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“Funny. I was about to say the same thing about you.” It wasn’t the blisters along her shins that threatened to take her down. It was the headache spreading with each step as they headed for the heavy door that’d been propped open when they’d arrived. She’d been able to ignore the pain until now. That was one of the advantages of surviving what she had since the night she’d found that body in the crawl space of her parents’ closet. Her ability to compartmentalize almost anything was the only thing keeping her from losing it, but she couldn’t physically keep going much longer without a meal, a shower, and a full eight hours of sleep.
“Agent Brody,” Chandler Reed said from behind. “A minute?”
The humor playing at the corners of Boucher’s mouth told her exactly what he thought the federal investigator wanted. The lieutenant lowered his voice. “Let him down easy, Brody. I’ll meet you outside.” He headed down the long hall carpeted in a geometric pattern that threatened to trigger vertigo.
“How are the legs?” Chandler rounded the foot of the bed, closing the distance between them. She’d never gotten this close to him, and it hit her how much… bigger he was than she was. Stronger. Not just in stature, but in wanting to help and care for others. To the point he’d forgo following Director Livingstone’s hour deadline for the chance to check in on Leigh.
“Medium-rare. Thanks for asking.” She didn’t know what else to say to him, didn’t really know how to talk to him. Then again, they were strangers. Each positioned on a separate track heading in the same direction. Their paths didn’t cross or give them reason to interact, and that was how it was supposed to be. He’d broken the rules by asking her to stay.
They were so different, the two of them. She craved isolation while being alone was possibly the worst scenario Chandler Reed could find himself in. It was evidenced in the way he’d tried to forge a personal relationship between them. Not just in this room but after the fire while the EMTs were treating her burns, when he’d tracked her down after Chris Ellingson had led her away from the scene. Her heart hurt for him, but that kind of need to be wanted and loved had burned out in her a long time ago. And she had a job to do.
Leigh hiked a thumb over her shoulder as the silence pressed in around them. “I should go. From what I’ve learned, Boucher isn’t the type of person who likes to wait in a freezing car.”
“Have you opened the box?” Chandler reached out but didn’t make contact. He wouldn’t. Not without her permission, and it was then she understood, given the scars he tried to hide, he didn’t like to be touched either. She’d have to remember that. “The one Chris Ellingson gave you.”
“No.” So much had happened between that night and now, she’d almost forgotten about it altogether. The gift was meant to mess with her mind, to claim her focus, and Leigh wasn’t going to let that happen. Chris Ellingson had consumed her every thought for two decades. He didn’t get to demand anything from her now. “I’m not sure I want to confirm what’s inside, but I’ll let you know if I need you to take a look at it.”
Chandler nodded. “Be careful out there.”
She left it at that. Her slacks rubbed against her shins as she exited the hotel room and descended the stairs at the end of the hall. She shoved through the back door of the hotel into the parking lot. Exhaust clouded at the back of Boucher’s patrol vehicle as she got inside.
“So how’d he take it?” Boucher put the car in Drive, swinging the hood toward Main Street once she’d buckled.
She wasn’t going to have this conversation with him. “Just take me back to the station.”
Frost clung to low-maintenance desert plants lining the front of the hotel and whitewashed the landscape ahead of them. The picturesque scene she’d memorized her last day in town at seventeen years old had faded, leaving nothing but bare trees, emptiness, and so much death. She wanted the present to line up with her memory. Fireworks in Colburn Park, Christmas lights strung from every business and home, kids running through sprinklers and blowing bubbles on their front yards. But there was no going back. Murder had tainted everything and left nothing but anger, fear, and grief behind.
“That bad, huh?” The lieutenant navigated them back to the station. Boucher fanned one palm over the steering wheel to turn onto Poverty Lane. “You need some people skills, Brody. Studying all those serial killers is turning you into a damn zombie.”
“I’ll try to remember that.” She wouldn’t. She’d tried people skills. All she’d gotten in return was pity. “What did you say to her?”
“Who?” He angled into the parking lot and shoved the car into Park.
“Director Livingstone. At the park after Dr. Jennings’s body was discovered. There has to be a reason you think she’s keeping information from the team.” The interaction hadn’t meant much at the time, but with Schmidt’s confirmed connection and an obvious spiraling reaction from Livingstone, Boucher could be the best person to get a read on the BAU director’s motives. “You both stepped away from the scene. Neither of you looked happy by the time you were finished.”
A sharp exhale cut through the tension coming from the driver’s side. “I asked her out to coffee. We made plans. She never showed up. Next time I saw her was standing over Jennings’s body, and yeah, I wasn’t happy. It was…”
“It was the first time since your divorce,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“Nah.” Boucher pulled the patrol vehicle into the station’s lot, cut the engine, and shouldered onto the pavement. “Hell, I probably saved myself the hassle.”
That was one way to see a silver lining. She didn’t bother waiting for Boucher to take the lead this time. What once stood as a blockade to getting the answers she needed, the station had become nothing more than a carefully constructed pile of brick and metal and tile. The scraps of familiarity she’d believed had helped forge her into the agent and woman she was outside of Lebanon had started shedding. There was something new taking hold. A combination of her old life mixed with the new. No matter how many times she’d tried to exorcise this town from her blood, it’d been part of her from the beginning. She couldn’t change the past, but she could stop letting it affect her as often. Having a partner—and a team—who had her back helped.
Leigh crossed the threshold barring civilians from the bowels of the station and ticked off each room by its nameplate until she came to Evidence. “We need to review everything Lebanon PD gathered during the murder investigation twenty years ago. Every witness statement, forensic report, crime scene photo—all of it. If all three victims were trying to prove my father was innocent, this is the place to start.”
“The first three hundred times wasn’t enough for you?” Boucher inserted his key into the doorknob and twisted, shoving the door open. “Not sure how much more water you’re going to get out of that rock.”
“Didn’t take you for a Bible scholar, Boucher. Your upbringing is showing.” Leigh had memorized the case number too many times to count. She ran her fingers along the heavy-duty steel shelves stacked with paper boxes holding clues and answers for hundreds of crimes. With this small of an evidence room, she bet multiple cases had been packed into each box. Each case number had been written in legible black Sharpie, most four to a box, but there was a hole where the container she wanted should’ve been. “Did one of your guys check the evidence out?”
Boucher reviewed the sign-out sheet hanging from a nail just inside the door. “Not according to the clipboard. No record of the box being logged out.” He handed off the clipboard. “No signature either.”
Leigh scanned the page to be sure, but the surrounding ink seemed to darken right in front of her. There was only one reason not to leave a signature on this page. “Someone stole the evidence.”
TWENTY-TWO
Concord, New Hampshire
Monday, March 15
