“What happened to her? To Jennifer Parks?”

Seth hesitates. Seated across from me, he slides forward to readjust before leaning back into an auburn leather armchair. It’s silent in the back of The Red Room. Not a single beat of the music or murmur of the guests makes its way through these doors.

Nothing makes it out of them either.

It’s a decadent but vacant space. A simple, but too-fucking-expensive iron and driftwood desk with no drawers stands in the middle of the room. My chair is at one end, while two matching chairs are on the other side. Not a damn thing else in the room.

The stubble on my jaw is rough; I’m way past due for a shave as I run my hand along my jaw as I wait for Seth’s answer.

“I’m still working on it, but let me tell you what I’ve got so far.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” The rage is inexplicable as I slam the edge of my fist down on the desk. It jolts and I clench my jaw, hating that something like this can get to me.

I focus on calming my shit down, ignoring the irritation and Seth’s questioning gaze.

All day I’ve been on edge. Ever since I left Bethany’s place, the second the sun rose.

“It goes deeper than you think, Boss.” His voice is low, testing my patience and apologetic even.

“Let me have it,” I speak and gesture for him to get going.

“She went missing on December twenty-eighth, but before then she was in and out of her sister’s home and several friends’ places. It was January seventeenth that the burned remains, including several of her teeth, were found in a trunk at the bottom of the Rattle River on the west side of town.”

I remember the flash of an image I found myself, searching through the archives at the downtown station hard drive. It was all the information Kent, one of the detectives we keep on our payroll, had to give.

“Fucking brutal,” I murmur. The remains were charred, but some of the bones were broken before being burned.

“She was tortured, but time of death couldn’t be determined.”

“I already know this. Get to something I don’t know.”

He starts to speak, but before he can even suck in the air needed for the first word, I ask, “Did you find anything on the sister?”

My fingers rap on the desk, one at a time with brief pauses, one after the other. As if it’s only a casual conversation.

“Bethany Fawn?”

At my nod, he begins. “Jennifer was born out of wedlock to a Catherine Parks. Shortly after her birth, her mother and father got hitched, then conceived Bethany. Not long after her birth, the father took off. Leaving their mom with no job, a toddler and an infant.”

“Where did he go?”

“Nebraska, where he died of a heart attack in a casino three years ago.”

“Did they keep in touch?”

“Not a word,” Seth answers professionally, but his eyes are questioning.

“Go on.”

“Bethany Fawn, the younger of the two, did well in school. And it seems like that was all she was interested in. She’s a nurse on the psych ward at Rockford. She’s worked there since she graduated. Apparently her mother had issues in the last years of her life and she chose this path because of it. Her sister--”

“What issues?” Again, I cut him off midbreath.

“Alzheimer’s.”

“How old was she?”

“Bethany? Twenty. Her mother was fifty-two when she died.”

I watched my mother die slowly, but I was young. Cancer is a bitch. I can only imagine being more aware and having to go through that. Being old enough to understand. Back when I was a kid, I was sure Mom was going to get better. Knowing there is no getting better and having to watch someone you love slowly die? That’s a cruel way to live. A cruel way to die as well. But that’s life, isn’t it?

“One thing you may find interesting is that she was spotted with you recently,” Seth says and sits back further in his seat. It’s the only note on her in the entire department. “A possible associate.”

“And who put that in? Our new friend, Walsh?” I surmise.

“You got it,” he says and snaps his fingers. “And you two aren’t the only ones doing some digging. Miss Fawn’s search history is interesting … limited, but interesting.”

“Is that right?” I ask, bringing my thumb up to run along my chin.

“Little Miss Fawn was looking you up and Officer Walsh after he paid her a visit.”

I shrug impatiently, and Seth continues.

“She didn’t find much, obviously, since there’s nothing on the internet to find… although it seems she’s interested in Angie. She’s searching for pictures of her, doesn’t look like she knows her name. Jase Cross with brunette. Jase Cross lover. Jase Cross date. Things like that.”

“Angie?” The only piece of information that surprises me so far is this. “Why?”

“I guess she saw her with you in pictures online. But she doesn’t have her name, or any information on her.”

Who do I remind you of? I remember her question last night. That’s why.

“Shit.” I breathe out the word. “Anything else?” I ask him, ignoring the dread, the regret, the deep-seated hate for myself because of everything that happened four years ago. All of those ghosts belong in the past. They can stay there too.

Seth passes me a folder; opening it up reveals six profiles. All are of women in their late twenties, and two I recognize from the club. Jennifer is the first. The second is Miranda. She’s gotten thrown out a handful of times. Too high to know she was messing with the wrong guys. Causing problems that aren’t easy to fix.

“She ran with quite a crowd,” I comment as I sift through the papers, reading one charge after the next and notes about the men they each were associated with. Men I don’t trust or like.

“You could say that. It was all recent though. She only came into the scene this past year,” Seth comments and leans back in his seat. The leather protests as he does. “College grad who struggled to keep a job after school. Taking one after the next. All had nothing to do with her degree.”

