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They talked over the next story, until they were drawn into the mad ramblings of an evangelist.
‘Is this still the news?’ said Ren.
‘We might learn something …’ said Janine.
‘And in so doing, the devil visited upon the Earth a faithful following of fornicators, a plague of pornographers, a harem of homosexuals—’
‘A harem?’ said Ren. ‘Seriously? Who’s this dickhead?’
The report continued. ‘That was the voice of evangelist Howard Coombes, who was assaulted earlier today at Centennial Airport.’
‘Woo-hoo!’ said Ren. ‘I cannot stand that man.’
‘Coombes, who is here to attend a memorial for the victims of the Aurora Theater shooting, was being interviewed outside the building by one of our own presenters … Here’s the audio …
‘“I’m just here as a show of support to the people of Aurora who were so affected by—”’
Another man’s voice broke into the interview: ‘“What about supporting the rights of citizens to marry the person they love? What about the rights of a man to marry a man or a woman to marry a woman?”’
There was the sound of scuffling and it went back to the studio.
‘The angry protester threw a milkshake at Mr Coombes, later describing it as an impulse attack, but making a point that the sentiment behind it still stands.’
‘High five to the milkshake man,’ said Ren. ‘Howard Coombes – the voice of reasonlessness … High five also to the producer for running the sermon from before Coombes was caught fornicating with a “homo-sekshil”—’
‘Did I miss that?’ said Janine. ‘Isn’t he married with mini-me-vangelists?’
‘Oh, yes he is,’ said Ren. ‘His son, Jesse, was the child evangelist − he was touring at five, being interviewed on television – it was insane. The family were building up their empire for years. Then the father got caught with a man-of-the-night in a motel. Busted! But he got all repentant, so the family stuck by him and he blamed it all on the other guy. He gave one of the most odious speeches I’ve ever heard, saying the guy was a “homo-sekshil of the worst kind”, the kind who takes money from a married, God-fearing man going through a crisis, a man questioning his life and his ways, a vulnerable man, who did not seek answers from this stranger, but found only more questions. I mean, it didn’t even make sense.’
‘He said that? “Of the worst kind”? What an asshole,’ said Janine.
‘Well, hopefully, he’s an asshole on a flight back to California.’
‘What’s he doing getting all up in our business anyway?’ said Janine.
‘I know,’ said Ren. ‘He is out there directing his wrath at people whose sin is to love? He should be pointing his daggers at the kind of people who would take a pregnant lady’s life. OK … deep breaths. Deep breaths.’
‘Yup,’ said Janine, ‘take your rantin’ pants off.’
‘I like that – rantin’ pants,’ said Ren. ‘I’ll get home, swap them for my fornicatin’ pants.’
‘Is yo’ man paying you a visit?’ said Janine.
‘No,’ said Ren. ‘Sadly. Realistically? We’re talking pajama pants tonight. Ah, the challenges of the long-distance relationship.’
Ren arrived home at nine thirty to an exceptional welcome from Misty, her black-and-white border collie and beloved friend. For a little over a year, Ren and Misty had been house-sitting a beautiful Gold-Rush-era home in historic Denver. It was owned by Annie Lowell, a Bryce family friend who had been a widow as long as Ren had known her. She was eighty-two now and busy traveling across Europe. She had been due back two months earlier, but had fallen in love with so many places on her trip, she kept extending it. Ren loved Annie … and loved that she was having such a good time.
Ren had recently auditioned dog walkers to look after Misty when she was working. She had settled on Devin, a sweet student from across the street, who loved Misty like she was her own. Ren had recently told Devin that Misty was a cadaver dog in her spare time, but it hadn’t broken Devin’s dog-walking stride.
When Ren walked into the hall, there was a box of Mike and Ike Berry Blast on top of the newel post with a pink Post-it stuck to it. Devin always left little things for Ren inside the door: notes or candy or something totally random.
Aw. Always something sweet to come home to.
She read the note.
Sugar rrrrrrush! Hope you cleaned up the streets today! Misty ran a marathon! Still no dead bodies, tho!
Devin
Ren laughed as she walked upstairs. She lay on her bed and called Ben.
‘Ben Rader, this is a time for hugs.’
‘What’s up?’ said Ben.
‘What’s up is we found a pregnant girl dead on the side of a road.’
He listened quietly as she told him everything.
‘Well, I wish I was there to give you those hugs,’ said Ben. ‘I’m sending you some down the phone. And there’ll be real ones at the weekend.’
‘Thank you, man.’
