Bringing Maddie Home(21)
Author: Janice Kay Johnson

Chandler unfolded them and studied the picture in silence for a minute. His eyebrows momentarily climbed when he saw the amount on the deposit slip. At last he looked up. “You do have a problem,” he said. “I assume the account number is your boss’s?”

“His wife’s.”

“And you believe these items are in some way connected to the murder.”

He’d been right; Noah Chandler wasn’t giving much away.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Colin said, choosing his words with care. “At this point, however, we have to pursue what few leads we have. We have no missing persons listed who were staying at Arrow Lake Lodge, nor from any resorts in the close vicinity. The medical examiner is sure the bones belong to a young male, likely between about sixteen and twenty years of age. Given that we have the jaw, we’ve been able to compare teeth with X-rays from a couple of young men who are listed as missing in the right time frame, one from Bend, the other from Klamath Falls. Neither matched. Who was this guy? What was his connection to Dubeau’s resort? And why was he carrying that photo and the deposit slip? Packaged together, no less.”

The mayor mulled that over. “Did you consider asking Chief Bystrom?”

“I did. If it had been only the photograph, I’d have done so.”

“What is it you intend?”

“I want to look at his bank records. Find out who wrote the check, if it was one, deposited on that date. Make sure there isn’t a pattern of unexplained deposits.”

“Do you expect that there will be?”

For the first time, Colin hesitated. “I can’t answer that,” he said at last. “Chief Bystrom and his wife live very well, clearly beyond his salary. I’ve always assumed there was family money. I have no idea. I will tell you that this would be part of our investigation no matter who it was.”

“All right,” Chandler said abruptly, folding the two pieces of paper and laying them on the coffee table. “Unless you already had a judge in mind, I’d suggest you go to Tenney. I’ll give him a call.” He rose to his feet. “And thank you for the warning.” Amusement glinted in his eyes. “I like to know before the shit hits the fan.”

“Chief Bystrom is going to see this as an attack. You may not be aware that he and I don’t have an entirely cordial working relationship.”

“He’s said things.” Chandler gave the faintest of smiles. “Chief Bystrom and I don’t, either. Do what you have to do.”

They didn’t shake hands again. Colin left, fully satisfied.

Half an hour later, he had his warrant, which included bank and investment accounts in the names of Gary Bystrom and/or Marcia Bystrom.

It didn’t take long to determine that Gary Bystrom and his wife had deposited over half a million dollars over a period of about fifteen years, distributed over a number of different bank and investment accounts. Many amounts were small enough not to catch anyone’s attention, but there were too many of them. A decent supplemental income. Colin was going to have to ask his boss what the source of that money was, and then bring a forensic accountant in to verify the truth of his answer.

If it turned out a trust account had been paying out, Colin was up shit creek without a paddle—unless Mayor Noah Chandler chose to hand him one.

* * *

DELIGHT BLOSSOMED IN Nell the moment Colin turned into the parking lot of the Wolf Creek Resort that evening. The elevation was higher than the town of Angel Butte, which meant the ground was still white from the last storm. The outdoor ice-skating rink was surrounded by a two-foot bank of snow. More snow weighed down the branches of small evergreen trees scattered throughout the grounds. The ones around the rink were strung with tiny white lights. The restaurant he escorted her into looked out onto the rink.

They were seated by a window, and her gaze kept being drawn to the winter wonderland outside.

“You are planning to take me skating?” she murmured, as she closed her menu, decision made.

Colin laughed. “There’s a reason I told you to wear pants.”

“Oh! That’s going to be so much fun.” Her gaze strayed to the window again, and the sight of a man crashing to the ice made her wince. “I think.”

“You said you knew what to do. I’m counting on you keeping me on my feet.”

She laughed at him. “You’re kidding, right?”

His expression was appropriately surprised. “Why would I be kidding?”

“Because you outweigh me by just a teensy bit. Like sixty, seventy pounds? You do know what would happen if we were holding hands and you started to go down?”

