Chapter 9
SHANE STRETCHED HIS LEGS, lifting them and resting them on his desk at the precinct, leaning back in his chair. He never liked working Sundays, but during an active homicide it was necessary. The bullpen was quiet. Of the ten desks in the room only a couple detectives were in the office; they were heads-down, working on something. Shane crumpled a piece of paper and tossed it into the air, catching it as it came barreling down toward his face.
“I can’t believe you still do that,” Kara said.
He hadn’t heard her approach. She’d always been good at sneaking up behind him. “Old habits die hard.”
“You keep saying that.” She sat on the edge of his desk. “What did you come up with?”
“Spent hours interviewing people from different candle companies.” He’d just finished filing the last of his paperwork and was now reading everyone else’s reports. He quickly glanced at his watch. It was pushing five o’clock. “Didn’t uncover much.”
“That doesn’t sound like fun,” she said. “Douglas McCauley’s alibi checks out.”
“Never doubted that,” he said. “No word on the warrant for Doug’s phone.”
“Not sure that will go through now that he’s been ruled out,” she said. “Foster and Jones interviewed Gregory’s parents, and no connection to the McCauley’s.”
“Yeah, I got that report. Also, I reread some of the journal entries from Emily. Nearly made me blush, the language coming from a fourteen-year-old girl.”
“It was descriptive,” she said. “Cleary is angry we let Haughton go. Called me a few choice names. I hope he doesn’t have friends with the CIA. The last thing we need is more agents to get into pissing matches with.”
“I’m worried about Cleary.” Shane continued to toss the paper into the air and catch it, each time tossing it a little higher. He could keep this up for hours. It was how he thought things through. “He’s got a real hard-on for Haughton, but I can’t imagine what he’ll do when he reads his daughter’s journal. Even you and I didn’t know half that stuff at her age, and we knew some stuff.”
“That we did,” she said. “Foster and I interviewed a couple of her friends and their parents today. She was sexting other young boys, sending naked pictures, though we have no proof of this.”
Shane caught the crumpled paper and tossed it at Kara. It landed on her nose.
“Real mature,” she said.
“You used to have better reflexes.”
“You used to at least say, ‘Hey catch’, before tossing it at me.” She bent over, picking up the paper, then leaned against the desk again. Deep down, Shane was finding it more and more difficult to keep his emotions in check when it came to Kara. They’d always had a natural flirtatious nature between them and it was getting stronger. And he liked it. Perhaps a little too much.
“Remember in middle school when I first kissed you?” she asked.
“Oh yeah.” That was a memory he’d never forget. It was not only his first kiss, but he hadn’t seen it coming. “I was pissed.”
“Why was that? You seemed to like it well enough.”
“Because I had our first kiss all planned out. How I would do it. I’d been planning it for days. You kind of ruined the moment.”
“You wouldn’t speak to me at all in person after that for weeks.”
“I was embarrassed,” he said. “I was twelve. It was cool to have a girlfriend, but honestly, the guys all picked on me. They basically told me I was pussy-whipped.”
“You were.”
“Right.” He laughed. “We easily transitioned back to being friends.”
“Except for making out in the movies.”
“Yeah, those were the days,” Shane said. It wasn’t until the kissing became heaving petting right before the start of their freshman year that Kara decided, if she was going to let him feel her up, they were going to be exclusive. He nearly laughed at her since they’d been exclusive forever. “Why the trip down memory lane?”
“I was just thinking about Emily and Doug and what else they might not have told anyone. We always said we officially started dating our freshman year, but we had our own secret romance all through middle school. It was just easier for both of us to pretend we were friends... but as they say now, we were friends with benefits.”
“I would have liked more benefits than I got,” Shane said. “That whacko chick who was your best friend in middle school used to always tell me what a tease you were, and she’d do better. She was a class- A bitch.”
“She still is. I saw her a few years ago,” Kara said, laughing. “She had the biggest crush on you. That’s why she stopped being my friend. I told her if I ever saw her flirting with you again I’d put Nair in her shampoo.”
“I had that convo with a few of my friends, but it was more like I’d kick the shit out of them.”
“We’re getting side-tracked,” she said. “We kept our relationship a secret, pretending to be friends, meanwhile we had make-out—.”
“We did a lot of kissing, but sadly I never got passed second base until our sophomore year, and we never talked or did the things Emily described until we were closer to seventeen, and even then, nothing like what she describes. That reads more like a script for a porno, not a romance.” Shane snagged the crumpled ball and started tossing it into the air.
“In some of her journals it says Doug, other entries it says he. I just wonder if he isn’t someone else. Some other older guy, like Gregory.”
“Okay. I’ll buy Emily could have been playing the field at fourteen. You girls are so aggressive.”
“Better than being passive-aggressive like you boys, but really. Think about it. What if she had a thing going with Gregory? I mean, the girl could pass for eighteen on any given day,” Kara said.
“Then why kill Emily? Makes more sense to kill the competition,” Shane said, but it wasn’t really a question.
“Let’s remember that Gregory was most likely killed before Emily. So, it is entirely possible that Doug did kill the competition, but then Emily finds out or is upset because she really liked Gregory better.”
“Gregory was ten years older than Emily,” Shane said.
“She wouldn’t care. She probably wanted an older man. Both Gregory and Doug were the shy, quiet type. Both into science.”
Shane dropped his feet to the floor and pushed a piece of paper in Kara’s direction. “But none of this uncovers any leads or even gives us much of a direction.”
“Yeah, we don’t have much of anything,” Kara said.
Shane looked across the bullpen as Pollock and Benster entered. “Got the report back on the fingerprints at the Gregory scene,” Pollack said as he tossed the report onto Shane’s desk. “There was one set we can’t match. Ran it through every database and came up short.”
“Send it to my analyst,” Kara said.
“Thanks for doing this on a Sunday,” Shane said. “Go home. We’ll regroup tomorrow.”
“Just wanted you to have that,” Benster said. “See you tomorrow.” He waved, turning his back.
Shane continued tossing his wadded paper.
“My team leader is sending Foster and me to check out two possible religious connections outside of this area. We leave tomorrow afternoon.”
“Going to ditch me again?” The moment the words left his lips he regretted them. “I didn’t mean that,” he said.
“I can honestly say I’ll be back.”
Shane laughed. “Guess we’ve come a long way in a few short days.”
“Yep,” she said.
“Breakfast tomorrow before you leave?” he asked.
“Only if it’s the greasy spoon on the canal.”
“I’ll pick you up at eight.”
“I’ll be ready,” she said.
Shane watched her walked through the bullpen, her hips swaying slightly. He sighed. He might have gotten over her years ago, but now that she was back…he was still hung up on her.