‘Make yourself some hot chocolate. Crank up the comfort. I need you to be there this weekend. I can’t have you running away to a lady commune …’
‘No chance,’ said Ren. ‘And don’t worry – here is always cozy. It just feels like home.’
‘Well, I can’t wait to be home with you,’ said Ben.
Ooh … home. Sounds a liittle too committed.
11 (#ulink_7f56d274-2ffa-5a5c-81c9-9234bb473736)
The following morning, Ren was in the office by seven. She sat at her desk in the small space where, over the years, the team-within-a-team had been cemented: Ren Bryce, Robbie Truax and Cliff James. There had been a fourth – Colin Grabien, IT and financial expert, and nemesis to Ren. He had resigned from Safe Streets five months earlier, not long after Ren had punched him in the face and told him she knew he had gotten his position by shafting the other candidate. She had kept it quiet; she didn’t want to ruin his career. She hoped he saw the error of his ways. He requested a transfer, and attributed it to the changing career of his soon-to-be-wife. Since then, Gary had drafted in different financial and IT experts from 36th Avenue, but he hadn’t made a decision on his permanent replacement.
Ren could see Robbie Truax’s computer was fired up. He was the only one in. Robbie was ex-Aurora PD, a solid member of Safe Streets. If honesty, earnestness and goodness could take a physical form, it would take Robbie Truax. He walked into the bullpen and gave her a weary hello.
‘You know what I can’t help?’ said Ren, ‘when anyone else sits in Grabien’s chair, I’m kind of thinking that I’ll come in some day and they will have morphed into him … morphed into an asshole. Like the chair itself changes people.’ She started up her computer. ‘I think the chair has taken on an ominous vibe,’ she said. ‘Stephen-King style.’
‘So no matter who sits there, we’re in trouble,’ said Robbie.
‘Maybe,’ said Ren.
‘There’s a lot of darkness in there,’ said Robbie, pointing to her head.
‘Caused by the absence of lightbulbs.’
‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ said Robbie. He never let her beat herself up too much, even when she was joking.
Cliff arrived into the office, looking shattered. He mustered up enough energy to give Ren one of his gorgeous smiles and a wink.
‘Hey, big guy,’ said Ren. ‘Were you two pulling an all-nighter or something?’
‘Are you saying I’m fat?’ said Cliff. He stretched back on his chair. ‘Why is it that women can say to men they look like crap, but men can’t say it to women?’
‘Who said anything about looking like crap?’ said Ren. ‘Maybe I meant you smell like you slept in your clothes.’
‘I slept in the nudie, as always,’ said Cliff.
‘There is no greater gift than those intimate mental snapshots,’ said Ren.
‘Mental?’ said Cliff. ‘They can’t be better than the photo books …’
‘The pages are getting tattered,’ said Ren. ‘They’re worn through.’ She paused. ‘Now, speaking of pages, I am about to enter the Facebook world of Laura Flynn.’
‘Facebook …’ said Cliff. And his tone expressed exactly how he felt about it.
‘This is bizarre,’ said Ren after a few minutes’ trawling. ‘There is no mention of her pregnancy anywhere. She’s not a major poster of photos, but the ones she has put up are all head-and-shoulders shots.’ She scrolled down through the images. ‘Looks like this was a secret pregnancy … but from who? The father? The Princes knew … but they’re not Facebook Friends. So maybe the father is connected to one of these twenty-two Friends she does have. And this is also weird: there’s no Nessa Lally, the girl she was to have stayed with in Chicago. But then, I guess, not everyone is on Facebook.’ She paused. ‘Could this be a surrogacy situation? Could Laura Flynn have been acting as a surrogate for the Princes? Ingrid Prince could well have a Moonbump and a prescription for Prednisone.’
‘And I am going to ask you what the heck both of those things are,’ said Cliff.
‘Prednisone is an anti-arthritis drug,’ said Ren, ‘but it causes weight gain that mimics pregnancy weight gain – like water retention in the face and neck. And a Moonbump is a faux pregnancy belly – they’re used in movies or by women who are adopting or using a surrogate and would rather people not know for whatever reason.’
‘Gee whizz,’ said Robbie.
‘Let me Google Ingrid Prince and see whether there are any suspect baby bump photos …’ said Ren, ‘the kind that fold and the like.’ Ren typed, then paused. ‘Four months is probably a little too early for that … I was thinking six months.’
‘So there’s a two-month difference in their due dates,’ said Cliff.
‘That way the baby comes before the paparazzi start sniffing around,’ said Ren.
She went back to scanning Laura Flynn’s Facebook posts.