“Huh.” A smile crinkled the skin at the corners of his eyes. “I’d take you down with me.”

“Yes!”

“I’ve never been ice-skating, but I do cross-country ski. How hard can it be?”

Thus spoke a man arrogantly certain of his prowess. Nell rolled her eyes. “Maybe we won’t hold hands.”

His smile deepened. “Oh, we’ll hold hands.” His voice had deepened, too.

She couldn’t look away. The velvety rough tone of his voice gave her quivers and she found herself squeezing her thighs together to try to contain them.

“I’ll sue you for any bruises,” she said lightly.

He chuckled. Both were distracted then by the waitress, who took their orders. When she was gone, he asked Nell about her day.

“It was fun.” She made a face. “First time you’ve ever heard that word out of my mouth, isn’t it? But I really like Felix, and we did have a good time. He told me this was my trip down memory lane. Mostly, it was his memory lane, but that’s okay. I found out where he went skinny-dipping, where teenagers in Angel Butte park to make out—” At Colin’s expression, she mock-glowered at him. “So okay, you could have told me that.” Her voice softened. “He showed me places we rode our bikes, where Mom and Dad took us on picnics. We went out to Arrow Lake. I don’t know if Dad was there or not—we didn’t ask for him. I got to sit on this rock that sticks out into the lake. Wrong time of year, of course, but I remember lying on it for hours at a time watching the minnows and dreaming. When there’s so much I don’t remember, visiting a place I do made me feel…anchored, I guess.” She shrugged, probably a little awkwardly.

“I’m glad.” He reached across the table for her hand. “That you had a good day, and that some of your memories are happy ones.”

She squeezed his hand, hoping he couldn’t tell that her reaction to his touch was a whole lot more than friendly. “Thank you.”

They’d been served their entrees when he became quiet. A couple of lines between his eyebrows made his expression brooding. Beginning to feel apprehensive, Nell waited.

When he met her eyes, he looked troubled. “Something came up today I’d like to talk to you about, see if it awakens any memories. If it does, they probably won’t be good ones. Damn,” he muttered. “What am I thinking? We can do this later.”

The too-familiar band around her chest tightened. “Sure, like I’m going to be able to think about anything else now. Tell me.”

His reluctance was obvious, but finally he dipped his head. “You know some bones turned up in River Park.” He explained how and when it happened, and that the continued search for both evidence and more bones had paused until the freeze let go of the ground. “You heard Detective Vahalik yesterday.”

“Yes,” she said, trying to hide her sense of foreboding.

“Here’s what we’ve learned so far.” He explained that they knew the victim was male and likely in his late teens. The exciting part for investigators was the recovery of a backpack with contents preserved well enough they knew the young man carried what might be items deeply personal to him, including a photo of a woman and boy and a Purple Heart. Oddly, he also had a change of clothes in the pack.

The foreboding had swelled until it hurt to contain. She managed a choppy nod.

“The clothes could have been because he’d just been to the gym.” He paused. “But the framed photo? The military medal? My first thought was that he was homeless. Carrying what he absolutely needed with him, and some mementos of his parents. Things he wouldn’t have left even if he had a temporary place to stay. The schoolwork complicates that explanation, though. I don’t know what to think now.”

“You’re asking if he was my boyfriend,” she whispered.

Regret darkened his eyes to charcoal. “Yeah, that’s what I’m wondering. He was buried so close to where you were assaulted, the coincidence has been nagging at me.”

She pushed against the darkness that separated her from all the things she should be able to remember, and was paid back by pain stabbing through her temple. Thinking at all became a struggle, but she made herself.

“I was wearing a shirt that I don’t think was mine when I came to in the trunk.” Filthy. Bloody, but still comforting even though she didn’t know why. It was the only thing she’d had to hold on to…something. Someone. “The sleeves come down to here.” She held her hand six or eight inches from the tips of her fingers on the other hand. “The patch on the shoulder says ‘Airborne’ and has a feathered wing holding a sword. I looked it up online and learned it’s from the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team. They took heavy casualties in Vietnam.”

