not saying that. Of course I’m not saying that. And we can work on Trevor’s case at some point in the future. But for our first case, we need something that will make a splash with the media, and we need the person we’re freeing to be very likable. Someone that people can empathize with. We don’t want the public to demonize him.”

  Frankie made a sour face. “I suppose you have some other case, then, someone in mind?”

  “Well, no,” said Elke. “I haven’t had a chance to look over anything yet.” They were only in the conference room because Frankie had insisted on presenting to them that morning.

  Iain cleared his throat.

  Elke turned to him, feeling a bit embarrassed that she and Frankie were having what amounted to an argument. But if she really headed up this unit, she needed to be the final word on every case, and she couldn’t very well allow Frankie to think otherwise. Iain, however, seemed utterly unaffected by the tension in the room.

  He smiled. “I have an idea for a case.”