‘Laura Flynn’s friends are almost entirely non-slutty,’ said Ren. ‘Low levels of selfies and duck face. And Laura – she looks like such a regular girl. Just a nice person. Like, she dressed as Little Red Riding Hood last Hallowe’en. A regular one, not an “adult” one. She volunteers at a soup kitchen …’
Ren did another search. ‘Hold on … more weirdness. I just ran her “illegal” friend, Nessa Lally, through our databases and she is, in fact, one hundred percent legal. If her mother is dead, which I’m now thinking she is not, Nessa is free to go back to Ireland all she wants.’
She sat back. ‘So, Laura Flynn. Almost-entirely-secret pregnancy, trip to Chicago with secret drive down to Colorado, phone call to Janine Hooks … there was lots of secret shiz going on.’
‘Let’s see what the autopsy tells us,’ said Robbie.
‘You know we’re also going to take in the ranch and abbey afterwards,’ said Ren. ‘We need to talk to a little old nun-like lady, who may or may not have seen a car being torched.’ She gathered up her things.
‘I can’t help feeling I’m drafted in for religious organizations and old ladies,’ said Robbie.
Ren paused as she walked by him and held a hand to his cheek. ‘But look at that face …’
He shook his head away from her.
‘You have a way about you,’ said Ren.
People told Robbie things because he made them feel that whatever information they gave him, it was a blessing, he would cherish it, and he would use it to successfully fight the forces of evil. No matter where he’d been and what he’d seen, he truly trusted and he inspired trust. His bright blue eyes told them ‘We are going to solve this. I will take care of this.’
Robbie Truax: Action Boy.
Ren glanced at him.
Tired-looking Action Boy.
The little old ladies saw him as the ideal grandson. He was single, Mormon and virginal, because he never wanted to do what so many of his friends had done: marry so he could have sex. Robbie was waiting for the right woman to come along. He had long believed it was Ren. He had once broken his no-alcohol vow for one night only to be a little more like the kind of man he thought Ren would want. He had tried to kiss her and he had told her how he felt. And she let him kindly know that, though she adored him, she thought of him in a different way; the worst way possible for him: as a brother.
Even if she had been physically attracted to him, even if he didn’t believe in no sex before marriage, Robbie wouldn’t do sex. Robbie did love.
Bless you, innocent, pure, breakable Robbie.
The autopsy lasted two hours and was a difficult one for everyone. Ren, Janine, Robbie and Kohler were now standing in a corner, as Tolman talked through the findings. Tolman was a smart, thorough medical examiner, who explained everything clearly.
He glanced at Janine and Ren.
‘You know, Janine, I remember a time when you told me not to speak to Agent Ren Bryce … now look at you guys.’
‘It was a dark moment in our history,’ said Ren.
‘Darker for her than me,’ said Janine.
Shame. Shaaame.
During a previous investigation, Ren had gotten her confidential informant to steal a file from Janine’s office, but he had put it back in the wrong place, and Janine had made the connection to Ren. By the end of the mercifully successful investigation, Janine had also solved a cold case and the two women had ultimately bonded over bad things and good intentions.
‘Aw, the lesser-spotted blushing of Ren Bryce,’ said Janine. ‘Let’s just say that at the time of said incident, Agent Bryce was using her superpowers for good …’
‘Some day you will tell me,’ said Tolman. ‘OK – down to business: we’ve got a twenty-six-year-old woman, pregnant, sustained multiple gunshot wounds, while sitting in a parked car. Cause of death was a severe head injury caused by a gunshot wound at close range. I recovered one projectile from behind the left scapula. Also noted was a gunshot wound to the chest, causing severe injuries. I recovered a second projectile just beneath the scalp behind the left ear. Both appear to me to be from a large caliber weapon. Manner of death: homicide. Time of death – anywhere from ten a.m. to when you found her at 15.48.
‘The pregnancy was approximately six months gestational age,’ said Tolman. ‘The fetus was viable. If it were born today, it would have been capable of living on its own. There were no signs of deformity. The death of the fetus is associated with maternal death, caused by the gunshot wounds.’ He paused. ‘Do you know who the father is? Is there a question of paternity? I’ll retain tissue here – I can get testing through the university lab, if you need it.’
‘Great,’ said Ren. ‘We don’t know yet. We also have to consider it as a possible surrogacy situation.’
‘Well, keep me posted,’ said Tolman.
‘Oh,’ said Ren. ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’
‘It’s a girl,’ said Tolman.
Those words were not meant for this room.
12 (#ulink_862bbee0-44ed-586d-9322-e3b7efef13b0)
Robbie sat with his laptop at a spare desk beside Janine’s. Ren was sitting on the edge of Janine’s desk, her office phone up to her ear.