“Which means lots of Purple Hearts were awarded,” he said slowly.

She nodded.

He let out a heavy breath. “It’s not sounding good, sweetheart.”

Her heart took a little hop. Did he realize what he’d just said? The way he’d reverted to brooding made her suspect it was a slip.

The moment of hope was only a blip in the dark cloud of anxiety that had her clasping her hands on her lap to hide her shaking from Colin.

“I have the shirt with me. I mean, back at the apartment. It’s…” Precious? No, that wasn’t right. “I wore it a lot those few first years. It meant something to me. I just don’t know what.”

“If your parents didn’t know you had a boyfriend, you wouldn’t have dared wear that shirt where they’d see it. Or run it through the wash at home.”

“No. He might have let me wear it sometimes.” The pain in her head splintered until she saw black spots before her eyes. “That night…” Her voice broke.

Colin leaned forward, his intensity a force field. “Maybe you weren’t running to Emily. You were running to him.”

Nell had to close her eyes. She pressed fingers to her temple, pushing hard, harder. A whimper escaped her.

The next thing she knew, a big, warm hand captured hers and lowered it. Then he began to massage, far more gently, almost a caress. Her temple, her forehead, her cheekbone. The pain subsided slowly, ebbing like a tide sweeping all debris with it.

The tension gradually left her neck and shoulders, until she felt so weak her head fell back. But not far—it rested against him. His belly, rock-hard but moving with each breath he drew. He was standing behind her, she gradually came to realize, both hands now squeezing her shoulders until she moaned softly.

“Ma’am?” she heard someone ask. “Sir? Is there a problem?”

“Migraine.” Colin bent forward so his lips had to be close to her ear. “Do we need to go home?”

She felt weirdly relaxed, and she wasn’t sure she could stand. The relief was huge. Somehow she shook her head slightly and slitted her eyes open. People at neighboring tables were watching them. Belated self-consciousness had her straightening.

“No, I…feel better.” To her astonishment, she did. The pain had to have been purely psychosomatic. Am I just a little crazy, or a lot? She blinked a few times. “Thank you, Colin. You saved me.”

His worried gaze not leaving her, he returned to his seat. “God, I’m sorry, Nell. That was entirely my fault.”

“No.” Her head still felt a little wobbly when she shook it. “I’ve…had that happen before, when I tried too hard to remember. It’s one reason I quit trying.”

His frown deepened. “Does it happen only when you try to remember certain things?”

Nell bit her lip. “I think so. Not school or friends or Felix. Not even my parents,” she admitted. She stared at him, wide-eyed. “Oh, my God. You don’t know what a relief that is. It never was them.”

“You did remember their faces.”

“Yes!” Her ebullience didn’t last long. “I can’t picture Beck at all, if that was his name. When I try, I get filled with this…this horrible pressure that makes me think my head is going to explode. The minute Emily mentioned him, I had this ominous feeling and I didn’t want to talk about him.”

“Because he hurt you?” His jaw flexed. “Or because you saw someone hurt him.”

She stared at him, hating this sensation of dread, hating whatever blocked her from remembering.

At whatever he saw on her face, Colin half rose to his feet, then closed his eyes and sat again. “Okay, that’s it,” he said, voice raw. “No more, I promise. Thank you for trying, Nell. We’re not doing this again tonight.” The strength of his concern for her made her tremble.

“It’s okay. Really.” Seeing his expression, she reached for his hand. “I came back to Angel Butte to remember. I have to keep trying. So I want you to tell me what else you found in the backpack. If any of it was important.”

His expression closed. “I wanted you to have a good time tonight.”

“I will, once we get this over with.”

They conducted a silent battle, gazes clashing. At length his breath gusted out. “Fine. There was a framed picture of a woman and a boy, maybe nine, ten years old.”