“Quit or fired?”

“She quit them all. Everyone I talked to said they loved her, but they knew she wasn’t going to stay long. It wasn’t interesting enough for her,” he says but forms air quotes around the word “interesting.”

“You think that’s why she quit them? Boredom?”

“I’m guessing she just needed to pay her bills.” He shrugs. “From what I gather she was eccentric and wanted to solve the world’s problems. The last job she had was working at The Bistro across the turnpike.”

That particular information catches my attention and I look up from the papers to see Seth nodding. “Romano’s place?”

“The one and only.”

Just hearing that name makes me grit my teeth. “He’s a dead man.” My throat tightens as I speak. All I can see when I hear the word Romano is the picture of Tyler, dead on the wet asphalt; the water soaked into my hoodie he wore that day.

It was supposed to be me.

“Damn right,” Seth says and I check my composure. Refusing to let that fuck get in the way of this conversation.

“So, The Bistro,” I say to push Seth to continue the conversation, picking at the pages in the folder, and trying to rid my mind of the sight of Tyler. He was a good kid. That’s the worst part. No one really deserves to die, but if anyone in this world could have been spared, it should have been him.

Tossing the folders down onto the desk, I lean back, letting the information sink in. “So she’s got debt from college, can’t get the right job yet so she’s bouncing around to pay the bills. She lands a job at The Bistro and something there’s leading these girls down a dark path.

“We have eyes down there; what’d they say?” My voice rises on its own, demanding information.

Seth winces slightly before telling me, “You aren’t going to like this.”

“Don’t be a little bitch,” I tell him, losing my patience.

“They said she was there and gone. She was friendly and nice, but then up and quit. Miranda was working there at the same time and quit with her. No reason. She didn’t stand out and nothing did about the two of them leaving. Just two open waitress spots to fill when they left.”

“So they’ve got nothing?” I ask as my heart rate rapidly increases and the blood rushes in my ears. “We have a group of women,” I enunciate each word and Seth takes the opportunity to butt in.

“Two of them working there at the same time and quitting at the same time,” he adds and I meet his gaze, daring him to interrupt me again.

“A group of women with no prior history of any of this bullshit, getting hooked on some shit, all of them racking up charges in the past year and some of them stepping foot into my club. And you’re telling me the boys we’re paying to watch that shithole have no fucking idea what happened, or who influenced this shit?” I slam the bottom of my oxfords again on the inside of my walnut desk, kicking it as hard as I can on impulse. Needing to get out the rage. My muscles are tense, my body’s hot and I need to beat the shit out of something.

I have no fucking impulse control, no restraint today. Not a damn thing keeping me under control.

Moving my chair back into place, I set my elbows on my desk, lower my head and smooth my hand over the back of my neck.

“I’m losing my patience,” I tell him. Staring at my desk, I admit the obvious. “I don’t like not having answers when I want them. She’s one girl. A girl we’ve seen; a girl we’ve watched before. We should know who the fuck killed her and why.”

Seth grips the armrest, looking away from me, toward the blood-red leather walls that line the room.

“It’s like someone’s hiding it,” Seth speaks quickly.

“Hiding?”

“I can’t find a damn thing on her after she started working there other than what we had already with the sweets,” he says, and his frustration grows with each word.

“We know she was buying our shit in bulk, high on what was obviously coke. She gave the name of a fake brother when we questioned her, that was early December. Then there’s not a trace of her.”

“She ever come back after that night?” I ask him. I remember that night. Carter came down here, looking for answers about his drug. It hardly sold shit, it’s something that puts you to sleep. We only push it on addicts that can’t handle any more. It knocks their asses out as they go through withdrawal. They always come back though, but never for the sweets.

Not until recently.

“No. She never came back and the demand for the sweets dropped simultaneously.”

“She was buying for someone,” I remark. “Someone who backed off when they found out we were onto them…. maybe that’s who did this? He wanted her silenced so there were no loose threads?”

“It’s not Romano, we have ears on him, we would know. I’ve been through every fucking recording from December twenty-seventh to the fucking week she was discovered. He didn’t say a word about it. I don’t think she’s on his radar.”

“So it’s just a fucking coincidence that all her shit starts going downhill when she starts working for him?” I raise my finger, feeling the lines in my forehead deepen with anger.

“He got her hooked; I think he did. Or someone there did. I think that’s when it started, but her dying… whoever it was, they got to her at his place, and Romano doesn’t know about it or even realize someone’s taking those girls from him.”

The pieces of the puzzle fall slowly into place, giving me the rough edges of a watered-down image someone doesn’t want me to see.

“It would be easy if it was Romano; he’s already a dead man.”

“As soon as this new cop is off our fucking backs, he’s dead,” I tell him, opening up the folder again to see Jennifer’s profile on top and Beth’s name listed as her only living relative staring back at me in black and white. “If Officer Cody Walsh doesn’t watch his step,” I say and lift my gaze from Beth’s name, where the tips of my fingers still linger to tell Seth, “he’s a dead man too.”